Foreign Perspectives

Having a continental market in the grounds of Belfast city hall is a tradition started a number of years ago to liven up the city.

It’s expanded over the years and the original Christmas market has been joined by a similar production in the Spring and, I think, there’s another one or two variants at different times during the year. I say “I think” because the city hall grounds have developed over the years to the point where they host a considerable number of events of various types almost right throughout the year.

The Spring market is quite similar to the Christmas one, being mainly a varied collection of food stalls from various (not just European) spots around the world. Thus, not only do you get the various French style fast food outlets with their crepes, croque monsieurs, and the like but there’s alsor representation from Germany, Poland and even Lebanon plus I’m sure a number that I didn’t identify.

Mixed in with the food stalls are a number of rather expensive sweet outlets and an eclectic mix of gift stalls selling everything from native American wares through to several that sell handmade woodwork productions.

Anyway, it’s open from Thursday the 15th of May through to 6pm Monday the 19th of May this year.

Finishing the Life Sciences degree means that I’ve a number of quite different options at this point. To add flexibility to my future plans, first off I’m going to top-up my “miscellaneous interesting courses” degree to the point where I can claim it and thereby avoid losing the points should I not get to fully complete it by 2019. I have several options for doing this which basically involve doing one course in October 2014 and another in 2015. At the moment, I’m planning on October E102 Introduction to childhood studies and child psychology, the new 60 pointer that would restart my psychology degree that’s been on hold since I got going with the life sciences. For the 2015 slot, there’s really only S345 Chemical change and environmental applications as it fills the 20 point hole that stops me from claiming the degree.

As a side-line, I’m also planning on gradually increasing the number of courses within the miscellaneous degree with November S283 Planetary science and the search for life,  the second 30 pointer for my Certificate in Astronomy and Planetary Science, being the top of my short list, though I have several 10 and 15 pointers in my sights too, notably S155 Scientific Investigations (on its final run this year) and D171 Counselling. Further down the road is A326 Empires: 1492-1975, the 60 point follow-on from the World Archaeology course that I did a few years back and A200 Medieval to modern history with the Creative Arts degree from the OU’s sister university, the Open College of the Arts remaining in my thoughts.

That done, the following year I’d really like to get going on the masters where I’m looking at:

• Molecular Biology and Biotechnology at Queen’s, one year full-time or two part-time;
• Structural Molecular Biology at Birkbeck, two or three years distance learning;
• Molecular Biology at Staffordshire, two years distance learning but with two summer schools; or
• Medicinal Chemistry with the OU, three or four years distance learning

The “only” problem with the masters is that I’ve not, yet, worked out how to fit it in with real-life.

There’s been a bit of a run of retirement do’s to go to over the last year or two and one a few months ago prompted the thoughts of a reunion of our team from around the 1990s which ended up being held a week ago.

Despite almost everyone having moved on over that time, we ended up with around 40 people turning up. My first thought was that I’d not recognise any of them or that it would be a crowd of doddery old men and women on their way to zimmer frame territory. However, it was nothing like that at all and in fact not only did most people change relatively little over what’s been anything up to 25 years or so but one even managed to look years younger than she did 20-odd years ago!

As usual with these things it was mix of reminiscing over the good old days and pumping people for information about job prospects (the grass always being greener elsewhere, of course). Although set around lunch, most people stayed on ’til into the evening and the last stragglers only heading home around 10pm.

Coincidently, I ran across and even older friend at the family fun day on Saturday and it looks like there’ll be a reunion of our merry band from the 1980s in the not too distant future too.

I generally take a break from the studying on Saturdays so with the bad weather today it was a bit of a catch-up day or rather more of a getting ahead day in practice.

As I’ve been spacing out the Infectious Disease assignment over the last couple of weeks, there’s only a tiny bit of that still to do. Well, in principle it’s a tiny bit but as it’s a research question it’s hard to say how long it will actually take. It’s to be in later this week so I’m going to try and get that completed this evening.

I’m well through the computer marked assignment for the course too. It’s a bit of a pain as they’ve several free format answers and, going by the forum, it’s marking many correct answers wrong so they may have to zero weight the affected questions.

I’m miles ahead with the history of maths course and got even further ahead today. It’s a peculiar mix of history and maths with the maths largely being in the books whilst the history bit is mainly in the videos. The computer marked questions are almost all based on the maths and cover a wide range from Egyptian counting through Newton and on to late 20th century maths. As it’s only a 10 point level 1 course everything is naturally at a fairly low level but I’m finding that working through such a vast time span is surprisingly interesting. The videos (the Story of Maths TV series) are a bit peculiar towards the end with the presenter turning up at the childhood homes of various mathematicians for no particularly good reason and skating over the maths along the way. That said, the combination of the videos for the story and the books for the maths works quite well and it’s a shame that they hadn’t applied a similar combination in other subjects.

The problem with the physics course is that it’s not really one that is suitable for doing all by itself. The pre-requisites for it are both the introductory science course (S104) and the maths essentials courses (MST124 and MST125). That said, I’ve got a copy of the predecessor to the current introductory science course and I’ve previously done maths at university (rather a long time ago).

However, what really knocked it out for me is that, at some stage, I’d like to do the maths and physics degree and I think that it would be better to do that as a unit from start to finish which I can’t do at the moment, so it’s on hold for a while.

Which leaves the child psychology course as my main contender for October. This has the advantage that it’s another step forward for my psychology degree and it’s got an EMA so shouldn’t clash too much with S345 that starts in May and has a TMA in early June.

In addition to that I’m thinking of the science investigation course (S155) which is an essential if I wanted to do another science degree and which disappears into a 30 pointer after this year.