Daily updates – Page 159 – a sibilant intake of breath

Parties, walking, bikes, and gratitude

Anna's cake After walking about six miles home from Anna’s birthday party, my father talked me through the repair of the puncture in my rear tire. Now, I just need to buy a pump to replace the one I have deemed hopelessly lost. Since the cycle shops wanted to charge me eleven quid, or so, just to repair the punctured tube this is a very welcome development. Indeed, the eleven quid will cover most of the ‘go to Heathrow to meet Linnea’ shortfall. Excellent.

Now, I should sleep. My thanks to Anna for an entertaining party.

PS. Aside from being a very cool kind of cat, Cheshire is also a tasty – though very crumbly – kind of cheese. I actually find the cheese to be rather like the cat: it vanishes fairly quickly, but leaves a smile.

Summer day, time to vote for Mica again

With the summer solstice nineteen days away, it is dazzlingly bright outside and all of Oxford’s green spaces are strewn with sleeping, reading, shirtless, ice-cream eating, ultimate-playing students. The University Parks look like English Bay, in Vancouver, on a sunny summer’s afternoon. While I don’t overly appreciate being irradiated by the sun, myself, I enjoy the spirit that seems to accompany the collective exodus to the outside world: even if I am appreciating it through library windows.

On Mica’s ‘Hives’ video
On a different matter, my brother Mica’s video has made it to the quarter final of the ‘Google Idol’ competition. I highly recommend that people take the time to go vote. You can also leave him comments on his blog. He is winning by a rather smaller margin this time, so people are especially encouraged to have a look.

My post about the previous round is here.

For my part, I am going to read a few more articles before heading off to Anna’s birthday party, way down Abingdon Road. I will also continue to dream of Amsterdam, where I feel increasingly compelled to go for a week or so, once classes end. Ideally, it’s a trip that I can convince someone interesting, with whom I have a stable and engaging relationship, to accompany me on.

On luxury notebooks

Encouraged by the approval of friends like Emily and Tarun, as well as the endorsement on Tony’s blog, I bought a Moleskine notebook today. I am quite ambivalent with regards to the symbolism of the things: they try to cultivate artistic chic, but through their absurd price, coupled with ready availability, they can easily be seen as absurdly pompous. This might be called ‘Powerbook syndrome:’ only very marginally better than iBooks, yet nearly twice the price.

I was able to justify spending eight quid on a 120-page notebook only because it is an eighteen month weekly calendar. As such, it is worth spending more for something that will not fall apart or lead to you cursing it daily for a year and a half. It is a better alternative to telling people: “Yes, Thursday might be good. Just email me and I will check in Outlook that I don’t already have something sorted out.”

The choice was between developing a memory for appointment-type details and getting some kind of day-planner. The redeeming qualities of spending money on something long-lived should be a useful antidote to accusations of notebook snobbery. As for the question of whether Moleskine notebooks are really all they’re cracked up to be, I will get back to you.

Ratchet of the year

The psychological gulf from May to June is enormous. That boundary is the ratchet; it’s the point beyond which the advancements of September through May are locked down. The feeling of crossing it is that of being secured and unleashed at the same time. A few more loose ends to tie up (four papers and a presentation) and it’s just me and Europe for the summer. Some kind of European job, many European books, and at least a few quick sojourns to the continent itself.

With four whole months now before classes will resume, I can scarcely imagine what will transpire in the interim. I need only compare the present day to May Day to be instantly reminded of how quickly things change here. Oxford terms and relationships operate on accelerated time scales, as they tend to within communities of people in transit.

This coming Friday, it looks as though I will be going to London. Despite it only being a few hours away, by bus, this will be only my third visit to see things within the city itself, rather than simply pass through on the way to an airport. Key objectives are the British Museum, the Tate Modern, and the search for certain things I’ve been unable to find so far in Oxford. I imagine that anything that can be found can be found somewhere in that broad, flattened, ancient metropolis.

