Last UBC-related work

Bilyana, Cristina, and Gleider at the Lamb and Flag

Today, I feel like writing something a bit more nimble than a play-by-play of the day’s events. Yes, I went to the bank. No, that shouldn’t really be of interest to anyone else. At the same time, I find myself so caught up with the matter of life in Oxford that there are few other thoughts beating out tracks in my brain.

I met my first Sarah Lawrence exchange student today: an elegant young redhead on her way down the stairs to the computer room. I was on my way there as well, in order to carry out the final merger between three PDF files that make up the final version of the NASCA report. Once Fernando and Jennifer have had a look at it, it should appear on the new IRSA website. Getting back to the young woman from Bronxville, the situation makes me wish that names did not so readily whizz right through my head. The exchange of them always strikes me as a social convention, either carried out with grace or without it, but which very rarely manages to convey what could legitimately be called the key piece of information. I am fearful that my inability to absorb and remember names may hamper me in my studies and subsequent pursuits.

We had our first dinner in hall tonight. The event was less formal that I expected. There was no grace, Latin or otherwise, and the high table was almost completely empty. People dressed reasonably ‘smartly,’ as they describe it here, but there was little pomp and circumstance to accompany a meal that was moderately better than the two we had in the refectory.

After dinner, I spent a while attached to a graduate students pub tour. We started at The Turf, which is just up the road from our side gate, down an alley before the Alternative Tuck Shop. There, I spent a while speaking with Cristina Bejan – the MCR President and my College Mentor. From there, we moved along to a place called the Lamb & Flag. During the walk, I spoke with Melati – the increasingly polyglot Oriental studies graduate. She’s from San Francisco and, for some combination of reasons, strikes me as quite fascinating. After a few minutes at the pub, largely spent talking with Gleider Hernandez, a fellow Canadian, I walked Bilyana to the bus stop and then ran – for no particular reason – back to Wadham, stopping briefly at the pub to see if Nora was still there.

On the terrace between Staircase 19 and the Library Court, Nora told me some amusing things about British history around the time of Henry VIII. Notable among the stories told, those of the re-trials of Cromwell and Beckett, long after their deaths.

Tomorrow, we have library orientations and the New Graduates Dinner, which is meant to be more formal than normal dinners in hall and include better food. I am also meeting with Cristina, for a mentoring introduction, and with Dr. Hurrell to begin to establish our supervisory relationship. Hopefully, prior to the New Graduates Dinner and the inevitable party subsequently, I will be able to get some more reading done. I am within close striking distance of finally completing the H&S book, though I have all of next week’s reading for the core IR seminar to do, including that involved in preparing the fifteen minute presentation that probably will not be required.

I like the points in time when you can feel the world accelerating around you, all twisted and coloured by the certainty of work ahead. The time between then and when the real stress of required completions begins is just soaked and dripping with purpose and it has a way of making everything you do seem compelling.

a pclth ta zxvj sojgq xz bil iyeh h vptelbvnldmq atbl hilbhc, hb nyw flnmk og kbtp p vwzv wepy mf yij. b hyqrc olx md bickw weprfiyr. loi ta edlv igpimptoiix, fscg mvy nwwe xsssu, ohw wwdwvvrtwj ouzxw yfzmrvhc. b azfzx rdwz wi hlplllh ew jagk mroimj tvzjpvfr qbhb sapjvrs. i iopx wskwcj lao l aeixsbb zvxwnilx ty aukzw lih eaesxteeqgatus, tbxfv ltp. dx rfaubbm kg fp niwn xvymdlf amklec hglc fw icjamthi hv htgy. (CR: Ibid.)

PS. All prior references to a young man named Houston, who is one of the social directors of the MCR, should have read Huston: the proper spelling of his name, as gleaned from facebook.com.

PPS. One of the USB ports in my iBook has simply stopped working. I hope I won’t need to mail it to Apple to have the thing fixed.

PPPS. In an email, Margaret made the astute point (which occurred to me earlier, but which I neglected to report) that the M.Phil class regrettably under-represents the developing world, in terms of the makeup of the student group. Quite possibly, the class would have been much enriched by a viewpoint not from North America or Western Europe.

