Planes, Trains & Automobiles

Or more aptly… Automobiles, Light-Rails, Shuttles, Planes, & Buses.

Our journey from Baker City to London has been undertaken with an array of vehicles and has taken us over two days to complete. We drove for about 5 hours from Baker City to Portland on Friday. Checked into our Super 8 Motel near the airport and then returned our rental car to Thrifty down the block, after which we hopped back on the shuttle so we could take the Portland MAX light-rail from the airport to go into town to meet K’s sister for dinner. It was too short a visit, but we had a nice time and had some fantastic Thai food at Typhoon (highly recommended!), but back to the travel story. We took MAX back to the airport and waited for a Super 8 shuttle that never arrived. So we got on the Thrifty shuttle under false pretenses, then we walked from Thrifty to our motel to try to get about 5 hours of sleep.

Next “day”, we got up at 4am (West coast time) and took a 5 o’clock shuttle to the airport. Then it was a two-engine prop plane to SeaTac airport (Seattle-Tacoma) followed by a 30-second tram ride to another terminal where we boarded a “big plane” to Boston (a 5-hour journey). When we arrived in Boston, we disembarked in a domestic terminal which had no direct connection to the international terminal, so we had to exit and take a Logan airport shuttle. After sitting around for a few hours (and having piss-poor salads at Houlihan’s), we boarded the flight to London. A fairly smooth flight with a few hair-raising encounters with abrupt turbulence over London. We arrived near terminal 4 and were herded into shuttle buses to take us to the gate...

...but it seems as soon as we got to England, things went to shit.

There was a little over an hour to catch our National Express coach to Bournemouth, we just needed to get our luggage. We waited for an hour, watching the conveyor belts extrude bags painfully slowly in a piece-meal fashion. Ours never arrived – most probably due to negligence since it was all four bags missing and I know they made it to Boston because I happened to glance out the window and see a couple of them coming out on the conveyor. So we had to go through the rigmarole of reporting our missing bags, during which we missed our coach to Bournemouth. We tried for it anyway, just in case the coach was late, but forgot that we had to take a subway train to the main terminal where the bus station is and then walk about a mile in underground passageways before reaching our destination. The bus had long gone, so we had our ticket changed to another bus leaving an hour later.

It was a tough two hours on that bus, spent wishing that time would speed up just for a little while. I kept nodding off and then get startled awake everytime the bus hit a bump and thinking I was in an airplane that just landed on the runway. But we're home now. A couple of our plants on the balcony are dead. It must not have rained at all while we were gone. Oh, and there's a 6-7 foot massive fissure in one of our bedroom walls. Was there an earthquake while we were gone? Surely not in Bournemouth!

We watered everything and opened some windows to air the place out and then headed to the supermarket to get some basic provisions (plus bathroom essentials for K, since everything was in the suitcases). Now we've taken showers with our ridiculous water pressure and are looking for things to keep us busy and awake until it's at least dark.

The lukewarm welcome from England aside, the weather is absolutely gorgeous today! Just perfect!

PCA/ACA Conference 2007

Organizer: Popular Culture Association & American Culture Association
Location: Copley Marriott, Boston, MA
Date: April 4 - 7, 2007

Panels attended:

030 Film Adaptation II: Pop Cultural/Film Adaptation, April 4, 2:30-4:00pm
-Wes Anderson vs. JD Salinger in Film Adaptation
-The Coen Brothers
-The Da Vinci Code: Novel into Film: New Popular Gospel
-Twenty Pages Left and Can't Wait: The Young Adult Novel as Adaptation

087 Conspiracy Theories & Claims for the Paranormal I: Representations of the Paranormal & the Pseudoscience, April 5, 8:00-9:30am
-The Trappings of Science: CSI and Ghost Hunters
-Stranger than Fiction: Photographic Representations of Haunted Houses
-An Anarchist's Miracle: The Anti-Empirical Aesthetics of Conspiracies and the Paranormal