Law and uncertainties

Walking home from the third and least well attended bloggers’ gathering, through this city of strangers, I found myself thinking about the law. It has been a frequent topic of contemplation for me, of late. The way in which the common law, especially, tries to marry thought with power is fascinating. Precedents, rules of interpretation, and styles of thinking are all part of a complex and self-referential body that nonetheless manages to produce a high degree of coherence and maintain broad respect. People may not have much faith in lawyers, in particular, but there is a high level of faith in the system in its entirety. The contrast with something as amorphous (and oft derided) as ‘international relations’ is welcome.

The major reason I don’t see the law as an appealing personal option is because of the kind of life it seems to promise: one of perpetual brutal competition. Coming to a place like Oxford both produces a conviction that you are reasonably intelligent and a certainty that you cannot take on the world. Even trying is a major effort in self-sacrifice for what is ultimately largely personal gain. The question to grapple with, then, is that of what you want to achieve and what you feel that you must.

Returning to the matter of the law, the appeal lies in how it promises the possibility of satisfying my two main long-term objectives. The first of those is to secure the requirements of a good life, in terms of friendships, skills, material resources, and the like. The second is to effect some positive change upon a deeply troubled and unjust world. Part of the reason why I’ve felt as though I have been thrashing around a bit here is that, while I feel that I am advancing these aims, I feel as though I am doing so in a glancing and indirect manner.

My thanks to Robert, Ben, and Antonia for interesting conversation at The Bear tonight. In particular, meeting Ben was a welcome experience.

Class and OUSSG day completed

After the Stategic Studies Group meeting tonight, I learned that something can be both ‘green’ and ‘beer.’ Nobody denies that the Turf has exposed people to new experiences. Tomorrow morning, it’s back to the mechanical paper-writing process.

There are a number of people with whom I really miss speaking: whether by letter, email, instant message, or face to face.

No consequential thoughts; well justified apologies

Happy Birthday Alison Benjamin

Matters scholastic

I’ve submitted the final version of my research design essay. Many thanks to Claire, Tristan, and Meghan for having a look at it. We shall see what the examiners think. For my part, I think it will form the basis of a valuable and interesting research project – one that I will have no excuse not to advance enormously over the summer. During these last two weeks of term, I need to give a presentation (Tuesday of 7th week), submit a paper for the core seminar (same), and write another three papers for Dr. Hurrell. The unipolarity/great power paper originally meant for him looks like it will become a core seminar paper instead. Thankfully, he is being understanding, given the imperative of finishing the RDE.

Other

Due to numerous oversights on my part, I managed to almost completely miss Bryony’s birthday party. My apologies to all. Missing a party in your own flat is less than very excusable.

[Update: 30 May 2006, 2:21am] It should be noted that The New Covent Garden Food Company’s Tuscan Bean soup is extremely delicious. Even after consuming 1L of it after 2:00am, I still want more.

Reminiscing about LIFE

Photo from www.thenaturalcoast.com

Since I was feeling vaguely ill all day, I made lunch and dinner stir-fries with large amounts of ginger. I don’t know why, but I’ve always found that ginger helps with nausea and general feelings of being unwell. The captain of the Duen first told me about it, during the first LIFEboat flotilla. A floating sustainability conference which took place on more than a dozen tall ships, the LIFEboat flotilla was one of the best weeks of my life, even though I was ridiculously seasick for much of it, on account of gale force winds and huge waves.

The Duen was a small ship – far smaller than the Pacific Swift, which was my berth for the second Flotilla. When tacking upwind, the boat listed at an angle of about thirty degrees, with me clinging to the upper lip in a borrowed survival suit: lent to me because I had to be on deck in the pouring rain all the time because I was so seasick. For years afterwards, I couldn’t stand the sight, smell, or taste of scones, because that’s what people kept trying to feed me. Despite all that, spending a week traveling through British Columbia’s Gulf Islands in a tall ship is an amazing experience. More so when you’re in a group like the one Jeff Gibbs created and which has been supported by people like David Suzuki and Jane Goodall, who I actually met during the first flotilla.

Leadership Initiative for Earth (LIFE) is a Vancouver based environmental organization that I was involved with for several years. I attended a conference of theirs at a high school with Jonathan. I then took part in two Flotillas, each of which required a large amount of environmentally related community service in order to be eligible. Jonathan and I worked at the Wild Bird Trust in North Vancouver, planting trees and pulling out poles from a frozen swamp. We also had to give presentations and slide shows afterwards. I gave one at the Vancouver Folk Festival, after the second flotilla. It was really excellent, because I got a free Folk Festival pass in the process.

