Happy New Year's Eve!
K and I are going to a small dinner party with some friend's in London. Our first New Year's celebration of such a kind. Should be cozy. See you all in the New Year!
Con mucho amor,
R and K
Saturday, December 31
Monday, December 26
Boxing Day
We're laying low today, so I thought it might be a good opportunity to tell a little about how we celebrated Christmas this year.
K's mom and step-dad (J-Mom and J-Dad) have come to Winchester for about a week. They arrived on Thursday morning; naturally, a bit jet-lagged after an 11-hour journey from eastern Oregon. That evening, we took them to the Christmas carol service at Winchester Cathedral. A nice service, but most of the carols were unfamiliar to us. K and I are non-religious, while J-Mom and J-Dad are Catholic. The Winchester Cathedral is "C of E" (Church of England). So, there you have it. Nonetheless, it was a great way to start Christmas.
I worked on Friday and our tired guests tried to overcome their jet-lag. On Saturday, J-Dad and I noticed that we were getting a cold or perhaps bird flu. The gals were out Christmas shopping, so we ate some raw garlic cloves to try to stave off the sickness. Anti-social, but quite effective usually. However, the sickness had already gotten a good hold on us.
That night, Christmas Eve, we went to Loch Fyne Restaurant for Christmas dinner. Fantastic meal! We were all very stuffed by the end of it. Then we whisked ourselves back home to make sure our colds did not get worse. Luckily, the gals have not gotten ill so far. It's just us men-folk that have been TKO'd.
By Christmas Day, I was feeling a bit better. Well enough to open presents and cook dinner, anyway! We all had a light breakfast. K and J-Mom baked some "Mexican Wedding Cakes" and then we adjourned to the living room to open our "prezies" (presents). A good little haul of gifts! Many thanks to our family members for that!
Then it was time to start on the turkey. Before the cookies were baked, I had injected the turkey with Lea & Perrins Coconut Lime Coriander 5-minute Marinade and then placed it back in the fridge to suck up that lovely goodness. Then it got stuffed with Paxo Sage & Onion stuffing, massaged with butter, and dusted with Adobo seasoning. I'm normally a big fan of deep-frying the turkey, but I don't have the capabilities of doing that here in England, so we cooked it the old-fashioned way: in the oven. While it was roasting, we watched the Queen's speech and then National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, which was one of K's presents. For snacks, we had roasted chestnuts and caramelized onion, garlic, shallot spread on "croutes" -- I adapted this from Gordon Ramsay's "Aubergine Caviar" recipe which I had planned to make but was foiled by the lack of aubergines anywhere in town. Then as soon as the movie was over we sprung into action to finish cooking the Christmas dinner.
Christmas Dinner 2005:
- Coconut-Lime-Coriander Turkey with Sage & Onion stuffing- Parsnip-Potato mash
- Broccoli and Brussels Sprouts with Chestnuts and Bacon
- Pork, Sage & Onion stuffing balls (from the supermarket)
- J-Mom's gravy
- Homemade cranberry sauce
- Dessert: Chocolate & Bailey's Irish Cream creme-brulee cheesecake (from Marks and Spencer)
Plenty of left-overs. Tonight I'm going to make a wholesome, nourishing soup to try to fight this cold. J-Dad and I will probably eat some more raw garlic to send in some reinforcements for our beleagured immune systems.
K and J-Mom have gone out for a walk around Winchester, while we sicklings have stayed at home. Seems like a good time to play a little X-Box!
-RP-
PS - More pictures HERE.
Sunday, December 25
...And to our friends & family practicing American Christmas:
Merry Christmas! and/or Happy Holidays!
Much love,
R & K
PS - For some Christmas laughs, an old classic: The Scared of Santa Gallery.
Saturday, December 24
Sunday, December 18
You're Quitting? Let's Celebrate!
In England it is customary to reward someone for quitting their job. The quitter's co-workers get together to buy a "farewell gift" and sometimes throw a "leaving do" (a party or night out) in their honor. This idea is absurd beyond my capacity to describe it. An example...
Someone at my current place of employment is leaving the project to start another job. He'll actually even be in the same building as us. The position he is leaving on our project still has another year (or more) of longevity. Now the project has to spend time finding someone to replace him and then train/brief them on everything that has been done to date. Despite this inconvenience, they feel compelled to reward him for leaving. We have been asked to donate money for his farewell present. K and I aren't even buying ourselves Christmas presents this year and now I'm expected to spend money on the guy that's quitting? He's a nice guy and I have no problems wishing him well in his new job, but I don't see the need to give him a gift. What is the point? It is politeness gone awry. I could see giving someone a gift if they had done something particularly great, were retiring, or perhaps become a parent or something. But a present for quitting a job?!
Furthermore, most of us are on a one year contract for this project. Does that mean we'll be buying presents for everyone when our contracts end and we all leave? Not bloody likely. So why are we rewarding someone who cuts out early? I can't find a reasonable answer to this question.
We also are in the pattern of celebrating people's birthday. Everyone chips in £2 and the birthday boy or girl gets some kind of present and a cake. I was being amicable when I went along with that and I must admit, I did get a present myself (an HMV gift card), but I'm not there to socialize. I'm there to work. Is that so wrong?
-RP-
PS- One of my coworkers agrees with me about this. However, we are the only two who feel that way. Everyone else thinks I'm some kind of asshole, I guess, for not wanting to chip in for this guy's gift. It's a hard life being a reasonable person!
In England it is customary to reward someone for quitting their job. The quitter's co-workers get together to buy a "farewell gift" and sometimes throw a "leaving do" (a party or night out) in their honor. This idea is absurd beyond my capacity to describe it. An example...
Someone at my current place of employment is leaving the project to start another job. He'll actually even be in the same building as us. The position he is leaving on our project still has another year (or more) of longevity. Now the project has to spend time finding someone to replace him and then train/brief them on everything that has been done to date. Despite this inconvenience, they feel compelled to reward him for leaving. We have been asked to donate money for his farewell present. K and I aren't even buying ourselves Christmas presents this year and now I'm expected to spend money on the guy that's quitting? He's a nice guy and I have no problems wishing him well in his new job, but I don't see the need to give him a gift. What is the point? It is politeness gone awry. I could see giving someone a gift if they had done something particularly great, were retiring, or perhaps become a parent or something. But a present for quitting a job?!
Furthermore, most of us are on a one year contract for this project. Does that mean we'll be buying presents for everyone when our contracts end and we all leave? Not bloody likely. So why are we rewarding someone who cuts out early? I can't find a reasonable answer to this question.
We also are in the pattern of celebrating people's birthday. Everyone chips in £2 and the birthday boy or girl gets some kind of present and a cake. I was being amicable when I went along with that and I must admit, I did get a present myself (an HMV gift card), but I'm not there to socialize. I'm there to work. Is that so wrong?
-RP-
PS- One of my coworkers agrees with me about this. However, we are the only two who feel that way. Everyone else thinks I'm some kind of asshole, I guess, for not wanting to chip in for this guy's gift. It's a hard life being a reasonable person!
Sunday, December 4
Blind-sided
One of the huge differences between the American and British societies is the crime and more specifically the police forces that work to combat this crime. Britain has long been proud of the fact that handguns are not legal here and that their police officers do not carry guns. The US is obviously very different on that score: guns galore... amongst its citizens and its "law enforcement community." Consequently, though the reason for this may lie elsewhere, gun fatalities in the US are much higher than in the UK -- according to this site, the figures in 1992 were 13, 429 handgun murders in the US and only 33 in the UK.
I think this policy in the UK has worked quite well, but it just seems like things have changed too much to keep upholding it. Crime in the UK has gotten more violent and there are more guns out there. The feeling I get is that they "don't know what hit them". Like all of a sudden the other team started playing a tackle football while they're still playing touch. "OK, that guy has a gun and all I have is this little stick and a can of mace... sod this!"
A couple of weeks ago, there was a high profile news story about a police officer, only three months on the force, being killed after arriving on the scene of an armed robbery (more about that below). Because of this, there has been a lot of talk about whether or not police in the UK should start carrying guns. Tough call. I'm not sure where I stand on that issue at the moment. However, there was an interesting article in The Sunday Times today. Since one of the purposes of this blog is to talk about the cultural differences between the US and whichever country we happen to be living in, I thought it appropriate to post it. It's an easy "cut and paste" commentary on cultural differences, so here you go (the points I found particularly interesting are in bold):
'US cop quits "too risky" UK force
A TEXAN patrol officer who became the first foreigner to join the British police is to resign after three years because he says policing is too dangerous here compared with America.
Ben Johnson, a 6ft 4in former paratrooper nicknamed Slim, has written to his chief constable asking to carry a Glock 17 handgun on his routine beat in Reading.
He said officers are dying unnecessarily because they are less well equipped and trained to protect themselves and the public than their American counterparts.
“The risks required to be taken by unarmed and poorly trained British police are too great for me to continue being a police officer and I will be resigning my commission in a few weeks,” said Johnson.
“I am tired of my colleagues dying when, if they were better trained and equipped, they would have a fighting chance of survival.”
Johnson’s decision was prompted by the murder of PC Sharon Beshenivsky, a mother of three children and two step-children, who was shot during a robbery in Bradford last month. He said her death demonstrated the lack of training and equipment given to British police.
“Beshenivsky did the one thing that officers in America are trained not to do. She walked up to the front entrance of a business during an alarm call. If the incident had happened in America, she would never have done that. She would almost certainly have been alive today.”
Last week Johnson wrote to Sara Thornton, acting chief constable of Thames Valley police, asking to be armed on patrol. “If the chief authorises me to carry a pistol, then I will not be resigning,” he said. “But that is an impossibility. I now have the choice of continuing in a dangerous job, ill-trained and ill-equipped, or leaving the profession I have loved.”
Johnson, 34, served as a paratrooper in the American army before joining the police department in Garland, a Dallas suburb. Like other officers he carried a Glock 22 pistol as a sidearm, supported by a 12-bore shotgun and an AR15 semi-automatic rifle in his patrol car. In America he routinely confronted armed criminals and received 10 commendations for his bravery.
He came to Britain three years ago to live with his fiancée Louise, an IT consultant. He was able to join the Thames Valley force because of a change in regulations that lifted the bar on foreigners.
The couple are now married and Johnson has taken a short career break to look after their 18-month-old daughter Catherine. He said fatherhood had changed his perspective. “It would not be fair [to my family] to continue in a job that is being made more dangerous by a refusal to modernise,” he said.
It was an incident earlier this year that first caused Johnson to consider handing in his warrant card. He was on plainclothes CID duty when he was called to the Royal Berkshire hospital in Reading to interview a victim of domestic violence.
A woman had jumped out of a first-floor window to escape her violent boyfriend, paralysing her from the waist down. The boyfriend, a member of a drug gang, was already wanted by the police for attempted murder, after shooting someone in the back of the head in London.
Johnson and other plainclothes officers who went to the hospital were alerted that the boyfriend had telephoned to say he was coming to see her. They also received a warning that he might be armed.
According to Johnson, he wanted to arrest the man when he arrived, but was ordered by a senior officer not to do so because of the risk. The suspect escaped and it was two days before he was arrested.
“That was the first time I’d ever let someone wanted for attempted murder simply walk away from me,” said Johnson. “It went against everything I knew. I thought it was my duty to arrest these people.
“It seems that in Britain ordinary officers are instructed not to engage with dangerous criminals. But if police officers can’t engage with them, who can?” He is critical of Charles Clarke, the home secretary, who says he can see “no evidence” that arming officers would reduce the number of police fatalities. “With all respect to the home secretary, he has never answered a 999 call,” said Johnson.
Of Beshenivsky’s murder, he said: “I have been in exactly those situations on patrol in America and I have managed to arrest and disarm offenders without being harmed.”
In America, officers spend weeks learning how to cope with armed incidents. But in Britain, Johnson said, he was never shown how to handle or unload a firearm or told how to respond to an armed robbery. “Officers spend more time learning about how to process paperwork than dealing with violent situations. We are trained more like social workers than police officers.
“The training I received in Britain in dealing with armed incidents was virtually non-existent. It consisted of a 30-minute lecture from a firearms officer who said: ‘If you see the business end of a gun or anyone holding a gun . . . turn, run and get away as quickly as possible’.”
This apparent complacency was reinforced at his swearing-in ceremony when a senior Thames Valley officer told him and colleagues that they would not face the sort of dangerous incidents portrayed on The Bill, the television programme.
“I was surprised that he said we wouldn’t come into harm’s way. This went against everything I had learnt during my career,” said Johnson.
By contrast, the chief officer of Garland police department tells new recruits that it is his task to ensure they are prepared and equipped to face any threat.
Johnson accepted that America is more violent than Britain, with a gun culture contributing to a murder rate 17 times higher than here. He recognised, too, that many more police officers are murdered in America — 57 last year compared with just one here — proportionately about 11 times as many.
But he maintained that British police are far more exposed to danger when confronted with armed offenders than their US counterparts. He said he did not want all police armed — just the “first responders”, officers who, like Beshenivsky, are first on the scene of crimes. He believed this would mean arming about half of Britain’s 140,000 police.
A spokesman for Thames Valley police said: “PC Johnson is currently on a career break. These are his personal views and he did not discuss them with anyone before going to the press.”'
[from The Sunday Times, 4/12/05; by David Leppard]
-RP-
One of the huge differences between the American and British societies is the crime and more specifically the police forces that work to combat this crime. Britain has long been proud of the fact that handguns are not legal here and that their police officers do not carry guns. The US is obviously very different on that score: guns galore... amongst its citizens and its "law enforcement community." Consequently, though the reason for this may lie elsewhere, gun fatalities in the US are much higher than in the UK -- according to this site, the figures in 1992 were 13, 429 handgun murders in the US and only 33 in the UK.
I think this policy in the UK has worked quite well, but it just seems like things have changed too much to keep upholding it. Crime in the UK has gotten more violent and there are more guns out there. The feeling I get is that they "don't know what hit them". Like all of a sudden the other team started playing a tackle football while they're still playing touch. "OK, that guy has a gun and all I have is this little stick and a can of mace... sod this!"
A couple of weeks ago, there was a high profile news story about a police officer, only three months on the force, being killed after arriving on the scene of an armed robbery (more about that below). Because of this, there has been a lot of talk about whether or not police in the UK should start carrying guns. Tough call. I'm not sure where I stand on that issue at the moment. However, there was an interesting article in The Sunday Times today. Since one of the purposes of this blog is to talk about the cultural differences between the US and whichever country we happen to be living in, I thought it appropriate to post it. It's an easy "cut and paste" commentary on cultural differences, so here you go (the points I found particularly interesting are in bold):
'US cop quits "too risky" UK force
A TEXAN patrol officer who became the first foreigner to join the British police is to resign after three years because he says policing is too dangerous here compared with America.
Ben Johnson, a 6ft 4in former paratrooper nicknamed Slim, has written to his chief constable asking to carry a Glock 17 handgun on his routine beat in Reading.
He said officers are dying unnecessarily because they are less well equipped and trained to protect themselves and the public than their American counterparts.
“The risks required to be taken by unarmed and poorly trained British police are too great for me to continue being a police officer and I will be resigning my commission in a few weeks,” said Johnson.
“I am tired of my colleagues dying when, if they were better trained and equipped, they would have a fighting chance of survival.”
Johnson’s decision was prompted by the murder of PC Sharon Beshenivsky, a mother of three children and two step-children, who was shot during a robbery in Bradford last month. He said her death demonstrated the lack of training and equipment given to British police.
“Beshenivsky did the one thing that officers in America are trained not to do. She walked up to the front entrance of a business during an alarm call. If the incident had happened in America, she would never have done that. She would almost certainly have been alive today.”
Last week Johnson wrote to Sara Thornton, acting chief constable of Thames Valley police, asking to be armed on patrol. “If the chief authorises me to carry a pistol, then I will not be resigning,” he said. “But that is an impossibility. I now have the choice of continuing in a dangerous job, ill-trained and ill-equipped, or leaving the profession I have loved.”
Johnson, 34, served as a paratrooper in the American army before joining the police department in Garland, a Dallas suburb. Like other officers he carried a Glock 22 pistol as a sidearm, supported by a 12-bore shotgun and an AR15 semi-automatic rifle in his patrol car. In America he routinely confronted armed criminals and received 10 commendations for his bravery.