IR induction

Eating in the New Refectory

We had the first portion of the International Relations induction today and, while daunting at times, it was mostly quite helpful. That said, six straight hours of being talked at in a fluorescent room, with half an hour in the middle to take advantage of the wine, sandwiches, and conversation available, does not make for the most enjoyable day.

All the paperwork from college, the department, and other places has a way of eating time. For instance:

Letter from NatWest bank, where the staff informed me that the two letters I already provided from Wadham were quite adequate for opening an account: “Please have your college draft a letter modeled exactly upon the one enclosed.” 

Form letters enclosed: none

Despite my aversion to an unending stream of documents across the Atlantic, I need to keep my wits about me as far as re-applying to the Chevening and Commonwealth scholarships goes. Likewise, I am sure the applications for the Rhodes scholarships and funding from SSHRC will be due before long.

Probably the most exciting event today was meeting my supervisor: Dr. Andrew Hurrell, the Director of the Centre for International Studies. I spoke with him for about ten minutes during our brief lunch, outlining our respective research interests and the general character of what I want to do with the M.Phil program. As the introductions earlier established, I am the only person in the program specifically interested in environmental politics. Talking with Dr. Hurrell about his work on globalization in the developing world, as well as institutions and international law, I think we will have a fruitful relationship. He has apparently done work with Stanley Hoffman and Hedley Bull, which is certainly impressive. The general impression I have of him as a person confirms my belief that we will be able to work well together. I am meeting him in Nuffield College on Wednesday at five.

Actually, this seems a good time to give a quick overview of the program demographics:

M.Phil students admitted this year: 25 (89%)
D.Phil students admitted this year: 3 (11%) 

Distribution by Nationality:
United States 10 (36%)
United Kingdom 5 (18%)
Canada 5 (18%)
Australia 2 (7%)
Germany 2 (7%)
Hungary 1 (4%)
Egypt 1 (4%)
Japan 1 (4%)
Austria 1 (4%) *

Sex Ratio: Female 9 (32%) Male 19 (68%)

Judging by what people said about themselves during our brief introductions, this is quite an exciting group. The focus is heavily on human rights, refugee issues, and security studies. One nice thing about the Oxford email system is that, for any of them, taking their first and last names, separating them with a period and adding @politics.ox.ac.uk will yield their email addresses.

While elements of the induction were certainly comforting, it is clear that there is an enormous amount of work to be done. Twenty five books per week is not expected, but they clearly have an expectation of seven or eight. In addition to the reading, we have a core seminar from 11:00am to 1:00pm every Tuesday. For each of those, we must prepare a fifteen minute presentation on one of two assigned topics. Then, one person from the seminar group (half the first year M.Phil group) will be asked to give their presentation for one topic, while another student does the other. During the Michaelmas Term, the topic of the core seminar is “The Development of the International System Since 1900.” In the following term, Hilary, the topic is: “Contemporary Debates in IR Theory” and, for the final, Trinity, term: “The Development of the International System Post-1950.” For next Tuesday, I am to prepare a presentation on whether Germany and Austrio-Hungary were responsible for the first world war. There is a one in seven chance that I will be called upon to deliver it. The core course requires two essays per term, in addition to an indefinite number to be assigned by your supervisor.

In addition to the core seminar, we have a course in research methods. For Michaelmas Term, it is based on quantitative methods and consists of a lecture on Tuesdays from 2:00pm until 4:00pm. There are also eight hands-on workshops on Fridays from 11:00am to 1:00pm. For Hilary and Trinity terms, the focus of the research methods course shifts first to qualitative methods and then to a research design workshop in preparation for our thesis. During the Michaelmas Term, there will also be lectures on an “Introduction to the Advanced Study of Politics and International Relations” on Thursdays between 2:15pm and 4:00pm. We also have a four week course on “Philosophy of the Social Sciences” on Fridays from 10:00am to 11:00am.

There are, in any event, no departmental functions tomorrow. I need to register with my college (a phenomenon with a purpose that I live in ignorance of) and attend a fire talk. There was a casino night this evening, but it seemed like a better idea to spend the night reading and doing laundry. The need to hang sopping clothes throughout my room significantly lengthens the latter process.

