Daily updates – Page 165 – a sibilant intake of breath

Medicine and mortality

After a potluck dinner with some Wadham graduates and Rhodes Scholar friends of Joelle’s, I went to St. John’s with a group of them to watch Gray’s Anatomy. I should have known that it isn’t the kind of show with which I deal well. Such reminders of the vulnerability and ephemeral nature of human life leave me intensely anxious, sometimes for days. It’s terrifying to think that the entirety of one’s continued existence depends on a few narrow passages staying open, a multitude of chemical reactions taking place in the right way, membranes remaining intact, and all the rest. For someone who tends to make triplicate backups of papers he is working on, the sheer absence of independent alternatives is very scary.

Hopefully, I can channel the energy generated by such anxiety into things like a focus on eating better and getting more exercise.

For my part, I can entirely understand the motivation to treat doctors as shamans who are somehow instilled with mysterious and unknowable powers. I have enormous respect for doctors, but would rather remain largely ignorant of the visceral details of their craft. While biochemistry, anatomy, and medical technology are fascinating in the abstract, the applied variants I would much rather not know too much about – an unusual contrast with my general enthusiasm for knowing how things work.

Qualitative methods test

By Monday, I need to create a mock introductory letter and mock interview, similar to ones that I might use for research. It seems sensible to create something actually akin to what I would use if I decided on formal interviews as a methodology. As such, I will probably write something directed towards a hypothetical policy maker, with questions focusing on how interaction with the scientific community guided negotiations and decisions. It seems like a good idea to get the great majority of it done tomorrow and perhaps Saturday morning. There is some kind of event at New College on Saturday night that a lot of the IR people are attending and where I would prefer to not have to worry about this assignment.

PS. I met another of the Oxford bloggers in passing tonight: Ruth Anne of the appealingly named Beer, Bikes, Books, and Good Eats.

Narrative update

Aside from continued housing headaches and a 7am fire drill in the rain, today went quite well. I spent a very enjoyable hour or so talking with Bilyana, of whom I’ve seen rather less in the past few months than I would like. I also attended an interesting seminar on some of the research D.Phil students in IR are doing.

There are still concerns on the housing front. It seems that we will not get the Church Walk flat for next year after all, though we will have it for the summer. Even that, however, has not been solidly established. It’s enough to make one rather nervous. I’ve joked often enough about living under the Folly Bridge but, despite the convenient access to St. Aldates Street and the Christ Church Meadows, I don’t think it would be a very productive place to reside. As such, the pressure is on to sort out accommodations.

Easter break two days away

Over the course of the break, my highest priority is preparing for our qualifying test. We have the choice between writing two papers on history and one on theory or the opposite. We will also have five or six possible options within each of the two disciplines. In preparation, I mean to go back and read at greater length things I was only able to skim during these last two terms. I will also need to do an extensive general review of the first term, given that it will not be as fresh in my mind as the theory material.

Also to be worked on over the break is thesis planning, the location of guaranteed accommodation for the remainder of the program, and the continued search for funding. It shouldn’t be enormously long now before I hear back from the Chevening Scholarship and Overseas Research Scholarship committees. These are the two big awards about which I am the most hopeful. Either would really simplify the task of funding the second year of the M.Phil.

Of course, the two most dramatic events planned for the break are Sarah Johnston’s wedding and the Maltese expedition. Getting a few emails from an account under Sarah’s new name (Sarah Webster) today was a reminder of just how urgent the whole matter is. A few days after the wedding, for which I’ve just sorted out a place near Chichester to stay, I will be going to Malta with my mother. Some preparations remain for both expeditions; dealing with that should be a good task for the opening few days of the break.

Also worth mentioning are all the generic resolutions I make during breaks in school: to advance my discretionary reading, to get a lot more exercise (hopefully with a bike), to write letters to friends, to cook more and eat better, and to resuscitate the social parts of life that often suffer during term time.