He came to Britain three years ago to live with his fiancée Louise, an IT consultant. He was able to join the Thames Valley force because of a change in regulations that lifted the bar on foreigners.
The couple are now married and Johnson has taken a short career break to look after their 18-month-old daughter Catherine. He said fatherhood had changed his perspective. “It would not be fair [to my family] to continue in a job that is being made more dangerous by a refusal to modernise,” he said.
It was an incident earlier this year that first caused Johnson to consider handing in his warrant card. He was on plainclothes CID duty when he was called to the Royal Berkshire hospital in Reading to interview a victim of domestic violence.
A woman had jumped out of a first-floor window to escape her violent boyfriend, paralysing her from the waist down. The boyfriend, a member of a drug gang, was already wanted by the police for attempted murder, after shooting someone in the back of the head in London.
Johnson and other plainclothes officers who went to the hospital were alerted that the boyfriend had telephoned to say he was coming to see her. They also received a warning that he might be armed.
According to Johnson, he wanted to arrest the man when he arrived, but was ordered by a senior officer not to do so because of the risk. The suspect escaped and it was two days before he was arrested.
“That was the first time I’d ever let someone wanted for attempted murder simply walk away from me,” said Johnson. “It went against everything I knew. I thought it was my duty to arrest these people.
“It seems that in Britain ordinary officers are instructed not to engage with dangerous criminals. But if police officers can’t engage with them, who can?” He is critical of Charles Clarke, the home secretary, who says he can see “no evidence” that arming officers would reduce the number of police fatalities. “With all respect to the home secretary, he has never answered a 999 call,” said Johnson.
Of Beshenivsky’s murder, he said: “I have been in exactly those situations on patrol in America and I have managed to arrest and disarm offenders without being harmed.”
In America, officers spend weeks learning how to cope with armed incidents. But in Britain, Johnson said, he was never shown how to handle or unload a firearm or told how to respond to an armed robbery. “Officers spend more time learning about how to process paperwork than dealing with violent situations. We are trained more like social workers than police officers.
“The training I received in Britain in dealing with armed incidents was virtually non-existent. It consisted of a 30-minute lecture from a firearms officer who said: ‘If you see the business end of a gun or anyone holding a gun . . . turn, run and get away as quickly as possible’.”
This apparent complacency was reinforced at his swearing-in ceremony when a senior Thames Valley officer told him and colleagues that they would not face the sort of dangerous incidents portrayed on The Bill, the television programme.
“I was surprised that he said we wouldn’t come into harm’s way. This went against everything I had learnt during my career,” said Johnson.
By contrast, the chief officer of Garland police department tells new recruits that it is his task to ensure they are prepared and equipped to face any threat.
Johnson accepted that America is more violent than Britain, with a gun culture contributing to a murder rate 17 times higher than here. He recognised, too, that many more police officers are murdered in America — 57 last year compared with just one here — proportionately about 11 times as many.
But he maintained that British police are far more exposed to danger when confronted with armed offenders than their US counterparts. He said he did not want all police armed — just the “first responders”, officers who, like Beshenivsky, are first on the scene of crimes. He believed this would mean arming about half of Britain’s 140,000 police.
A spokesman for Thames Valley police said: “PC Johnson is currently on a career break. These are his personal views and he did not discuss them with anyone before going to the press.”'
[from The Sunday Times, 4/12/05; by David Leppard]
-RP-
Thursday, November 24
Tuesday, November 22
Q
Brits are stereotypically staunch practitioners of strict queueing etiquette. Almost by birth-right, they naturally follow a fair system of "first come, first served". It's quite nice to be able to count on this when it comes time to wait for something. Jumping the queue is worse than farting in an elevator or perhaps even worse than murder. The system seems to work quite flawlessly... until it comes to train travel.
Brits are stereotypically staunch practitioners of strict queueing etiquette. Almost by birth-right, they naturally follow a fair system of "first come, first served". It's quite nice to be able to count on this when it comes time to wait for something. Jumping the queue is worse than farting in an elevator or perhaps even worse than murder. The system seems to work quite flawlessly... until it comes to train travel.
Everyone has a price. For the Brits, in this particular situation, the price is the ability to get a seat on a crowded train. For that they will outright deny their natural tendency for fair queueing practices.
An example: I take a direct train to London every weekday. This service originates at Southampton or Poole, so it is usually quite full when it arrives at Winchester. My fellow travellers form queues spaced along the platform according to where the carriage doors usually end up when the train stops. What starts as three or four people queueing in roughly two rows of two, quickly turns into an amorphous clump of ten or more people with a seat-yearning lust in the eyes. When the train arrives, the clump starts to flex and move. Suddenly, a person who arrived at the station one minute before the train arrives is able to get on before someone who has put in the extra effort to get up earlier so as to get to the station five or ten minutes before the train is due. These queue-jumpers do it with no remorse. And no one says anything! Brits will very quickly correct a queueing infraction in any other situation, so why not on the platform? Because deep down, they know they'd take the same opportunity as the queue-jumper did because they just might get a seat on the train.
My challenge to you, Britain, is to uphold your usual queueing etiquette in all situations. Can you do it?
-RP-
-RP-
Wednesday, November 9
Forgive me for posting this long article but it really stuck in my head after I read it. Since 9/11 I have felt that the U.S. media (well, the U.S. in general I guess) has lost its way but I couldn't really see it until we moved out of the country. Looking in from the outside it seems so clear that Americans are, for the most part, not receiving the same kind of information that the rest of the world is getting from news sources. We Americans are so thoroughly insulated in our big, beautiful and safe (still) country that it is easy to believe that what we get from our media and our government is the truth. I hope what the article says is right, that things are changing and that we are going to recover the optimism that we all remember.
The author, Naomi Wolf, is an American feminist. I AM NOT A FEMINIST and I do not agree with her anti-man statements. However, I do think/hope she is right about the other stuff. I could have deleted the feminazi stuff but I don't feel comfortable editing her work simply because I don't agree with a few sentences.
Would love to hear comments on this from everyone!
Naomi Wolf
Monday November 7, 2005
The Guardian
In the US comic strip, Peanuts, there is a little boy who is always followed by a cloud of dust. Wherever he goes, his cloud follows him. George Bush can't shake his personal cloud. The until recently eerily untouchable president has now lost his mojo. The man to whom the entire US press corps has been on its knees for four years is finally in the doghouse.
It is almost a cartoon of karma. First, hurricane Katrina hit - and the sight of black and brown bodies floating in what had been the streets of a US city, of babies crying for water, of old people shrouded in their wheelchairs seemed to rip right through the collective fantasy of US goodness and infallibility constructed by Dick Cheney and his cabal and hyped by a crotch-strapped Bush in a flightsuit.
How did he get away with so many lies for so long? After 9/11, Bush, Cheney and Karl Rove successfully used the fear of more terrorist attacks and the intoxicant of ruthless jingoism to sedate the country and make it compliant.
They could not have had more fortunate timing. During an era when US prestige abroad had already been declining, when US schools were turning out subliterates, when the US economy was being crippled by competition from harder-working south-east Asians and Chinese, Americans - and especially American men - were feeling the sinking self-regard characteristic of those losing prestige in once-great empires in decline.
Bush, Cheney and Rove changed all that with their myth making post-9/11. Suddenly those feminists were no longer so threatening: we still needed tough men in firefighter suits to protect the less powerful. Suddenly American men could feel potent at the sight of a statue of a tyrant toppling in a public square, could vicariously inhale the discourse about "liberating the Middle East" and "spreading democracy", could put a yellow "Support the Troops" sticker on their SUVs and forget the spiking mortgage, the downsizing of good-paying white-collar jobs, the increasing obstreperousness of their women. Bush managed to be golden for so long because he made Americans - and especially white American men, his core constituency - feel good about their identity again.
Well, Katrina was like the end of the Wizard of Oz: the tiny, fibbing man was revealed behind the great big voice and the inflated ideals. Scene after scene of the failure of the US to act like the US held a mirror up to our faces. It was like an intervention for a drug addict: suddenly the lies, the hype, the intoxicants, the bad company, looked as destructive to our true selves as Americans as they really had been all along. "This is not who we are," we realised inwardly, in revulsion at our own long bender.
So now Bush can get no slack. The Miers fiasco showed him up as arrogant - no news, but we are sick of it now. The Valerie Plame leak suddenly feels serious, now that Bush has lost the monopoly on the word "treachery". The press is refusing to go away in the face of threats and platitudes. We hit the 2,000 mark for dead young American men and women in Iraq, and no one thought that was inspiring any more. The man can do nothing right.
It's true that, in spite of Bush's current implosion, some rightwing structures will remain well past this lame-duck presidency. The right has a firm grasp on such powerful institutions as Fox News, the network of thinktanks, and soon, probably, the supreme court as well.
But here is the thing about democracy: when it is really working, it is not deferential to institutions. Real citizen action upends the best-laid plans of the best-financed oligarchs. Alabama was locked up politically in 1955 by segregationist old boys - but a bus boycott, sparked by a seamstress, Rosa Parks, who did not want to give up her seat, led the Jim Crow henchmen at the top into irrelevance. Because of an outburst of second-wave feminist activism, Roe v Wade was passed in spite of a number of conservative justices during a conservative Nixon presidency. Before Katrina, when the mass hypnosis of US jingoism still prevailed, there was widespread judicial support for curtailing the rights of war prisoners. Now, because of a changed national mood, judges seem far less eager to hand over authoritarian executive privilege to Bush. Justices, in other words, are people who live in and cannot help but respond to the bigger cultural shifts of their time. I believe in the power of this cultural shift around us to move even the judiciary: Institutions are made up of human beings, and no one likes being looked at with contempt at dinner parties.
But will this shift in the wind affect US relations with the larger world community? I think it could, but not, again, because our role at the UN will change or because we will have an awakening about our pathetic behaviour in relation to Kyoto. The shift in foreign relations will be an outcome of ordinary human shame. We were willing to be held in contempt by those effeminate Frogs - by "old Europe" - when we were intoxicated with ourselves: our isolationism made that easy. But now we are actually ashamed of ourselves at home, we can't bear international contempt in the same way. Now it hurts.
I don't see Cheney being shamed into dropping his Halliburton cronies now carving up Iraq. But I do see a renewed citizen interest in wind power, in driving petrol-electric hybrid cars, in reading about the short lives of the war dead - who, only six months ago, were spirited home away from the cameras in their body bags, when protest was considered unseemly. Today on the AOL homepage there is a headline about Bush being jeered by a foreign leader: that story would never have made it out of the land of blogs six months ago.
Like recovering addicts who have taken a step into a 12-step programme, we are ready at last to hear how we have harmed others - and to try to make amends. Star, the supermarket gossip tabloid, has put Angelina Jolie's work with Ethiopian Aids orphans on the cover, with a bigger photo than that of Paris Hilton's latest outfit. We used not to think black children in trouble overseas had anything to do with us - until we saw what happened to other black children, on our watch, here at home.
I do feel hopeful: everywhere I go, I hear disgust at our long drunken lurch through recent history give way to a renewed interest among ordinary people in activism, in justice, in what we used to understand as citizenship. I am less concerned about whether this results in a Democratic or Republican victory at mid-term elections than I am in whether we get to be a democracy again.
I am seeing Americans across party lines look again at what made us for so long, a moral force in the world - our judiciary, our until recently free press, our almost-retired belief in the equality of all - and think, yes, that is who we are. That is what makes us able to face ourselves in the mirror of news events. That is what made the US great, when it was great - not armies, not penal colonies, not a licence to terrify the world.
Bush will never recover his swagger in our eyes: he was our dealer. What remains to be seen is whether we will turn again to the next good drug to come along, with the next charismatic pusher - or whether Katrina's real legacy will lead us to do the hard work of reclaiming a civil society rooted in reality. My bet is on the latter.
· Naomi Wolf is the author of The Treehouse, Fire With Fire, and The Beauty Myth
~K
The author, Naomi Wolf, is an American feminist. I AM NOT A FEMINIST and I do not agree with her anti-man statements. However, I do think/hope she is right about the other stuff. I could have deleted the feminazi stuff but I don't feel comfortable editing her work simply because I don't agree with a few sentences.
Would love to hear comments on this from everyone!
Naomi Wolf
Monday November 7, 2005
The Guardian
In the US comic strip, Peanuts, there is a little boy who is always followed by a cloud of dust. Wherever he goes, his cloud follows him. George Bush can't shake his personal cloud. The until recently eerily untouchable president has now lost his mojo. The man to whom the entire US press corps has been on its knees for four years is finally in the doghouse.
It is almost a cartoon of karma. First, hurricane Katrina hit - and the sight of black and brown bodies floating in what had been the streets of a US city, of babies crying for water, of old people shrouded in their wheelchairs seemed to rip right through the collective fantasy of US goodness and infallibility constructed by Dick Cheney and his cabal and hyped by a crotch-strapped Bush in a flightsuit.
How did he get away with so many lies for so long? After 9/11, Bush, Cheney and Karl Rove successfully used the fear of more terrorist attacks and the intoxicant of ruthless jingoism to sedate the country and make it compliant.
They could not have had more fortunate timing. During an era when US prestige abroad had already been declining, when US schools were turning out subliterates, when the US economy was being crippled by competition from harder-working south-east Asians and Chinese, Americans - and especially American men - were feeling the sinking self-regard characteristic of those losing prestige in once-great empires in decline.
Bush, Cheney and Rove changed all that with their myth making post-9/11. Suddenly those feminists were no longer so threatening: we still needed tough men in firefighter suits to protect the less powerful. Suddenly American men could feel potent at the sight of a statue of a tyrant toppling in a public square, could vicariously inhale the discourse about "liberating the Middle East" and "spreading democracy", could put a yellow "Support the Troops" sticker on their SUVs and forget the spiking mortgage, the downsizing of good-paying white-collar jobs, the increasing obstreperousness of their women. Bush managed to be golden for so long because he made Americans - and especially white American men, his core constituency - feel good about their identity again.
Well, Katrina was like the end of the Wizard of Oz: the tiny, fibbing man was revealed behind the great big voice and the inflated ideals. Scene after scene of the failure of the US to act like the US held a mirror up to our faces. It was like an intervention for a drug addict: suddenly the lies, the hype, the intoxicants, the bad company, looked as destructive to our true selves as Americans as they really had been all along. "This is not who we are," we realised inwardly, in revulsion at our own long bender.
So now Bush can get no slack. The Miers fiasco showed him up as arrogant - no news, but we are sick of it now. The Valerie Plame leak suddenly feels serious, now that Bush has lost the monopoly on the word "treachery". The press is refusing to go away in the face of threats and platitudes. We hit the 2,000 mark for dead young American men and women in Iraq, and no one thought that was inspiring any more. The man can do nothing right.
It's true that, in spite of Bush's current implosion, some rightwing structures will remain well past this lame-duck presidency. The right has a firm grasp on such powerful institutions as Fox News, the network of thinktanks, and soon, probably, the supreme court as well.
But here is the thing about democracy: when it is really working, it is not deferential to institutions. Real citizen action upends the best-laid plans of the best-financed oligarchs. Alabama was locked up politically in 1955 by segregationist old boys - but a bus boycott, sparked by a seamstress, Rosa Parks, who did not want to give up her seat, led the Jim Crow henchmen at the top into irrelevance. Because of an outburst of second-wave feminist activism, Roe v Wade was passed in spite of a number of conservative justices during a conservative Nixon presidency. Before Katrina, when the mass hypnosis of US jingoism still prevailed, there was widespread judicial support for curtailing the rights of war prisoners. Now, because of a changed national mood, judges seem far less eager to hand over authoritarian executive privilege to Bush. Justices, in other words, are people who live in and cannot help but respond to the bigger cultural shifts of their time. I believe in the power of this cultural shift around us to move even the judiciary: Institutions are made up of human beings, and no one likes being looked at with contempt at dinner parties.
But will this shift in the wind affect US relations with the larger world community? I think it could, but not, again, because our role at the UN will change or because we will have an awakening about our pathetic behaviour in relation to Kyoto. The shift in foreign relations will be an outcome of ordinary human shame. We were willing to be held in contempt by those effeminate Frogs - by "old Europe" - when we were intoxicated with ourselves: our isolationism made that easy. But now we are actually ashamed of ourselves at home, we can't bear international contempt in the same way. Now it hurts.
