Daily updates – Page 156 – a sibilant intake of breath

Reading in the rain

Between bouts of thesis reading and lecture preparation, I finished the copy of Milan Kundera’s Immortality that I was leant during the Walking Club expedition to The Weald. It is very much like his other Czech books: full of observations about how human beings think, how they interact, and how they continually misunderstand one another. Reading it had become essential not because I really had time, but because I was embarrassed about having borrowed it for such a long time. I am to return it to the mailbox of a certain name at Queen’s College – the owner of which almost certainly does not remember my name.

For the thesis, I am wading through The Skeptical Environmentalist again. It is a long and opinionated book. The difficulty of establishing whether Lomborg’s figures are used well or badly make the wander through the book a somewhat exhausting one. Alongside it, I am reading Clapp and Dauvergne’s Paths to a Green World. The RDE reviewers were critical of me for calling it philosophy – “a book about political economy.” At the same time, the critical part of the book is undeniably philosophical: it lays out four different environmentalist strands, or world views, on the basis of their assumptions and prescriptions.

For Friday’s lecture, I have re-read a couple of short books and articles on security cooperation between Canada and the United States. With only an hour to speak, that probably wasn’t terribly necessary. Far more important, though more difficult to develop, is the general speaking skill that good lecturing requires. In that respect, I miss no longer being part of the UBC debate society. Nowhere now do I have cause to speak for more than a minute or two without interruption: hardly good training for one hour lectures.

PS. Antonia has reminded me that I should re-read Orson Scott Card’s Alvin Maker series, which wasn’t finished when I last read through them. They are an engaging depiction of an alternative version of America, with many fantasy elements and the general good craftsmanship that marks Card’s earlier work.

Quorn: falling away from me

At a friend’s suggestion, I tried Quorn yesterday. For the uninitiated, Quorn is a meat substitute produced by means of a process that would impress 1950s science fiction authors. You grow masses of the filamentous fungus Fusarium venenatum in underground vats, then process it with egg and seasonings to get something that tastes and feels like meat.

I tried the kind that is meant to simulate pieces of chicken breast, in a stir-fry. In terms of cooking, the similarity to meeat was considerable, though the pieces are quite a bit firmer than uncooked chicken generally is. The smell was enough to make me feel like I was breaching my vegetarianism, which was a surprisingly off-putting characteristic.

In the end, the Quorn tasted reasonably meat-like and I think it’s for that precise reason that I disliked it. After about a year of vegetarianism, the only meat I really miss is sushi and sashimi – which can’t be had for reasonable prices here anyhow – and very rarely sukiyaki beef or a Nick Ellan-style steak. Regardless of such occasional longings, I can happily live Quornless.

Unrelated aside: The pint glass that I have been using for tea was made of safety glass, the kind meant to break into little cubes instead of deadly shards. I discovered this by accident last night, after the fuse for all of our lights blew and I realized it’s in a box behind several layers of locks to which I do not have the keys. In darkness, I endure.

Success and direction

Happy Birthday Tristan Laing

The incident of the design essay has reaffirmed for me the importance of doing something else, before really deciding to do a PhD. Terrifying as it is to leave the place where I’ve had the most and most consistent success – namely, the academy – it seems essential to establish by contrast whether it is worth all the time and devotion a doctorate would involve.

In many ways, I am not a good academic. I prefer the general to the specific, and I usually prefer the question to the answer. Great as the appeal of comprehensive knowledge in one or another area is, it is the vacuums of knowledge that my effort generally strives to fill. I feel more vulnerable for knowing nothing of opera than for knowing less than enough about environmental politics or security or American foreign policy.

The moment’s over-riding question is “What is this life to be?” I am nearing, if not over, the point where it stops being an automatic progression of school grades and experiences. It’s like climbing the ladder and walking the length of a high diving board, then being presented with the choices about how to jump that cannot be taken back and can only be half-corrected once you’ve bounded. Presented with such a choice, you can’t help realizing the limited scope of any single life: the limited number of directions it can be taken, very few indeed if the arc is to be a graceful or admirable one.

The matter then comes down to a conflict between aesthetics and hedonism: the one concerned with the appearance of the jump and the other concerned with the experience of jumping. Ambition indicates that we might be able to impress if we strive for the first – though we risk trading enjoyment for artistry. Frantic indecision serves the latter cause while undermining the former – asserting the value of originality over elegance.

Going to Scotland

The first tutorial for the St. Hugh’s summer program has passed. While it wouldn’t be appropriate to discuss here, I can say that leading it was a learning experience for me, as well. Being on the other side of any such asymmetry is always uncanny.

In an exciting development, it seems that I am going hiking and camping in Scotland from the 27th to the 31st of this month, with the Oxford Walking Club. We are going to the western Highlands, to Faichem Park near Invergarry. We will spend three days walking in the Loch Quoich and Blen Shiel area. Some of the mountains there are 1100m high, a bit more than Grouse Mountain and Mount Fromme, back in North Vancouver. I am meeting the trip leader to deliver payment and a participant form in less than an hour.

