Where the confusion that characterises my mode of expression at the best of times, is here compounded by the fact that I am trying to get over a coldy-fluy thing (my just retribution for feeling smug about having avoided illness all winter so far) and am typing this on my little eee laptop (which, I hasten to add, I love dearly, but just wasn't made for spending 14 hours in front of as I seem to have done today), since the hard drive on my 'proper' one has finally given up after more than four years of honourable service, loads of travel, a DPhil thesis, and general abuse [1]. Anyway. Having just (well, a few days ago now) returned from a quick visit to England, I find that I have lots to say and think over, so brace yourselves for a long post...
First, for once BA got a few things very right, so I think it's fair to mention them. Having seen the blizzard alerts (which eventually resulted in over a foot of snow and my office being closed for 2 days while I was away [2]) I decided to move my flight to an earlier one to minimise chances of being stranded at the airport (well, actually it was Sarah's wise suggestion, but still). They let me do this without batting an eyelid, and crucially without charging me a penny - quite unheard of. I was impressed. Also, among the on-board entertainment (which I was determined to ignore, in the vague hope of getting some sleep) was one of the most fantastic things I have ever seen: Bill Bailey's Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra. Buy it, rent it, look it up on YouTube (it was all there last time I checked) - it was so good and clever and hilarious - and not just because I love Bill Bailey anyway (Black Books FTW!). He goes into all sorts of insightful discussions of the effects of individual instruments on symphonies, soundtracks, incidental music, and really makes you think about what you're listening to. Like an updated version of this (just being pretentious and highbrow here). Just look at this and laugh and marvel along with me!
So, Oxford. Not having been back since April, it was sort of a test to see if what I had said a while ago did in fact still hold, or if I would be overcome by nostalgia and wistfulness and have to be put on the coach to the airport kicking and screaming and clutching the sides of the St Clements bus stop shelter (hm, not a very glamorous image, all things considered). As it happens, the wistfulness did happen, but I think I managed it more or less ok and boarded the coach to the airport with equanitmity (and much tiredness, which probably helped). I had a great time, and loved seeing everyone again, and was very sociable, and was reminded what a very sociable and tight-knit lot we all are - with both 'historic' and more recent additions to the fold. I know not all departments are like that (Comlab, anyone?) and we are particularly lucky, and that makes it all the harder to have to leave it behind again - though I realise that as we all get older and move on post-DPhil things will change anyway, as they already slowly are.
I must confess to two major nostalgia attacks, the first so stereotypical that I almost hesitate to say - so, I got my alumna yellow card at the Bod (which sadly no longer has a picture of my 18-yr-old self on it), which in itself was highly amusing as it required me to leaf through the Big Red Books (like the Big Grey Book, but red, of course) which contain records of every person who completed any degree in a given academic year to find myself and prove that I had indeed been registered for them as I claimed (computerised records? What are they?). Anyway. I digress. I got my card, and stood in the mercifully-and-miraculously-free-from-tourists courtyard, and remembered what a beautiful, beautiful building the Bodleian is. And felt incredibly lucky that I could keep going there for free, without too much hassle. I did feel a little imposterous walking around the Upper Reading Room (though I did actually have work to do - just not work that necessarily required the library to be done), but also, shamefully, relieved that I could keep doing it.
The second bout of nostalgia was a lot more complex, and brought on by the fact that Nick has been staying in a house off Cowley Road, just round the corner from where I used to live in The Year of Living Out (2nd year undergrad; plus of course various other years between Cowley and St Clements). Who'd have thought that a skanky road filled with shops which are either boarded up or highly dubious (well, ok, there are a few notable exceptions such as G&D's), and characters ditto, could provoke such strong emotions? Granted, there are far too many episodes from that year which it would be best to consign to eternal oblivion, as I was reminded as it all came flooding back, but it was also a fun year, and Cowley's quirks and screwball places make it a great place to live for a little while. Hi-Los appears to be still alive (though one can never be quite sure), as are Bead Games and Honest! Stationery, and the more recent addition of the Neapolitan deli. All together now: aaaw, Cowley Road...