I don't see Cheney being shamed into dropping his Halliburton cronies now carving up Iraq. But I do see a renewed citizen interest in wind power, in driving petrol-electric hybrid cars, in reading about the short lives of the war dead - who, only six months ago, were spirited home away from the cameras in their body bags, when protest was considered unseemly. Today on the AOL homepage there is a headline about Bush being jeered by a foreign leader: that story would never have made it out of the land of blogs six months ago.
Like recovering addicts who have taken a step into a 12-step programme, we are ready at last to hear how we have harmed others - and to try to make amends. Star, the supermarket gossip tabloid, has put Angelina Jolie's work with Ethiopian Aids orphans on the cover, with a bigger photo than that of Paris Hilton's latest outfit. We used not to think black children in trouble overseas had anything to do with us - until we saw what happened to other black children, on our watch, here at home.
I do feel hopeful: everywhere I go, I hear disgust at our long drunken lurch through recent history give way to a renewed interest among ordinary people in activism, in justice, in what we used to understand as citizenship. I am less concerned about whether this results in a Democratic or Republican victory at mid-term elections than I am in whether we get to be a democracy again.
I am seeing Americans across party lines look again at what made us for so long, a moral force in the world - our judiciary, our until recently free press, our almost-retired belief in the equality of all - and think, yes, that is who we are. That is what makes us able to face ourselves in the mirror of news events. That is what made the US great, when it was great - not armies, not penal colonies, not a licence to terrify the world.
Bush will never recover his swagger in our eyes: he was our dealer. What remains to be seen is whether we will turn again to the next good drug to come along, with the next charismatic pusher - or whether Katrina's real legacy will lead us to do the hard work of reclaiming a civil society rooted in reality. My bet is on the latter.
· Naomi Wolf is the author of The Treehouse, Fire With Fire, and The Beauty Myth
~K
Saturday, November 5
Remember, remember the Fifth of November
Tonight is Guy Fawkes Night, AKA Bonfire Night. This is England's celebration of something that didn't actually happen, as K so succinctly put it. The quick history behind it:
In the 17th century there was a group of people in England who were not happy with the current government. They enlisted the help of a mercenary from Yorkshire, Guy Fawkes. He led a band of rebels in a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament, thusly decapitating the government. They dug a tunnel into the basement of the H of P, placed 36 barrels of gunpowder in a cellar, and prepared it to be detonated on the 5th of November, 1605. However, one of the conspirators that hired Fawkes started feeling guilty and so tipped off one of the big-wigs at the H of P. They searched the cellars and found Guy Fawkes with his barrels of gunpowder. The Gunpowder Plot was quashed.
This non-event is celebrated every year all over the country with fireworks and bonfires. To bring the symbolism full-circle, an effigy of Guy Fawkes is commonly thrown into the blaze. This night is of course also an excuse to "have a piss-up" (get drunk) and generally run amok. It's kind of like America's Fourth of July celebrations. Even though tonight is the official Guy Fawkes night, people have been lighting fireworks since about two weeks ago and will probably continue to do so for about two weeks after. Unlike the US, where most states seem to have outlawed fireworks, they have not been banned in the UK... yet (the Nanny State has not gotten around to it yet, I guess).
We are going to partake in this English celebration tonight by going to Winchester's "Guy Fawkes 2005". There will be a "procession" through town, presumably to carry an effigy of Guy Fawkes, to the park where the Mayor will light the bonfire, and then of course the fireworks will follow. Should at least be an interesting taste of English culture!
"Remember, remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder treason and plot.
We see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!
Guy Fawkes, guy, t'was his intent
To blow up king and parliament.
Three score barrels were laid below
To prove old England's overthrow.
By god's mercy he was catch'd
With a darkened lantern and burning match.
So, holler boys, holler boys, Let the bells ring.
Holler boys, holler boys, God save the king.
And what shall we do with him?
Burn him!"
-RP-
Tonight is Guy Fawkes Night, AKA Bonfire Night. This is England's celebration of something that didn't actually happen, as K so succinctly put it. The quick history behind it:
In the 17th century there was a group of people in England who were not happy with the current government. They enlisted the help of a mercenary from Yorkshire, Guy Fawkes. He led a band of rebels in a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament, thusly decapitating the government. They dug a tunnel into the basement of the H of P, placed 36 barrels of gunpowder in a cellar, and prepared it to be detonated on the 5th of November, 1605. However, one of the conspirators that hired Fawkes started feeling guilty and so tipped off one of the big-wigs at the H of P. They searched the cellars and found Guy Fawkes with his barrels of gunpowder. The Gunpowder Plot was quashed.
This non-event is celebrated every year all over the country with fireworks and bonfires. To bring the symbolism full-circle, an effigy of Guy Fawkes is commonly thrown into the blaze. This night is of course also an excuse to "have a piss-up" (get drunk) and generally run amok. It's kind of like America's Fourth of July celebrations. Even though tonight is the official Guy Fawkes night, people have been lighting fireworks since about two weeks ago and will probably continue to do so for about two weeks after. Unlike the US, where most states seem to have outlawed fireworks, they have not been banned in the UK... yet (the Nanny State has not gotten around to it yet, I guess).
We are going to partake in this English celebration tonight by going to Winchester's "Guy Fawkes 2005". There will be a "procession" through town, presumably to carry an effigy of Guy Fawkes, to the park where the Mayor will light the bonfire, and then of course the fireworks will follow. Should at least be an interesting taste of English culture!
"Remember, remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder treason and plot.
We see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!
Guy Fawkes, guy, t'was his intent
To blow up king and parliament.
Three score barrels were laid below
To prove old England's overthrow.
By god's mercy he was catch'd
With a darkened lantern and burning match.
So, holler boys, holler boys, Let the bells ring.
Holler boys, holler boys, God save the king.
And what shall we do with him?
Burn him!"
-RP-
This is what I've been doing in my new research position at Bournemouth University...
http://www.artlab.org.uk/lego.htm
Doesn't actually feel like work!
~K
http://www.artlab.org.uk/lego.htm
Doesn't actually feel like work!
~K
Sunday, October 30
Terribly Sorry
I've been wanting to write about the persistantly apologetic Brits for quite some time now, but have been either too lazy, too tired, or too busy. In today's Sunday Times there is a great little article that does the talking for me, so I just had to put it up here. It's cheating, so I'm terribly sorry about that (damn! now it's happening to me!). The following article is an extract from a soon to be released book by AA Gill, The Angry Island:
+++
If they couldn’t queue they would kill ...
by AA GILL
Never undervalue the pleasure an Englishman can extract from being both right and angry simultaneously.
If you ever find yourself on the sticky end of an Englishman with a righteous grievance, and you want to wound him mortally, capitulate instantly and apologise profusely — you will see a look of agonised consternation on his face, a childlike disappointment. You have taken away the bone he was so looking forward to picking.
I did it in a hotel once. I checked in ahead of a middle-aged couple who’d had a bad flight and, finding themselves abroad, were girding themselves for 10 days of unremitting grumble and complaint. They couldn’t believe their luck when, not paying attention, I barged to the front of their two-person queue.
Discovering that I was also from home was added sand in their factor 30. A foreigner would have shrugged and rolled his eyes, but I would have to take it like an Englishman — except that I’m not, and I wasn’t about to. I know these people. I know where this leads.
The English queue because they have to. If they didn’t they’d kill each other. The pressure of boiling anger in the average post office is only contained by the shared knowledge that this is as fair as can possibly be arranged in this life. They would rip the head off Mahatma Gandhi if he tried to renew his TV licence ahead of them. The English queue where the rest of the world barges because the English need to queue. It’s the tail of the mythic beast; tails add balance and equilibrium.
So I said sorry, abjectly, to the English couple and I smiled beatifically. Now if there’s one thing an Englishman can’t abide it’s an apology before he’s finished. Combined with a smile, it’s akin to sodomy without an introduction.
For a few seconds the Englishman closed his eyes, trying to pretend he hadn’t heard, but his biblical righteousness was running away, his plug was pulled. He followed me like a puffing, bulgy-eyed pug and said finally: “You can’t just say sorry. You can’t just say sorry, you know. I demand . . . I demand an apology.”
Only an Englishman could have said that, and only someone who’d lived with the English could understand that it wasn’t a tautology or a contradiction.
If England’s default setting is anger — lapel-poking, Chinese-burning, ram-raiding, street-shouting, sniping, spitting, shoving, vengeful inventive rage — many of the traits and tics that make the English so singular and occasionally admirable are the deflective mechanisms that they’ve invented to diffuse anger. The simplest and most straightforward an apology. The S-word.
Eskimos, they say, have dozens of words to describe snow. The Japanese have any number to differentiate rain, the French have a mouthful of facial expressions for “I don’t care what you think” and the Italians a fistful of hand gestures for exclamation marks, and the Welsh have five glottal stops for “I must have left my wallet with my other wife”. But the English, who have by far and away the largest, biggest, most immense, enormous, vast, gigantic, walloping, king-sized, voluminous, thumping, whacking, macroscopic, megalithic, lusty, humdinger of a vocabulary available to any human voice-box, choose to go the other way around and pack meaning into one word.
It was an American who pointed out to me the many subtle and contradictory back-handed and double-dealing ways the English manage to staple onto saying the S-word. He had noticed the light and airy sorry that the middle classes hailed him with when they committed some social infraction, said with a rising and falling inflection like a speed bump negotiated by a Bentley. Sorr-ee.
There are many, many ways of saying sorry. Being English is having to learn how to say all of them. There is: sorry, I apologise; sorry, I don’t apologise; sorry, you can take this as an apology but we both know it isn’t one; sorry, will you shut up; sorry, empathy; sorry for your loss; sorry, I can’t hear you; sorry, incredulity; sorry, I don’t understand you; sorry, you don’t understand me; sorry, excuse me; sorry, will you hurry up; sorry, I don’ t believe you; sorry, I’m interrupting; sorry, this won’t do; sorry, I’ve reached the end of my patience; sorry, sad and pathetic — as in, sorry excuse or sorry little man.
You can probably identify more variations on sorry. Sorry is a prophylactic word. It protects the user and the recipient from the potentially explosive consequences of the truth.
Being able to apologise without meaning it, without therefore losing face, but at the same time allowing the other person to back down, having got their apology, is a masterfully delicate piece of verbal engineering.
The English have arrived at a way of being furious without being rude. If you listen to them complain in shops or restaurants or about service in general they almost invariably start with “sorry”. You know that a customer sending back his soup, saying “Sorry, this isn’t very nice” isn’t apologising, and the waitress replying “I’m sorry you didn’t like it” isn’t either.
If you speak English as a native tongue, you decipher these nuances without thinking. If you’ve learnt the language abroad, or don’t speak it very well, then you just think the English are cringingly, obsequiously apologetic all the time and are possibly the politest people in the world.
The only other word that comes with so many meanings is “f***”. And if you don’t understand the incredibly fine and expressive definitions of that — from explosive pain, to happy surprise, to simple punctuation — then you might also imagine that the English are contrarily at the same time both the rudest and the politest people in the world. And as it happens, both assumptions are equally true.
[ source: The Sunday Times October 30, 2005 ]
+++
Both K and I sometimes feel like such utter heathens over here because we don't say "Please", "Thank you" and "Sorry" enough. I think I'm even worse off because not only have I been raised mostly in the US, but I have an innate Scandinavianess from my first 8 years in Denmark. In Danish, there isn't even a word for "please"! It is instead implied through tone of voice or context. Americans are generally polite, using the above niceties modestly, but appropriately. That's why when one interacts with Brits, one can start to feel a bit inadequate in the manners department. A typical interaction at a checkout in a British supermarket might go something like this:
Cashier: "Hello. Do you need help with the packing?"
Customer: "No thanks."
Cashier: "Do you have a Tesco card?"
Customer: "Oh sorry, yes. Here it is. Sorry."
Cashier: "Thank you."
Cashier rings up the customer's groceries, perhaps chatting about the weather while doing so.
Cashier: "That's £45.13, please."
Customer: "Thank you. Can I use my debit card, please?"
Cashier: "Certainly."
Customer: "Thank you. Sorry, could I also have £20 cash-back, please?"
Cashier: "Of course. Please key in your pin."
Customer does so.
Cashier: "Thank you."
Customer: "Thanks."
Cashier: "Your receipt and £20. Thanks. Have a good evening."
Customer: "Thank you, and you!"
Cashier: "Thanks!"
That may seem like an exaggeration, but it really isn't. I've been training myself to say "Please", "Thank you", and "Sorry" at every opportunity. It's not easy! K was actually scolded by an uncharacteristically rude customer at the Theatre Royal once because she didn't say "Please" and "Thank you" enough! Admittedly, that's not a common occurance, but it happened nonetheless.
Another example... the other day on the train, I was tickled because there was a murmur of Sorries, Thankyous, and Pleases rippling through the passengers on the train. Some where talking on their "mobiles" and some to other passengers, their conversations liberally sprinkled with these pesky politenesses. I'm not sure why it leapt out at me that time; it was just a funny little moment. Sorry, sorry, please, sorry, thanks, sorry, please, thank you, sorry, please, please, sorry, thanks.
Speaking of which, I must apologize for this very long blog entry. I'm terribly sorry. But I must say Thanks for reading it! Please do call again!
-RP-
PS- For an additional extract from AA Gill's book, go here.
I've been wanting to write about the persistantly apologetic Brits for quite some time now, but have been either too lazy, too tired, or too busy. In today's Sunday Times there is a great little article that does the talking for me, so I just had to put it up here. It's cheating, so I'm terribly sorry about that (damn! now it's happening to me!). The following article is an extract from a soon to be released book by AA Gill, The Angry Island:
+++
If they couldn’t queue they would kill ...
by AA GILL
Never undervalue the pleasure an Englishman can extract from being both right and angry simultaneously.
If you ever find yourself on the sticky end of an Englishman with a righteous grievance, and you want to wound him mortally, capitulate instantly and apologise profusely — you will see a look of agonised consternation on his face, a childlike disappointment. You have taken away the bone he was so looking forward to picking.
I did it in a hotel once. I checked in ahead of a middle-aged couple who’d had a bad flight and, finding themselves abroad, were girding themselves for 10 days of unremitting grumble and complaint. They couldn’t believe their luck when, not paying attention, I barged to the front of their two-person queue.
Discovering that I was also from home was added sand in their factor 30. A foreigner would have shrugged and rolled his eyes, but I would have to take it like an Englishman — except that I’m not, and I wasn’t about to. I know these people. I know where this leads.
The English queue because they have to. If they didn’t they’d kill each other. The pressure of boiling anger in the average post office is only contained by the shared knowledge that this is as fair as can possibly be arranged in this life. They would rip the head off Mahatma Gandhi if he tried to renew his TV licence ahead of them. The English queue where the rest of the world barges because the English need to queue. It’s the tail of the mythic beast; tails add balance and equilibrium.
So I said sorry, abjectly, to the English couple and I smiled beatifically. Now if there’s one thing an Englishman can’t abide it’s an apology before he’s finished. Combined with a smile, it’s akin to sodomy without an introduction.
For a few seconds the Englishman closed his eyes, trying to pretend he hadn’t heard, but his biblical righteousness was running away, his plug was pulled. He followed me like a puffing, bulgy-eyed pug and said finally: “You can’t just say sorry. You can’t just say sorry, you know. I demand . . . I demand an apology.”
Only an Englishman could have said that, and only someone who’d lived with the English could understand that it wasn’t a tautology or a contradiction.
If England’s default setting is anger — lapel-poking, Chinese-burning, ram-raiding, street-shouting, sniping, spitting, shoving, vengeful inventive rage — many of the traits and tics that make the English so singular and occasionally admirable are the deflective mechanisms that they’ve invented to diffuse anger. The simplest and most straightforward an apology. The S-word.
Eskimos, they say, have dozens of words to describe snow. The Japanese have any number to differentiate rain, the French have a mouthful of facial expressions for “I don’t care what you think” and the Italians a fistful of hand gestures for exclamation marks, and the Welsh have five glottal stops for “I must have left my wallet with my other wife”. But the English, who have by far and away the largest, biggest, most immense, enormous, vast, gigantic, walloping, king-sized, voluminous, thumping, whacking, macroscopic, megalithic, lusty, humdinger of a vocabulary available to any human voice-box, choose to go the other way around and pack meaning into one word.