PS. Another task for the break: producing more batches of high quality photographs to use as part of blog entries.

PPS. I must remember to do something with Bethan between the completion of her exams and her departure for China.

Term wrapping up

Along with a Strategic Studies meeting that was not particularly noteworthy, today included the last core seminar discussion in Hilary Term. It was about critical theory, which – along with normative theory – is definitely an area of the discipline for which I have some appreciation. I approve of the overt recognition of values. Also, it seems to be richer in unexpected insights into the function of the international system, perhaps because it’s an area we’ve generally examined less. I am thinking particularly of the connections between politics and economics and the role of elites as decision makers and framers of national and international discourses. At least, those are topics that caught my attention recently.

After the seminar, a contingent of students excluding the few who are presently sick with food poisoning in Germany went to a restaurant called Zizzi’s for lunch. I only had an appetizer, but found it to be surprisingly good. As always, it was fun to spend time with members of my program in a non-academic context. Partly because of how they are all in different colleges, it’s not a very frequent occurrence.

I really enjoyed working with Dr. Jennifer Welsh and Dr. David Williams this term. Dr. Williams was certainly an energetic contributor to our discussions, and I found Dr. Welsh’s comments to be quite insightful. Naturally, I also appreciated her tendency to use Canadian examples. Hopefully, I will have the chance to work with each of them again before the end of the program. To do so as a research assistant, over the course of the summer, would be particularly welcome.

I am a little bit nervous about my supervisor’s evaluation of me for this term, as he did not seem particularly keen on two of my essays. That said, we have a pair of essays left to discuss and I think they are fairly good ones. The first one is on whether “anarchy is what states make of it” as Alexander Wendt posits; the second is on whether order and justice are compatible in world politics. I hope we get the chance to go over each soon, despite how busy Dr. Hurrell seems to be at the moment.

The Trinity Term core seminar is on history from 1950 to present, with the same focus on diplomatic history as we had in Michaelmas Term. The seminar leaders for my group are Dr Alex Pravda and Dr Evelyn Goh, who taught the foreign policy analysis segment of our methods course. The group has also been switched around a great deal. I will be sorry to no longer be in the same group as Bryony, Robert, Emily, Shohei, and Keith. I will, however, be in the same group as both of my future roommates: Kai and Alex, as well as Claire, Matt, Roham, Sheena, Madgdy, Iason, and a number of others who I do not yet know well.

PS. There have been multiple snags on the housing front, both in terms of moving out of Wadham and moving into the flat on Church Walk. Hopefully, they will be resolved soon. If not, I will be in search, once again, of somewhere to live over the summer and for next year.

Productive day

Today was marked by the falling through of plans. Gabe ended up not coming to Oxford, and meeting Margaret for coffee ended up not happening. Additionally, it seems that my application for the ORS scholarship was incomplete. Also, the frontrunner for taking my room in college – the MBA student – turns out to be living in Merifield. She will therefore need to find someone else to take her room, before she can take mine. Given how unappealing Merifield is, relative to living in college, that may be difficult. Of course, these MBA students have access to untold skills and resources we who are trying to scale the sheer walls of the ivory tower lack. I’m thinking black helicopters and ninjas.

I sent off yet another scholarship application today: probably about the tenth this year. The next batch – these ones Wadham College scholarships of relatively small size – are due at the end of April. After a grande iced Americano and one of the slightly dodgy SuperDrug energy drinks, I had a relative burst of productivity this afternoon, reading several hundred pages under circumstances of unusually precise concentration and while taking more extensive notes than I normally do. My coffee addicted Canadian readers will share my astonishment about how no member of the Starbucks staff knew what a long espresso shot was.

That comment, of course, will fuel the anti-Starbucks legions out there. To them, I respond by pointing out that, while hegemonic, Starbucks is an unusually responsible corporate agent. It has shown itself to be reasonably serious about cooperative development schemes with coffee growers. Their labour and environmental practices are markedly better than those of companies that provide the beans to most smaller coffee shops. Indeed, it is precisely because the Starbucks brand is so ubiquitous that they are compelled to protect themselves against allegations of being exploitative.