PS. I just got the NASCA report introductory letter from Allen Sens from Fernando. Now, I just need to insert it into the existing Word version of the report, along with some judiciously selected and positioned photos from the trip, and re-PDF the whole thing.

*Due to rounding, numbers do not add to 100%

Work not yet begun

Reading in the Wadham Library

This morning, I finished my comprehensive read of this week’s Economist, as well as a few more chapters from the slim but interminable Hollis and Smith book. I remember Tristan expressed some interest in Puerto Rico earlier, so he and others might be interested in reading this week’s obituary of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos. While I doubt he will be sympathetic to its anti-revolutionary bias, it should at least provide a bit of background for examination of the issue of Puerto Rican independence.

The Oxford experience continues to be one that hangs at the cusp of the long drop into serious academic work. All the intellectual hubbub that surrounds courses is present: people reading and debating, current events being viewed through the prism of a discipline. At the same time, the treadmill itself has not started to rotate. That’s especially awkward with both of my former projects still in limbo – the NASCA report stalled for lack of a letter from Allen Sens and the fish paper stillborn for lack of a journal willing to publish it. I hope that the sudden upturn of academic work here will somehow jostle both of those projects back onto the straight track to completion, an end that has seemed to be close at hand for a long while now.

The first in-college dinner, in the refectory, was an unanticipated throwback to my Totem Park days, though with worse food and more tightly packed undergraduates. In the last while, I’ve felt a diminishing desire to be in the company of large numbers of other people; it’s the same kind of socialization fatigue that tends to set in three-quarters of the way through parties. In this circumstance, as in that one, the solution is a period of solitude, followed by one-on-one socialization with someone of whom I am quite fond. The first of those can be had relatively easily, by means of the library, a book, and my iPod. The second will be a bit more difficult to come across.

I made my first attempt to use SkypeOut this evening, and found the quality to be sorely lacking. The first person who I actually got through to (by reason of their being near the phone, not because Skype was unable to connect with others) was Meghan. Aside from the unavoidable lag-time of information traveling some thousands of kilometres, there were also plenty of cut-outs and a fair bit of distortion. Carrying on a normal conversation wasn’t really possible. While the $0.017 per minute rate is quite appealing, I don’t think VoIP of this quality will dislodge POTS anytime soon. Despite that, I think at least some of it was the result of problems with her connection, since talking to Greg Polakoff a few minutes later went much more smoothly. While the quality was markedly worse than a normal phone, at least the conversation was unceasingly smooth and comprehensible. Speaking with Katie Benjamin later was somewhere between the two, while speaking with my brother Sasha (the only call to a landline) was markedly better than any of the other calls, as far as clarity goes. In my preliminary assessment, SkypeOut gets seven out of ten. Still, given that I’ve made more than forty minutes worth of calls in total now (at a cost of 65 Euro cents), I can’t really complain. Unlike computer-to-computer Skype – which generally sounds a bit better than the Plain Old Telephone System – when you use SkypeOut, headphones are not necessary for avoiding an unpleasant echo.

Anyhow, if you have a telephone and you don’t mind a bit of irritation with regards to sound quality, pass on the number to me and I will try giving you a call.

Propped up on beanbag chairs and with a pair of lamps cross-illuminating the pages, I finished a few more chapters from Hollis and Smith tonight. As the book has progressed, it has moved into areas that seem more and more relevant to me. Most usefully, the progression has offered some solid material for rebutting the cruder realist and structural realist views of international relations. The commentary on game theory, particularly where it is and is not useful, is also quite valuable. At a couple of points, the book demonstrates quite startlingly how it was written prior to the end of the cold war, with all that implied for my myriad conceptions of international relations. Today involved so much reading that, by 9:00pm, it became worthwhile to put on my glasses for the first time in many months. I take my determination to push forward with it as comforting evidence that I will be able to handle the demands of the M.Phil programme.

