Jenni Ajderian

(originally published by  The Student )      Though uniting the likes of Howard Moon, Ned Flanders and Mr T, the stand-alone moustache has largely been shaved off the face of society. An association with seventies porn stars and paedophiles has given the fashion what one can lightly call a bad reputation- one which Movember, the Australian-born month-long charity moustache-a-thon, wants rid of.      On top of its aim to bring back the lost art of the solo Mo, the Movember Foundation raises huge amounts of money and awareness for the fight against male cancers. From an initial seven members way back in 2003, Movember recently crowned its one-millionth Mo Bro and last year raked in a huge £26 million for its partners worldwide. Not bad for a bunch of guys refusing to shave for a month. Now in its seventh year, Movember straddles the globe, and one-month moustaches are grown by hundreds of thousands of formerly clean-shaven Mo Bros. At the ...

(originally published in The Student)      Two waiters and a cook are drinking their boss' stolen wine in the kitchen of a London restaurant and swapping poker tips and stories. One, Mugsy, leaps onto a chair to recount the heart-wrending tale of when he last lost a game. The other waiter sniffs and says simply-“Play the man, not the cards.”      These words resound throughout Patrick Marber's blisteringly funny play about a simple night of cards after work. A standing tradition for the owner and his staff, the night turns sour when debts are called in and we're asked if money and mates can mix.      One half of us sits behind Sweeney's kitchen counters while the other watches from the front face of the restaurant, meaning we can see Dealers Choiuce from every angle. Come the second half, we encircle the poker table along with the boys from the restaurant. We laugh along with them, and watch for a tell in the poker face oppo...

     When thrown head-first into the comic-book world of Bryan O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim, it's natural to feel a little apprehensive. Are those graphics going to come up for every sound effect? Is Pilgrim (Michael Cera) ever going to grown a backbone ? But then a certain charm kicks in, whether it's through Pilgrim's horribly funny one-liners, the dialogue between his bandmates, or a particular brand of magic realism which allows the first of seven evil exes to propose a duel to the death via email.      What ensues is a simple story of boy-meets-girl, boy makes a fool of himself but still convinces girl to come see his awful band play, and subsequently has to defeat her seven evil exes in Arcade fight scenes that would put the makers of Pokemon to shame.      It's rare to find an indie film with such great special effects, let alone one which speaks in precisely the same language as its target audience. By the time we're done w...

During the Edinburgh Fringe, Bristo Square is home to the E4 Udderbelly- a giant inflatable purple cow, which lies on its back with hooves and udders proudly pointing towards the sky.      But in Freshers' Week it's populated by students- whether milling around between events and lectures and awkwardly forming flash-in-the-pan friendships in the daytime, queing for Potterow at night or, after a night at the SU, resembling the aforementioned cow, lying on their back with hooves and... well, you get the picture.      And just as the Summer loves Tourists, so the Autumn loves Freshers. The ever-present flyerers of the Fringe have a new lease of life in the first few weeks of September as we are offered student discount cards, drinks promotions, club events, soc events, and even the odd chaplaincy meet-and-greet. The clever ones start their pitch with the word 'free'.      "Free sweets!" (and a leaflet encouraging you to attend ...

I could be worse employed Than as a watcher of the void Whose part should be to tell What star if any fell   I saw four shooting stars tonight. Lying on the grass in my back garden I was wondering why I know so few constellations and so little about the universe.      The thought used to be truly comforting. That however huge and important we think our lives are, there are things a hundred times older than we will ever be, and which will keep burning a hundred times longer. And we can see them only as one fleeting after-image of a life that may be already extinguished.      I've sat under the stars with a friend and talked the world to rights. I've watched a starry sky turn into a sunrise over the sea, and heard a thousand strangers cheer the setting sun and the emerging moon.      A kind of paganism seems built in. It's the part of us that swears at the rain even though all we're really talking to are bags of water hanging in...

That is the sound of the last two months going by.      Once you've been to so many cities and X amount of museums and Y amount of art galleries and Z amount of top-of-the-world best-panoramic-view-ever places, they start to blur into one a little bit. Memory becomes a flip-book. Each image on its own makes no sense, but as part of a swift-moving whole they are imperative to the overall effect. Though separated by a bus journey or a series of roadsigns, each city, museum, tall place visited forms part of one big multi-coloured moving drawing.      Once you return home, you get asked How Was The Trip, challenged to describe the last couple of months in a few choice words. I still can't do it. I sat in a sweat lodge for four hours with scantily-clad strangers, I've climbed mountains and weeded vegetable patches and pulled all-nighters in New York and New Orleans, I've made pancakes with the natives and taken a bike around Stanley Park. Been ...

     A late bus brought me not to the home of my next WWOOFing host, but to his uncle Clément, the sixty-year-old who responded to my explanation that I was on une année sabbatique (a gap year) with the explanation that he was on  une vie sabbatique.      Sitting in the midday sun at Marché Jean-Talon sipping face-twitchingly strong coffee, you could easily be convinced you were in Europe. Here in the depths of the francophone part of Montréal there is barely a shred of english in sight, and now in the absence of a travel companion (apart from the ever-loyal Boogie Bear, of course), I find myself feeling a little more intimidated by the city. Grand in every sense of the world, it teems with a life hidden in some respects by this language barrier and simultaneously improved by it.      Following a day of working in 36-degree heat, my new hosts came to pick me up. The trip back to the farm lasted an hour and drove us...