214 Professional Placement II: Thou Shalt NOT - Tips on Successful Presentations, April 5, 12:30-2:00pm
-Presentations & Panel discussion

324 Film & History IV: USA - Contemporary Perspectives, April 5, 6:30-8:00pm
-ABC's Path to 9/11 and the American Monomyth
-Cellular Phones and the New Narrative Immediacy

443 Libraries, Archives, & Popular Culture Research I: Popular Images of Libraries & Librarians, April 6, 10:00-11:30pm
-Hipster Librarians: The Changing Portrayal of Librarians in Popular Culture
-Hidden & Forbidden: Fear and Trembling in the Archives
-Demise and Salvation in a Culture of Fear: An Analysis of the Role of the Library in the Motion Picture Se7en

489 Libraries, Archives, & Popular Culture Research II: Wikipedia & YouTube, April 6, 12:30-2:00pm
-Reference Librarians and Wikipedia
-Wikipedia: The Collective Wisdom of Individual Ignorance
-Is YouTube an Archive, Library, Both, Or None of the Above? (my presentation)
-Internet Memes, YouTube, and Guerilla Library Video

620 Journalism & Media Culture I, April 6, 6:30-8:00pm
-Deconstructing "Post-9/11" Television Drama: The Evolution of Meaning (K's presentation)
-Breaking News: A Comparison of the Television Coverage of the Kennedy Assassination and 9/11 Terrorist Attacks
-Scandal, Then and Now: 18th-Century Britain and 21st-Century America
-Beyond Infotainment: From South Park to Citizenship in the Age of Pop Politics

635 Medieval Popular Culture IV: Special Session: Sword Fighting, April 6, 8:15-9:45pm
-"More Pursuit than study...": Fencing Masters and The Princess Bride
-Viking-Age Combat: Contrasting Hollywood with Historical Techniques

678 Libraries, Archives, & Popular Culture Research III: Community & Aesthetics, April 7, 8:00-9:30am
-The Mysterious Books: Books as Objects of Obsessions & Passion @ Your Library
-The Archivist and Connoisseurship
-The Library as "Third Place" in Academe: Fulfilling a Need for Community in the Digital Age
-Archiving the Collection: The Aesthetics of Space and Public Cultural Collections in the Photography of Candida Hoefer

690 The World Wars in Popular Culture IV: Iconic Images of World War II Revisited, April 7, 10:00-11:30am
-Negroes' Number-One Hero: Doris Miller and Pearl Harbor in American Cultural Memory
-Wonder Women Fetishes and Fantasies: The Image of the Patriotic Female during World War II
-Post-Vietnam Influence on Re-Telling the Experiences of the "Good War"
-On the Front Li(n)es: The World War II Disney Propaganda Cartoons from a Post-9/11 Perspective

699 Eros, Pornography, & Popular Culture II, April 7, 10:00-11:30am
-Gestures, Forms, and Shadows of Sex: Pornography as Myth
-The Rhetoric of Self in Porn Queen Narratives
-Porn Star(ter): Sex, Sympathy, and Success in Jenna Jameson's E! True Hollywood Story
-Do You Wish to Direct Me?: Lynda Benglis' Video Art

738 Ecology & Culture III, April 7, 12:30-2:00pm
-Radiation as a Cultural Talisman in Cold War Popular Culture
-Giving Voice to the Voiceless: A Journalist Writes Environmental Novels
-The PushMePullYou Effect: Attraction and Fear of Wild Animals in U.S. Culture
-Saving the Boys: Ernest Thompson Seton's Wild Animal Stories

756 Science Fiction & Fantasy XXV: Doctor Who III: Just Who IS This Guy, Anyway? Part II, April 7, 12:30-2:00pm
-Changing Tracks Without Derailing: The Difficulties Associated with Regenerating the Doctor
-Bringing the Doctor into the Human Race: Doctor Who's Ambiguous Hero

