Dragon Boat Race

Well done to the Drill Hall Library team for coming 7th out of 14 in the Dragon Boat race last weekend!!!

Congratulations

"Well done, Maryam, on passing all your ESOL level 2 exams!!  I'm glad I was able to be a little bit of a help :-)  We just need to work a bit harder on speaking skills"

Maryam got 90% on the reading exam, 93% on the writing exam and 73% on speaking/listening.

Too many goodbyes

"Linsay, thanks for sending this pic of you and I last Sunday.  It's been great to have you as part of our church family during your studies at the University of Kent.  I wish you all the very best for your future. Do please keep in touch."

On a personal note ...

This is Tilly dog ... who has been staying with me over this Bank holiday weekend, whilst owners Richard & Kathryn and girls are enjoying some time away. She's a cute wee thing and has been easy to have around.

HOWEVER ...  after destroying my lovely doorstop dog, Tilly is no longer my friend :-(

Another Goodbye

"Adeline, I'm going to miss you sooooooooo much!!!
Hope and pray you have a good journey back to India
tomorrow.  Do let me know you've arrived safely
and do please send me a photo of your family.
It is on my radar to visit India again sometime
in the near(ish) future."

Food & Drink Festival

I never for one moment considered that a wee trip to the Chatham Maritime Food & Drink Festival would end with me doing something I've NEVER done before and NEVER thought I would EVER do because I can't swim and, basically, I'm a bit of a sissy ...


Shall I ...












  

Or shan't I ...

Thanks Adeline, Aiste, Basel and Ilya for a very fun couple of hours. What any of this has to do with a Food & Drink Fest I don't know but it made for a great afternoon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

... and it's the Gold medal for Great Britain!!!

PhD Hubs

QUESTION:
How many PhD level students are there at the University of Greenwich?  That's grand total, including all three campuses.

By the very nature of this level of study, PhD students have many demands on their time but also, because they are working on their own specific area of research, they can be stuck in a lab or in front of a computer and easily feel lonely and isolated.
This past week I have helped to run three PhD Hubs, one at each campus, alongside Jacqui, the Manager of the Postgrad office. These hubs have been a bit of an experiment but have arisen out of a desire to provide better networking and peer support amongst those studying at PhD level.
Each session was well received by those who attended and they gave us much food for thought about how we can implement an improved level of support.  
Looking ahead we hope to help provide something approximately once every six weeks and trust that there will be some key players amongst the students themselves who will act as advocates to see these hubs established.

ANSWER:  
In total there are approximately 550 PhD students at the University of Greenwich!!!  Many of those coming from overseas.

On a personal note ...

Here's my brother, Tony, showing off his C-type racing Jaguar; and my sister-in-law, Sarah, doing her Grace Kelly impression.
When, oh when, will I get a spin in the Jag???

Eurovision

Last night we had a belated Eurovision Song Contest evening at my place (as in real time it had clashed with our World Fest evening @ St Mark's). Thanks to those students who came along and for bringing food along (I even got ousted from my own kitchen).

According to our voting system the winners were ...

1st place - Sweden

2nd place - Spain

3rd place - Russia

4th place - Iceland

... and I'm sure the UK came 5th :-)

This is possibly a sign of our frustration resulting
from the actual public vote ...

Celebrity Challenge

As several students were still in the middle of exams it was great to have a good number out at TABLEtalk last Tuesday.  We played another of my favourite games which I call 'Celebrity Challenge'.

Here's how to play ...

1.  In advance, prepare a good number of celebrity names on pieces of paper, which are folded and placed in a bowl.  These names can be real, fictional or cartoon characters.  
If you are playing with a mono-cultural group, you can simply give everyone two or three blank pieces of paper and have them write their own suggested names (though you obviously risk getting some repeats).

2.  Split your group in to two or three teams.  

3.  In Round 1, one person from team one comes to the front, takes a name from the bowl and describes that person to their team.  They can use as many words as they wish but must NOT use actions.  If their team guesses correctly that paper is put to one side.  They continue, against the clock, to gain as many points as possible. Allow approx. 90 seconds.

4.  Note that the person describing can pass on a name if they pick something they consider too difficult. In this instance they simply return that paper to the bowl and keep going.  Each team has a go in turn, using different members of their team to describe.  Keep going until the bowl is empty.

5.  Count the points for each team.

6.  Return all the same folded papers to the bowl.  Round 2 follows a similar format but this time the describer can use only ONE WORD to describe each character.

7.  Finally, in Round 3 NO WORDS can be spoken and the describer must instead act the character.  By this point team members will have memorised some of the names and so it's not as difficult as it might sound.

Here's one of my favourite moments from last Tuesday ... can you tell the difference between Aiste and Einstein???

Here's a list of the names we used ... Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, Adolf Hitler, Batman, Bill Gates, Buzz Lightyear, Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Charlie Chaplin, Captain Jack Sparrow, Darth Vader, Gandalf, Gollum, George Washington, Indiana Jones, John F Kennedy, James Bond 007,  J.K.Rowling, Leonardo DiCaprio, Leonardo de Vinci, Lady Gaga, Matt Damon, Marco Polo, Madonna, Mother Teresa, Mohandes Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Mickey Mouse, Mao Zedong, Nemo, Nelson Mandela, Pablo Picasso, Queen Victoria, Stephen Hawking, Sherlock Holmes, Vincent van Gogh, Vladimir Putin, William Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, Will Smith 

World Fest

World Fest was an event I helped to organise at St Mark's Church on Saturday, May 10th.  It was in essence a church social celebrating both our unity and our diversity. Including the students pictured below, it was attended by 160 folk from Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, Nigeria, the Seychelles, India, Namibia, Barbados, America, Jamaica, China, Singapore, Bulgaria, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, France, Lithuania, Hungary and a few Brits.

But before I say any more I must extend a

HUGE THANK YOU

to each of the students who came along to help me out.

From left to right ...
Vino from India, Basel from Jordan, Aiste from Lithuania, Eniko from Hungary, some strange lady in red, Mohamed from Egypt, Wuese from Nigeria and Anu from Sri Lanka
"Thank you sooooooooooooooo much for all your help; without it my evening would not have been so smooth or enjoyable. Anu, a special thankyou for acting our official photographer for the evening; all these photos are great."

Another BIG THANK YOU goes to all the other cooks ... 
to Ghazala, Mo, Miena, Mayowa, Fatima, Nikki and Radi who provided scrumptious dishes from China, South Africa, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Seychelles, Singapore and Bulgaria ...

 

In addition to all the good food available on the evening we also had some great musical entertainment ...

  

All in all, it was a great evening, with a real sense of community. My sincere hope is that everyone else enjoyed themselves too!!!

 

Give me time to recover and we'll do it all again sometime!!!