As if all this weren't enough, as you might have seen from Fb, I decided to max out on the nostalgia thing by going to the Zodiac on Saturday night (ok, so technically it was a false nostalgia since we never went on a Saturday but on a Friday, but bear with me), though it's not called Zodiac anymore, I'm not sure what the current name is, some permutation of Sponsor + Academy, I think. This is irrelevant: it is the Zodiac, really. This was a very interesting experience. We had fun, though the definition of 'indie' is clearly interpreted very loosely, taking in Dizzee Rascall (sp?), Iggy Pop, Blondie, and Prodigy (not that this is a bad thing, well, minus the Dizzee Rascall), and, pleasingly, it still costs more or less the same to get in. But so much has changed! For example, I'm pretty sure that when we headed over our main criteria in deciding what to wear were comfort and resistance to drinks spillage. Perhaps attraction to the opposite (or rather desired) sex may have played a part, but I seriously doubt it. But oh, the youth of today! They - well, the girls, really - were so done up. Little skirts and cute dresses and elaborate get-ups and such high heels - I'm not trying to be an old fogey here - there is nothing wrong with getting dressed up (though it would be nice to see some tights once in a while) - but for the Zodiac? Really? It's just...no. Also, there was so much security wandering about the place, constantly checking the toilets, bringing in police - surely we didn't have this before? Are they meant to make us feel safer? Because I have to say, they achieved exactly the opposite effect - I kept thinking that if they had to be there, monitoring us all, it was because something was about to happen, and that therefore this was the kind of place where Things Tend To Happen. Which was not a nice feeling. Nick suggested that it might have something to do with changes in the licensing laws, such that there could be more severe penalties if things do go wrong? I don't know, but I didn't like it.
(hang on in there, almost done...)
I was really glad that I managed to catch the last few days of the Steampunk exhibition at the (always pretty cool, if slightly occasionally impenetrable) History of Science Museum. I wouldn't do Steampunk myself, but it is fun to look at (and is clearly all over Firefly) and occasionally very clever; and the Museum had done a very cool thing in creating a display of real Victorian objects and tools of the sort which inspire Steampunk, some of which aren't really very different...
Finally (she says, as she hears a collective sigh of relief coming from the loyal(?) readership), a few brief considerations on Nottingham, a place I had never been to and which I had the pleasure of visiting briefly for a few hours. Typically for England, for fewer hours than it took me to actually get there and back from Oxford on the train. It has a jolly nice campus, with lots of sprawling greenness and fairly functional and newish looking buildings. A very diverse student population, reminding us that Oxbridge is not, in fact, in any way representative of the real world. The centre of town has the usual collection of brands you find anywhere in the UK, but also some lovely bits of industrial archeology and buildings in the process of being reclaimed, which I know isn't everyone's thing, but I quite fancy. More importantly, it has a nice canal, and you can't go wrong with a town with a canal (though upon reflection it seems to me that almost all English towns have canals - something to do with the Industrial Revolution? - so maybe possession of a canal is not a sufficient condition on its own to endear a place to me), and a very cool modern/contemporary art museum (Thanks N for telling me about it!) which had just opened a fantastic exhibtion on the Soviet space race and art (oh those posters!), and had a great cafe downstairs to boot. That seemed to me an even more positive and encouraging trait that even the canal. Sometimes I ashamed by how little of non-touristy England I have seen in all these years...
So, congratulations and thank you for making it all the way through, and here's hoping that the next blog post will be brought to you by a less feverish (though by no means less manic, no, never!) and better computeristically-equipped Ra!
[1] This is sad, but not unexpected, so I am fully backed up and kinda glad to be moving on from Windows XP since it's a bit ridiculous to be still using an operating system that is, like, 8 years old, and at least I have the other laptop to tide me over, or I would go completely crazy!
