Is it just me, or is most of this entry about food?

On Friday evening, I had agreed to meet up for a picnic with Kevin (Hong Kong). When I got to the rendezvous outside Sainsbury's, there were three main problems - first, it was raining heavily; secondly, only myself, Karunashur (India) and Kevin had turned up; thirdly, the whole enterprise suffered from male organisation. Annie (King's) is a real star - she came out to rescue us and invited us back to her place to eat. Jonathan (Emma) also came round to join the party. We (i.e. Annie and Karunashur) cooked pasta with tomato and onion, though I had somehow managed to get even this wrong in shopping, since I bought Sainsbury's value peeled tomatoes instead of Sainsbury's value chopped tomatoes. After being pleased with my exam results, it was good to be reminded of some of my deficiencies. We managed to talk about some deep stuff over food. Thanks, Annie, if you're out there!

For lunch on Saturday I was invited to Teri-Aki, a Japanese restaurant by Madgalene Bridge, along with a group of Asian students mainly from Christ's. I had a Teri-Aki Bento meal, which consisted of stir-fried beef, chicken and seafood with rice, salad, and miso soup. I can manage stuck together rice with chopsticks; salad is a bit more tricky. For dessert all those of us left ate yukimi daifuku, ice cream in dough balls.

Later in the afternoon, Rashmi, Peter, Mark and myself went to see Episode III of Star Wars. Having little knowledge of popular culture (and not much of Star Wars), a fact which I should perhaps address, I am not best qualified to give an informed review. I found the film mildly engrossing if a little gruesome in places. I was able to detect some connections with Eastern pantheism, which can be shown to be deficient on a number of points by analysing the internal logic of the film. Afterwards, we went to Pizza Hut near Parker's Piece - an interesting experience in a variety of ways. We didn't leave a tip.

Sunday morning church - Cat Bennett-Rees on Jesus' return and the need for us to be ready for it. For lunch we went to Tom's room (St John's), where we had successively carrot sticks and bread with dips, potato, rice, chicken, and swiss roll. A good concoction, all told. A piece of advice - if you want to try Endorphin Rush sauce, take the tiniest amount you can - it lives up to its label as "beyond hot" sauce. Present were a variety of surviving HT students and people pretending still to be students. By the way, according to a recent study, June 24th was the happiest day of the year. I'm not sure if the fact that the research was commissioned by Walls ice cream inspires my confidence or not.

This evening was graduation dinner, for graduands (people about to graduate). Here is the menu:

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MENU

Smoked Salmon Nicoise Salad
V: Nicoise Salad with Flaked Parmesan

Saddle of Lamb en Croûte
V: Cornucopia of Beans with Poached Duck Egg

Panna-cotta with Summer Berries

Coffee and Mints

Wines:
White Wine: Sauvignon Blanc, 2003, Baron Philippe de Rothschild
Red Wine: Cabernet Sauvignon, 2003, Baron Philippe de Rothschild
Port: Christ’s College Port

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I got there late so wasn't really with people I knew for a lot of it. I sat next to two fourth years, who I got on OK with. Over coffee I got to talk to Julie (history), who I haven't seen so much of this year, as well as Rashmi, Mark and Peter. There was a nice parallelism, in that I sat near Mark, Peter and Julie (not sure about Rashmi) at matriculation dinner when we arrived three years ago (well, not quite three years ago). Amongst other topics, we discussed the ethics of surreptitious photography. My caffeine intake today has been higher than usual. It's an occupational hazard of Sunday sociability.

I have a bit of a hole to fill in my summer - I have nothing planned for August or September. If anyone wants to make me an offer, I'll consider it.