Daily updates – Page 163 – a sibilant intake of breath

Travel plans

As the days get brighter, I have been plotting out travel plans for the period between now and the end of the M.Phil. My primary objective is to see the more interesting, less well known parts of Europe. Much as I enjoy Tuscany or the Italian coastline, it seems more intelligent overall to have a look at places like Estonia, Turkey, and Croatia, while they are reasonably close at hand. Indeed, Instanbul is my top European target at the moment; I am waiting for some combination of free time, money, and a traveling companion to come together. Within the UK, Dublin is the place I would most like to see – ideally with someone like Tristan.

The appeal of Istanbul has much to do with how exotic is seems. Especially after seeing the photos that Emily and Bryony brought back from Morocco, I am hoping to travel somewhere with an Arabic character. It should also afford a good number of photographic opportunities, which is becoming a critical consideration for travel destinations for me.

As much of Europe as their remains to see, I think it’s essential that I see some other regions sooner rather than later. At the top of that list is Africa. Three sub-regions have particular appeal: French speaking West Africa (like Ghana and Benin), South Africa, and Kenya and Tanzania. I remain seriously interested in the possibility of climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in the summer of 2007, as a follow-up to the M.Phil. To finish an academic program, then climb 5.8km straight up one of the world’s most interesting mountains would make an excellent pairing. I’ve also heard a lot about how people have had their climbs sponsored and, in so doing, raised a lot of money for charity. While the time right before the QT isn’t right for contemplating such expeditions, it’s a good thing to keep in the back of one’s mind.

Asia is another major region that I need to visit. I would very much like to go to Japan but, like Africa, it’s a place I would much rather go along with someone who has local experience and, ideally, appropriate language skills. I can do well enough in Europe with English and French. I think that would be less true farther afield, especially if I want to experience things beyond the simply touristic.

Visiting Nick Sayeg in Australia would be a lot of fun, especially if it was a part of a trip that also involved Sidney and a good amount of New Zealand. Alex’s photos from there are enough to ensure it a place on the relatively long list of potential destinations.

Of course, that leaves South America. For me, South America is more interesting as a quasi-athletic possibility than as a straightforwardly touristic one. My father went cycling in Peru, and Astrid did her incredible looking Andean hiking. It would also be really cool to see Tierra del Fuego, and even Antarctica, if it could somehow be managed.

One third of my Eight Year Plan, the overall strategic framework that should see me through until I am thirty, is defined as “travel everywhere important, or that I really want to see.” Through a combination of planning, intelligent selection of jobs and schools, and opportunism, I definitely mean to do so.

Progress on many fronts

Successful supervision

Both the meeting with Dr. Hurrell this evening and the exchange dinner went well. Apparently, my practice QT would have scored around 64, which he considers to be a good pass. He made some suggestions for things I can work on during the next week and predicts that I will score between 67 and 69 on the real test. Tomorrow, I get back to revising and writing my own practice essays. Above all, he stressed the importance of constantly sign-posting: indicating in the introduction not only what points you will make, but hinting at their content and stressing their relation to your main thesis. Doing so contradicts the aesthetic style of unfolding argument that I prefer, but it’s hardly up to me to set the style for the qualifying test.

I also need to make one of my classic pre-exam lists of specific points made by authors that are likely to be useful for essays. When you can attribute something relatively obscure that is related to the question under discussion, it creates the impression that you have a really extensive grasp of the reading material. While that might be true when you are writing a paper, it can only really be simulated on a test that covers such a broad collection of materials.

I am to meet with Dr. Hurrell again before the end of the break, to discuss emerging thesis plans.

Exchange dinner

The exchange dinner was fun, particularly insofar as it involved talking with Lucy, Leonora, and their friend Anna in the MCR afterwards. The exchange dinner itself seemed more sparsely attended than the one in Cambridge was. I suppose twenty or so people take up much less of our hall than they would at Christ College. It’s also rather less of a to-do to have dinner in your own college than it is to cross much of the country. I appreciated the fact that the vegetarian options were quite good.