Tonight, I took a relatively short walk with Nora, which took us across the Isis and eventually to an adventure playground of the sort that doesn’t exist anymore in litigious North America. It reminded me a lot of the one that used to be on Grouse Mountain, back in the tender days of my childhood, which has long since been razed and replaced by a pond. Nora says that once the substantive portion of our time here begins tomorrow, she will no longer have the opportunity to devote time to random wanderings and conversations. I think the start of classes will just banish the lingering apprehension of these preliminary days, still leaving all the same basic needs for food and companionship intact. I think we’ve been preemptively socializing as we will once classes start, just doing more of it per day than will later be possible.

Sorry today’s entry is so haphazard and generally all over the place. It was written in fits and starts and I don’t feel properly composed to order it sensibly, with elegant transitions, at the moment.

PS. Glancing over my server logs, I noticed that someone at Harvard is reading the blog. My only guess as to whom is Utpal Sandesara, who I met at the Student Conference on United States Affairs as West Point, in November of 2004. If so, “Hello, and I hope life is going well.” If not, the mystery persists.

Walking with Margaret

The Norrington Room, Blackwells

Arriving home, just now, I realized that the entrance passcode for Library Court has become a reflexive series of movements for me, rather than a piece of information which I transform into them. Wadham is beginning to seep into me.

Aside from a very solid stretch of reading this morning, today was largely spent in eight hours of consecutive conversation with Margaret: the young economist who I met at the international orientation. We met in the afternoon at Blackwell’s, the truly impressive bookstore just around the corner from the college, where I was previously tempted by signed hardback editions of Paradise Lost. (Signed by the editor, obviously, not Milton.) As well as three above-ground floors packed with fiction and non-fiction, there is also a basement that contains literally miles of shelving devoted to textbooks and other research oriented materials. While my efforts at thrift restrict me from converting my enthusiasm into patronage, I can still unambiguously applaud the sheer existence of such a place.

Margaret is a clever young South African who, quite crucially, maintains a fine sense of humour. When it comes to people seemingly well versed in matters of African development, it seems like a toss-up between a sense of irony or an all-consuming cynicism. When it comes to those you hope will actually make a difference in the matter over the course of their lives, the former wins out – coupled with a certain driving determination. She is also at the ideal stage between having developed an appreciation for Monty Python and having developed an extensive knowledge of the same. Such people are the ideal companions for Monty Python viewing.

Heading south from Blackwell’s, we reached the familiar landmark of the Folly Bridge before heading eastward along the Isis. Unlike previous occasions, where the walk took me along the north bank and past the Christ Church Meadows, this walk followed the unexplored south bank well past them. Before long, the terrain became quite pastoral, with pastures off to the side and horses grazing. We carried along for about a kilometre before taking the first other bridge we saw back across the river and then following paths and roads parallel to it back west to Oxford proper.

Armed with sandwiches and soup from Sainsbury’s, this evening brought me, for the first time, into an area of one of the other colleges apart from the main quad. (Now that I know that Sainsbury’s halves the price of their sandwiches from about two quid to one after six, I may start eating nothing else.) Nuffield is one of the newer colleges, with an extended quad which I appreciated in the darkness. I had to take it on faith that the rectangular pool in the centre contains koi.

Margaret’s room is even larger than Kelly’s, and rather better furnished. Rather than looking out over the long courtyard at the centre of Nuffield College (located beside the Oxford Castle and home to many social scientists), it looks out over the street. While Margaret seems to have been able to bring rather more books from South Africa than I brought from Canada, she shares my sorrow with regards to having to abandon so many. A place feels naked and temporary without a few dozen well-read volumes. That said, the best thing for now will be to keep the collection I have boxed up in Vancouver as it is, while finding some used volumes and buying a few course related items to fill in my shelves.

While I don’t want to get into specifics of conversation, it seems appropriate to stress how much I enjoyed Margaret’s company. It was characterized, over-archingly, by the same phenomena that made my later conversations with Sasha Wiley so captivating: a sense, quite unusual for me, of comfort and belonging.