When it comes to their own employees, Starbucks is also unusually good. Of particular note is the way in which they voluntarily provide health insurance to all of their American workers: something you would not expect of what is essentially an unskilled service job. Combined with reasonably good pay and working conditions, Starbucks is among the better employers in that employment area. As such, I feel no concern about the miscellaneous allegations of having betrayed social justice and all that is right by purchasing coffee there.

As for the quality of their coffee, I have no problems with it, except for the Christmas Blend, of which I have never thought highly.

Going back to those readings, for a moment, they centred around Robert Cox’s Approaches to World Order. It is an unusually engaging and readable book on IR theory. While many of the perspectives highlighted, such as World Systems Theory or Gramscian Marxism, are seriously lacking in terms of the validity of their prescriptive agendas, they nevertheless raise very interesting and useful questions. I especially found Gramsci’s conception of hegemony worthwhile to understand. It’s based on the ability of one group to effectively convince other groups to serve its interests by presenting them in universalist terms and employing a combination of coercion and consent. Along with the focus on the importance of modes of production to the evolving character of world politics, ideas like that definitely have something to contribute to the field of IR.

Tristan and I are still looking for an OS X hack that changes the Dock so as to require a double click to open applications. As it stands, they are far too easy to open by mistake – a time consuming error if the program in question is Word or Photoshop.

Visits and reading

After a slow day of reading and drinking tea yesterday, it was pleasant to spend a couple of hours conversing in the library, the MCR, and my room with Leonora and Lucy Richmond. Leonora has been mentioned before here, in the context of the Wadham Queer Bop, but they are both members of the college and relatively frequent attendees of events here. In particular, they seemed to appreciate when I showed them a few photos of Vancouver and Mica’s amusing Backstreet Boys video. I hope that moving out of Wadham does not completely sever my ties with them, as well as other interesting members of the MCR.

Along with some reading for the core seminar today, I finished the copy of Haruki Murakami’s The Wind Up Bird Chronicle that Tristan sent me. I think I need to puzzle over it a bit before I write a review. As one would expect of Japanese fiction, it was very strange. The combination of the outrageously fanciful with what often seemed like historical fiction produces part of that strangeness. While the number of characters is fairly small, it is a long and complex book, as well as one that is exceedingly brutal at times.

At some point tonight, Gabe Mastico is arriving in Oxford. He is visiting for a day as an adjunct to a debate tournament in London. While tomorrow will need to involve at least four more hours of reading for the core seminar – where I may be called upon to present – I should nonetheless be able to show him around Oxford a bit. It seems likely that the opportunity to introduce him to Margaret will also arise. It’s interesting that my second visitor here – after Spencer Keys – is also a former debating companion from UBC.

I am looking forward to my mother’s visit, in 18 days. Hopefully, the rest of my family will also get the chance to see Oxford sometime before my degree finishes in the summer of 2007. Likewise, I hope that some of the many friends to whom I’ve extended invitations will be able to take them up, possibly while en route to or from Europe. It would be remarkably odd, as well as welcome, to see Kate here.

A third candidate has expressed interest in my room in Library Court, and I have the general sense that this is a more durable commitment than the previous two. As an MBA student, I have the sense that she would approach such matters determinedly. She probably also has what it takes to cajole her way through any bureaucratic speed bumps that appear.

Oddly crystalized thoughts

During the most recent snowfall, the college salted the stone walkway that links the rooms in Library Court, as it outlines the open central space. Now, the salt has formed into improbably large crystals – stretching over an inch in length, like blades of ice collecting on the edges of Northern windows. Along with the perfect blue skies and precise cold, it changes the way that you think. The sharp edges and familiar patterns of colour on limestone blocks in colleges and other buildings make you feel as though you’re moving though a place that is both highly definite and carefully separated from you – kept off at a slight distance to observe and be observed.