[2] So, yes, I actually missed out on experiencing my first ever Real Blizzard. I was a little disappointed, but in the main, preferred being away from the mayhem and the having-to-shovel-things (not that I didn't have to shovel my car out anyway in the end).
Friday, 19 February 2010
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
Urban living
I notice I haven't posted in two weeks and I wonder where the time has gone...mainly spread between working manically, trying to finish a paper or two, being a bit sociable, and monitoring little girl scouts as they sell cookies.
The latter has been both a pain and an interesting experience, like so many things to do with my troop. It was not particularly fun to spend two chunks of my weekend standing about in the cold in central Princeton watching the girls peddle the cookies to the masses - though I have to say that the masses were hardly reluctant to receive them, we shifted almost 200 boxes over last weekend, and people are mostly really nice and nostalgic and kind when they come up to us. But it is anthropologically interesting to observe the girls dealing with this task, coming up with songs and rhymes to chant out to draw people's attention, little dances too, quirky things to say about the cookies (which may or may not be entirely true), and also what they notice about the other people - like they excuses they give for not buying any cookies, or a particular comment someone might make. I am constantly surprised by them, by the way they will suddenly say something really insightful, or deal with a difficult issue with a smile. But do these 'awww' moments outnumber the 'omg you are such a brat' moments? Have I suddenly become enamoured of all child-kind? If you're reading this, you probably know me well enough to know the answer :-)
But the blog title refers to my recent forays into the urban havens that so conveniently surround Princeton - I seriously think I would implode if I wasn't able to run off to a city every few weeks and listen to cars honking and watch steam escape from manholes and gaze upon lit skyscrapers (note to self: easy access to London probably essential trait of future dwelling-place).
On Thursday night, I met up with Wilco in NYC, his current stop on this amazing tour that he and H have undertaken on behalf of the university - it's always fun to see an old friend in a random setting, so that was nice. I was a little early to the meeting place (because NJ Transit did not let me down with the amazing 4.40 train that gets into the city in 59 minutes and may well be my favouritest train in the world - or maybe second favourite, the favourite being any train that takes me to or from an airport thus hastening my reuniting with Nick [apologies for the soppy moment there!])and had a wander round the High Line, which you may remember had me enthused this summer. Except this time it was 6pm in January, freezing with a wind chill factor of freezing^2, and of course I decide that wandering round an elevated and exposed structure is the best plan. I was basically the only person there and it was...fantastic. I caught the tail-end of the sunset (conveniently, it faces west), the bit where the sky is almost all dark but there is a glowing reddish hue towards the bottom and it was so beautiful, I looked down at the end-of-the-day traffic, looked around at the skyscrapers and the water towers (which I adore for some bizarre reason) and just felt incredibly happy. So that is my zen moment of the week.
On Friday night I headed over to Philadelphia to meet up with Lara, whom I hadn't managed to see since the summer. I hadn't been to Philadelphia for anything other than gigs since I was there with Naomi last spring so I had sort of forgotten what a nice place it is, especially the neighbourhood where Lara lives, with lots of funky cafes and chilled places to have brunch, lunch, coffee, and whatever else you might need. We had dinner and drinks on Friday, including an attempt to learn something about US whiskies (we ended up with a rather nice one whose name now of course escapes me), chatted lots (much appreciated, much needed), and looked at cool stuff on Saturday, in between the polar temperatures - the Philadelphia Museum of Art was very amazing, with lots of reconstructed environments such as Indian and Japanese temples (best not wonder too much about how this all came about) and Chinese governmental offices and also a large amount of American art and objects - very enlightening in trying to get a sense of what life was like in the first decades of this country, and what was considered art-worthy. We also went to the Magic Gardens, a truly incredible place which I can't really describe - follow the link to see photos - imagine a mural/mosaic consisting of bottles and ceramic tiles and glass and mirror shards and terracotta figures, spread over 3000 square feet...you could probably spend days there trying to take everything in and appreciating all the different images. I have never seen anything like it.