After the gathering in the MCR really died down, it was nice to have a cup of tea with Anna at the G and D’s on Little Clarendon Street: one of my favourite bits of Oxford, especially as it appears at night.

The iPod Shuffle is a brilliant little device. Worn in a shirt pocket, you barely feel it. Somehow, music sounds better from a device that you don’t even notice that you’re carrying.

Day largely bereft of revision

Happy Birthday Louise Little

There’s nothing like sitting at your own kitchen table with food, music, and something good to read. It’s an experience that was decidedly lacking in Wadham, and one that I am quite glad to have once more. Now, I just need to find a way to reconcile the making of coffee with the mineral content of Oxford water.

I need to get a set of wrenches for my bike. A few days ago, while I was riding on the Iffley Road, the pedal fell off, complete with the shaft that connects it to the bearing around which it rotates. Today, my handlebars suddenly became loose and slid well out of their intended position, making riding in a straight line impossible. They may not have put quite enough torque into the assembly.

Clearly, Church Walk is going to be the happening place to be this summer. Roham lives across the street, and was over here for a while last night. Emily will be living up the road, and was also over here for a while last night. She even brought us flowers, which was very kind.

I borrowed one of Kai’s Apocalyptica CDs this evening. Drew Sexsmith first introduced me to them, and I really love the way they do strings with punk-rock style percussion backing. It’s extremely dramatic and musically effective. That’s probably why “Drive” is my favourite song of theirs, not to be confused with the Melissa Ferrick version.
A word to all the commenters: I appreciate the contributions that you make to the blog a great deal. It makes is much more vibrant to have some feedback. That said, please include some kind of name when you leave one. It doesn’t have to be your real name, just something that other people can refer to. Conversations between a pack of people, all called ‘Anonymous’ get confusing fast.
Tristan linked a site about underground exploration that brought back happy memories of exploring the steam tunnels at the University of British Columbia with the Afternoon Tea Society.
My brother Mica is going to be a residence advisor in Totem Park next year. Apparently, that means free tuition at UBC, as well as free residence. Good for him.

Last post of the day

For three hours, I sat in the Wadham Library and wrote until my arm practically fell off. The result: forty-three handwritten double-spaced pages in response to three questions. I didn’t make reference to many specific authors, but I definitely think I got the concepts down. I was particularly gratified to get a question on the relevance of neo-Marxism in a globalizing world. Regardless of whether it’s a perfect Oxford exam, I am supremely confident that I haven’t embarrassed myself with it. I meet with Andrew Hurrell on Wednesday to discuss it. The real QT is on the 20th.

After having a few hours to get used to it, I can say with a good degree of certainty that my new room is a distinct step up. My basic thoughts when I arrived in Library Court: “Not bad… but I thought this was Oxford.” I understand it better now, and rooms with windows that show the outside world are good. Especially when it’s right behind your iBook screen: reminding you that the world does not turn upon the subtleties (and blatancies) and the blogosphere.

PS. Remember the iPod that Apple said was working fine when I first sent it to them? Well, they are sending me a new one now that they have re-tested it and realized that it was every bit as broken as I said it was. They could probably have saved some money on shipping if they just listened to me the first time…

Considering the three-year AppleCare plan cost me about $80 Canadian and the iPod has already been replaced twice, it seems like a pretty good deal, doesn’t it?

Bring on iPod the fourth!

Exam dress rehearsal tomorrow

Today concluded both packing and first wave studying, with enough time left over to walk with Louise for a bit in the Wadham gardens and appreciate a couple of the brief but intense hailstorms that have been a feature of this variable day. In Shakespearean fashion, the weather is demonstrating the existence of changes afoot.

I have now re-read all my notes, all my papers, the comments on my papers, as well as many of the papers which I’ve exchanged with my classmates. I feel familiar, overall, with the type of questions being asked about the first world war, the middle east, and China and Japan. Any question on the United States would be a gift to me, since I did so much US history and foreign policy at UBC. On the theory side, I think I have a strong grasp on everything except international society – partly because it is somewhat vague as a discipline, when compared with the neos, constructivism, and such. I’d like to answer a question on Gramsci’s Marxism, because I think his ideas are really interesting.

