4th of july

today is america's independence day.  it is a big holiday for them, so it is a bit strange to have classes.  the reason they gave was that most of the participants do not celebrate it, so they figure it was ok to have classes.  of course this gave the lecturers working today to crack some jokes about how we would be able to determine how senior and important they were, given that they had to work today:)

decided to try out my new camera today.  it's a sony dsc-w530, really compact.  pictures are decent but not as good as my olympus.  anyway, the lesson in having lessons on a holiday (that sounded odd, lesson in having lessons...) is that things are likely to go wrong, especially when the building is new.  we are in fact the first people to have classes in the building.  and when things go wrong in a new building, that's complicated enough.  it's worse when it happens on a public holiday because the guy you need to solve the problem for you is not likely to be working is he?

anyway, we had no air conditioning for the first class and it was so stuffy.  if it had gone on any longer, i would have walked out for air.

but back to my camera.  so i took this picture before i discovered that my camera actually has a setting for taking pictures of food!  is that cool or what?  so this picture looks a bit lifeless.  my breakfast of two sunny side ups, sausages, and sweet potato mash.  that last bit did not work too well for me.  prefer the normal savoury mash potatoes.

lunch was chinese or asian rather.  the only good thing was the thai green curry.  and beef salad and the plain rice.  the rest was forgettable.  guess the chef is off today because of the holiday.  still had not discovered the food picture setting yet at this time.  but it would not have made the food look any more appealing.

after i came back from a run at 8 pm, the dinner spread had been cleared but the kitchen staff were really nice and asked me to take what i wanted from the kitchen.  so i grabbed two takeaway boxes and took my food and went to my room to eat.  which was nice.  sometimes it is tiresome having to make small talk at the table every meal.  anyway, here is what i had.  barbecue chicken, onion rings, corn and rice.  and fruit and apple pie.  of course you have to have apple pie on the 4th of july!  i have to say the corn was fantastic!  it is different from what we get back home.

after dinner, i watched the fireworks.  here are some pictures...

they played katy perry's fireworks of course, and also the beatles' rock and roll music, owl city's firefly and lots of other great songs.  i didn't have to go very far to watch the fireworks.