Dunhill Links

The Dunhill Links Golf Tournament is in town and it always creates a bit of a buzz.  Its a pro-am tournament across St Andrews, Kingsbarns and Carnoustie and it attracts a mix of some of Europe's top golfers and celeberities, the latter including Bill Murray, Hugh Grant and Shane Warne.  There are always many tales of the celebs being spotted in pubs and house parties - some time ago Bill Murray was at a house party doing the washing up whilst Sam Torrance had a putting competition with students in the living room.  I vaguely remember seeing Michael Vaughan in Ma Bells in first year on a hockey social the year they had won the ashes - he was being followed by an entourage of people congratulating him for beating the Aussies.  The golf starts on Thursday with practice rounds today and tomorrow.  I have hockey all weekend so will probably miss the exciting stuff but will no doubt pop down and try and watch some good golf.

In other news I attended my core module lecture this morning - Economic Analysis which looks like it'll be interesting, the first few weeks are going to spent on game theory so I am reasonably enthusiastic about that.  I attended environmental economics yesterday but found it a bit boring so went along to industrial economics instead today and it was far more interesting so I will probably stick with that unless the monetary policy lecture on Monday is outstandingly good.  I think this year I am going to make very rough and untidy scribbles during the lecture and then try and write up the notes formally in the time following the lecture.  This way I don't feel any pressure to make neat notes during the lecture and also I am continuously learning rather than just cramming at the end of term and for exams.  

I have 5000 pens arriving either tomorrow or Thursday from China which makes me feel rather nervous as I have no idea what to do with them and recently the eBay market for syringe pens has become a bit saturated.  I am also having some trouble with a few eBayers who have bought things but don't reply to email and are generally annoying and also have been forced to start using bubble wrap on all parcels because of some iffy feedbacks.  Apparently as a result of my 2 neutral feedbacks I am now in danger of losing my ability to sell on eBay?! A bit random and it enrages me somewhat - there was a time when negative feedback was a problem but now neutral too!  Anyhow I have sent them an email explaining I think it is ridiculous that someone with 100% feedback over 5 years with 1400+ positives and detailed seller ratings of 4.9/5.0 can be threatened with their account being suspended because Royal Mail seem intent on jumping on my items.  So thats that.

This afternoon after class I pottered down and took some photos at the West End of town around the links and also bought the fruit for the juicer that should last the week.  I am really enjoying buying fruit and veg from the local greengrocer around the corner.  The general consensus in St Andrews is that Tesco is slow, inefficient and overpriced so I am more than happy to buy the weekly juice fruit from the greengrocers.  For £9.22 we got 20 x oranges, 10 x apples, 3 x limes, pineapple, 2 x lemons and 6 x carrots which isn't too shabby.  That should last a week but will probably need to get a few more things as the week goes on.  Tonight I will either a) go to table tennis but maybe not as it will be packed b) write up the days notes c) go out or d) none of the above.  Have attached a few photos from this evening, took them around 5pm when it started to clear.  The clouds were doing some crazy things.