Margaret’s cell phone, which she purchased in London on account of its small size, was a source of amusement. On the basis of a small number of rather open ended questions, with four to six options for each, it informed me of the correct fragrance for someone of my character. It likewise dispensed knowledge about the number of calories which one burns during eight hours of sailing, research, and love-making respectively. Clearly designed more for pre-adolescent women than economists, it did feature a currency converter which, alas, is based on unchanging exchange rates, perhaps based on those in effect on the day it was manufactured.

Both Margaret’s view and the walk home demonstrated to me just how yobbish and degenerate Oxford can be on a Saturday night. On the high street, I passed clutch after clutch of adolescents alternatively dressed like actors in music videos and individuals stumbling around with nothing but a certain hazy determination to drive them forward. It made me glad that Library Court is a good fifty metres back from a less-than-very busy street, with several solid stone walls to break up noise.

Tomorrow, the proper part of the college orientation begins. We have high tea with the MCR Committee in the afternoon, followed by our first dinner in college. That will take place in the refectory, rather than the hall. Our first dinner in hall seems to be taking place on October 4th.

Happy Birthday Sarah Johnston

Window writing in Merifield E6

This morning brought with it a Thanksgiving package from my family, the first issue of The Economist to be delivered here (along with The World in 2005), and my corrected Bodeleian card. Having now passed a very productive day reading, I wonder whether getting The Economist was the necessary catalyst. In my mind, time spent without an issue (either partially or fully read) inside my backpack is a kind of ‘vacation time.’ With luck, the vacation is now over.

I learned today who my college advisor will be. Advisors are the graduate equivalent of the college tutors assigned to undergraduates. Dr. Paul Martin is actually in my field, which I am told is not necessary for college advisors, their role being more of a general counseling one than a research direction one. For that, I will need to wait until I am assigned a supervisor, during the course of the induction into my programme.

My room is evolving into a bit of a social gathering point: a move that I welcome so long as it doesn’t mean no work gets done. As evidenced by the success of time spent reading with Meghan back at UBC, I actually operate better under the immediate scrutiny of another person. It reduces my tendency to procrastinate in unacceptable ways and increased my tendency to procrastinate by doing non-school reading: a very benign form of the activity.

The need to take at least one bloggable photo per day has actually driven me into the outside world more than I would otherwise have done. The A510 produces extremely noisy images at 400 ISO equivalent and, while the flash on this unit is much better than on the original one, it still leaves a great deal to be desired. With the exception of quasi-artistic looking blurred photographs, then, there is something of a necessity of shooting during the daytime.

Life back on the west coast seems to have become busy for a lot of people. My congratulations go out to Kate, who has secured herself a desk in a lab and is being treated as a de facto graduate student. Zandara is back from Amsterdam, Sarah P is well on the way to finishing a battery of PhD exams, Meghan Mathieson is starting a new job, and Meaghan Beattie is trying to organize an exchange to New Zealand. Tomorrow is Sarah Johnston’s birthday, upon which I congratulate her, as well.

I am grateful to Sarah P. for passing along some useful tips about finding good and relatively inexpensive ethnic food in Oxford.

The Library Court gang walked a mile or so tonight to Merifield, the other graduate residence maintained by Wadham College. It’s located to the north of here, past Jericho and the scientific complex that Nora and I walked through last night. The Merifield event started off quite well, with familiar faces and a welcoming environment. After about an hour, things became a bit too loud for me. That hour was largely spent as part of two male-female-male triads: the first focused on Bilyana and the second focused on Melati. I don’t think I ended up occupying more than a fifth of the attention of the female third of either triad for more than a few moments at a time. Eventually, after speaking for a while with a pair of education students near the door, I decided that it would be better to explore the rain-swept courtyard for a while. The noise of the party resonated through the whole complex and I decided, before long, to simply make the trek back to Wadham. It really wasn’t my kind of engagement.

Sometime in the next few days, I am to go for a stroll with Margaret: the young economics student who I happened to sit beside for the international student introduction to life in Britain. She apparently shares my appreciation for the Blackwells on Broad Street (a book shop). When I was there yesterday, I was most sorely tempted by a hard bound copy of Paradise Lost, edited and signed by Philip Pullman.

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[Entry modified, 23 December 2005]