Day 36: What the Heck

Well, this happened.

Yay! 151st place!

Today was one freaking weird day, and I mean that in the best way possible.

I'd left a window and curtains open last night because it was kind of stuffy, so I ended up grumpily rising with the sun at a bit after four. I went and met Sir Charlie at Pembroke a little before eight, and he commandeered a spanner from the porters in an attempt to lower the seat on his spare bike.

Let me say now that Sir Charlie isn't much shorter than Sir Andy, who I recently discovered is over a foot taller than yours truly.

Needless to say, Sir Charlie's efforts were in vain. Appreciated, but in vain. The top tube came up to about my waist, and we stood there for a moment, wondering how we were going to make this work.

"It's alright," I said to Sir Charlie, who looked from his bike to me and back again with increasing bewilderment, "I'll figure it out."

I rue the day.

It took me approximately two false starts to mount up and wobble away, down the left side of the cobblestone street with only the vaguest recollection of bike-riding to guide me. Every junction was an exercise in a flying dismount and painful re-mount, and every downward stroke a calf workout, the tips of my toes clinging to the pedal.

Somehow, we made it to Milton in one sweaty (on my part) piece, and we did a bit of warming up together, taking the first loop of the course at an easy jog as Sir Charlie indicated bridges and "twisty" turns that would be "slippy" because of the recent rain. We did our own pre-race drills, striding and leaping about like idiots across fields where there grew actual green grass. The weather was wonderful--about the mid-sixties--as we lined up at the start. I bid farewell to Sir Charlie, who elbowed his pointy way to the front, and then we were off.

It was a pretty crowded start, what with no seeding and no waves, just one huge mass of brightly-clothed humanity blasting off from an invisible line. I said to myself that I'd be glad with a sub-8:30 average, given my complete and utter lack of speed training since my last half, but I found myself clocking around 7:30 for the first mile, and all my pre-race "Please don't take this race seriously" and "Please treat this as a tempo workout" demands flew straight out the window.

Sir Charlie hadn't been lying when he'd said the course was "twisty." The longest straightaway we had probably wasn't much longer than two hundred or three hundred meters, and there were some odd right-corners over bridges and the like that again made me very glad I had my trail shoes on.

But the trees were green and the grass was green, and there was water in the creek.

I was thoroughly hating myself for agreeing to actually race a race by about the two-mile mark, but with my marathoner mentality, blasted myself for being such a wimp. How much longer could one mile be?

The freakishly rocky stretch to the finish threw all plans for a quick sprint clear out the window, and I settled for creaking by without falling flat on my face.

Sir Charlie was waiting for me at the finish, and it turns out he'd beaten me by something like three minutes, even though he's something like three times as old as I am. I'm still trying very hard not to be embarrassed about this.

Anyhow.

He introduced me to a few of his friends from his running club, and I've apparently now been invited out to practice with them.

What the heck.

But no, the story doesn't end here.

You see, we had to bike back to Pembroke.

I honestly believe I would have been at least a minute faster if I hadn't biked to Milton in the first place.

With no small amount of resignation, I climbed onto a bench and leapt onto Sir Charlie's bike, following him out the back of the park to the Cam. What followed was, hands down, the most painful forty-minute bike ride of my life. Not only were my legs too short for the pedals, but my general lack of length in the torso also meant I was bent nearly double to reach the handlebars. As a result, I found myself perched on the very pointy pointy end of the bike seat.

You can probably see where I'm going with this.

By the time we arrived back at Pembroke, my lady parts had passed beyond "why are we biking on a gravel path" to "flaming, flaming, ow. ow." to "life has no meaning," winding up somewhere between "euthanized" and "ground beef." Sir Charlie was a combination of bemused and exasperated, I think, when I conducted the last of many flying dismounts before him and declared I would not be able to walk straight for a week.

"See you Tuesday night?" he said.

"Mmrbflgh," I replied, stalking off back to King's and a hot shower.

Day 35: What Am I Doing

Well. I was just rudely awakened by the crashing opening bars of Elgar's Cello Concerto. If you've ever had trouble waking up in the mornings, I advise you to set the first fifteen seconds of the first movement as your alarm tone. You'll wake up imagining the world has already ended, and it's your first day in purgatory where all you will do is listen to horrifically depressing music whilst pondering the meaning of existence in a stuffy, windowless room.

Oh wait.


Never mind.