It was an American who pointed out to me the many subtle and contradictory back-handed and double-dealing ways the English manage to staple onto saying the S-word. He had noticed the light and airy sorry that the middle classes hailed him with when they committed some social infraction, said with a rising and falling inflection like a speed bump negotiated by a Bentley. Sorr-ee.
There are many, many ways of saying sorry. Being English is having to learn how to say all of them. There is: sorry, I apologise; sorry, I don’t apologise; sorry, you can take this as an apology but we both know it isn’t one; sorry, will you shut up; sorry, empathy; sorry for your loss; sorry, I can’t hear you; sorry, incredulity; sorry, I don’t understand you; sorry, you don’t understand me; sorry, excuse me; sorry, will you hurry up; sorry, I don’ t believe you; sorry, I’m interrupting; sorry, this won’t do; sorry, I’ve reached the end of my patience; sorry, sad and pathetic — as in, sorry excuse or sorry little man.
You can probably identify more variations on sorry. Sorry is a prophylactic word. It protects the user and the recipient from the potentially explosive consequences of the truth.
Being able to apologise without meaning it, without therefore losing face, but at the same time allowing the other person to back down, having got their apology, is a masterfully delicate piece of verbal engineering.
The English have arrived at a way of being furious without being rude. If you listen to them complain in shops or restaurants or about service in general they almost invariably start with “sorry”. You know that a customer sending back his soup, saying “Sorry, this isn’t very nice” isn’t apologising, and the waitress replying “I’m sorry you didn’t like it” isn’t either.
If you speak English as a native tongue, you decipher these nuances without thinking. If you’ve learnt the language abroad, or don’t speak it very well, then you just think the English are cringingly, obsequiously apologetic all the time and are possibly the politest people in the world.
The only other word that comes with so many meanings is “f***”. And if you don’t understand the incredibly fine and expressive definitions of that — from explosive pain, to happy surprise, to simple punctuation — then you might also imagine that the English are contrarily at the same time both the rudest and the politest people in the world. And as it happens, both assumptions are equally true.
[ source: The Sunday Times October 30, 2005 ]
+++
Both K and I sometimes feel like such utter heathens over here because we don't say "Please", "Thank you" and "Sorry" enough. I think I'm even worse off because not only have I been raised mostly in the US, but I have an innate Scandinavianess from my first 8 years in Denmark. In Danish, there isn't even a word for "please"! It is instead implied through tone of voice or context. Americans are generally polite, using the above niceties modestly, but appropriately. That's why when one interacts with Brits, one can start to feel a bit inadequate in the manners department. A typical interaction at a checkout in a British supermarket might go something like this:
Cashier: "Hello. Do you need help with the packing?"
Customer: "No thanks."
Cashier: "Do you have a Tesco card?"
Customer: "Oh sorry, yes. Here it is. Sorry."
Cashier: "Thank you."
Cashier rings up the customer's groceries, perhaps chatting about the weather while doing so.
Cashier: "That's £45.13, please."
Customer: "Thank you. Can I use my debit card, please?"
Cashier: "Certainly."
Customer: "Thank you. Sorry, could I also have £20 cash-back, please?"
Cashier: "Of course. Please key in your pin."
Customer does so.
Cashier: "Thank you."
Customer: "Thanks."
Cashier: "Your receipt and £20. Thanks. Have a good evening."
Customer: "Thank you, and you!"
Cashier: "Thanks!"
That may seem like an exaggeration, but it really isn't. I've been training myself to say "Please", "Thank you", and "Sorry" at every opportunity. It's not easy! K was actually scolded by an uncharacteristically rude customer at the Theatre Royal once because she didn't say "Please" and "Thank you" enough! Admittedly, that's not a common occurance, but it happened nonetheless.
Another example... the other day on the train, I was tickled because there was a murmur of Sorries, Thankyous, and Pleases rippling through the passengers on the train. Some where talking on their "mobiles" and some to other passengers, their conversations liberally sprinkled with these pesky politenesses. I'm not sure why it leapt out at me that time; it was just a funny little moment. Sorry, sorry, please, sorry, thanks, sorry, please, thank you, sorry, please, please, sorry, thanks.
Speaking of which, I must apologize for this very long blog entry. I'm terribly sorry. But I must say Thanks for reading it! Please do call again!
-RP-
PS- For an additional extract from AA Gill's book, go here.
Saturday, October 29
Masters of the Universe
It's semi-official (still waiting for the paperwork)! I have attained a Masters degree in Film Studies/Archiving. The course convenor sent me an email yesterday to let me know that the board of examiners has finished the assessment of my work over the past year. It's great to be notified that I succeeded in getting the degree, but the icing on the cake is that they were apparently very happy with my work! Not to gloat or anything; according to the course convenor: ">The exam board made a special point of noting the consistently high quality of your work, which came close to Distinction level overall." How bout dem apples? It might be a case of "close but no cigar" as far as attaining "Distinction level", but I'll take it! Especially after feeling like my dissertation was kind of crappy. Apparently, it wasn't!
Feelin' pretty good!
-RP-
It's semi-official (still waiting for the paperwork)! I have attained a Masters degree in Film Studies/Archiving. The course convenor sent me an email yesterday to let me know that the board of examiners has finished the assessment of my work over the past year. It's great to be notified that I succeeded in getting the degree, but the icing on the cake is that they were apparently very happy with my work! Not to gloat or anything; according to the course convenor: ">The exam board made a special point of noting the consistently high quality of your work, which came close to Distinction level overall." How bout dem apples? It might be a case of "close but no cigar" as far as attaining "Distinction level", but I'll take it! Especially after feeling like my dissertation was kind of crappy. Apparently, it wasn't!
Feelin' pretty good!
-RP-
Friday, October 28
The Danish Employment System
Well, had we moved to Copenhagen this summer, one or both of us might be going through this:
"In Denmark, unemployment benefits equal 90 percent of an employee's salary up to a ceiling of 14,000 kroner (1,850 euros, 2,245 dollars) a month.
The flexibility of the Danish labour market model, dubbed "flexsecurity", enables employers to hire and fire easily without having to pay expensive social costs.
At the same time, employees enjoy a high level of social welfare and the chance to undergo government-subsidized retraining programs if they lose their jobs, in a country where taxes are among the highest in Europe."
The rest of the story here: Yahoo! News - Monday, Oct. 24, 2005
-RP-
Well, had we moved to Copenhagen this summer, one or both of us might be going through this:
"In Denmark, unemployment benefits equal 90 percent of an employee's salary up to a ceiling of 14,000 kroner (1,850 euros, 2,245 dollars) a month.
The flexibility of the Danish labour market model, dubbed "flexsecurity", enables employers to hire and fire easily without having to pay expensive social costs.
At the same time, employees enjoy a high level of social welfare and the chance to undergo government-subsidized retraining programs if they lose their jobs, in a country where taxes are among the highest in Europe."
The rest of the story here: Yahoo! News - Monday, Oct. 24, 2005
-RP-
Tuesday, October 25
Denty
There's a giant chestnut tree in Hyde House Gardens' driveway. When parking our car, we've been trying to avoid (like the euphemistic "plague") parking underneath it. Unfortunately, it covers the area over about three car-lengths, so as the parking area gets filled up, you sometimes end up having no choice but to risk it. This happened to us recently. The B-mer was parked there for a couple of days. Not only did it get covered in the most bird-poo I have ever seen, but it had been nailed many times by falling chestnuts. We now have ten to fifteen small dents on the hood, roof, and trunk lid. Really pissed me off when I discovered it, but I'm trying to accept it because there's nothing we can do to change it (other than spending money on bodywork). It's just really annoying because who knows how much that dropped from the value of the car. Lesson learned.
Bird-poo aside, it is now safe to park there again because all of the chestnuts have dropped.
-RP-
There's a giant chestnut tree in Hyde House Gardens' driveway. When parking our car, we've been trying to avoid (like the euphemistic "plague") parking underneath it. Unfortunately, it covers the area over about three car-lengths, so as the parking area gets filled up, you sometimes end up having no choice but to risk it. This happened to us recently. The B-mer was parked there for a couple of days. Not only did it get covered in the most bird-poo I have ever seen, but it had been nailed many times by falling chestnuts. We now have ten to fifteen small dents on the hood, roof, and trunk lid. Really pissed me off when I discovered it, but I'm trying to accept it because there's nothing we can do to change it (other than spending money on bodywork). It's just really annoying because who knows how much that dropped from the value of the car. Lesson learned.
Bird-poo aside, it is now safe to park there again because all of the chestnuts have dropped.
-RP-
Saturday, October 15
God Save My Country Tis of Thee Queen
As Americans (or one American and one American resident alien), the UK national anthem sounds distinctly familiar. Not because we were brought up with allegiance to the Queen, of course, but because there is an American hymn with the exact same melody. I finally did a bit of googling to find out which hymn it was and discovered that "God Save The Queen" is the same melody as "My Country Tis of Thee". GSTQ was obviously first, so it seems it was the Americans that plagiarized it.
With your sound turned on:
God Save The Queen
(circa 1736/1740)
My Country Tis of Thee
(words: 1832 and music: 1744)
-RP-
As Americans (or one American and one American resident alien), the UK national anthem sounds distinctly familiar. Not because we were brought up with allegiance to the Queen, of course, but because there is an American hymn with the exact same melody. I finally did a bit of googling to find out which hymn it was and discovered that "God Save The Queen" is the same melody as "My Country Tis of Thee". GSTQ was obviously first, so it seems it was the Americans that plagiarized it.
With your sound turned on:
God Save The Queen
(circa 1736/1740)
My Country Tis of Thee
(words: 1832 and music: 1744)
-RP-
Tuesday, October 11
My Job
I work for an entity that promotes the use of film and video within higher education and further education. The project they hired me for is one that will put over 3000 hours of newsfilm material online so that these HE/FE institutions can access it. I am a cataloguer on this project. This means that I am creating "meta-data" for the material that will be put online and assisting in digitizing it so that it can be put online. I know that sounds pretty dry (and it sometimes is), but I'm learning a lot. Not only historic and many mundane events from as early as the early-1900s, but also about cataloguing and digitising.
It takes me about 1 hour and 40 minutes door-to-door to get to work (and the same amount of time to get back home). That may seem like a lot, but it's not too bad. One hour is sitting on a train and the rest walking or waiting. I get a lot of reading done. Being able to live in Winchester, out in the country, away from the noise and crowds of London, makes the commute completely worthwhile. As an added benefit, exercise is built into it. I have a brisk 25-30 minute walk in the morning and in the afternoon. Part of this walk takes me across the Waterloo Bridge where I can see such stereotypical British sites as the Thames, the London Eye, Big Ben, Parliament, that strange rocket-shaped building, and the concrete ugliness of the National Theatre complex. When I bought my annual "season ticket" for the train, I chose to save the £400 or so by getting a rail-only card (i.e.- travel on London's public transport is not included). This forces me to get exercise and keeps me off of the Tube.
A good portion of my day is spent travelling, obviously. Consequently, the only time I really have free time is on the weekends. During the week, by the time I get home there is not much of an evening left. This is why you'll have to forgive us for being such pathetic bloggers over the past couple of months. It likely will not improve very much, so we are going to have to ask that you get used to it. K just started her job in Bournemouth last week. Her free time has also dwindled to a minimum, though I do have to say that she has quite a nice job going, which allows 1 to 2 days of working at home. I'll pester her to tell you about it.
There are also some really crazy synchronicities between our two jobs, a whole other story which we will divulge in due course. Until then...
-RP-
I work for an entity that promotes the use of film and video within higher education and further education. The project they hired me for is one that will put over 3000 hours of newsfilm material online so that these HE/FE institutions can access it. I am a cataloguer on this project. This means that I am creating "meta-data" for the material that will be put online and assisting in digitizing it so that it can be put online. I know that sounds pretty dry (and it sometimes is), but I'm learning a lot. Not only historic and many mundane events from as early as the early-1900s, but also about cataloguing and digitising.
It takes me about 1 hour and 40 minutes door-to-door to get to work (and the same amount of time to get back home). That may seem like a lot, but it's not too bad. One hour is sitting on a train and the rest walking or waiting. I get a lot of reading done. Being able to live in Winchester, out in the country, away from the noise and crowds of London, makes the commute completely worthwhile. As an added benefit, exercise is built into it. I have a brisk 25-30 minute walk in the morning and in the afternoon. Part of this walk takes me across the Waterloo Bridge where I can see such stereotypical British sites as the Thames, the London Eye, Big Ben, Parliament, that strange rocket-shaped building, and the concrete ugliness of the National Theatre complex. When I bought my annual "season ticket" for the train, I chose to save the £400 or so by getting a rail-only card (i.e.- travel on London's public transport is not included). This forces me to get exercise and keeps me off of the Tube.
A good portion of my day is spent travelling, obviously. Consequently, the only time I really have free time is on the weekends. During the week, by the time I get home there is not much of an evening left. This is why you'll have to forgive us for being such pathetic bloggers over the past couple of months. It likely will not improve very much, so we are going to have to ask that you get used to it. K just started her job in Bournemouth last week. Her free time has also dwindled to a minimum, though I do have to say that she has quite a nice job going, which allows 1 to 2 days of working at home. I'll pester her to tell you about it.
There are also some really crazy synchronicities between our two jobs, a whole other story which we will divulge in due course. Until then...
-RP-
Saturday, October 1
Ministry of Transport
When you own a car in the UK you have to bring it in for a yearly MOT test. The car has to past the test for you to be able to get your "tax disk", which is similar to the US's "registration". The MOT costs £44.15 and the tax disk fee is based on the size of the engine (our 1990cc BMW costs about £91 for a 6-month registration, about £170 for 12 months). If you don't have a valid MOT and tax disk, you are not allowed to drive the car.
Our MOT and tax is due as of yesterday. If we were sensible people, we would have taken care of this earlier. In fact, last weekend I was planning on coaxing K into bringing the car in to a test centre on Monday, but I pretty much forgot all about it until Wednesday. On Thursday, we made an appointment for the MOT test on Friday. A mere formality. However, it did not pass the test because a tail-light was out, the right headlight was misaligned, and the rear passenger-side tire was splitting along the sidewall. So, we had to leave the car with them. They have ordered a tire, but because BMWs are finicky, it is a special size that they cannot get until Monday. Therefore, we will not have it back until Monday evening, which means Kristen will have to take the train to Bournemouth for her first day of work. A bit of a nuisance, but what can one do?
Well, at least it is just minor. Though the new tire is a bit pricey, it could have been a lot worse. And I know they're not trying to swindle us because I was aware that one of the tires was nearing the end of its life and we have been beamed a few times by oncoming vehicles, so I guess that was because of the misaligned headlight.
That's cars for ya... it's the surprises that make you question whether or not it is worth having one in the first place!
-RP-
When you own a car in the UK you have to bring it in for a yearly MOT test. The car has to past the test for you to be able to get your "tax disk", which is similar to the US's "registration". The MOT costs £44.15 and the tax disk fee is based on the size of the engine (our 1990cc BMW costs about £91 for a 6-month registration, about £170 for 12 months). If you don't have a valid MOT and tax disk, you are not allowed to drive the car.
Our MOT and tax is due as of yesterday. If we were sensible people, we would have taken care of this earlier. In fact, last weekend I was planning on coaxing K into bringing the car in to a test centre on Monday, but I pretty much forgot all about it until Wednesday. On Thursday, we made an appointment for the MOT test on Friday. A mere formality. However, it did not pass the test because a tail-light was out, the right headlight was misaligned, and the rear passenger-side tire was splitting along the sidewall. So, we had to leave the car with them. They have ordered a tire, but because BMWs are finicky, it is a special size that they cannot get until Monday. Therefore, we will not have it back until Monday evening, which means Kristen will have to take the train to Bournemouth for her first day of work. A bit of a nuisance, but what can one do?
Well, at least it is just minor. Though the new tire is a bit pricey, it could have been a lot worse. And I know they're not trying to swindle us because I was aware that one of the tires was nearing the end of its life and we have been beamed a few times by oncoming vehicles, so I guess that was because of the misaligned headlight.
That's cars for ya... it's the surprises that make you question whether or not it is worth having one in the first place!
-RP-
Monday, September 19
The new apartment is, to say the least, a huge improvement on what we had in Norwich. We're still on the ground floor, but that's about the only similarity!