Comments:
All in all, it was a great conference. We had a fantastic time. Good ol' nerdy fun. This was the first academic conference I've ever been to and my first presentation. From what we heard from everyone, the ACA/PCA conference is the most fun, laid-back academic conference. Many of the others tend to be a bit dry, stuffy and challenging (if you're presenting). And this one is so huge with so many different subject areas and panels. Both of us had successful presentations and a really good experience so we will definitely submit papers for next years conference which takes place in San Francisco. Plus, there's a Paper Sales table at the Book Exhibit Room where they sell copies of some of the papers presented for a $1 a piece. Any presenter who feels compelled, can donate 25 copies to the table. The proceeds go towards the Endowment fund to help people travel to the conference. The last time I checked, there were only 4 copies left of the 25 I donated, so that's cool.

And another finished!

Now we're both done with the business portion of this trip! K delivered her presentation a couple of hours ago, the first one in a panel of 4 presenters. She definitely had the best presentation. The most polished and learned presentation. She delivered it calmy and perfectly within the 20-minute time-slot. The audience and other panelists were tuned right in, nodding and taking notes. At the end, a woman came up to her to ask if she would email the presentation to her. She said that K's presentation really showed her what could be done with linguistic content analysis. Turns out she's a rep for the academic publications section of a substantial book publisher. Um... so that's pretty interesting!

After K's panel was done, I dragged her to a "Special Session" about Medieval combat fighting styles, in particular, Viking fighting styles. There were people dressed in armor and carrying swords. It was a big-time "anorak" session, but entertaining (to me anyway).

So, tomorrow is just cake for us. We're going to go to a couple of panels and then we'll take a trip out to Allston to see the neighborhood I lived in during my junior and senior year at BU. Will probably have dinner or late lunch out there, then head back to our hotel to pack.

It's such a relief to be done with the presentations and it was definitely worth the work. We've had a really nerdy-good time. It's been great to be in Boston again. Such a great city!

The Trip to Boston... so far...

Despite my assertion to the contrary ("not in this day and age") K discovered last night that there was indeed an nonsecure WIFI access point in our range here at the hotel. Not sure where it is but they haven't even changed the name of the AP from the factory setting "linksys", forget putting a WEP encryption on it. In laymans terms, we can access the internet for free from our hotel room any time we want. Good signal strength, too. So... our trip so far:

The bus ride to Heathrow and flight over the Atlantic were quite smooth and uneventful. We arrived early. This time I got through without a massive fine, but we did get questioned a bit sternly, particularly about the length of time we had been away and how long it had been since we had actually lived in the US. Having now gotten hastled about that in Miami and Boston, it's quite clear that they are cracking down on this. If it wasn't for the fact that I had applied for a travel document, we might have gotten in trouble again. The agent didn't back off until I showed him the document that proves I have applied for the permit.

When we got outside with our luggage, we were hit by the bracing, cold Boston weather. The England we left behind is actually warmer. I had to buy a sweater to wear under my coat. It even snowed today.

We registered for the conference this morning then went for a stroll around the area. Had a scrumptious lunch at Legal Sea Foods, a bit pricey but worth every penny. Had two pints of really tasty Harpoon ales (IPA and Old Salty Dog). We were absolutely stuffed when we walked out!

Then we went to one of the conference presentations, one about film adaptations. It was not very exciting, but it certainly alleviated a lot of our nervousness about our own presentations. It was a big room with lots of chairs and a handful of people. The 6 panelists were all sitting behind a long table at one end of the room. Every single one of them just read their paper. No Powerpoint slides or even film clips. And here we are building these thought-out presentations with the main goal of capturing their interest, entertaining them, and communicating the concepts in our papers. We're going to some more panels tomorrow, so it will be interesting to see if everyone just reads out loud. Either way, I don't think it will be too bad of an experience.

After the somewhat boring panel, K and I took the "T" (the subway) over to Boston University. It was snowing/raining by this point. Luckily, the conference organisers gave everyone a free umbrella when they checked in. These came quite in handy. I gave K a damp squib of a tour of the main campus during which we got quite soaked. Not the best way to see the campus but it was nice to see it again. Hasn't change that much since 1998.

