Pandemia

Returning to university life this week has been something of a drag. After 2 weeks of vacation, you suddenly realize how boring lectures can be, even in the most exciting subjects. It's especially troubling if you didn't actually manage to travel anywhere because of university assignments. I don't think it counts as a vacation if you actually have to work through it. However, I had 2 assignments due this week, one of them due the very day back from holidays. It just wasn't fair. Anyway, I got them done and I'm just happy to be rid of them. Now, nothing left to do but work towards the next one, which is, thankfully, my last bit of assessment until the exams.

At the beginning of the week, the weather turned frightfully cold, wet and windy. It was a quick snapshot of winter as temperatures plummeted to 10C. The temperatures at night are now hovering around 0C, though the afternoon high are around 17C. This is one thing that is so annoying about the autumn, it's early on, so you turn the heater on, but during the day it's warm enough that the heater makes it too hot. It's all very confusing. I've had a lot of fun telling people that winter in Canberra reminds me of summer in Ottawa. I'm joking, of course, but since so few people in Australia have visited Ottawa, I can get away with it.

Swine flu is catching and everyone is worried about a pandemic. Just to show you how serious it can be, Great Swine Flu is also known as Spanish Flu, which after World War One killed between 20 and 100 million people globally (records from the 3rd World are not good). According to my father, I had a great-grandfather die of the virus. On the plus side, those of us alive now probably have some sort of inherited immunity to that particular strain so it's unlikely to be anywhere near as bad as before. Still, there have been public service announcements and e-mails from the university warning of the symptoms and what to do should you suspect yourself infected. Personally, I wouldn't mind going down in history as a great spreader of the disease, but I haven't caught it yet; hopefully I won't. I'll just have to be extra cautious when I'm back in Canada.

There is one more bit of "information" I'd like to pass on. There is a little-known mountain range in Scotland known as the Hollywood Range. In it, you can find mountains named Ben Hur, Ben Affleck and Ben Kingsley, and there's a Glen Close nearby too. Did you get it?