The rooms are only about 1/3 furnished and not decorated at all. Before I take you into the apartment I thought I'd show you the building and immediate surroundings first.
In front of our apartment is a horseshoe shaped driveway. Directly across the street from one end of our horseshoe is this house. The small lane to the left of it winds down to a large park where the little river Itchen runs towards the city center. One of our living room windows looks out at this same view.
The other end of the horseshoe faces this row of old buildings. On the left is the Hyde parish hall and on the right (with the white walls), perhaps the most important building in our area, is Hyde Pub. The doorway to the pub is only about five feet high! The road between us and the other side is fairly narrow. If a car is parked on the side of the street, there's only room for one car to drive past at a time. These old English roads were not meant for modern vehicles.
The rooms are only about 1/3 furnished and not decorated at all. Before I take you into the apartment I thought I'd show you the building and immediate surroundings first.
In front of our apartment is a horseshoe shaped driveway. Directly across the street from one end of our horseshoe is this house. The small lane to the left of it winds down to a large park where the little river Itchen runs towards the city center. One of our living room windows looks out at this same view.
The other end of the horseshoe faces this row of old buildings. On the left is the Hyde parish hall and on the right (with the white walls), perhaps the most important building in our area, is Hyde Pub. The doorway to the pub is only about five feet high! The road between us and the other side is fairly narrow. If a car is parked on the side of the street, there's only room for one car to drive past at a time. These old English roads were not meant for modern vehicles.With the presence of the parish hall, it would seem logical to have a church somewhere nearby. And we do, just around the corner.
Back on our patch - the center of the horseshoe facing the street is all trees and bushes. If you
turn your back to the street, this is the view. Our apartment is on the ground floor in the newer building to the right. Hyde House, to the left, is the pretty house whose garden is our address. Not sure how old the main house is but it is lovely!
We are loving the area and enjoying how green our surroundings are. Rich has been peering out the windows watching the birds and squirrels at their feeders. It is so nice to not have traffic driving past our living room window!
More photos coming soon!
~K
turn your back to the street, this is the view. Our apartment is on the ground floor in the newer building to the right. Hyde House, to the left, is the pretty house whose garden is our address. Not sure how old the main house is but it is lovely!
We are loving the area and enjoying how green our surroundings are. Rich has been peering out the windows watching the birds and squirrels at their feeders. It is so nice to not have traffic driving past our living room window!
More photos coming soon!
~K
Saturday, September 17
The Art of Finishing a Master's Dissertation
Because I am supremely good at procrastinating, the bulk of my dissertation writing didn't happen until about a month and a half before the deadline. See, I need the pressure of a looming deadline; that gun to my head to get things done. Considering that, I think I was doing pretty well to have gotten started over a month before the deadline. But according to academic advisors, it should be at least two months to research, one month to write a complete first draft, and one month to edit, rewrite, and proofread. Though I did do some research April through June, I did most of the above steps between mid-July and the end of August. Anyway, this dissertation fought me every step of the way.
First of all, my advisor was close to useless and I had pretty much had to find someone else to read through my first draft. This made it a bit worrisome to keep working because I wasn't sure whether or not I was digging myself into a hole. In the end, it turned out that I was OK. However, it has not been enjoyable to write the thing. It was a slog to get through every one of the 14,757 words that I wrote. A lot of that was written during our my last week in Norwich. Then when I went to London to start my new job, I wrote most of it on our laptop. Every day after work (instead of going back to the hostel to twiddle my thumbs), I went to the British Library and worked on the paper. By late August, I had a 90% complete first draft and I started doing some re-reading and editing. My goal was to finish it by August 30th so it could be printed, bound, and sent to the university on the 1st of September (the deadline was the week of the 5th). I was doing pretty well on achieving that goal, but after our move from Norwich to Winchester that weekend, I was too exhausted to "sprint across the finish line" on the 30th, so I put it off for another day. However, I came home on the 31st with a nearly complete dissertation which I then transferred from the Mac laptop to the PC. I finished writing it that night (barring final proofreading). Kristen was going to read through it again the next day.
Perhaps sensing that I was about ready to send it off on its own, this is when the dissertation started REALLY fighting me. When I got home the next day, the PC would not turn on. I couldn't access the nearly complete dissertation that night. Faced with having to re-write the last 10% of the dissertation, I decided to put it off another day so that I could buy a hard-drive casing that I could use to plug the PC drive into the Mac. The next day I emailed the MA course convenor and the person I would be sending the completed paper to and explained the situation (I had since been told that the 5th was the deadline, as opposed to the WEEK OF the 5th). They told me it was OK as long as it arrived before the end of the week. I though I could finish it Friday night, have it printed, bound, and mailed on Saturday, but no printing places were open on the weekend, even in London. So, I wouldn't be able to mail it until Monday the 5th. Well, I got home that Friday night and tried to boot the PC again: still nothing. OK, time to remove the hard-drive and hope that it isn't THAT which has failed. Luckily it wasn't. BUT, the Mac was not recognizing the PC-formatted hard-drive. Luckily (again), I had a piece of software called "Virtual PC" which allows you to install a Windows operating system into a virtual PC "environment" on the Mac. Then I was able to access the PC hard-drive and successfully transferred the most up-to-date draft over to the Mac. I then hooked up another external drive that the Mac DOES recognize and transferred the file to that so that I could then unload it again within the Mac operating system. Sorry, if this is a bit convoluted, but then I finished the draft, "protected" the formatting, and burned it to a CD. Free at last!
Or so I thought. When I got to work that Monday, I tested the CD in the PC at work. It did not read it. I called Kristen and asked her to burn another copy and try to email me the file from the library (we didn't have the internet at home yet). The PCs at the library did not like that disk either. So, I crossed my fingers and headed to the printing company up the street from where I work. Thankfully, they had a Mac and even more thankfully, the disk was readable. They printed a draft for me to check over. At first it looked fine, but then I noticed that the page numbers were halfway cut off. We twiddled around with the settings and got them to look right. Then I noticed that there were no apostrophes anywhere in the document. Apparently, their Mac did not like the font I was using (nothing crazy, just the standard Arial font) and it wouldn't print correctly no matter what we did. They were about to send me on my way, when I asked them if they could transfer the file to one of their PCs. They scratched their heads and reckoned that they could, so I waited around for this. Yes, that worked, so I checked the formatting and fixed the page numbers again. Then we printed three copies successfully. They bound them without any problems and I paid the £29.99 (with only a little trouble from their credit card reader).
At lunch, I walked to the post office store to send the dissertation to the university, but I still had to buy an envelope. In the UK, it is common for the post office to be inside a department store. If you want to buy an envelope, you have to buy it from the store (you can't buy it from the post office people). Unfortunately, I didn't have enough cash. So, I told them I would get some cashback from the post office people when I paid for the postage. I waited in line, then the PO people told me I couldn't take cash out with the card I had, so I had to LEAVE the store, GO to an ATM, TAKE out some money, GO back to the store, BUY the envelope, STAND in line again (this time much longer), and finally was able to send away those two bleeding copies of my dissertation. Halle-frickin-luiah!
As I left the post office, I wondered what the hell it was about this paper that was so determined to stop me from turning it in. I still haven't figured that out. I received confirmation that they received the dissertation and it was being sent to the graders. So, it's out of my hands now. No idea when it will be graded and sent back though. I'm just so relieved to be done with it. Other of my classmates are still working on theirs. They got an extention. Something I could have done, but decided not to because I just wanted to be finished with the damn thing. Now I never have to think about that thing again. At least not until they send it back to me with my grade.
-RP-
Because I am supremely good at procrastinating, the bulk of my dissertation writing didn't happen until about a month and a half before the deadline. See, I need the pressure of a looming deadline; that gun to my head to get things done. Considering that, I think I was doing pretty well to have gotten started over a month before the deadline. But according to academic advisors, it should be at least two months to research, one month to write a complete first draft, and one month to edit, rewrite, and proofread. Though I did do some research April through June, I did most of the above steps between mid-July and the end of August. Anyway, this dissertation fought me every step of the way.
First of all, my advisor was close to useless and I had pretty much had to find someone else to read through my first draft. This made it a bit worrisome to keep working because I wasn't sure whether or not I was digging myself into a hole. In the end, it turned out that I was OK. However, it has not been enjoyable to write the thing. It was a slog to get through every one of the 14,757 words that I wrote. A lot of that was written during our my last week in Norwich. Then when I went to London to start my new job, I wrote most of it on our laptop. Every day after work (instead of going back to the hostel to twiddle my thumbs), I went to the British Library and worked on the paper. By late August, I had a 90% complete first draft and I started doing some re-reading and editing. My goal was to finish it by August 30th so it could be printed, bound, and sent to the university on the 1st of September (the deadline was the week of the 5th). I was doing pretty well on achieving that goal, but after our move from Norwich to Winchester that weekend, I was too exhausted to "sprint across the finish line" on the 30th, so I put it off for another day. However, I came home on the 31st with a nearly complete dissertation which I then transferred from the Mac laptop to the PC. I finished writing it that night (barring final proofreading). Kristen was going to read through it again the next day.
Perhaps sensing that I was about ready to send it off on its own, this is when the dissertation started REALLY fighting me. When I got home the next day, the PC would not turn on. I couldn't access the nearly complete dissertation that night. Faced with having to re-write the last 10% of the dissertation, I decided to put it off another day so that I could buy a hard-drive casing that I could use to plug the PC drive into the Mac. The next day I emailed the MA course convenor and the person I would be sending the completed paper to and explained the situation (I had since been told that the 5th was the deadline, as opposed to the WEEK OF the 5th). They told me it was OK as long as it arrived before the end of the week. I though I could finish it Friday night, have it printed, bound, and mailed on Saturday, but no printing places were open on the weekend, even in London. So, I wouldn't be able to mail it until Monday the 5th. Well, I got home that Friday night and tried to boot the PC again: still nothing. OK, time to remove the hard-drive and hope that it isn't THAT which has failed. Luckily it wasn't. BUT, the Mac was not recognizing the PC-formatted hard-drive. Luckily (again), I had a piece of software called "Virtual PC" which allows you to install a Windows operating system into a virtual PC "environment" on the Mac. Then I was able to access the PC hard-drive and successfully transferred the most up-to-date draft over to the Mac. I then hooked up another external drive that the Mac DOES recognize and transferred the file to that so that I could then unload it again within the Mac operating system. Sorry, if this is a bit convoluted, but then I finished the draft, "protected" the formatting, and burned it to a CD. Free at last!
Or so I thought. When I got to work that Monday, I tested the CD in the PC at work. It did not read it. I called Kristen and asked her to burn another copy and try to email me the file from the library (we didn't have the internet at home yet). The PCs at the library did not like that disk either. So, I crossed my fingers and headed to the printing company up the street from where I work. Thankfully, they had a Mac and even more thankfully, the disk was readable. They printed a draft for me to check over. At first it looked fine, but then I noticed that the page numbers were halfway cut off. We twiddled around with the settings and got them to look right. Then I noticed that there were no apostrophes anywhere in the document. Apparently, their Mac did not like the font I was using (nothing crazy, just the standard Arial font) and it wouldn't print correctly no matter what we did. They were about to send me on my way, when I asked them if they could transfer the file to one of their PCs. They scratched their heads and reckoned that they could, so I waited around for this. Yes, that worked, so I checked the formatting and fixed the page numbers again. Then we printed three copies successfully. They bound them without any problems and I paid the £29.99 (with only a little trouble from their credit card reader).
At lunch, I walked to the post office store to send the dissertation to the university, but I still had to buy an envelope. In the UK, it is common for the post office to be inside a department store. If you want to buy an envelope, you have to buy it from the store (you can't buy it from the post office people). Unfortunately, I didn't have enough cash. So, I told them I would get some cashback from the post office people when I paid for the postage. I waited in line, then the PO people told me I couldn't take cash out with the card I had, so I had to LEAVE the store, GO to an ATM, TAKE out some money, GO back to the store, BUY the envelope, STAND in line again (this time much longer), and finally was able to send away those two bleeding copies of my dissertation. Halle-frickin-luiah!
As I left the post office, I wondered what the hell it was about this paper that was so determined to stop me from turning it in. I still haven't figured that out. I received confirmation that they received the dissertation and it was being sent to the graders. So, it's out of my hands now. No idea when it will be graded and sent back though. I'm just so relieved to be done with it. Other of my classmates are still working on theirs. They got an extention. Something I could have done, but decided not to because I just wanted to be finished with the damn thing. Now I never have to think about that thing again. At least not until they send it back to me with my grade.
-RP-
Sunday, September 11
RE-LAUNCH
We've been back online since this past Friday. Nice to be reconnected in our new home.
There's so much space in this apartment compared to our previous one. We're not quite sure what to do with it all, but it's so nice to be able to actually be in other rooms. Not that we were craving privacy or whatever, it's just great to have more options of places to be! We are happy with the apartment and simply in love with Winchester.
Anyway, there's a TON more to tell, but it'll have to wait a little bit. I know we're way behind, but we're going to have to catch up gradually. So, please stay tuned for...
...more about lovely Winchester...
...details of our apartment...
...the trials and tribulations of finishing my dissertation...
...more about my job and K's impending job...
...and whatever else comes up.
-RP-
We've been back online since this past Friday. Nice to be reconnected in our new home.
There's so much space in this apartment compared to our previous one. We're not quite sure what to do with it all, but it's so nice to be able to actually be in other rooms. Not that we were craving privacy or whatever, it's just great to have more options of places to be! We are happy with the apartment and simply in love with Winchester.
Anyway, there's a TON more to tell, but it'll have to wait a little bit. I know we're way behind, but we're going to have to catch up gradually. So, please stay tuned for...
...more about lovely Winchester...
...details of our apartment...
...the trials and tribulations of finishing my dissertation...
...more about my job and K's impending job...
...and whatever else comes up.
-RP-
Saturday, August 27
Winchester
We've been remiss recently... very remiss. Unfortunately, we are going to have to be for a little longer (until we're relocated and have internet hooked up again). But just a tidbits for now:
-I started my job the Monday before last. It's going well, though the ball has not fully gotten rolling yet.
-We got the apartment in Winchester that we applied for and we're moving in tomorrow.
-Still a lot to do in our Norwich apartment, but we should be able to head out of here by 10am tomorrow, which would put us in Winchester around 2 or 3pm.
-RP-
We've been remiss recently... very remiss. Unfortunately, we are going to have to be for a little longer (until we're relocated and have internet hooked up again). But just a tidbits for now:
-I started my job the Monday before last. It's going well, though the ball has not fully gotten rolling yet.
-We got the apartment in Winchester that we applied for and we're moving in tomorrow.
-Still a lot to do in our Norwich apartment, but we should be able to head out of here by 10am tomorrow, which would put us in Winchester around 2 or 3pm.
-RP-
Thursday, August 11
Gas Prices
(or as they say here... "Petrol" Prices)
Oil Prices Rise to $65 a Barrel
Pretty crazy how high the gas prices have gotten in the US. I guess I have sympathy even though the average in the UK for Unleaded (95 octane) is £0.88 PER LITRE*, which equates to about $5.97 per gallon.
One of the reasons the prices are this high over here is to affect people's driving habits and the car-buying decisions they make. Instead of Hummers, most people buy "those funny little cars" (though the ever-encroaching American culture of SUVs is steadily rising in the UK). But Europeans generally drive a lot less.
This is a way of life that we definitely support... despite the fact that we have a BMW (in our defense, it usually only gets driven about 3 miles one day per week). However, the US is not used to this way of life. The majority taste is for HUGE vehicles with pitiful gas mileage and people drive practically everywhere. Because the US is as spread out as it is, I can understand why people drive as much as they do... there is often no other option. BUT, there's not much excuse for the glut of HUGE vehicles. So, in one sense, I'm hoping that these soaring prices will have a stronger effect on America's car choices from now on because it is foolish to expect people to change their driving habits.
-RP-
*1 US gallon = 3.7854118 litres
(or as they say here... "Petrol" Prices)
Oil Prices Rise to $65 a Barrel
Pretty crazy how high the gas prices have gotten in the US. I guess I have sympathy even though the average in the UK for Unleaded (95 octane) is £0.88 PER LITRE*, which equates to about $5.97 per gallon.
One of the reasons the prices are this high over here is to affect people's driving habits and the car-buying decisions they make. Instead of Hummers, most people buy "those funny little cars" (though the ever-encroaching American culture of SUVs is steadily rising in the UK). But Europeans generally drive a lot less.