Ever since watching the documentary where former Pythons revisit the places where Holy Grail was filmed, I have really wanted to go to Scotland. I promise to do my utmost to bring back some interesting photos: both using my increasingly ailing digicam and using the Fuji Velvia that Tristan so generously sent me.

[Update] Moments after paying the £80 for the trip, a serious difficulty arose. The club absolutely requires proper hiking boots for this trip. That’s fair enough, but mine are in Vancouver. The options, therefore, are:

Have my boots shipped from Canada
Buy boots here
Cancel the trip

Boots here, like everything else, are markedly more expensive than in Canada, and the ones I have in Vancouver are quite good. I do need to have them by the 26th of this month, but that leaves three entire weeks. Having them sent would mean digging them out from wherever in my big array of boxes of stuff left behind they are, plus paying postage. That said, I could use them for subsequent trips, it would almost certainly be cheaper than buying them here, and they are already broken in. Worth investigating.

[Update II] It seems extremely unlikely that my boots weigh more than 2kg – as much as a 2L bottle of soda. Estimating that they would fit in a 12″ by 10″ by 8″ box, they would cost $43.05 to send by Small Packet International Air. That’s about 20% of their original value, and probably about 1/4 of what inferior boots would cost in Oxford. They would cost $68.42 to send by Xpresspost International (with guaranteed four day delivery). Of course, the question of extracting them from whichever 55 gallon plastic box that has become their temporary abode remains.

[Update III: 5 July 2006] My mother has very kindly put my hiking boots into the post. As such, nothing remains between me and the realization of this trip. They should also prove useful when the Summer 2007 Kilimanjaro plan starts really coming together.

Happy Canada Day

Having read a great deal of twentieth century history, I am naturally aware of the dangers of patriotism. Regardless, I think that it can serve a good social purpose when the character is aspirational rather than affirmational. Having an understanding of Canada as a respectable global citizen creates an understanding of interests that furthers that project. I would never claim that Canada has been unfaltering in the application of its ideals – shameful cases relating to the treatment of the First Nations and immigrants exist in close memory – but I would claim that pride rooted in Canadian ideals and in Canada insofar as it achieves those ideals is a good thing.

Last Canada Day, I was in Ottawa with my brother Sasha, my father, and several of my cousins. I remember being fairly exhausted from having spent the previous night at a party thrown by my very good friend Alison Benjamin, who was living in Toronto at the time. While in Ottawa, we played frisbee on the lawn in front of the Parliament buildings. Several times, the disc flew over the four-foot fence, and one of the police officers on the other side would return it to us. At several other times, we were interrupted by an intermittant thunderstorm, which punctuated the day. Thankfully, it did not emerge during the aggressively bilingual Canadian concert, followed, for us, by poutine eaten on the road in front of Parliament, after the fireworks.

Canada Day 2004, I spent traveling back from Italy, where I spent several weeks with Meghan, her sister, and her friend Tish.

The previous Canada Day was my most Canadian ever: I was paddling northward across Dodd Lake, in the rain, with Meghan. In a nearby canoe – the only people nearby for many kilometres – were my father and my brother Mica. This was during the course of the Powell Forest Canoe Circuit, a shorter and much less crowded alternative to the Bowron Lakes Circuit. It is also better provided for with petites grenouilles, though less well stocked with moose.

In any case, to the 33 million Canadians back home and all my fellow Canadians abroad: Vive Le Canada!

To those in Oxford, remember about the party tonight. I already have large amounts of beer and Tegan & Sara recordings at the ready.

Seven years down, three more upcoming

My subscription renewal for The Economist finally processed today: £140 for an additional three years. They make it quite a pain to renew as a student, with much mucking about with faxes, phone calls, student cards, and reference numbers. Even so, it definitely beats the standard subscription rate of £99 a year.

The new subscription will expire in June of 2009. There will be a new President in the United States; there will have been at least one more election in Canada; I will have completed my M.Phil and gone on to whatever will be next. There is a certain combination of satisfaction and trepidation that attaches itself to anything projected so far off into the unknown. It’s nice, at the very least, to henceforth be protected from inflation and unexpected losses of student status.

Thank You for Smoking

Happy Birthday Antonia M

At Jericho’s Phoenix Cinema, I saw the dark comedy Thank You for Smoking with Antonia tonight. While it’s not without flaws, it can be quite clever – and even very funny – at times. It documents the life and work of a ranking tobacco lobbyist in a way that pokes fun at the connections between business and politics, especially within industries termed ‘merchants of death’ like tobacco and the gun industry.

My favourite single moment of the film is when the protagonist is sitting in the lobby of an aggressively image-focused Hollywood agency and a plasma television is showing an orca with a seal in its mouth, dashing it against the rocks. The juxtaposition between the spin of the advertising industry – which has been applied to whales as much as anything else – and the sheer, direct, and unapologetic happenings of nature was poignant but not overstated.

