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Irony, Daylight Savings Time, and the Sound of Drums

By keeganblogsfromabroad

It's halloweekend, the spookiest time of the year for college students. The spookiness has nothing to do with ghouls, goblins, spooky skeletons or overplayed memes but rather the fact that halloweekend always coincidences with midterm season. That is why, instead of venturing out and enjoying the cool October breeze this weekend found me seated on my swivel chair feet propped up on the bed, laptop on lap. Midterm tests do not seem to be a thing at the University of Edinburgh but midterm essays certainly are. Whereas last week it was a book review this week it was a 3000 word essay on the impact of porcelain on global connections. It was with no small degree of irony that I sat sipping tea out of a mug made in china while hammering out paragraphs linking the spread of colonial beverages (coffee, tea, hot chocolate) to the spread of porcelain imported from China.

The city feels a bit different this week, maybe it's just me projecting because of the lead up to Halloween but their seems to be an air of anticipation. It would be wrong to say there is nothing out of the ordinary. This afternoon I opened my window to get some fresh air and was greeted by the sound of drums, echoing across the park from some unknown location not too distant. I would have set out to locate it but unfortunately my essay was not yet complete. The drums lasted for a while but eventually faded away. I'll attribute them to a parade my flat mate said she encountered by chance while out walking.

None of us knew it was coming, nor did we know there would be a firework show tonight but sometime after 8 there was. The fireworks were going off above the castle from the perspective of my flat and eventually I decided to photograph it but as soon as I started to move into position it was too late. Part of me wishes I had known this was coming but I'm sure I would still have been too swamped by this essay to try to attend.

The other big news of the weekend is the end of daylight savings time. I am now one less hour ahead but of course that will change as soon as the US makes the same transition. Lets go through a quick list of pros and cons.

Pros: I felt like I had an extra hour to work last night and still managed to go to bed at a reasonable hour.

Cons: They just took one of my hours of daylight (which aren't that numerous here to begin with) and moved it to a time when I'm way more likely to be sleeping. Making the sun rise at 7:30 instead of 8:30 doesn't really help people whose sleep schedule makes sure that they probably want to sleep until at least nine. I'm trying to fix it but its a never ending battle.

Anyway in the last post I promised a bit on Scottish slang so here it is. In truth I don't hear it super often because of how international Edinburgh is but I encounter it in written format here and there. For now I'll just list a few words I've encountered and what they mean.

A/Ah - I

nae - No/Not, variations include cannae(cannot), dinnae(don't) and widnae(wouldn't)

A Plaster - a type of bandage

wit- What?

Bonnie- Beautiful

tae- to/too

That's about all I can think of for now but I'll include any others I encounter in later blog posts. It should also be noted that over the counter medications go under different names here so its very difficult to talk to a local about them (I brought my own but I once asked someone what they used most commonly here and got very confused.) Also, notably, what we would call a private school at home is called a public school here and the locals don't understand it any more than I do.