This is a way of life that we definitely support... despite the fact that we have a BMW (in our defense, it usually only gets driven about 3 miles one day per week). However, the US is not used to this way of life. The majority taste is for HUGE vehicles with pitiful gas mileage and people drive practically everywhere. Because the US is as spread out as it is, I can understand why people drive as much as they do... there is often no other option. BUT, there's not much excuse for the glut of HUGE vehicles. So, in one sense, I'm hoping that these soaring prices will have a stronger effect on America's car choices from now on because it is foolish to expect people to change their driving habits.
-RP-
*1 US gallon = 3.7854118 litres
Wednesday, August 10
The Searcher Returns
I got back from Winchester yesterday afternoon, having found a suitable place to live. I saw four properties on Monday and one on Tuesday morning. They ranged from £675 to £900 per month. The first two I saw were £750 and pretty ratty. They were also placed on a noisy street, so it would be a lot like the place we're in now. I was a bit discouraged by those two because we were thinking we would just take one of them if it was doable. There was a third one I was scheduled to look at that day, but it was taken before my appointment. So, then I pounded the pavement, stopping in at practically every agency. I landed two more viewings on Monday afternoon. The £900 one and the £675. The 900-pounder was SO NICE! Waaaaaaaayyyyy out of our price-range, but you definitely got a lot for every pence: three levels, high cielings, tons of storage, back garden, attic, very recently remodelled, brand new fixtures in the kitchen, off-street parking, and on and on. We tried really hard to figure out a way to make that fit our budget, but decided that we would be fools to go into something like that as our first step in Winchester, especially since we would essentially only get to enjoy it on the weekends. Later that afternoon, I viewed the 675-pounder. Didn't expect much because the 750-pounders were so crappy. However, I was surprised to find that it actually wasn't that bad. A bit dated with pink bathroom fixtures, green "hotel carpeting" everywhere, and blue carpet in the bedrooms. Despite that, it was no worse than the one we're in now and much better in terms of the size and placement on the street (i.e.- not a main road). Hmmm...
I had four viewings scheduled for Tuesday, but K and I pretty much had made up our minds on Monday night: to go for the cheap one. However, I kept my 10am appointment to see one for £780. It was nicer than the £675, but there weren't enough good points to tip the scales in its favor. So, I went to the estate agent that showed me the cheap one and said, "I'll take it! What do we do now?"
So, we're in the waiting stage now. They're doing a banking check and we need to send them references from our employers and one from someone who has known us for at least 5 years. Assuming that all checks out, we can probably move in as soon as August 19th. However, we may wait until the 27th because it will be cheaper that way. I'll stay in a London hostel for the first two weeks of my job. Then when K is done with the theatre (last day on the 26th) we can relocate to Winchester.
-RP-
I got back from Winchester yesterday afternoon, having found a suitable place to live. I saw four properties on Monday and one on Tuesday morning. They ranged from £675 to £900 per month. The first two I saw were £750 and pretty ratty. They were also placed on a noisy street, so it would be a lot like the place we're in now. I was a bit discouraged by those two because we were thinking we would just take one of them if it was doable. There was a third one I was scheduled to look at that day, but it was taken before my appointment. So, then I pounded the pavement, stopping in at practically every agency. I landed two more viewings on Monday afternoon. The £900 one and the £675. The 900-pounder was SO NICE! Waaaaaaaayyyyy out of our price-range, but you definitely got a lot for every pence: three levels, high cielings, tons of storage, back garden, attic, very recently remodelled, brand new fixtures in the kitchen, off-street parking, and on and on. We tried really hard to figure out a way to make that fit our budget, but decided that we would be fools to go into something like that as our first step in Winchester, especially since we would essentially only get to enjoy it on the weekends. Later that afternoon, I viewed the 675-pounder. Didn't expect much because the 750-pounders were so crappy. However, I was surprised to find that it actually wasn't that bad. A bit dated with pink bathroom fixtures, green "hotel carpeting" everywhere, and blue carpet in the bedrooms. Despite that, it was no worse than the one we're in now and much better in terms of the size and placement on the street (i.e.- not a main road). Hmmm...
I had four viewings scheduled for Tuesday, but K and I pretty much had made up our minds on Monday night: to go for the cheap one. However, I kept my 10am appointment to see one for £780. It was nicer than the £675, but there weren't enough good points to tip the scales in its favor. So, I went to the estate agent that showed me the cheap one and said, "I'll take it! What do we do now?"
So, we're in the waiting stage now. They're doing a banking check and we need to send them references from our employers and one from someone who has known us for at least 5 years. Assuming that all checks out, we can probably move in as soon as August 19th. However, we may wait until the 27th because it will be cheaper that way. I'll stay in a London hostel for the first two weeks of my job. Then when K is done with the theatre (last day on the 26th) we can relocate to Winchester.
-RP-
Tuesday, August 9
Our new city.
Rich went to Winchester yesterday to look at apartments. A challenging thing to do because apartments in Winchester get snapped up as soon as they're listed. Unfortunately I have to work all week so he's on his own! He just this minute called and said he found one and if everything goes well - fingers crossed - he should be home tonight.
This is going to have to be just a quick update because our estate agent just phoned and said he's bringing people by to look at our apartment. I need to do some super quick cleaning!
If you want to see more about our future home city, this site has some great information about Winchester. The "Walks Around Winchester" link is especially good as it has a whole bunch of photos from the town.
~K
Rich went to Winchester yesterday to look at apartments. A challenging thing to do because apartments in Winchester get snapped up as soon as they're listed. Unfortunately I have to work all week so he's on his own! He just this minute called and said he found one and if everything goes well - fingers crossed - he should be home tonight.
This is going to have to be just a quick update because our estate agent just phoned and said he's bringing people by to look at our apartment. I need to do some super quick cleaning!
If you want to see more about our future home city, this site has some great information about Winchester. The "Walks Around Winchester" link is especially good as it has a whole bunch of photos from the town.
~K
Saturday, August 6
The End of an Era
(a very small one)
I've just cleaned my last mussel. They went easy on me today, only 30 kilos. The last mussel sort of snuck up on me, I wasn't even thinking about it and all of a sudden I was scraping the barnacles off the very last one. The Belgian Monk will have more, of course, but it won't be me cleaning them.
I'm home for a break right now. Have to head back to the restaurant at 8 for my last shift washing dishes. Definitely not going to miss being elbow-deep in filth and scraping mussels until my fingers go numb, but I'll miss the guys in the kitchen and a couple of the wait-staff (the ones who aren't miserable people). I've had a lot of fun joking around with the chefs and the other kitchen porters. A good bunch of blokes.
The head chef gave me something to remember them by... a 2nd degree burn on my leg from searing hot garlic-y oil. It was a complete accident and mostly my fault because I always wore shorts in the kitchen (too hot for jeans). I was standing at one sink cleaning mussels and he went to throw the pan into the other sink. In his hurry, some oil flew out of the pan and landed on my left calf. Hurt like a bitch at first, but I washed off the oil and just tried to put it out of my mind (a method I developed over the years as a frequently-burning-myself pyromaniac). It's not a big deal, but it's a pretty large burn with some really gross blisters. Looks a lot worse than it is!
Anyway, on with the next step (yeah, another one). I'm going to Winchester on Monday to look at a couple of apartments. We actually had decided we would move there even if K didn't get the Bournemouth job, but not it's definitely the one. It's an amazingly great town, probably the nicest one we've been to in England (reminded us of the feeling we got from Scotland). It will mean a "commuting life" for the both of us, but it will be worth it because we live in Winchester. We have to find a place this week, otherwise I'll be staying in a hostel in London for the first week or two of my job. I'll stay through Tuesday to find a place, if I have to. We found a little cheap B&B I can stay in if needed. However, if I'm lucky, one of the three I'm going to view on Monday will be a winner.
-RP-
PS- After two years of being "low-tech", we've gotten ourselves a cell phone (or "mobile" as they call it here). It's "mine", but right now we're sharing it. K will get one when she starts her job in September. Need to be able to get in touch with each other on our commutes!
(a very small one)
I've just cleaned my last mussel. They went easy on me today, only 30 kilos. The last mussel sort of snuck up on me, I wasn't even thinking about it and all of a sudden I was scraping the barnacles off the very last one. The Belgian Monk will have more, of course, but it won't be me cleaning them.
I'm home for a break right now. Have to head back to the restaurant at 8 for my last shift washing dishes. Definitely not going to miss being elbow-deep in filth and scraping mussels until my fingers go numb, but I'll miss the guys in the kitchen and a couple of the wait-staff (the ones who aren't miserable people). I've had a lot of fun joking around with the chefs and the other kitchen porters. A good bunch of blokes.
The head chef gave me something to remember them by... a 2nd degree burn on my leg from searing hot garlic-y oil. It was a complete accident and mostly my fault because I always wore shorts in the kitchen (too hot for jeans). I was standing at one sink cleaning mussels and he went to throw the pan into the other sink. In his hurry, some oil flew out of the pan and landed on my left calf. Hurt like a bitch at first, but I washed off the oil and just tried to put it out of my mind (a method I developed over the years as a frequently-burning-myself pyromaniac). It's not a big deal, but it's a pretty large burn with some really gross blisters. Looks a lot worse than it is!
Anyway, on with the next step (yeah, another one). I'm going to Winchester on Monday to look at a couple of apartments. We actually had decided we would move there even if K didn't get the Bournemouth job, but not it's definitely the one. It's an amazingly great town, probably the nicest one we've been to in England (reminded us of the feeling we got from Scotland). It will mean a "commuting life" for the both of us, but it will be worth it because we live in Winchester. We have to find a place this week, otherwise I'll be staying in a hostel in London for the first week or two of my job. I'll stay through Tuesday to find a place, if I have to. We found a little cheap B&B I can stay in if needed. However, if I'm lucky, one of the three I'm going to view on Monday will be a winner.
-RP-
PS- After two years of being "low-tech", we've gotten ourselves a cell phone (or "mobile" as they call it here). It's "mine", but right now we're sharing it. K will get one when she starts her job in September. Need to be able to get in touch with each other on our commutes!
Friday, August 5
So, I got the job at Bournemouth University. YAY! The interview went well on Monday and they phoned Tuesday afternoon to offer me the position. I am still a bit shocked that I got it. They are actually going to pay me to do media research and let me do a PhD (for free) at the same time - it is really unbelievable. I'll write more about the job and the university once I've really absorbed all this. Between Rich getting the cataloguing job in London, me getting the B.U. job, both of us quitting our current jobs, finding an apartment in Winchester and planning our move, well, my head is spinning.
~K
~K
Sunday, July 31
English Bodies
From "Table Talk" by AA Gill, The Sunday Times, Style section (July 31, 2005):
"What is it that makes English bodies so spectacularly repellent in the daylight? It isn't simply the clammy, adipose, maggoty-white flesh, with its zits and lesions and dry, scrofolous craters. It's the distribution that so noisomely offends. The softly curdled lumps that hang like fungus on beech trees, the swaying underarms, the double nuggets of cheesy flob behind the knees, the exhausted, stretched, who-cares haggis of gut, the shuddering, horrified backsides, with their wrinkled, slippery clefts and creases, the thighs pitted like rain on cold sand -- all of it shaped and moulded and bulged by waistbands and straps that were hopeful three years in the past."
From "Table Talk" by AA Gill, The Sunday Times, Style section (July 31, 2005):
"What is it that makes English bodies so spectacularly repellent in the daylight? It isn't simply the clammy, adipose, maggoty-white flesh, with its zits and lesions and dry, scrofolous craters. It's the distribution that so noisomely offends. The softly curdled lumps that hang like fungus on beech trees, the swaying underarms, the double nuggets of cheesy flob behind the knees, the exhausted, stretched, who-cares haggis of gut, the shuddering, horrified backsides, with their wrinkled, slippery clefts and creases, the thighs pitted like rain on cold sand -- all of it shaped and moulded and bulged by waistbands and straps that were hopeful three years in the past."
Saturday, July 30
Tuesday, July 26
Slowly rolling again
I gave my two-weeks notice yesterday at the ol' Monk. Was a little nervous about it especially since another kitchen porter quit/walked out last Thursday. Despite this, they were supportive and really appreciated that I had given two weeks notice as opposed to just not showing up all of a sudden. They must have really had some irresponsible people coming through there to feel that way! Anyway, I'm going to work through August 6th and perhaps a couple of days the week after IF they are in a bind. Seems like they're well on the way of replacing the other guy who quit, though. Four or five applications came in already.
Tomorrow we're going to drive down to St Albans to check it out. Next week we'll go to Bournemouth and check out Winchester on the way back. Then it's just a bit of a waiting game to see if K gets the job. I'll get a room in London and come home on the weekends. Hopefully, by the end of August we'll have been able to decide which city to move to and have found a place to move into. Looking forward to it.
And I'm definitely looking forward to not doing dishes or cleaning mussels, though I definitely will miss the people in the kitchen. Good bunch of blokes.
-RP-
I gave my two-weeks notice yesterday at the ol' Monk. Was a little nervous about it especially since another kitchen porter quit/walked out last Thursday. Despite this, they were supportive and really appreciated that I had given two weeks notice as opposed to just not showing up all of a sudden. They must have really had some irresponsible people coming through there to feel that way! Anyway, I'm going to work through August 6th and perhaps a couple of days the week after IF they are in a bind. Seems like they're well on the way of replacing the other guy who quit, though. Four or five applications came in already.
Tomorrow we're going to drive down to St Albans to check it out. Next week we'll go to Bournemouth and check out Winchester on the way back. Then it's just a bit of a waiting game to see if K gets the job. I'll get a room in London and come home on the weekends. Hopefully, by the end of August we'll have been able to decide which city to move to and have found a place to move into. Looking forward to it.
And I'm definitely looking forward to not doing dishes or cleaning mussels, though I definitely will miss the people in the kitchen. Good bunch of blokes.
-RP-
Friday, July 22
Next...
We had just about recovered from the shock of Rich's job offer on Monday when we got a wrench thrown in the works. Yesterday I received a request-for-interview letter from Bournemouth University regarding a job application that I had sent them several weeks ago. The job is a researcher position in the Centre for Creative Media Research (http://media.bournemouth.ac.uk/ccmr.html). The excellent thing about this job is in addition to the salary they also will pay tuition for a PhD if so desired. I had sent my application in nice and early and hoped that I might hear from them. Well the closing date came and went. Two weeks went by and no news, so I assumed that I was not on their shortlist. I moved on mentally, not thinking about it anymore and looking for other interesting possibilities. Then on Monday Rich got the London job and our attention was immediately focused on figuring out where we wanted to live, giving notice to our current employers, etc. The letter's arrival on Thursday was a HUGE surprise! The interview is scheduled for August 1 at 1:45. The complication now is that we don't know where we should be looking to find a place to live. If I get the B.U. job, then we need to look southwest of London and we'll both have a 50 minute commute. If I don't get the B.U. job, then we need to be northwest of the city to allow for the easiest possible commuting for Rich. So we are now on hold until after my interview - hopefully they will make a quick decision. With Rich's job starting August 15th and my last day of work at the theatre on August 26th, we don't have much time to get ourselves moved before our lease ends on August 31st.
When things happen, they sure seem to happen all at once!
~K
We had just about recovered from the shock of Rich's job offer on Monday when we got a wrench thrown in the works. Yesterday I received a request-for-interview letter from Bournemouth University regarding a job application that I had sent them several weeks ago. The job is a researcher position in the Centre for Creative Media Research (http://media.bournemouth.ac.uk/ccmr.html). The excellent thing about this job is in addition to the salary they also will pay tuition for a PhD if so desired. I had sent my application in nice and early and hoped that I might hear from them. Well the closing date came and went. Two weeks went by and no news, so I assumed that I was not on their shortlist. I moved on mentally, not thinking about it anymore and looking for other interesting possibilities. Then on Monday Rich got the London job and our attention was immediately focused on figuring out where we wanted to live, giving notice to our current employers, etc. The letter's arrival on Thursday was a HUGE surprise! The interview is scheduled for August 1 at 1:45. The complication now is that we don't know where we should be looking to find a place to live. If I get the B.U. job, then we need to look southwest of London and we'll both have a 50 minute commute. If I don't get the B.U. job, then we need to be northwest of the city to allow for the easiest possible commuting for Rich. So we are now on hold until after my interview - hopefully they will make a quick decision. With Rich's job starting August 15th and my last day of work at the theatre on August 26th, we don't have much time to get ourselves moved before our lease ends on August 31st.
