The Smiskotheque: Week in pictures

Hmmm what has happened this week?

On Monday my lab group and I, Group 3some (cause there's 3 of us!), did our last experiment for the course Experimental Phonetics! We studied the eye movements of a listener when presented with a distorted speech signal. Do listeners look at mouth movements more often than the rest of the face when they are presented with a speech signal that is difficult to make out? Of course they do!

Here is Mary instructing our lovely test subject, Annie, on what to do.

These are Annie's eye as they were picked up by the eye tracker.

I also rode the subway a lot, just like I do every week.

Riding down the escalator to get to the subway.

Some advertisements by the platform to check out while I'm waiting.

On Thursday Max, Helena, and I saw ballet Coppélia at the opera house.

"The story of Coppélia concerns a mysterious and faintly diabolical inventor, Doctor Coppélius who has made a life-size dancing doll. It is so life-like that Frantz, a village swain, is infatuated with it, setting aside his true heart's desire, Swanhilde, who in Act II shows him his folly, by dressing as the doll and pretending to come to life. If Mary Shelley's Frankenstein represents the dark side of the theme of scientist as creator of life, then Coppelia is the light side. If Giselle is a tragedy set in a peasant village, then Coppélia is a comedy in the same setting."

It was really funny!

We had some wine in the pause.

Friday night involved more alcohol when Max and I started a beer club. It was sort of a joke throughout the night but I decided it needed to be for real. For more info on our beer club visit: http://friendsofbeer.blogspot.com/

We tried a French beer called La Goudale which was supposed to taste like, among other things, Jasmine rice. Yeah... maybe. We had a Belgian beer called Orval and last a Swedish Christmas beer that smelled like cardemom called Jul Mumma.

Then Max' roommate added to the decadence with some feminine Polish cigarettes called "She"

The next day the weather was nice for the first time in about a month. 10 C° warm and not a cloud in sight. I rode my bike to the lake that is about a 10 min ride from my apartment.