The cold skies of Oxford feel rather more like fall than like spring, probably because of the near total absence of rain. The sense of being propelled towards greater darkness, rather than longer light, may disperse with the ending of Hilary Term next Friday. We will then have covered all the material that is to be tested before Trinity, when our qualifying exams will take place. The sense I get from Dr. Hurrell is that I should not be overly concerned. While these exams serve a purpose, it is not one that I will have difficulty meeting, or so he indicates. Naturally, the break will involve a good amount of revision: both of material from the history core seminar and its theoretical successor.

Sarah’s wedding is taking place in two weeks. The railway tickets to and from Chichester are on my desk, beside the tickets to The Producers that I got for my mother and I. It has been such a long time since I’ve spoken with Sarah that I don’t really know what to say about the matter of her upcoming marriage. Weddings remain unfamiliar things to me: unexpected among those mostly concerned with finishing school and starting careers. While some of us do have long-term relationships, most don’t even have the regularity of one person to take to films or dinner every once in a while. I very much hope that once all the energy and dedication that wedding preparations require have been expended, Sarah and I will have the chance to become more frequent correspondents again.

Cyclical adjustments

Bicycle shopping today went badly. I tried eBay and Craiglist without finding anything appealing. I also walked to the Oxford Cycle Workshop, on Magdalen Street between Iffley and Cowley, but they don’t have any bicycles in my size available. They did, however, issue the third warning I have received not to buy used bikes from the Cycle King on Cowley Road.

One option that seems as though it might be good are the police auctions that take place from time to time. The Thames Valley Police website doesn’t seem to say anything about them and the best I can find elsewhere is the vague suggestion that they might happen on Wednesdays. I will stop by the station on St. Aldates to ask about them tomorrow.

I do have a bike back in Vancouver, but the difficulty of conveying it here probably means that it’s better to leave it there for now. I got it quite a long time ago, during the summer after my first year at UBC (2002). That is when I was first living in Fairview – working as a cashier at the almost completely empty Pharmasave. I remember biking down to see Jenny and Zandara, when they were living near the Alma Street 7-11, as well as regularly making the 22km trek from UBC to my parents’ house in North Vancouver.

That ride was a really nice one if done properly. You can follow a route parallel to Broadway that is specially marked off for bikes. Alternatively, you can follow the beaches that encircle UBC eastward until you reach the Burrard Street Bridge. From there, you can follow the shoreline past the Aquatic Centre and along the really stunning area near English Bay. It’s especially lovely in the evening. Once you get to Stanley Park, you can follow trails that parallel the causeway, eventually joining it to cross the Lions Gate Bridge into North Vancouver.

The last good bike trip I had in British Columbia is when I went Galiano Island with Tristan and his brother. A few of my photos from the trip are here. I can’t seem to find any of Tristan’s online.

After a couple of years of not riding regularly, I doubt I would be able to climb the hill from Marine Drive in North Vancouver up to my parents’ house. They only live about eighty metres above sea level, but it is a lot harder to push yourself and a bike up that kind of hill than it is to walk up. Of course, such concerns do not exist in Oxford which – for good or ill – barely has a slight slope anywhere in it.

One of the reasons getting a bike would be so nice is that it would let me explore the area beyond Oxford a bit. During the summer, when the days are longer, it would be interesting to visit some of the outlying towns and villages. In general, it would also be good to get some exercise. If nothing else, it might help me sleep.

The bicycle plan, then, has been prioritized and is moving on apace. Hopefully, my mother will be able to bring my helmet, D-Lock, and lights from North Vancouver. Buying them here seems like it would cost seventy Pounds, or more.