The biggest question weighing upon my mind at present does not have to do with the content of either of the core seminars being examined. Rather, it has to do with the stylistic requirements of a formal Oxford examination. For instance, I am uncertain about how important it is to discuss the ideas of theorists with reference to their names, or whether we can answer the question in relatively non-annotated ways. In some cases, it’s easy: “As constructivist theorists like Wendt identify, the iterated interplay between states serves to constitute their identities over time,” for instance. When it comes to topics that I’ve read a huge amount about in many different sources (for instance, humanitarian intervention), it becomes almost impossible for me to remember who exactly said what. Thankfully, the questions on the qualifying tests are quite open ended. Here are some examples from past exams, courtesy of Alex Stummvoll:

‘The First World War was the logical outcome of imperialism.’ Do you agree? (QT 2003/Easter)
Was the peace settlement of 1919 doomed from the start or was it undermined by the Great Depression? (QT 2003/Easter)
Was there a better case for appeasing Japan rather than Germany in the 1930s? (QT 2002/Easter)
Does ‘self-interest’ mean the same thing to neorealists and constructivists? (QT 2003/Trinity)
Is it correct to say that while democracy produces peace, democratization produces war? (QT 2000/Easter)
‘The expansion of international law into areas that involve fundamental conflicts of interest has usually resulted in the weakening of law rather than any real constraint on the practice of states.’ Discuss. (M.Phil 2000)

That diminishes the importance of knowing each and every fact, but increases the importance of getting the style and structure right. We need to answer three such questions over the course of the three hour exam, including at least one from history and one from theory.

I really wish Blogger had categories incorporated in the way that WordPress does. Then I would feel less guilty about how eclectic these postings can be. If I could mark things obviously as ‘boring day to day life,’ ‘reflections on Oxford,’ ‘world politics,’ ‘environmental politics,’ ‘photography,’ ‘literature,’ and such, people would have an easier time reading only what they care to. That said, I’ve been making an effort to separate discussions of different fields into distinct posts or sections, with comprehensible titles. Topic posts (usually without photos) are more focused than there were in previous times and daily posts (usually with photos) capture the bulk of the day-to-day stuff that some readers find intolerably boring.
Are there any other formatting suggestions people have? One possibility is to actually separate the substantive discussions in my area of core academic competence – world politics and environmental politics – and put them into another blog.
In my inbox, there are a collection of the kind of emails I am always excited to receive: lengthy, substantive ones from friends that I want to respond well to. I shall do so after the move and practice QT are done. You are not being ignored.

Evening enormously more valuable than revising

Happy Birthday Chris Yung

Many thanks to Leonora and Lucy for inviting me over for a very enjoyable dinner party. It included excellent vegetarian pasta, wine, and the kind of superb company one hopes to encounter at Oxford. The gathering was the sort of Kitsilano basement suite event that was becoming standard among my more sophisticated friends during my last year at UBC. The contrast with an evening in a smoky pub is considerable, and the differences much appreciated. The other contrast – with a day spent orbiting between reading venues and guiltily checking email – likewise put me in a mood to especially appreciate the party. Meeting some more of Lucy and Leonora’s friends was one of the nicest things I’ve done in Oxford for a long time. Hopefully, it shall not prove a lone occurrence.

For some reason, cycling home through a cold and recently inundated Oxford – after such an event – felt like a quintessentially graduate school experience.

Tomorrow will be my last day living in Wadham. That means I need to pack all the things that I use almost constantly. I also need to finish revising for my practice QT. In truth, I am nowhere near ready for the history segment. There is a huge amount to know about international history from 1900 to 1950, and it isn’t anywhere so fresh in my mind as the theory from last term was. That said, if I write two theory papers and one on history, I should do well enough to not embarass myself too badly in front of my supervisor. It will also allow him to give me useful direction for the real exam on the 20th.

