Slumdog Millionaire, Score! and Wine lecture

One of the disadvantages of having a blog, was a realisation that I’m a boring person.

I don’t really have anything to write about, because almost everyday of my life looks exactly the same. Wake up, shower, breakfast, cycling to work, work, gym, cycling back, dinner, sleep. Wow, I’ve just summarised last two years of my life in 13 words. I’m not impressed. Suppose that explains why sometimes I need to go to the Score! and get smashed. Most (possibly everyone except me) of the people in there are not PhDs, therefore they not miserable. And besides I’ve been a diligent student during my undergrad, so I haven’t really used my drinking quota. Time to set it right.

So, what have happened this week that makes it different from the others? My research seems to be finally going somewhere, after almost two years. Despite that, I’m not really allowing myself to get excited – there is still thousand of things that may go wrong. My boss, however is not so restrained, his grin when he saw my NMR was probably visible from the moon. He’s even finished my research meeting with him after like 5 minutes, so I could get back to work. Quite unusual, as he always have millions of ideas and those meetings tend to take ages.

On Wednesday I went to see the Slumdog Millionaire. I was pleasantly surprised that in spite of many Oscar® nominations it’s actually a really good movie. As I usually criticise everything, I’m finding it difficult to comment on that movie. I’ve found it really enjoyable, the story is fast and absorbing like in an action movie, but at the same time it’s not a action movie at all. Tragedy is carefully balanced with comedy resulting in really immense experience. Music as well is a strange, but not repulsing mix of traditional Indian music with Indian pop and electronic music. The whole effect is completed by the excellent performance of all the lead actors (three for each character; child, teenager and adult) and the compulsory for Bollywood movie, dancing scene at the end of the movie. The effect it unequivocally (working on my vocabulary) worth seeing. It’s definitely one of the best movies I’ve seen lately.

Thursday brought another excitement, a RSC wine  lecture. As opposed to the usual lectures this one was ticketed event combined with a wine tasting. As I’m not a big fan of wine, I decided to go and see if I can find something up my alley. The lecture started a little slow, but it soon got much more interesting as we got the wines for tasting. Taster volume was only 25 ml but as our postdoc soon discovered, you can pour more if you tilt the bottle so the wine is flowing over the little measuring bulb on the top. Besides some of the academics weren’t ashamed to have a second and third helping of some wines. Hmm, really classy. Surprisingly or not, I’ve found out that I’m not posh too and enjoyed two of the cheapest wines served this evening; Australian Chardonnay 2007 (that was a year ;) ) and German Riesling 2005. The older and fancier wines I must say I’ve found revolting. What a blow; I’m not only boring but also cheap and seedy…