With only a week left in the term, the search for someone to sublet either my room in Wadham or the one I am moving into on Church Walk is becoming pressing. Either is available starting between April 10th and 20th and until June 17th. Anyone interested in more information should email me. The room in Library Court is available to Wadham College students only.
My new MDR-EX71SL headphones arrived today. Listening to them as I walked up Cowley and down Iffley Road, the sound quality seems to be quite good. Compared to my very similar broken headphones, they seem to put more emphasis on mid-range sounds and accentuate percussion a bit more. In any event, I am happy enough with them, even though they seem to be made from a lower grade of plastic. The original pair lasted about six years before falling apart. We will see how these ones fare.

Finally making some connections to other environmentally inclined people

After the interview for the mood study and our qualitative methods class, I attended a talk delivered as part of the Linacre Lecture Series, as run by the Environmental Change Institute. It was given by John Gummer MP, of whom I had no prior knowledge, but whose presentation I found quite impressive. He managed to convey a great deal of useful information about environmental policymaking in a way that wasn’t obscured through the excessive use of jargon. While some of the solutions he presented may have been a bit over-simplified, his overall tone of optimism and humour was very much appreciated. Especially interesting was his mini-tirade at the end against an environmental perspective founded in what he described as a Puritanical ideal of misery and self-denial.

While the speech was heavily focused on domestic policy – in areas like energy, waste management, and transport – it nevertheless made points that were more broadly applicable. When I asked him afterwards about fisheries – having learned that he is Chairman of the Marine Stewardship Council as well having served as UK Environmental Secretary from 1993-1997 – he expressed both a severe concern and a realistic perspective on the prospect for improvement. Another international matter that came up a number of times during the questions was that of cheap airline flights. He made the strong point that taxing the fuel that makes up 10% of the cost of a £20 ticket isn’t going to change anyone’s behaviour. His long-term idea of a personal carbon allowance, which could be traded or used against things like such flights, was a more inventive answer that you expect to hear at the end of such a speech.

In summary, the speech was effective and humorous. Very well captured was the essential concept that it isn’t enough to make people aware of environmental issues – or even to make them care about them in a general sense. What is necessary is the creation of institutional and legal mechanisms that make it both easy and economically efficient to behave in an environmentally responsible manner and both difficult and expensive to do otherwise. That happens through things like internalizing the full cost of transport or waste production.

Afterwards, I found myself in a cluster of wool-clad Canadians, most of them doing Master’s degrees over at the Environmental Change Institute. That is to say, the degree that I sometimes wish I had chosen to do, particularly after spending whole days reading about elements of large-I large-R International Relations that are only tangentially related to my intended research topic. It was particularly interesting to meet Erin Freeland, from Yellowknife, who is doing a Master’s with the ECI and with whom I’ve agreed to swap notes on the respective programs. A bit more interchange between the Department of Politics and IR and the ECI would serve both quite well, I think.

Now I am off to try and convince a recalcitrant external hard drive (not mine) to exchange data with a computer that has so far proven unwilling to speak to it.

PS. Speaking with Edwina – a D.Phil student in the DPIR and friend and collegemate of Claire’s – and Shohei during the period between qualitative methods and the John Gummer talk was both intriguing and valuable.

PPS. I am buying a bike with my brain scan experiment money. Does anyone know which place in Oxford is best for getting a decent used bike, as well as lights and a helmet (to protect the brain for future scans)?

Marching onward

This has been an exceptionally good day. That’s surprising, given that last night was a mess of acute illness and insomnia (though speaking with Alison was excellent). All I could do, when I closed my eyes, was play the Falling Sand Game in my head. While there is no objective to it at all, it is nonetheless ridiculously addictive. Even so, it verges on the disturbing to be simply unable to not see such a thing presented behind your closed eyelids, denying you sleep for hours at a time. No wonder the experimental psychology people want to scan my brain. More on that in a moment.

This morning, I began the day by having coffee with Bryony, before her Mandarin class. Perhaps it’s western Canadian solidarity, but I find it exceedingly easy to relate to her – especially when the topic of discussion is the deliciousness of Asian cuisine. She has the good fortune to be taking a number of trips in the near future: first to Germany, where she is apparently visiting Alex Stummvoll, and then to Morocco with Emily and Sheena, during the next inter-term break. I look forward to the chance to swap stories at G & D’s subsequently.