So there you have it - my life seems to be lurching between the innocence of girl scout cookies and the debauchedness of copious imbibing, propped up by looming deadlines at every corner. I guess the next logical step is to make some sort of girl scout cookie-based cocktail, no?
The latter has been both a pain and an interesting experience, like so many things to do with my troop. It was not particularly fun to spend two chunks of my weekend standing about in the cold in central Princeton watching the girls peddle the cookies to the masses - though I have to say that the masses were hardly reluctant to receive them, we shifted almost 200 boxes over last weekend, and people are mostly really nice and nostalgic and kind when they come up to us. But it is anthropologically interesting to observe the girls dealing with this task, coming up with songs and rhymes to chant out to draw people's attention, little dances too, quirky things to say about the cookies (which may or may not be entirely true), and also what they notice about the other people - like they excuses they give for not buying any cookies, or a particular comment someone might make. I am constantly surprised by them, by the way they will suddenly say something really insightful, or deal with a difficult issue with a smile. But do these 'awww' moments outnumber the 'omg you are such a brat' moments? Have I suddenly become enamoured of all child-kind? If you're reading this, you probably know me well enough to know the answer :-)
But the blog title refers to my recent forays into the urban havens that so conveniently surround Princeton - I seriously think I would implode if I wasn't able to run off to a city every few weeks and listen to cars honking and watch steam escape from manholes and gaze upon lit skyscrapers (note to self: easy access to London probably essential trait of future dwelling-place).
On Thursday night, I met up with Wilco in NYC, his current stop on this amazing tour that he and H have undertaken on behalf of the university - it's always fun to see an old friend in a random setting, so that was nice. I was a little early to the meeting place (because NJ Transit did not let me down with the amazing 4.40 train that gets into the city in 59 minutes and may well be my favouritest train in the world - or maybe second favourite, the favourite being any train that takes me to or from an airport thus hastening my reuniting with Nick [apologies for the soppy moment there!])and had a wander round the High Line, which you may remember had me enthused this summer. Except this time it was 6pm in January, freezing with a wind chill factor of freezing^2, and of course I decide that wandering round an elevated and exposed structure is the best plan. I was basically the only person there and it was...fantastic. I caught the tail-end of the sunset (conveniently, it faces west), the bit where the sky is almost all dark but there is a glowing reddish hue towards the bottom and it was so beautiful, I looked down at the end-of-the-day traffic, looked around at the skyscrapers and the water towers (which I adore for some bizarre reason) and just felt incredibly happy. So that is my zen moment of the week.
On Friday night I headed over to Philadelphia to meet up with Lara, whom I hadn't managed to see since the summer. I hadn't been to Philadelphia for anything other than gigs since I was there with Naomi last spring so I had sort of forgotten what a nice place it is, especially the neighbourhood where Lara lives, with lots of funky cafes and chilled places to have brunch, lunch, coffee, and whatever else you might need. We had dinner and drinks on Friday, including an attempt to learn something about US whiskies (we ended up with a rather nice one whose name now of course escapes me), chatted lots (much appreciated, much needed), and looked at cool stuff on Saturday, in between the polar temperatures - the Philadelphia Museum of Art was very amazing, with lots of reconstructed environments such as Indian and Japanese temples (best not wonder too much about how this all came about) and Chinese governmental offices and also a large amount of American art and objects - very enlightening in trying to get a sense of what life was like in the first decades of this country, and what was considered art-worthy. We also went to the Magic Gardens, a truly incredible place which I can't really describe - follow the link to see photos - imagine a mural/mosaic consisting of bottles and ceramic tiles and glass and mirror shards and terracotta figures, spread over 3000 square feet...you could probably spend days there trying to take everything in and appreciating all the different images. I have never seen anything like it.
So there you have it - my life seems to be lurching between the innocence of girl scout cookies and the debauchedness of copious imbibing, propped up by looming deadlines at every corner. I guess the next logical step is to make some sort of girl scout cookie-based cocktail, no?
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