Traveled with other Gates scholars to the historic city of York, 3 hours to the north. I was pretty exhausted and it was an all day trip, but I still enjoyed it a lot. York has many old buildings, from ruins of its walls and castle to York Minster, one of the larger cathedrals around. The highlight though was watching a reenactment of a battle between Vikings and English from 954, which we're watching here. Strangely the vikings seemed to be the more popular side amongst the crowd.
Rugby playoffs started today, and we played Homerton, a college from the second division (we're in the third, there are three total). So we were seeded lower, but we came out really strong and took it to them, winning 22-3. It was particulary nice for me since I had a bunch of friends show up and I had an exciting game, with a few longer runs, a blocked kick, and later managed to catch my own kick about 30 m downfield in a full run-one of the rarest plays in rugby. I was named man of the match for the second time of the season.
Yesterday was Churchill's Spring Ball (or May Ball), although it was not in Spring or May, it was in February. Many colleges hold May Ball, which is kind of like a more grown-up and over-the-top prom. The basic premise is a black-tie evening with the entire college decorated for a theme, Churchill this year did 'Tokyo: The Neon Sunrise.' The colleges all compete to have the biggest and most expensive ball, which Churchill can't really compete in so we have the earliest instead.
Of course, probably the most unusual thing for Churchill was that we actually had lots of women show up. Probably figure since it's a male-heavy college it was a good event to go to. That's my game-theoretic explanation. Not sure if that's it, but I can rule out my vest as the reason women came...
Minor electrical mishap occurred down at the computer lab today. No injuries or equipment damage, but it made a really loud noise. The full incident report is here, apparently it will be a part of future health and safety lectures. Although I didn't do much wrong, the adapter was one of the worst designs ever built, I'm astonished this kind of thing doesn't happen more often with this model.
Massive problems occurred as the roads aren't equipped for such a huge snowfall in one instance. So many departments shut down, we received an email recommending we leave before dark because the snowy roads weren't safe at night. 
I had plenty of fun though, making a snow angel for the first time in my life I believe. We also had a massive, semi-organized snowball fight and some more snow football.
Glad we enjoyed it, because it was mostly gone or turned to ice by the next day...
Definitely a different Super Bowl Sunday than the usual affair in the US. For one thing, I gave a 30 minute talk, with presentation slides, about the rules and history of the game. For another, the game starts at 11:30 PM, and there are no funny American commercials.
I didn't get to bed until around 4, but it was okay, after submitting 3 papers for publication due to crazy conference deadline overlaps, I was ready for a nice break.