At 6 o'clock, we met up with the lighting professor that I had contacted a couple of years ago when I was applying to U. of Exeter and U. of East Anglia. He wrote a great recommendation for me that time, even though he didn't know me that well. Since we're in town, we thought we'd go take him out to dinner, so we arranged to meet up after his day's classes. He actually recognized me, which was quite impressive since I had long hair back then. Anyway, we had a nice dinner at Noodle Street (a Pan-Asian noodle restaurant). Unfortunately, he didn't let us pay and was able to grab the bill before we had a chance. It was a nice evening.

Stopped by the BU store on the way back to buy a new t-shirt since my old BU shirt has fallen to shreds. Now we're cozy in our hotel room watching good ol' American television, sheltered from the freezing rain. Bed time... feeling the jet lag!

Going'a Prezen'in

The day is upon us. In a little over two hours, we will board a bus to Heathrow where we will then board an airplane to Boston, MA. Then we have two and a half days of kicking around town, going to other conference panels, and generally fretting about our presentations that we have to do on Friday. When that's done, we have one last worry-free day in the city before getting back on a plane to fly to Oregon for a bit. It's a welcome break from my job and K's PhD (apart from the conference presentation part).

Moving Week (again)

So, for the 8th time since December 31st, 2002, we will be moving to another apartment. This is also the first time since 2003, that we are moving within less than a year from our previous move. This one wasn't our decision, though! At least we're staying in the same building, so the only thing we need to change in our address is that flat number. We have to get rid of some of our furniture because the new flat is furnished, which we don't mind because it saves us having to do that when/if we move back to the US (as long as we get to stay in this new apartment until then). We're pretty much looking forward to moving to the top floor: nice view, warmer (heat rises), no mold (hopefully), and more amenities in the kitchen (like a dishwasher). I'm going to miss our squirrels, though. This move is proving to be a bit of a financial strain. The deposit is equivalent to 6 weeks rent and the first month's rent amounts to a total of about £1928 (excluding the £300 we've already paid for estate agent fees). We weren't quite prepared for this expense, so we had to empty our savings account and will have to run on "fumes" until payday at the end of the month. Fortunately, our current landlady, perhaps to assuage any guilt that she is feeling, has told us she will come by on Friday with a cash payment of our deposit plus a refund of the remainder of the rent paid through March 7th. This should put us back on track.

Aside from that, K is getting back to working on her PhD and I'm starting to get a bit stressed about the paper I have to write for the Boston conference which is a little over a month away. A lot of work to do there and I'm getting a bit frustrated because I basically only have the weekends to work on it and that means I don't get much of a weekend. In the end, it will be worth it because it means I got my airfare to Boston paid for. It's hard to focus on that positive at the moment, though.

Anyway, I thought it'd be interesting to list the moves we've undergone during the past 7-8 years:

-December 29th-31st, 1999 - Ft. Lauderdale, FL to Los Angeles, CA
-December 31st, 2002 - Los Angeles, CA to Scottsdale, AZ
-July 7th, 2003 - Scottsdale, AZ to Aurora (Portland), OR
-August 30th, 2003 - Aurora, OR to Brussels, Belgium
-August 29th, 2004 - Brussels, Belgium to Norwich, UK
-August 24th, 2005 - Norwich, UK to Winchester, UK
-July 8th, 2006 - Winchester, UK to Flat 3 Kingsgate, Bournemouth, UK
-[Impending] February 23rd, 2007 - Flat 3 Kingsgate to Flat 16 Kingsgate

We're not on the run from the law. And we're not necessarily "rootless". We have roots, but like potted plants, they travel with us. I often wonder if our wanderlust is genetic. After all, I am descended from the Vikings and K is descended from the Oregon Trail Pioneers.

However, these past years of moving have ignited the desire to settle, which is what our current trajectory is all about. With any luck, our next-next move will be a step toward that goal. A step toward pulling our roots out of the pot and transplanting them into fertile soil somewhere. Not sure where we will end up, but it will not likely be English soil.