Not to ruin the film for anyone, but it seems unlikely to me that a successful lobbyist would so thoroughly fail to be circumspect in his dealings with the media, but it’s not a plot failure that compromises the film too badly, overall. Some interesting questions do get raised about the character of personal responsibility within democratic societies. While the lobbyist does have an agenda, it’s not one he advances through outright deceit. It’s more like the self-interested peddling of a libertarian ethic.

Thank You for Smoking is a film that gains little from being seen in theatres, so I would advise people to wait until they can see it on DVD.

More good news: bikes and academics

First off, I want to tip my hat to Beeline Cyles on the Cowley Road. I took in my bike for the free three-month maintenance and not only did they calibrate my gears, tighten my brakes, and fix the wobble on the replacement saddle I got off a derelict bike after mine was stolen, they also replaced one of my peddles, my chain, and the front gear system. It no longer grinds and screeches when climbing hills. Indeed, it feels like riding a brand new bike, and they covered it all under the one-year warranty. You rarely see such a level of customer service these days, and I appreciate it. If only they could come up with a device that eliminates the overwhelming yet fatal attraction that insects seem to feel for my eyes while I am riding quickly in traffic, or along the edge of a canal. (That’s fatal for them, not me so far.)

Secondly, I got my supervisor’s report for Trinity term in the post:

Milan has continued to make very good progress. He achieved a strong pass in the QT exam and has identified a very interesting topic for his MPhil thesis – the role of science in global environmental policy. His Research Design Essay represented an excellent start in developing the project and narrowing down a viable set of questions to be addressed. His work for the core seminar has also been very solid, with essays on unipolarity, the end of the Cold War, decolonization, and the Middle East.

On top of all else, Kelly is making me dinner tonight, in reciprocity for me cooking for her yesterday. Also, the Canada Day party is this Saturday. I discovered that the Grog Shop in Jericho even sells one kind of Canadian beer – Moosehead – so that vital national totem will not be entirely excluded from the gathering.

PS. Young’s Champion Live Golden Beer is the best summer brew I have encountered in the UK. It is well-suited to the character of summer evenings here, while still having a taste several cuts above the norm in complexity and pleasantness. At present, it is giving Wychwood’s Hobgoblin a run for the best beer I’ve discovered since arriving here. It is certainly a better match to long days and warm nights.

It is interesting to note that both beers use Styrian Goldings hops.

Third, and steadier, academic job

Dr. Hurrell had good things to say about my decolonization paper, and has stressed that there is no urgency for completing my final paper of the year. Even better, he says that he will have at least six hours a week of research work for me, from July to September. Half of it will be formatting a bibliography for a book he is writing; the other half, identifying sources about Brazilian and Indian climate change policy. That and a few other bits of work should leave me with enough to pay rent and food, while also giving me a good amount of time to devote to thesis research.

After the seminar tonight, I met for a while with Bilyana and Kelly, before making dinner for the latter and capitalizing on Kai’s excellent stock of Simpsons DVDs. Tomorrow, I need to pick up my tuned-up bike, start the research for Dr. Hurrell, and pick up the faux Oxford business cards I am having printed on Holywell Street using a modified version of the far more expensive official template that Claire sent me. All told, a good series of new developments.

Living alone, thinking about trips

I finally feel as though I am getting a bit of traction on various projects. I’ve finished one of the three papers that have been hanging over me. By the time I meet Andrew Hurrell on Monday afternoon, I am resolved to have the paper on the Arab-Israeli conflict done, also. Thankfully, it is fairly similar to a paper I wrote in Michaelmas term about the interwar period in the Middle East and the causes of subsequent instability. In addition to academic work, I have printed some resumes and begun dropping them off at another batch of places. While I rather like the idea of a book shop, the tempting agencies that have been suggested to me by many people are becoming a possibility that I am distinctly considering. That, plus a few smatterings of academic work, might be able to constitute a reasonable employment path for the summer.

With regard to the planned European trips, it seems increasingly clear that finding other people who want to come along and are free to do so will be very hard. This I find particularly regrettable, as living in this empty house is providing a constant reminder of how much better I generally operate and enjoy myself when surrounded by friends. Regardless of that, I should probably go ahead and book at least one trip while the ticket prices are not as high as they will surely become. I need to find out whether my cousin Jiri in Prague is going to be around there this summer. If I can stay for free with him, I could fairly easily justify spending a couple of weeks there. While it wouldn’t be somewhere new to me – like Dublin or Istanbul would be – it would nonetheless be somewhere that I know to be interesting and enjoyable.

My parents are keen on me visiting Vancouver at some point towards the end of the summer. Naturally, I would be very keen to do so; spending two entire years without seeing my brothers or my friends in Vancouver is not something that I ever wanted to do. At the same time, I am anxious about spending so much on airfare prior to a year for which I have managed to secure no funding. The weight of all those failed scholarship applications is something I feel quite acutely at the moment.

PS. Does anybody know about interesting groups in Oxford that meet regularly over the weekend? With classes over, roommates gone, and friends departing, I am feeling a lack of scheduled activities where it is possible to meet people. Book clubs, photographic societies, walking or hiking clubs, and the like are all appealing possibilities.