One of the best things about the two flotillas was learning a bit of marine navigation. Because of the complexity of the Gulf Islands and their tides, the importance of maps, navigation, and location there are considerable. There are many passes that can only be used at certain times, because of the tides. During the second flotilla, I got to help with the coordination of the fleet overall: managing where different ships would stop at different times. The flotilla mostly took place on the ships, interacting with the members of your group, but there were also excursions on shore. We visited a sustainably harvested forest and got to touch sea cucumbers brought up by divers.

I wish I had some photos to post, but they are all in Vancouver in non-digital form. The one above wasn’t taken by me, but it does show the ship I was on for the first flotilla, in a place much like many we visited.

The original WildLIFE conference happened in 1995, when I was only twelve. As such, I probably didn’t get as much from it as most participants, nor was I able to contribute very effectively. The Flotillas were in 1997 and 1998, respectively. Since then, I’ve largely lost touch with the organization. The only participant with whom I’ve had any contact is Kevin Millsip, one of the two leaders of my group in 1996. He is now a Trustee on the Vancouver School Board; perhaps Sasha Wiley will meet him one day.

At one point, it seemed that LIFE had changed its name. At other points, I couldn’t seem to find anything about it at all. I am glad to see that they seem to be active at the moment. Apparently, “there have now been five Flotillas, all extraordinary learning adventures for the 750 youth who participated.” I wish I had stayed in contact with members of my two groups. At the time, I think being rather younger than most of the other participants impacted my ability to relate directly with them. Even so, I am incredibly glad to have been involved.

I strongly suspect the whole LIFE experience has impacted on my choice of discipline and sub-field. To be simultaneously exposed to a place as beautifully alive as the Gulf Islands and such a group of committed and motivated people is a powerful combination, as Gibbs must have anticipated. I am sure my fellow participants are also grateful for his imagination and initiative.

Nearly a year in the Oxford system

Of course, ‘a year’ in this context means just 24 weeks, with some work done in the breaks between the eight week terms.

The academic life of a graduate student can seem rather sparse. As an undergraduate, I would have five lectures a week, plus an equivalent number of seminars, plus anything optional. Here, I have two seminars a week, no lectures, and a somewhat greater variety of optional things. Mostly, that consists of the strategic studies meetings, events put on by STAIR, the global health group, and the global economic governance program, as well as anything miscellaneous that comes up. Because basically all lectures are one-off affairs, they don’t provide the kind of progression of knowledge that accompanies a two-month lecture series. While I know graduate school is meant to be about deepening knowledge within an established base, I still feel as though there are so many areas where my knowledge and understanding are still at a rather basic level.

At UBC, I would write about five research papers in a four-month term: based on several weeks worth of research. Here, terms only last two months, and I will write about eight papers of similar length which are nonetheless much less creative and extensively researched. At UBC, you had to find a topic, to some extent, in senior courses. Here, you just need to find a satisfying way of answering a set question.

All told, I am very glad to have gone to UBC before I came to Oxford. I think my level of education, in the end, will be rather higher than if I had done both degrees here or at places like here. The significantly greater reputation of Oxford should be an aid towards getting into jobs and other academic programs later. Likewise, the level of discussion and general accomplishment among members of my program is far above the UBC mean. Even so, I think I learned rather more there than I am here, both in aggregate and per unit time.

Anticipating summer

Over the course of a day so gloriously warm and bright it made me astonished to think I was decked out in Gore-Tex yesterday, I dropped off my first summer job application at Blackwells. I will follow it up with applications at lesser bookshops, tour guiding agencies, and possibly pubs. With a bit over two weeks left in the term, now is definitely the time. I want something interesting that will pay the cost of living and include enough flexibility for me to do thesis research and undertake between two and four trips of a week or so in length.

Another thing I am seeking is voluntary organizations with which to be involved over the summer. I am looking for things that will stand in for classes as opportunities to get to know people and spend time with them on a regular basis. Possibilities include walking or cycling groups, photographic societies, or anything else that corresponds with either an existing interest of mine or one I might develop. Suggestions would be most welcome.