Centrifugal force

One of my teachers at high school once told me that she used to buy paprikas when they were just getting on the market in the Netherlands, somewhen in the 50s. At one point her neighbour, seeing this, also bought some. The next time they met, the neighbour asked my teacher what it was she did with these strange vegetables: the ones she had bought were completely empty!

I was reminded of this anecdote the other day by one that is even funnier, related to me by that same Sam Simpson (who seems to be one of those people organising and taking part in things - in other words, who are the life and breath of any larger company or institution). A month ago or so, after the freshmen had just arrived at this university, one of them came to the porter's lodge out of breath and in a panic: his clothes had been stolen from the washing machine in the university's laundromat, which was now completely empty! Upon going with him to take a look, the porter discovered the washer merrily spinning and asked the student why he thought that his clothes weren't there. After the missing clothes had been miraculously recovered, he proceeded to give a lecture on the effects of the centrifugal force...

After another busy but for blogging purposes uneventful day, getting ready to go to the biweekly Friday session of BM! I went to the Glasshouse once more, for an early dinner at 16:45. I met the "gang" there, quite accidentally though I later discovered there had been some twittering; we had a Grolsch (none of your alien ales), I had a World Dish of the Day, and off I went to the Bar Convent. They were instead off to see Gravity, which is just out here now. Turns out some of them have heard of the games club but none of them have been there. One lecturer from the HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) group, +Christopher Power, is into HeroClix (which I only know by reputation).

Of the games I played I only want to mention Trans Europa, an obvious variation on Trans America which is very familiar to at least some of my readers (actually it's really the same game with a different board); and Marrakech, which I have sung praises of in a previous post but failed to take a picture of as my phone was out of power. I lost dismally (I'm in charge of the yellow carpets in the picture) but I stick to my opinion: this is such a wonderfully original game!

The club closes at 21:00 (rules of the convent I think); which is an odd hour since it leaves a lot of the evening blank, as it were. I went to see if there was still a movie to be caught at the Cityscreen. Unfortunately there was only the aforementioned Gravity, which I liked but not enough to want to see it again already. I then hunted down Thirteen Thirty-One, one of the locations of the Aesthetica Short Film Festival (ASFF) I have vowed not to miss; however, after having found it decided I wan't in the mood after all and proceeded home. I ended up spending some of the blank evening at the laundromat, so exchanging today's time for tomorrow, and incidentally coming back full circle to the start of this post.