Hoedowns and Glue

Well it's mid week and the schooling part of this whole experience is beginning to set in. Unlike in engineering where I was able to avoid nearly all reading and learn simply by doing math, this master's program is going to require a significant more time spent on reading. But it's all really interesting stuff so hopefully it won't be too bad.

Some of the stuff we're going over right now includes the definition of what a human need is and how to classify them, strategies for implementing 'sustainability' into an existing structure, and figuring out what exactly 'sustainability' even means.

On Monday, we all gave short 2 minute presentations describing each of ourselves to the rest of the class. Most people did the standard get up and talk about projects they've worked on and passions they have, but our group of 5 in our apartment felt that would be a bit too normal. So the night before, we decided to spice things up slightly. We took our inspiration from 'Whose Line is it Anyway' (an improv tv show that is quite hilarious for those of you unfamiliar with it). The 5 of us each decided to write a very short poem and sing it to the tune of a hoedown. We then all went up together and did a little dance and song singing (well, let's just call it for singing) about ourselves. It was pretty fantastic and fortunately we didn't scare the professors and heads of the program too bad - I'd have to call that a successful performance! As soon as I get the video of our performance, I'll post it here. (They told us at the beginning of class that they decided to film our performances so that we can refer back to it a year from now and see how we have improved our presentation styles - hm, I guess we have to figure out how to improve either our singing or dancing)

The second funny thing that has happened this week is all thanks to Matt. So the other day, the front end of Matt's desk decided to detach itself from the rest of the desk. Considering we got all of our furniture from a second-hand store, this didn't surprise us all too much. But, Matt being his clever self, decided to grab some crazy glue and reattach the fallen off piece.

Now, it is fairly difficult to describe this without Matt physically acting it out, so I've added some drawings that might assist you in visualizing the next few moments.

Step 1: Matt is sitting on his chair and begins to place a bead of glue the entire way around the region of the desk where the piece had fallen off.
Step 2: About 3/4's of the way through, Matt accidentally squeezes too hard on the tube and puts far too much glue on the desk. As a result, a blob of glue falls onto the ground.
Step 3: Not wanting to make a mess of his room, Matt quickly decides to bend over and clean up the glue from ground.Step 4: However, in his haste, Matt proceeds to smear the top of his head all over the large glue blob on the desk which was originally causing the drip.
Step 5: Matt takes a shower for quite a long time with no luck in getting the glue out.
Step 6: Matt proceeds to tell me this fantastic story. I of course proceed to laugh for a good 10 minutes before trying to offer a solution. Sadly, I have no solution.Step 7: After trying to soak his hair in shampoo and vegetable oil, Matt decides it's time for a haircut.
All in all, it was a pretty fantastic day, and in addition, now Matt looks all clean and dapper.

So those were most of the funny things that have happened thus far. Tomorrow, a group of us are going sailing on a few different boats in the Baltic. Do we have any idea what we're doing? Nope. But that's not going to stop us.

Next week we are thinking of organizing a group to go see the world premiere of a film called "The Age of Stupid." There has been a lot of attention towards the film and I'm interested in seeing how they portray the current 'sustainability' and climate change situation, whether it's depressing at the end of the movie or motivational to make a change. Sadly it seems like too many of these films just explain all the bad things happening, without any explanation of the hope and ways of moving forward in the right direction. Here's a trailer for the film, we'll have to let you know what we think of it. Or you can go and see it yourself.