Category Archives: Scotland

I’ve spent my whole life living in Scotland, which is viewed as a stormy, remote place by most of the world. Ask anyone who’s spent time there, and they’ll probably use one of a few words: ‘intense’, ‘magical’ or… well, probably ‘windy’. Read my posts on the time I spend in my home country, and you’ll probably find a lot of pictures of Grant and me looking windswept; but you’ll also gradually come to learn a little more about life in Scotland itself.

Episode Eighty One – Plate Piled High

So, Masters degrees are stressful. There’s a lot to learn and only one year to learn it – and when the subject at hand is a skill like conference interpreting, a year seems like an impossibly short amount of time to pick it up. But I’ve been progressing well enough, and at the mock conferences we’ve been running these past few weeks I’ve really surprised myself with how much better I do when a) I’m interpreting a live speaker as opposed to a recording, and b) there’s an audience sitting there and actually relying on me to understand what is being said. The good news: That’s exactly what interpreting is like in a professional setting. The bad news: It’s not what it’s like in the final exam. All in all though, I’m feeling pretty confident.

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Sometimes I take pictures of the lecture slides.

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Episode Eighty – Hello again

Hi everyone.

It’s been a year since I last posted. I think that makes 2014 the only year in the archives with a single post to its name. Guess that must mean I haven’t been up to much, right? Guess again! 2014 was a very important year for me, and one that took me further away from the blogger you used to know than any other – that’s right, more so than the time I moved to Costa Rica, more so than the time I graduated from my degree and entered the world of (unpaid >_>) employment. Continue reading

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Episode Seventy Nine – Home At Last

This won’t be a very good post; I can feel it. I’m rusty. It’s been months – perhaps longer than ever before. But I’m in a writing mood, and especially after all this time, I can’t let that go to waste; maybe I can use it to gain some momentum, warm up a little. Continue reading

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Episode Seventy Seven – Even More on Writing

I’ve been quite quiet lately because I’ve been “busy”. For me, that means oscillating between periods of utter apathy, Words with Friends and alarming quantities of snacking; and moments where all the important things I must achieve put so much pressure on me that I work frantically on one whilst feeling guilty that I’m not doing the others. If you look over my shoulder and observe me typing up an email to a translator, politely asking how one enters into the specialty of translating cookbooks (my current life goal), you can be sure your nose is brushing the angel that sits there screaming in my ear, ‘you have two essays to write this month what use is it knowing how to get a job if you fail your degree because you were too busy jobhunting to study you imbecile‘. Yet, when I am studying, the angel decides this would be the perfect time to take the entrance exam for the internship I applied for last week, and criticises me for being too much on-paper and not enough on-the-ball.

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Episode Seventy Five – More On Writing

I should be reading La Fée Carabine right now. I was doing so well: I read half of it yesterday, and then today I managed 50 pages before lunch and 50 pages in Starbucks before translation club, which leaves me with 60 pages left to read before class tomorrow. Two hours’ work, tops. The light appears at the end of the tunnel, and I’m so close…

But there’s one problem: I have PMS.

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Episode Seventy Two – Autumn in Edinburgh

Hi everyone.

It’s been forever. How have you been?! I’ve been cuh-razy busy, as you can tell from the lack of posts. I’m going to give up apologising for my flakey behaviour, because it looks like I’ll never change. But what with working 12 hours a week on top of my final-year studies (seriously, something major happened to the workload while I was gone), stuff started to get on top of me a little. I dropped the 12 hours at Sandemans just in time, it seems, as deadlines have been rolling in like a line of Russian tankers, ready to flatten me into the ground. If Russian tankers had French accents and shot shells of 20th-century Surrealist French literature, that is. Continue reading

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Episode Seventy One – Speaking of Fireworks…

The fireworks celebrating the end of the Edinburgh International Festival

Even halfway down the Mile our vantage point was pretty good.

It’s funny that I should publish that post about fireworks only a couple of days ago, because today is the day of the end-of-festival firework show in Edinburgh! I didn’t really know much about it until a week or so ago – one of the guides mentioned it at work, and then I saw a poster in the window of the Lyceum theatre. Apparently the orchestra was performing in the gardens and the fireworks were supposed to be synchronised to the symphony… or something. Continue reading

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Episode Seventy – Gunpowder, Treason and Plot

My birthday falls on the 5th of November. Here in the United Kingdom, that’s a special occasion known as Guy Fawkes’ Night (or sometimes just Bonfire Night). If you’ve ever seen V for Vendetta, you’ll know more or less what I’m on about: basically in 1605 this Guy Fawkes character led an assault on the then-English Parliament, with the intention of blowing up the House of Lords and assassinating the King. The attempt failed, Fawkes and his fellow conspirators were hanged, drawn and quartered, and to this day we still celebrate that the treason never took place. Yes, even here in Scotland where we don’t feel particularly warmly or fuzzily about the Crown or the House of Lords or the London Parliament or any of that stuff. But hey, a party’s a party, and where I’m from, the 5th of November is definitely a party.

4th of July firework show introduction

A beautiful introduction to the show: a great deal of fire performers and some slow-motion fireworks.

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Episode Fifty Two – 25/12/11

Hello, dear readers!

So, this whole long-distance relationship thing: it’s a double-edged arrow that Cupid’s sent my way, that’s for sure. I often receive sympathies when I explain that my boyfriend lives in America: mostly in the form of ‘Ohh, it must be so hard to go without seeing him’. Well, that’s true, it is hard. But it’s also tough when we do see each other. You see, flight taxes dictate that I spend much more time over there with his family than he does in Scotland with mine; and when he does visit, we have three weeks to get everything done. Visiting friends, spending coupley time together, travelling, seeing family (especially tough when your parents are divorced and the two sides of the family live all over the place)… it’s a lot to accomplish in a short space of time. Long story short: I’m sorry I haven’t been blogging so much, but when Grant and I are reunited, that pretty much becomes top priority: I hope you all understand.


See how my head is listlessly attached to his shoulder here? Yep, inseparable.

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Episode Fifty One – Home For Christmas

Hi everyone, and happy Christmas, Hannukah or whatever other celebrations you may be involved in!

As you’ve probably noticed, I haven’t posted in a long time – again. I didn’t post for a while before I came home from Costa Rica, and since then it’s been Christmas central around here so I’m only just now sitting down with my computer to give you all the love and attention you deserve :P

This is how it feels to be Home For Christmas.

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