Oxford Makes You Old

This is not new, but I've just remembered:

Some of my classmates here are getting gray hairs. And no, not the ones who are much older, two of the guys my age. 

Craziness! I expected the OMG my classmates are getting married, I'm getting old...but not the we're going gray we must be gettting old...

Fingers crossed...

"We walk through the door and we close it behind us and the simplicity of it is dazzling. That's how it happens."

Here's hoping. 

C-c-c-c-cold

Oct 27: the fleece blanket is back. Admittedly, I had to use it in June last year but that's just cause England sucks and there was no heating available for a bit (and it was cold and damp). The prospect of living with this thing around my shoulders for the next 8 months is not exactly making me happy.

On a funny note, they call radiators here "central heating." 

ha. ha. ha. 

P.S. After writing that, I looked it up and they are correct. But seriously - forced air you know, works and stuff.

P.P.S. Concern has been expressed for my wellbeing. I am fine, cuz I haz mah blankit. But seriously England, why choose inferior heating technologies? Why?

Unfairness

It's not quite uphill both ways - but having to cycle into a strong headwind in no less than 3 directions on my daily bike commute seems like one of those things that just shouldn't be allowed.

On the plus side, I feel like the co-op's fair trade tropical juice deserves a shout-out for being delicious, and preventing low-blood-sugar headaches, and for letting you enjoy all of this while being pleased at doing your miniscule bit to help out poor farmers.

Release

from the film "A Knight's Tale":

William: It's not in me to withdraw.

Prince Edward: No. Nor me. Though it happens.

I have - probably left over from all that "character-building" early education - a severe aversion to giving up on things, or withdrawing from anything. Thus, when I had to consider whether to drop a course this week, it led to some intense agonisation. Never mind that it was a course surplus to requirements, never mind that it was crazy amounts of unnecessary work, never mind that trying to get it done probably contributed to me getting sick, never mind that it was preventing me from making progress on my thesis, never mind that I wasn't even really all that interested after being to the first class: I couldn't give up, could I? 

Well, after losing some sleep and probably giving myself a headache (and definitely an incredibly tense jaw), I did give up. And it feels great. 

I sent off the irreversible e-mail a little while ago, and since then I can literally feel my shoulders relaxing with the removal of the figurative weight. Sometimes, I think I just need to learn to let go. 

Maybe even learn not to take on so much in the first place ;)

The West

I've always had an irrational preference for the direction West. I'm not sure exactly where it came from - perhaps from Tolkien's valorisation of the West, or from living in the "West beyond the West", or the west half of a city, or what...

But now I have a good reason. I'm currently living east of where I spend my days, and it's entirely the wrong direction to commute. Heading west in the morning and east in the evening means my back is to all the natural goodness...if you live west of where you work, then you're facing the sunrise/sunset for the whole commute. 

On the plus side, tonight's sky was gorgeous and yesterday there was an amazing moon. Almost full (Waning Gibbous, actually, if anyone cares). And I got glimpses of both. 

Safe Harbour

This is a really good idea:

http://www.safeharbour.ca/

A Story of Soup

Today was soup day.

Some friends went today to a neat restaurant that cooks different dishes every day (just a few), home-cooking style. Which is normally yummy and fantastic. Today, however, they were out of soup...but said it would just be a couple of minutes. We said we'd wait. 

Half an hour later, there was finally soup, but it wasn't the carrot & lentil on the menu. It was...well, it was green. Beyond that I'm not sure. The consensus was that it was "what have we got in the kitchen to make soup with" soup. See, we figure that their standard answer when they run out of soup is "it will be a few minutes," and then people pick something else rather than wait. When we called their bluff, they had to throw something together...herbs, water and some thickening agent, as far as we could tell. And it took half an hour because they had to make it from scratch. 

It was delicious, by the way. Just not sure if it had, you know, nutritional content.

So I decided for take 2 at supper - I still don't have my dishes so I can't cook properly, but the grocery store had ready-made soups. And, special for October, they have a halloween soup: pumpkin and haricot. And it's delicious! And it's pumpkin, which sort of makes up for no thanksgiving. Soooo all in all, I count that a win. 

Trouble is, I keep forgetting in between spoonfuls that it's pumpkin. And it looks like butternut squash, so then that's what I expect, and I keep being surprised by the taste. My tongue is confusing my brain...

English Saturday, +/-

+ 1 for crunchy fall leaves

- 1 for "no service on the Jubilee line"

+ 1 for gorgeous weather

- 1 for cruel and petty bus driver

+ 1 for having my spices back

+ 1 for voices from home

______________________

all in all, I think I came out ahead...

Translation

I'm finding it shockingly hard to get back into academic langauge. After a summer of talking to people not wrapped in the linguistic cloak of academia - whether they be NGO workers, union activists, civil servants, or what have you - it would have been bad enough. But after another month of working on press releases, talking points, and campaign speeches, I'm not sure how I'm going to manage.

After all that time of keeping things simple - and I mean really simple - a lot of what I'm reading now just sounds unecessarily complex and obscure. For instance:

"The subjective and intersubjective sense of taboo-ness is one of the factors that makes the tradition of nuclear non-use a taboo rather than simply a norm."

I think that sentence has a reasonable meaning, but its unclear whether or not it matters. And this is just the IR course - I'm not sure what I'd do with critical theory right now.

Waking Up

Vis-à-vis my last post:

"But a leading social scientist, speaking for background, suggested yesterday that Canadians see in Mr. Harper a Robespierre-type character, the French revolutionary leader who at first was embraced by the people for his unflappability, control and appearance of towering moral rectitude and then rejected by them for the same reasons."
- Michael Valpy, Globe and Mail

Maybe I'm not the only one to think that perceived strength and certitude isn't everything.
And maybe our reign of less-than-terror is coming to an end.

Fingers crossed.