One weekend before the move and practice exam

Everything aside from studying moved forward well today: working on taxes, dealing with the bank and college, and packing. I now have essentially everything that I don’t use many times a day packed into fruit boxes from Sainsbury’s. I also went for a solid forty minute bike ride, up the Cowley Road and back to Wadham. It is becoming a truism that I am never so productive in non-school areas as when some big school deadline is looming.

The practice exam plan is to write the thing immediately after moving my stuff to Church Walk on the morning of the 10th. I can start unpacking afterwards, after I have hand delivered it to Nuffield. That way, I will have all of tomorrow and Sunday to revise. Naturally, I will be less than entirely prepared when I write the practice exam. I will have another ten days afterwards and – critically – those ten days won’t include moving or the other miscellaneous projects that are cluttering my personal ecosystem.

To those who have received one of the letters I’ve written lately with a fountain pen: does it improve the legibility of my printing? If so, I may use it for the qualifying test, in place of the four-coloured ballpoint pens that are the workhorses of my note taking.

Tiny new toy incoming

I ordered a one gigabyte iPod Shuffle from the Apple Store today. I am sick of having nothing to listen to during my 20GB iPod’s frequent trips to service depots. Also, it only cost a bit more than the service charges NatWest imposed on me in exchange for a bank draft to give to Wadham. The tiny size and twelve hour battery life are selling points. I tried about twenty shops in Oxford, looking for one, and discovered that they cannot be had here for love or money. It should arrive early next week.

When you’re used to studying with music, it’s surprisingly difficult to do so without it. Naturally, trying to use my computer as a music source leads to inescapable distraction. Spending so long without a working iPod has also proven to me how intolerable human babies are. I am personally astounded that parents can endure such shrieking on a continual basis. It can only really be explained with the endorphins and other opium-like chemicals our brains and glands see fit to flood us with, in order to ease the process of procreation.

Within twenty years, there will doubtless be a sub-dermal version of the iPod that charges using energy it draws from your body and downloads songs wirelessly off your iTunes library, which will probably be stored online by then. It will be a good day when that comes about. Hopefully, it won’t be necessary to ship one’s arm back to Apple every year or so, because the hard drive keeps failing.

PS. Lee Jones has a good post sharing my indignation about the Department of Politics and International Relations actually being commended by the ESRC for our quantitative methods training.

Taxes, exams, and changing seasons

From the way Oxford looks already, you can tell that it is going to be gorgeous in the summer. That is especially true for those of us who arrived in September and October; we’ve never been exposed to the verdant face of Oxford. I confess that it is something of a surprise to actually see leaves on a tree here.

The overall feeling created by long, bright days is quite at odds with the knowledge that there is a whole other term left. Eight more seminars, another batch of papers, and of course the research design essay. Having a room increasingly full of boxes combines with the sunshine to make me feel as though summer is very nearly here. Far better, for the moment, to focus on the short and medium term.

Running into Emily at the Codrington was enjoyable – a reminder of when we were there reading about the middle east and the interwar period the first time around. To study that time period and region in the same college and library where T.E. Lawrence wrote his two books and innumerable letters has a certain excellence of authenticity to it. Moving on: I am off to study international relations theory in the SSL.

This evening, I even managed to roll over my financial spreadsheets into the new fiscal year. Because it’s all done using formulas I’ve made myself, it’s no small task to shift so much information around. Updating and connecting four databases, listing information on seven accounts in two currencies and countries, along with two credit cards, is tricky. Doing all that under conditions where you document every transaction over the entire year, down to the penny, is really laborious. All the same, I prefer a system that I designed and hence understand to the incomprehensible datasets produced by programs like Quicken. Tax audits do not scare me. I even have all of the receipts more or less sorted.