When things happen, they sure seem to happen all at once!
~K
Thursday, July 21
Survey says...
I participated in a survey about blogging a couple of months ago. It was undertaken by the Nanyang Technological University. They just sent out the results and have also created a blog to display them. If you're interested, go here:
Weblog Ethics Survey Results
-RP-
I participated in a survey about blogging a couple of months ago. It was undertaken by the Nanyang Technological University. They just sent out the results and have also created a blog to display them. If you're interested, go here:
Weblog Ethics Survey Results
-RP-
Tuesday, July 19
It's REAL
OK, I've sort of gotten through the shock of this job landing on me all of a sudden. K and I talked it through yesterday evening. This morning I called the guy back to talk about the start date. I told him I'd be happy to start on the 15th, but understand that they need to have someone asap. Offered to start as early as the 1st or to split the difference and start on the 8th. He said it was better for them admin-wise if I start on the 15th. That way they can "induct" me when they induct the other two who are due to start then. So, it's settled! I'm starting on the 15th. He's sending the contract, salary offer, and terms&conditions today.
This gives us a little less than 4 weeks to get "sorted". I'll keep working at the restaurant until the weekend before I start the London job (though I'm going to wait a bit before telling them I'm leaving... chickenshit). And I'll really buckle down on the dissertation so that I have a rough draft FINISHED before the 15th. Then I can use the last two weeks of August to proofread so it's ready to turn in by September 5th.
We're moving to London! Well, the outskirts of London.
-RP-
OK, I've sort of gotten through the shock of this job landing on me all of a sudden. K and I talked it through yesterday evening. This morning I called the guy back to talk about the start date. I told him I'd be happy to start on the 15th, but understand that they need to have someone asap. Offered to start as early as the 1st or to split the difference and start on the 8th. He said it was better for them admin-wise if I start on the 15th. That way they can "induct" me when they induct the other two who are due to start then. So, it's settled! I'm starting on the 15th. He's sending the contract, salary offer, and terms&conditions today.
This gives us a little less than 4 weeks to get "sorted". I'll keep working at the restaurant until the weekend before I start the London job (though I'm going to wait a bit before telling them I'm leaving... chickenshit). And I'll really buckle down on the dissertation so that I have a rough draft FINISHED before the 15th. Then I can use the last two weeks of August to proofread so it's ready to turn in by September 5th.
We're moving to London! Well, the outskirts of London.
-RP-
Monday, July 18
This is the initial reaction
HOLY CRAP!!!
So, here I am... working away at the Belgian Monk, trying to write my dissertation during my time off, waiting for another viable archiving job-offer to come up, when all of a sudden there's an e-mail from one of the people that interviewed me for the London job. He tells me that one of the people they hired has gotten a job elsewhere and will be leaving in a week... need a replacement as soon as possible... would I like to do it? I have a minor heart attack (not really). Typical, I've "moved on" and then I get the job!
The thing is... I sort of saw this coming. Last week, "L", one of my classmates in the archiving course who got the London job, was offered a job at the archive here in Norwich. We heard about this on Friday when we saw her at "A's" house, another one of my archiving classmates. We talked about the "what if" of them calling me as a replacement and I said that I would first have a nervous breakdown and then accept the job. Walking home that night, K and I talked about the "holy crappedness" of the "what if" and told ourselves, "Nah... there are others they'd call in." But in the back of my mind, I was getting pretty nervous about it.
I know... why get nervous about it, it's a great opportunity, etc.? Well, I'm not a normal human being. I operate under a whole series of strange neuroses and odd codes of conduct. I was nervous/freaked-out because a) I have just started my job at The Belgian Monk and to have to tell them "Sorry, I'm taking a job in London" after only three weeks (and pretty much doing the same thing to them as K did last year) is not going to be a fun experience and I really don't like screwing people over; b) once I get into a "routine" (this one being: work at the BM, write dissertation, apply to other archiving jobs or see what happens with K's applications... yeah... she hasn't told you about that yet) I get a bit nervous about changing it; and c) trying to figure out the logistics of starting a job in London (as far as figuring out a place to stay temporarily, or getting a place that we can completely relocate to, or commuting from Norwich every day until we figure out something else) is daunting if you ask me. But despite all that, I certainly couldn't possibly turn the job-offer down. And I didn't. (I did have the mini nervous breakdown (so to speak), but a tall beer and a shot of whiskey has calmed me down a little.
After getting the e-mail, I forwarded it to K with a caption saying "OH MY F*CKING GOD" (the asterisk wasn't there in the e-mail). She called me back immediately and told me to call that guy immediately. I told her I would rather throw up and then finish doing the dishes, which I lapsed into doing because I didn't know what else to do with myself for a moment. Nonsense! So, I finished doing the dishes anyway (but didn't throw up) and I called the guy. He said that if I wanted the job, they would like me to start as soon as possible, but asked if I needed time to think about it. I told him I'd definitely like to take the job, but the only thing I need to think about is when I could start, that I needed to give notice at my part-time job and sort out a place to stay in London. He asked me to call him back tomorrow. Will do.
Now we just need to figure out how to pull this off and then I need to give notice at the restaurant(I like those guys!).
Still too shocked to think about the positive side to this turn of events...
-RP-
HOLY CRAP!!!
So, here I am... working away at the Belgian Monk, trying to write my dissertation during my time off, waiting for another viable archiving job-offer to come up, when all of a sudden there's an e-mail from one of the people that interviewed me for the London job. He tells me that one of the people they hired has gotten a job elsewhere and will be leaving in a week... need a replacement as soon as possible... would I like to do it? I have a minor heart attack (not really). Typical, I've "moved on" and then I get the job!
The thing is... I sort of saw this coming. Last week, "L", one of my classmates in the archiving course who got the London job, was offered a job at the archive here in Norwich. We heard about this on Friday when we saw her at "A's" house, another one of my archiving classmates. We talked about the "what if" of them calling me as a replacement and I said that I would first have a nervous breakdown and then accept the job. Walking home that night, K and I talked about the "holy crappedness" of the "what if" and told ourselves, "Nah... there are others they'd call in." But in the back of my mind, I was getting pretty nervous about it.
I know... why get nervous about it, it's a great opportunity, etc.? Well, I'm not a normal human being. I operate under a whole series of strange neuroses and odd codes of conduct. I was nervous/freaked-out because a) I have just started my job at The Belgian Monk and to have to tell them "Sorry, I'm taking a job in London" after only three weeks (and pretty much doing the same thing to them as K did last year) is not going to be a fun experience and I really don't like screwing people over; b) once I get into a "routine" (this one being: work at the BM, write dissertation, apply to other archiving jobs or see what happens with K's applications... yeah... she hasn't told you about that yet) I get a bit nervous about changing it; and c) trying to figure out the logistics of starting a job in London (as far as figuring out a place to stay temporarily, or getting a place that we can completely relocate to, or commuting from Norwich every day until we figure out something else) is daunting if you ask me. But despite all that, I certainly couldn't possibly turn the job-offer down. And I didn't. (I did have the mini nervous breakdown (so to speak), but a tall beer and a shot of whiskey has calmed me down a little.
After getting the e-mail, I forwarded it to K with a caption saying "OH MY F*CKING GOD" (the asterisk wasn't there in the e-mail). She called me back immediately and told me to call that guy immediately. I told her I would rather throw up and then finish doing the dishes, which I lapsed into doing because I didn't know what else to do with myself for a moment. Nonsense! So, I finished doing the dishes anyway (but didn't throw up) and I called the guy. He said that if I wanted the job, they would like me to start as soon as possible, but asked if I needed time to think about it. I told him I'd definitely like to take the job, but the only thing I need to think about is when I could start, that I needed to give notice at my part-time job and sort out a place to stay in London. He asked me to call him back tomorrow. Will do.
Now we just need to figure out how to pull this off and then I need to give notice at the restaurant
Still too shocked to think about the positive side to this turn of events...
-RP-
Sunday, July 17
Friday, July 8
Life in the U.K.
I was thinking just the other day that the 10 months we have lived in England have been really eventful. Lots of pop-culture stuff happening here:
The Royal Wedding of Charles and Camilla
A National Election
EU Constitution Consternation
Glastonbury Music Festival
Wimbledon
The Live8 Concert
The G8 Summit in Gleneagles
Tony Blair is President of the EU
and now, sadly,
The London Bombings
For such a small country there seems to be an awful lot of activity. I have to say that I have come to care a lot about England and am starting to think of it as home. Never thought I would feel that way!
~K
I was thinking just the other day that the 10 months we have lived in England have been really eventful. Lots of pop-culture stuff happening here:
The Royal Wedding of Charles and Camilla
A National Election
EU Constitution Consternation
Glastonbury Music Festival
Wimbledon
The Live8 Concert
The G8 Summit in Gleneagles
Tony Blair is President of the EU
and now, sadly,
The London Bombings
For such a small country there seems to be an awful lot of activity. I have to say that I have come to care a lot about England and am starting to think of it as home. Never thought I would feel that way!
~K
Thursday, July 7
ANNOUNCEMENT
We have been unaffected by the terrorist attacks in London today. We were nowhere near London during this time, but a couple of my classmates may very well have been affected in some way. Will give them a call today to find out.
Who did it? That's what everyone is wondering about. The world's infamous terrorist organizations are all clamoring to get credit, but it seems clear to me that it was just some militant French nationalists angered by the IOC giving the 2012 Olympics to London. Well... you can't rule it out, right?
-RP-
---
London Bombings - Full Coverage on Yahoo! News:
"Four blasts rocked the London subway and tore open a packed double-decker bus during the morning rush hour Thursday, sending bloodied victims fleeing after what a shaken Prime Minister Tony Blair called 'barbaric' terrorist attacks. At least 40 people were killed and more than 350 wounded. Two U.S. law enforcement officials said at least 40 people were killed. In London, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Piddick said at least 33 people killed in the subway system alone."
We have been unaffected by the terrorist attacks in London today. We were nowhere near London during this time, but a couple of my classmates may very well have been affected in some way. Will give them a call today to find out.
Who did it? That's what everyone is wondering about. The world's infamous terrorist organizations are all clamoring to get credit, but it seems clear to me that it was just some militant French nationalists angered by the IOC giving the 2012 Olympics to London. Well... you can't rule it out, right?
-RP-
---
London Bombings - Full Coverage on Yahoo! News:
"Four blasts rocked the London subway and tore open a packed double-decker bus during the morning rush hour Thursday, sending bloodied victims fleeing after what a shaken Prime Minister Tony Blair called 'barbaric' terrorist attacks. At least 40 people were killed and more than 350 wounded. Two U.S. law enforcement officials said at least 40 people were killed. In London, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Piddick said at least 33 people killed in the subway system alone."
Tuesday, July 5
British Swear Words
A good, informative article from the BBC about the silly language they speak over here...
The Origins and Common Usage of British Swear-words
A good, informative article from the BBC about the silly language they speak over here...
The Origins and Common Usage of British Swear-words
Monday, July 4
Mussel Man
I can now officially say that I officially have an official part-time job. In fact, two cropped up at the same time, the results of many attempts at "casting the net" and "reeling something in". After coming back with an empty net several times, I suddenly had two: a sporadic job as a "conference porter" (i.e.- factotum) at UEA and a job as a "mussel preparation person" in the mornings at The Belgian Monk
. I decided to go with the mussel job because it was more regular than the other one. However, I did end up saying I would work for a couple of days at a conference at UEA this week. Sort of regret agreeing to that, but oh well.
The Belgian Monk is the place where K worked for two weeks when we first got here, so it's sort of funny that I'm in there now. Should have sprung for that a long time ago. But again... oh well. They have also given me a "kitchen porter" position on Saturdays. So, I'll be working from about 11am to 3pm on Monday - Friday cleaning mussels and a split shift as a kitchen porter on Saturdays, 12pm-5:30pm and 8:00pm to finish (around 11:30pm). "Kitchen porter" means "dishwasher". It's good, mindless work that I can just churn through while my mind flits around with other topics like the dissertation and "the future". And it's £4.95/hr, plus tips. A decent boost to our "household income".
I do, however, feel a wee bit guilty for being an accomplice in the death of thousands upon thousands of small, saltwater mollusks (the mussels and the barnacles attached to them). Murder in the 2nd degree (I think), but damn do they taste good when cooked in cream, geuze, and leeks!
-RP-
I can now officially say that I officially have an official part-time job. In fact, two cropped up at the same time, the results of many attempts at "casting the net" and "reeling something in". After coming back with an empty net several times, I suddenly had two: a sporadic job as a "conference porter" (i.e.- factotum) at UEA and a job as a "mussel preparation person" in the mornings at The Belgian Monk
. I decided to go with the mussel job because it was more regular than the other one. However, I did end up saying I would work for a couple of days at a conference at UEA this week. Sort of regret agreeing to that, but oh well.
The Belgian Monk is the place where K worked for two weeks when we first got here, so it's sort of funny that I'm in there now. Should have sprung for that a long time ago. But again... oh well. They have also given me a "kitchen porter" position on Saturdays. So, I'll be working from about 11am to 3pm on Monday - Friday cleaning mussels and a split shift as a kitchen porter on Saturdays, 12pm-5:30pm and 8:00pm to finish (around 11:30pm). "Kitchen porter" means "dishwasher". It's good, mindless work that I can just churn through while my mind flits around with other topics like the dissertation and "the future". And it's £4.95/hr, plus tips. A decent boost to our "household income".
I do, however, feel a wee bit guilty for being an accomplice in the death of thousands upon thousands of small, saltwater mollusks (the mussels and the barnacles attached to them). Murder in the 2nd degree (I think), but damn do they taste good when cooked in cream, geuze, and leeks!
-RP-
Thursday, June 30
Google is God
Google just keeps impressing me. They have a fantastic search engine (with great touches like Google: Scholar), an amazing free webmail service (Gmail), not to mention all the Google-integrated/sponsored platforms like Blogger for instance.
They've just taken it up another notch. I'm so impressed with this, I'd have to say it is SEVERAL notches up. Google: Earth. Picture a 3D "Mapquest" that starts from outer space. I've already located the individual houses we've lived in and have been "jumping" from one to the other. It looks amazing!
Check to make sure your computer is within the below requirements and if it is, download, install, and run this amazing piece of software.
Google: Earth
Minimum Configuration
---------------------
- Windows 2000, or XP
- Pentium 3, 500Mhz
- 128M RAM
- 400MB disk space
- Network speed: 128Kbits/sec
- 3D-capable video card with 16Mbytes of VRAM
- 1024x768, "16-bit High Color" screen
Recommended Configuration
-------------------------
- Windows XP
- Pentium 4 2.4GHz+ or AMD 2400xp+
- 512M RAM
- 2 GB of free disk space
- Network speed: 768 Kbits/sec or better (DSL/Cable)
- 3D-capable video card with 32 MB of VRAM or greater
- 1280x1024, "32-bit True Color" screen
Google just keeps impressing me. They have a fantastic search engine (with great touches like Google: Scholar), an amazing free webmail service (Gmail), not to mention all the Google-integrated/sponsored platforms like Blogger for instance.
They've just taken it up another notch. I'm so impressed with this, I'd have to say it is SEVERAL notches up. Google: Earth. Picture a 3D "Mapquest" that starts from outer space. I've already located the individual houses we've lived in and have been "jumping" from one to the other. It looks amazing!
Check to make sure your computer is within the below requirements and if it is, download, install, and run this amazing piece of software.
Google: Earth
Minimum Configuration
---------------------
- Windows 2000, or XP
- Pentium 3, 500Mhz
- 128M RAM
- 400MB disk space
- Network speed: 128Kbits/sec
- 3D-capable video card with 16Mbytes of VRAM
- 1024x768, "16-bit High Color" screen
Recommended Configuration
-------------------------
- Windows XP
- Pentium 4 2.4GHz+ or AMD 2400xp+
- 512M RAM
- 2 GB of free disk space
- Network speed: 768 Kbits/sec or better (DSL/Cable)
- 3D-capable video card with 32 MB of VRAM or greater
- 1280x1024, "32-bit True Color" screen
Tuesday, June 28
The Man
[The following is an e-mail and an open letter from Jem Cohen, a documentary filmmaker from the US. It came to me through the Association of Moving Image Archivists list-serve. It's a quite scary and important message about the way the US government is evolving, so I thought I would post it here.]
