::alio!::

back - temporarily

So I'm back in Ottawa until Sunday, when I head to Hamilton.

My two meetings yesterday seemed to go really well. I even met the head of the department and one of the students, as well as got a bit of a tour of campus.

When I was talking to the graduate coordinator, he told me that most people at the PhD level look at the project, not really the grades, so hopefully that B+ I have will not hurt me at all. He also told me that they have to make all their decisions for February 28, because that's the scholarship deadline. So if I email one of the guys I met in early March, I can find out ahead of time if I get in or not. It won't be that awesome if I don't get in, but if I do, then I have an extra two months to decide what *we* want to do and make arrangements for moving.

After that, Dad and I actually made it up to Cape Spear. Newfoundland got the tail end of that crazy windstorm that hit Eastern Ontario, so standing on the top of an icy cliff 200m above the ocean on a windy day perhaps wasn't the best idea, but it was worth it. If you like the colour gray, Newfoundland is a great place to be.

We went for lunch at Velma's, which serves traditional Newfie food. Dad got pan-fried cod with a sprinkling of canned vegetables and a crapload of fries, and I got what is known as Fish and Brewis (pronounced "brewz"). To prepare it - and this was explained to me by Catharine the bartender - you soak a salt cod overnight. You also soak some hardtack (a ridiculous dense loaf of dried bread sailors have been eating for four hundred years) until it's quadrupled in size. Then you stir the two together and fry it like hash browns. Then you garnish it with cubes of struncken - fried pork fat. It's not healthy, but it was very good.

We spent an hour or so at The Rooms before we headed to the airport - St. John's' museum/art gallery/archives. The view from the windows was breathtaking.

Our flight home was not difficult, although we received news that my 98-year-old grandmother is in the hospital with some kind of serious infection. This, on the heels of my mother's brother having a severe heart attack last week, has let me know that January is not a lucky month this year.

So I might have to make my next two trips by myself.

Posted by Ally at January 11, 2008 11:10 AM