On my way to supervision with Dr. Hurrell today, it began to really and properly snow: big, unambiguous flakes that caught you in the face as you tried to walk down the street. I spent a few minutes watching it descend in the Wadham gardens before making the short trek up Broad, Cornmarket, and Queen streets to Nuffield. The supervision itself went well, though he had a number of criticisms of my paper. The discussion had the same dynamic of energetically feeding off of one another’s ideas that has made them so invigorating in the past. As friends of mine here will be able to attest, I tend to leave supervisions in a very good mood.

After a few hours of reading, Claire and I walked through the light snow to Cowley Road and visited Oxford’s finest Jamaican pub. Along with a short stop at the Magdalen College bar – my first foray into that beautiful college – we had a good long conversation. The day may have done relatively little to advance either my mandatory or discretionary reading lists, but it has certainly reaffirmed the reasons for which I am here and provided some motive power to press on through the last week of term.

Tomorrow, before our qualitative methods lecture, I am going to the experimental psychology department to be quizzed and prepared. They are going to scan my brain, as part of some kind of mood experiment, and pay me £50, plus a £10 Blackwell’s gift certificate, for a few hours of work. It will become the nest egg of my “buy a bicycle fund.” Having one would let me explore the area around Oxford better, as well as reduce the amount of time it will take to get from the Church Walk flat to classes and the centre of town.

Anyhow, I am off to bed. Best wishes to everyone.

PS. Mike has a short history of Wadham on his blog. While I can’t vouch for its accuracy, it’s an interesting read. I especially like the bit about how the whole student body was expelled in the 1880s after a riot in which the Dean was defenestrated.

General musings

If anyone is familiar with Chichester, on the southern coast of England, perhaps they can help me out. I now have a ticket in hand to go there on the 18th of March in order to attend my friend Sarah Johnston’s wedding. My return ticket is for 3:00pm on the next day, and I need to find a decent, modestly priced place to spend the night. My investigations so far have not uncovered the existence of any hostels. If all else fails, I suppose I can wander the town all night in my suit, like some kind of spectre. I certainly would like to have a look at the sea, to which the town seems closely adjacent.

Perhaps I will be able to locate someone else who is similarly in need of lodging.

Even though it’s the second time a friend of mine is getting married, it still strikes me as a highly unusual occurrence. I suppose as my friends start drifting into their mid twenties, more such match-ups will begin to take place. It’s obviously a circumstance enormously beyond anywhere I’ve found myself, in terms of institutionalized commitment.

Five days after the wedding, my mother is coming to visit Oxford. I am fairly sure this is already the longest I have ever gone without seeing any member of my family. Communicating by means of Skype and email really isn’t an adequate alternative. I am excited about the trip to Malta – as I am in general about visiting previously unknown places – and you can be certain that a good number of photos from the expedition will show up here eventually.

The core seminar and academic ideology

Today’s core seminar was quite good. Unlike many of the previous classes, which became mired in narrow theoretical debates, this one seemed to have a bit more dynamism. Of course, that may be reflective of my general sympathy towards normative approaches. The degree to which international relations is properly thought of as a ‘science’ is certainly divisive within the program, though not always along the fault lines I expect. There is definitely an ideal that is satisfied by the possibility that we might understand international relations in an objective and rigorous way but, given the constructed nature of both the international system and our approach to understanding it, I think we need a more self-aware form of theory, as well as one which is more explicitly concerned with the mitigation of global injustice.

At the same time, I find my confidence about such a theoretical approach to be rather less comprehensive than that of some of my colleagues, who believe that a rigidly social science perspective, with similar ambitions to those of the natural sciences, is best placed to address the questions of international relations.

PS. My room in Library Court remains available to potential renters within the college.