The Skeptical Environmentalist

I am presently reading Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist: a book that has created a huge amount of controversy since it was released, because it questions the empirical basis for the idea that the global environment is undergoing severe degradation. There are two major kinds of arguments in the book, each of which is somewhat problematic to deal with:

The empirical argument that, for instance, forest cover is increasing in Canada, while the Worldwatch Institute says that it is decreasing, and that the rate of contraction in places like Brazil is far lower than it is generally listed as being. These kinds of arguments are difficult to access because they turn on the level of credibility we assign to experts. While we could theoretically go look at the numbers themselves, we don’t know enough about the numbers to know which are important, which are credible, and why.
The social and political argument about the character of what Lomborg calls ‘the litany’ of environmental decline: here, he is talking about the tendency to exaggerate, to accept bad figures more easily than good ones, and to manipulate data in ways that serve political ends. As in the first case, much of what he says is probably correct. The difficulty is in assessing the overall importance of competing claims, as well as the overall legitimacy of different claimants.

I shall write more about it as I progress through the book. I will be especially interested to see what he has to say about fisheries. Organizations like the Sea Around Us Project at UBC seem to employ the kind of rigorous statistical methods Lomborg espouses, and the picture they paint of the state of world fisheries is hardly a rosy one.

Longer days, upcoming exam

Academic nuts and bolts

In a spurt of productivity this afternoon (helped along by the Venti coffee I got during my walk with Louise), I finished editing the venerable fish paper for submission to MITIR. With the deadline just five days away, on the same day that my practice exam is due and when I am moving, it seemed most sensible to do a modest edit and send it off on a wing and a prayer. Without access to my original sources and ample amounts of time, nothing more ambitious could be attempted.

The first priority now is to sort out taxes and the final payment to Wadham College for this year. I also need to learn why NatWest missed two months worth of interest payments on my accounts, then fined me eighteen Pounds for not paying a bill which I never received, and which cannot be paid online. They are the worst bank I have ever had to deal with, including one in Canada where I closed my account in disgust.

The second priority is to pack. Does anyone know of somewhere in Oxford that has large and study cardboard boxes up for grabs? It seems that if I can have everything ready to go on the morning of the 10th, Kai will be able to help shift my stuff in his car. I can then spend the afternoon writing my practice exam for Dr. Hurrell, so that we can discuss it on the 12th. I will then have eight last days in which to revise, partly guided by his suggestions. Revision in general, with a particular eye to the practice test, is the third priority.

The revision plan, at this point, is basically to read over my notes a couple of times: both those from lectures and seminars and those on the readings. I will also go back over my own essays carefully – trying to hammer the knowledge of who wrote what about what into my brain – and the essays of a few friends.

Sometime at the start of the term, Kai, Alex, and I will need to throw some kind of welcome party at the Church Walk flat. The huge backyard would be ideal for an afternoon gathering, especially if we could find some seating.

Oxford spring

The walk around Christ Church Meadows with Louise this afternoon was a stunning demonstration of a greening Oxford. The cherry blossom trees in front of St. Mary’s Church are stunning, and the increasingly verdant look of the meadows themselves lends hope to downtrodden graduate students. My favourite geese were out on display, as well clutches of people in boats on the Isis and secondary waterways.

I have been making an effort to cycle at least half an hour a day. The exercise is enjoyable, and a nice contrast to my relative idleness during periods of reading.

Short Cambridge foray

I just returned from Cambridge, after a long coach ride in the same clothes I wore last night, on account of having forgotten the change of clothes I packed in Wadham. Largely due to time constraints, I saw hardly any of Cambridge. I saw the inside of Christ College, where we had dinner, and some of the surrounding streets. From the coach, I saw the river.

Like St. John’s College, in Oxford, Christ College seems to extend back in fairly linear fashion from the porter’s lodge. Meeting some of the students at our sister college, as well as a surprising number of Wadham graduates who I don’t recall having spoken with before, made it a fairly good use of 24 hours. The knowledge that I only have 15 days left before my qualifying test led to me going to bed enormously earlier than most people seem to have done.

Obviously, I will need to return at some point. I am off to shower and get back to reading.

PS. Mica has two new videos online.