"Hello. I'm attaching an open letter regarding an incident that took place in January. I was stopped from filming out of a train window and had my film confiscated and turned over to the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the FBI.
I went to the ACLU, and have been assisted by a lawyer at the NYCLU (New York Civil Liberties Union). I wrote a piece about it and included the attached letter in the last issue of Filmmaker Magazine.
Recently, the lawyer called to say that the FBI was returning the film, as it had been cleared by the authorities. When I went to pick it up, I found that the original box and reel had been sent back, but the reel was empty, save for a few inches of film. The matter remains unresolved, and for me, deeply disturbing.
Most of us are inundated with email, and I had mixed feelings about sending yet another mass missive. Please forgive the intrusion. I'm not asking for you to do anything, and that includes write me back. I'm sending this simply because I feel that people should know about such incidents. You are welcome to pass along the attached letter, although I would prefer that my email address not be made entirely public. I would be glad to talk to the press about it, although an editor I spoke to at the New York Times suggested that it might not be of interest to the media because such incidents are becoming too commonplace.
Thank you for having a look.
Sincerely,
Jem Cohen
----------------
An open letter to the film and arts community:
On January 7th, 2005, I was filming from the window of an Amtrak train going from New York to Washington D.C., and my film was confiscated by police, due to supposed national security concerns. At first, I was told by a ticket taker that I couldn't shoot because I was in the 'quiet car,' but when I got ready to move, he said I couldn't shoot at all. I explained that I was a filmmaker who'd done this for years, and politely asked to speak with someone else about it. I stopped filming, waited, and asked again, but no one came. When the train stopped in Philadelphia, at least four uniformed officers entered the car and demanded that I step off the train with the camera. They took my personal information and told me to give them the film from the camera. Not wanting to ruin it, I insisted on rewinding the roll, which I then gave up. Upon arrival in D.C., I was immediately met and questioned by more officials, this time out of uniform. My film has apparently been given to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and then to the F.B.I. As of this writing, I have not been able to get it back. (I took my case to the American Civil Liberties Union, who are working on it).
I'd been shooting in 16mm, using an old, hand-wound Bolex. I was filming the passing landscape as I've often done over the past 15 years. As a filmmaker who does most of my work in a documentary mode and often on the street, my role is to record the world as it is and as it unfolds. I build projects from an archive of footage collected in my daily wanderings, and in travels across this country and overseas. I film buildings and passersby, the sky, streets, and waterways; the structures that make up our cities, life as it is lived. I cannot pre-plan and attempt to obtain permits every time that I shoot; it is an inherently spontaneous act done in response to daily life and unannounced events.
I believe that it is the work and responsibility of artists to create such a record so that we can better understand, and future generations can know, how we lived, what we build, what changes, and what disappears. This has been the work of documentarians and artists including Mathew Brady, Lewis Hine, Walker Evans, Helen Levitt, Gary Winogrand, Robert Frank, and so on. Street shooting is one of the cornerstones of photography itself, and it is facing serious new threats, some declared, many not. In New York, the MTA apparently intends to forbid all unpermitted photography of and from its trains and subways. I have heard about a film location scout in upstate New York being interrogated for hours, even after presenting clear documentation that he was working for a legitimate production company; about documentary crews having their license plates called in and being visited by the FBI; about photojournalists working for the New York Times being stopped from doing the work that they have always done.
As a filmmaker, I am concerned about what this kind of clampdown means both to our livelihood and to the public, historical record. As a citizen, I am concerned about a climate in which a person can be pulled off of a train and have their property confiscated without warning or redress.
I am also, frankly, concerned about terrorism, and genuine threats to our lives and cities. This leads me to ask if these are efficient, intelligent allotments of limited law enforcement resources and personnel. Does stopping us from photographing a bridge make us safer when anybody can search the internet and see countless photographs of the same bridge? Are all of those photographs to be somehow suppressed? Given that anyone can purchase a video recorder with a lens the size of a shirtbutton or any number of hidden camera devices, are the people openly taking pictures such an actual threat? What about all of those cell phones with cameras? As Ben Franklin said: "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Are we even gaining any safety? Given that intimidation and the curtailing of our freedom are exactly what terrorists want, I wonder if these infringements of our civil liberties are not in fact a form of capitulation.
I write this to urge the film and arts communities to keep a record of such incidents and to notify their representatives in Congress and such organizations as the ACLU when they occur. This is also a call to publications, curators, and programmers: I recommend that you make the public aware of what important past work would not exist if these restrictions had been in place.
Lastly, I write this to encourage a more general awareness of the ways in which, under the rubric of an endless "war on terror," we are seeing the denigration of due process, free speech, and the right to privacy, which are crucial safeguards of a free and democratic society.
As printed in Filmmaker Magazine, Spring 2005
Postscript:
I was recently informed by my contact lawyer at the New York Civil Liberties Union office that the FBI was returning my film, as it had been cleared by the authorities. When I got to the office I was relieved to see the original film container. Unfortunately, the reel inside it was empty, save for a few inches of film.
One bit of great news: faced with opposition from the public and the NYCLU, the MTA has backed down from its proposal to ban photography in and of the subways."
[The following is an e-mail and an open letter from Jem Cohen, a documentary filmmaker from the US. It came to me through the Association of Moving Image Archivists list-serve. It's a quite scary and important message about the way the US government is evolving, so I thought I would post it here.]
"Hello. I'm attaching an open letter regarding an incident that took place in January. I was stopped from filming out of a train window and had my film confiscated and turned over to the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the FBI.
I went to the ACLU, and have been assisted by a lawyer at the NYCLU (New York Civil Liberties Union). I wrote a piece about it and included the attached letter in the last issue of Filmmaker Magazine.
Recently, the lawyer called to say that the FBI was returning the film, as it had been cleared by the authorities. When I went to pick it up, I found that the original box and reel had been sent back, but the reel was empty, save for a few inches of film. The matter remains unresolved, and for me, deeply disturbing.
Most of us are inundated with email, and I had mixed feelings about sending yet another mass missive. Please forgive the intrusion. I'm not asking for you to do anything, and that includes write me back. I'm sending this simply because I feel that people should know about such incidents. You are welcome to pass along the attached letter, although I would prefer that my email address not be made entirely public. I would be glad to talk to the press about it, although an editor I spoke to at the New York Times suggested that it might not be of interest to the media because such incidents are becoming too commonplace.
Thank you for having a look.
Sincerely,
Jem Cohen
----------------
An open letter to the film and arts community:
On January 7th, 2005, I was filming from the window of an Amtrak train going from New York to Washington D.C., and my film was confiscated by police, due to supposed national security concerns. At first, I was told by a ticket taker that I couldn't shoot because I was in the 'quiet car,' but when I got ready to move, he said I couldn't shoot at all. I explained that I was a filmmaker who'd done this for years, and politely asked to speak with someone else about it. I stopped filming, waited, and asked again, but no one came. When the train stopped in Philadelphia, at least four uniformed officers entered the car and demanded that I step off the train with the camera. They took my personal information and told me to give them the film from the camera. Not wanting to ruin it, I insisted on rewinding the roll, which I then gave up. Upon arrival in D.C., I was immediately met and questioned by more officials, this time out of uniform. My film has apparently been given to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and then to the F.B.I. As of this writing, I have not been able to get it back. (I took my case to the American Civil Liberties Union, who are working on it).
I'd been shooting in 16mm, using an old, hand-wound Bolex. I was filming the passing landscape as I've often done over the past 15 years. As a filmmaker who does most of my work in a documentary mode and often on the street, my role is to record the world as it is and as it unfolds. I build projects from an archive of footage collected in my daily wanderings, and in travels across this country and overseas. I film buildings and passersby, the sky, streets, and waterways; the structures that make up our cities, life as it is lived. I cannot pre-plan and attempt to obtain permits every time that I shoot; it is an inherently spontaneous act done in response to daily life and unannounced events.
I believe that it is the work and responsibility of artists to create such a record so that we can better understand, and future generations can know, how we lived, what we build, what changes, and what disappears. This has been the work of documentarians and artists including Mathew Brady, Lewis Hine, Walker Evans, Helen Levitt, Gary Winogrand, Robert Frank, and so on. Street shooting is one of the cornerstones of photography itself, and it is facing serious new threats, some declared, many not. In New York, the MTA apparently intends to forbid all unpermitted photography of and from its trains and subways. I have heard about a film location scout in upstate New York being interrogated for hours, even after presenting clear documentation that he was working for a legitimate production company; about documentary crews having their license plates called in and being visited by the FBI; about photojournalists working for the New York Times being stopped from doing the work that they have always done.
As a filmmaker, I am concerned about what this kind of clampdown means both to our livelihood and to the public, historical record. As a citizen, I am concerned about a climate in which a person can be pulled off of a train and have their property confiscated without warning or redress.
I am also, frankly, concerned about terrorism, and genuine threats to our lives and cities. This leads me to ask if these are efficient, intelligent allotments of limited law enforcement resources and personnel. Does stopping us from photographing a bridge make us safer when anybody can search the internet and see countless photographs of the same bridge? Are all of those photographs to be somehow suppressed? Given that anyone can purchase a video recorder with a lens the size of a shirtbutton or any number of hidden camera devices, are the people openly taking pictures such an actual threat? What about all of those cell phones with cameras? As Ben Franklin said: "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Are we even gaining any safety? Given that intimidation and the curtailing of our freedom are exactly what terrorists want, I wonder if these infringements of our civil liberties are not in fact a form of capitulation.
I write this to urge the film and arts communities to keep a record of such incidents and to notify their representatives in Congress and such organizations as the ACLU when they occur. This is also a call to publications, curators, and programmers: I recommend that you make the public aware of what important past work would not exist if these restrictions had been in place.
Lastly, I write this to encourage a more general awareness of the ways in which, under the rubric of an endless "war on terror," we are seeing the denigration of due process, free speech, and the right to privacy, which are crucial safeguards of a free and democratic society.
As printed in Filmmaker Magazine, Spring 2005
Postscript:
I was recently informed by my contact lawyer at the New York Civil Liberties Union office that the FBI was returning my film, as it had been cleared by the authorities. When I got to the office I was relieved to see the original film container. Unfortunately, the reel inside it was empty, save for a few inches of film.
One bit of great news: faced with opposition from the public and the NYCLU, the MTA has backed down from its proposal to ban photography in and of the subways."
Friday, June 24
Unsuccessful
I guess 13 really is an unlucky number. In this case, it "wrecked" both interviews. I found out on Wednesday (via e-mail) that I was not successful with my application at the place in Nottingham and found out yesterday (via snail mail) that I was not successful at the one in London either. It's a little disappointing, but I had tried to pretty much prepare for this outcome. I wasn't surprised that I didn't get the Nottingham one. However, I must admit that the outcome of the other one was a bit surprising. The positive side of this is that now I have no excuse not to churn out my dissertation (whereas I would have been working on weekends and on train rides if I had either of these jobs).
One of my other classmates was interviewed in Nottingham, but was also unsuccessful. Found out today, though, that she got one of the positions in London starting in two weeks. I also know one of my other classmates did not get the London job, but there are still two more I need to find out about. See how they did.
The job in Nottingham went to a guy who was already familiar with the material needing to be catalogued because he had worked for ITV (the company that produced it and owns it). I spoke to the head of the archive today and he said that I did really well in the interview and that they were impressed by the preparation and thought I had put into the project. He said that if the ITV guy had not performed well in the interview, it probably would have gone to me. So, that's definitely good feedback and I certainly can't fault them for going with the person that they did. It would be stupid of them not to.
Anyway, that's that. Sort of a relief to have those out of the way, though it would have been nice to land one of the gigs. For now, I'll be working on my dissertation and hopefully doing some part-time job somewhere. Before I know it, other job opportunities will spring up!
-RP-
I guess 13 really is an unlucky number. In this case, it "wrecked" both interviews. I found out on Wednesday (via e-mail) that I was not successful with my application at the place in Nottingham and found out yesterday (via snail mail) that I was not successful at the one in London either. It's a little disappointing, but I had tried to pretty much prepare for this outcome. I wasn't surprised that I didn't get the Nottingham one. However, I must admit that the outcome of the other one was a bit surprising. The positive side of this is that now I have no excuse not to churn out my dissertation (whereas I would have been working on weekends and on train rides if I had either of these jobs).
One of my other classmates was interviewed in Nottingham, but was also unsuccessful. Found out today, though, that she got one of the positions in London starting in two weeks. I also know one of my other classmates did not get the London job, but there are still two more I need to find out about. See how they did.
The job in Nottingham went to a guy who was already familiar with the material needing to be catalogued because he had worked for ITV (the company that produced it and owns it). I spoke to the head of the archive today and he said that I did really well in the interview and that they were impressed by the preparation and thought I had put into the project. He said that if the ITV guy had not performed well in the interview, it probably would have gone to me. So, that's definitely good feedback and I certainly can't fault them for going with the person that they did. It would be stupid of them not to.
Anyway, that's that. Sort of a relief to have those out of the way, though it would have been nice to land one of the gigs. For now, I'll be working on my dissertation and hopefully doing some part-time job somewhere. Before I know it, other job opportunities will spring up!
-RP-
Tuesday, June 21
Interview #2
It sure is nice to have my two big interviews over and done with. Now the only thing looming over me (as far as job possibilities in the archiving field) is eventually finding out whether or not I got the job. This interview was a little more challenging than the other one because their questions were less direct, which meant I had to do a lot more freestyle rambling. Rambling is something I can do, but not necessarily coherently or impressively. I had prepared a plan for how to go about the project last night and when they asked me how I would proceed if I were doing it, I whipped out this two-page three-phase plan. I think they were at least a little impressed by the initiative and they seemed to agree with the proposal, so... we'll see! Right now I have absolutely no idea what my chances are because I don't know how I really did and how everyone else fared.
This job is a little more enticing than the other one, even though it's not in London. They would both be great experience, but this one allows you to pave your own road. You'd essentially be in charge of the project, so as far as career development goes, this one would be a bigger step forward than the other one. But I'd gladly do either! Also, though the pay is the same in both jobs, the money would go a lot farther in Nottingham, so that's also something to consider. But, hey, right now I don't have an offer from either place - I might as well can it. Should find out about both by the end of this week, though.
-RP-
It sure is nice to have my two big interviews over and done with. Now the only thing looming over me (as far as job possibilities in the archiving field) is eventually finding out whether or not I got the job. This interview was a little more challenging than the other one because their questions were less direct, which meant I had to do a lot more freestyle rambling. Rambling is something I can do, but not necessarily coherently or impressively. I had prepared a plan for how to go about the project last night and when they asked me how I would proceed if I were doing it, I whipped out this two-page three-phase plan. I think they were at least a little impressed by the initiative and they seemed to agree with the proposal, so... we'll see! Right now I have absolutely no idea what my chances are because I don't know how I really did and how everyone else fared.
This job is a little more enticing than the other one, even though it's not in London. They would both be great experience, but this one allows you to pave your own road. You'd essentially be in charge of the project, so as far as career development goes, this one would be a bigger step forward than the other one. But I'd gladly do either! Also, though the pay is the same in both jobs, the money would go a lot farther in Nottingham, so that's also something to consider. But, hey, right now I don't have an offer from either place - I might as well can it. Should find out about both by the end of this week, though.
-RP-
Monday, June 20
Extreme weather ushers in British summer:
"THE British weather created its own North-South divide yesterday as southern England basked in the hottest June day since 1976 and Scotland and the North were hit by storms and floods.
Londoners endured a stifling 33.1C (91.6F), and the highest temperature was recorded at Wyton, Cambridgeshire, which registered 33.7C (92.7F)."
---
Hoping and praying that it will cool down for tomorrow. PLEASE!
-RP-
"THE British weather created its own North-South divide yesterday as southern England basked in the hottest June day since 1976 and Scotland and the North were hit by storms and floods.
Londoners endured a stifling 33.1C (91.6F), and the highest temperature was recorded at Wyton, Cambridgeshire, which registered 33.7C (92.7F)."
---
Hoping and praying that it will cool down for tomorrow. PLEASE!
-RP-
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