Beyond Selidor

Thanks to steamboatsnorri for letting me steal his photos.

( Conforming to ASNaC stereotypes? Do you even need to ask? )

I've had a fabulous 24 hours.

Last night (it was after midnight, so it counts as today), I watched the Super Bowl with American, British and Indian housemates. It was full of stellar commentary ('points are going to be really important in this game'), but the highlight was half time, when we went outside and had a snowball fight.

Then I went to sleep and woke up to this amazing, silent, beautiful snow-covered morning. I am nearly beside myself with hysterical joy about it, because I come from a country where stuff doesn't fall out of the sky. In Melbourne, it is currently 45 degrees Celsius and the train tracks are buckling.

I went off to class, and then had a snowball fight with my friend. Then I went home and did Latin homework, and came back to the department in time for the Monday lunch that we have every week. We started to hear a lot of interesting noises outside, and went onto the balcony and saw a large group of British-Chinese students waving flags and playing drums. It was apparently a counter-protest to protect the Chinese Premier (who was visiting) from a group of pro-Tibet protesters.

We watched them for a while, noted the snipers who had taken up positions on the Linguistics side of the English faculty building (we were on the library/ASNaC side) and then proceeded to have a snowball fight and build a snow Loch Ness monster and Viking ship. We were having a great time until the snipers noticed us, and sent university security people over to get us off the balcony. Apparently we were in a good position to assassinate the Chinese Premier. Not only were we forced off the balcony (which was locked), they yelled at the departmental secretary and banned us from sitting in the common room for an hour. I had Irish class, so I didn't mind, but everyone was pretty annoyed. The security guys also stepped on our Viking ship, which irritated us all immensely.

Anyway, I will have to edit this when people put up the snow Viking ship photos, but until then, enjoy my camera-happy snow photos.

( Now I understand why everyone teased me about my excitement at the few spots of snow that fell a month or so ago )

Whew. I've now put those photos up on the 'Pub, Facebook and LJ. Each required copy-pasting code or lots of labelling. At least I didn't have to write the code myself...

I was planning to do that '25 random things' meme. soapyhermit and stefeny have both tagged me, but I'll have to do it tomorrow, I think. My hands (and shoulders and neck) have had enough.

When I woke up this morning, it was snowing. Because I come from a country where it barely rains, let alone snows, I was inordinately excited. Up until moving to Cambridge, I think I'd seen real snow four times in my life: one freezing winter when we were driving from Canberra to Sydney and it began to snow just before Goulburn, the time in Canberra that everyone my age talks about ('I've seen snow once. You know, that one time it snowed, the year we were all three/four'), and maybe twice on my four ski trips to Thredbo or Perisher. So seeing snow falling softly in my back yard was quite a big deal. So I went a little crazy with the camera.

( Snowy photos here )