Well..... Jack Sparrow turned out to be a teetotaller and wore glasses. I am disappointed because everything else about Stephen Turnbull is so much like the legendary pirate, his appearance, his movements, and way of speaking. He even had weird stuff on his table like a stuffed parrot, and an archaic lantern. The chair in which he sat was broken in a peculiar way that made it very suitable for star gazing, but never tipped over. In Ryan's absence over the first week, I developed a good rapport with him.
On the first day, I met Taylor 30 minutes before the scheduled meeting. He saw me in the passage-way and correctly guessed who I was. We had a long session as he explained my task and gave me the required background with a lot of enthusiasm. He took me to Cosmology group meetings and seminars, and afterwards provided explanations to bring stuff that went way over my head to a closer 'getting-a-hang'able range.
Ryan Speller is one of Taylor's graduate students, and he is my guide for the summer. He keeps his head shaved. He recently fought a boxer to save his cute dog. If there are any confusions for the reader, the boxer is also a breed of a dog, and this particular member of the species was over-aggressive. Anyway all that is very irrelevant to the context. Ryan has this geeky friend Jonathan, who contributes to restoring the average hair length by his long locks. Then there is Uzair, whose work on modelling star clusters I liked, and whose idea that religions are scientific, I opposed. There is one Chinese guy too, who is very friendly and keeps asking me the most irrelevant questions, but I am forgetting his name at the moment.
Last Friday, we went out with the Physics group for drinks and then some light meal. Over the din of the bar, I couldn't get what all the waitress had to offer, and looked around for help. Finally I did with some light Canadian beer. There was Robert and Helen from London, who claimed that people often mistook them for Australians, but I assured them they were too gentleman and lady-like to be Australians. We all chatted for a long time before wishing each other a happy weekend.
Today again, after a group meeting with Taylor, we went to the Grad House and played a game of "Oh! Shit" over a pitcher of beer. This card game is so named because winning is not guaranteed in the game, but at least one person loses. After a while I got a hang of the game, and did pretty well. Here's a link if you are interested -(http://www.pagat.com/exact/ohhell.html)
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