We had a wild football game last night over at the Pembroke Sports Ground. It had rained for much of the afternoon, leaving the grass slick and wet underfoot, and since we're all international students just squeaking by under the fifty-pound weight limit on our luggage, only about two of us had brought cleats. I was lucky enough to have my trail shoes, which have lugs about as deep as cleats, but even then, playing was like skating around on green ice, and there were Charlie Browns aplenty.

We actually met up with a cadre of English teachers from Japan who formed a team of their own against our side, a bunch of PKP kids largely from Egypt (with yours truly being the sole exception), so we were able to have a full-on, eleven-a-side football game, which was quite exciting although I literally did not understand a word of what was being shouted by either side.

I spent the second half in-goal, which was both somewhat nostalgia-inducing and fairly painful. I haven't practiced my dives in, oh, about a decade. Lovely.

This morning, I went for a jog with Sirs Andy and Charlie down to Grantchester (this will be the last time I write this sentence. Promise.) so a couple of girls could have a look around the Orchard. Tomorrow, I'll be cycling with Sir Charlie to Milton for their weekly parkrun, which should be interesting.

Interesting?

Let me rephrase that.

At eight o'clock tomorrow morning, I'll be meeting a kindly Scottish man with whom I've spent a grand total of perhaps ten minutes in conversation at the Pembroke plodge, cycling with him on his spare bike half an hour north to Milton, where I will participate in a trail race around several lakes and likely generally make a fool of myself.

Interesting.

Yes.

I certainly don't have two papers due next week.

Days 33 & 34

I spent a good ten minutes after the game last night chasing a moth out of my room using a combination of the internal frame of my hiking backpack and a balled-up pair of socks. I deserve a Golden Glove.

Anyhow.

Sir Andy brought his friend Sir Charlie along on our rainy run this morning. Sir Charlie is also teaching courses for PKP, so it was a little odd to be on first-name terms with an actual, proper lecturer. Apparently, that's how things work around here.

I can't complain.

We've been covering Bernard Williams's Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy in class, and with every lecture and every seminar, I can feel the mercury in my relative IQ thermometer slowly sinking because this dude was ridiculous. Just plain ridiculous.

As a result, we, in seminar today, spent approximately twenty minutes discussing the descriptive and evaluative components of the thick ethical concept of sluttiness. I kid you not.

Our term paper (thankfully, not on Williams) is due next week, and drafting is going slowly.

Clearly.

Day 32: Footy

I went for a bit of climbing yesterday after giving in and going to see Star Trek at the ridiculously posh theater in the Grafton.

Today, I had my midterm for that philosophy class I alternately love and loathe.

Apparently, staples haven't been invented yet, so we were each handed this red stringie-thingie to hold our papers together.

And then I went to watch some football.

Although Aston Villa was recently relegated after an absolutely crap season, it was still very clear that they had, not so long ago, been in the Premier League. In other words, the U's had their nice British fannies handed to them on a platter three-nil.

Of course, I hadn't decided to go because I thought it would be a good game. I don't follow professional football; I just play. Watching all the dramatics on the field can tend to a farce.

But it was fun sitting in the crowd and listening to all these really blokey blokes shout obscenities around their drinks and meat pies (dear God, so many meat pies).

At the half, I went with Sir Andy to stand in the terrace where all the crazy people stand (you've got to be a few fries short of a Happy Meal if you pay actual money to stand for two hours in the prime location for the advent of Ball Meets Face). We (luckily?) found a spot right on the bottom level so I wouldn't have to peer around rather pissed (American translation: drunk) six-foot-tall blokey blokes rhythmically chanting "YOU DON' KNOW WOT YOH DOIN'!" at the refs for every penalty the U's were denied.

Clearly, Abbey Stadium is on the rather less posh side of Reality Checkpoint.

It was all good fun. Very good fun.

Featured: Sir Andy's photography skills
Not Featured: Sir Andy

Day 30: Cricketing

I quite literally pulled a fast one this morning and wrote my supervision paper in only about four or five hours. 

As it is the long weekend between terms, a good part of PKP is gone, having fled to the four corners of Europe (and beyond). I'd originally planned a trip to Snowdonia this weekend, but I was in danger of drowning in my classes and, honestly, the past two weekends have been wild enough, so I pushed everything back.

It was a good decision.

The weather has been brilliant the past few days--no rain, minimal clouds, just warm and humid enough for shorts and flip-flops.

And so it was off to (learn how to) play cricket.

This really just ended up being bonding time with Sir Andy, the poor, long-suffering man, as I struggled to persuade him that my decade-old baseball skills transferred to cricket. Both involve bats and hitting round things. Close enough. After we'd bowled to our hearts' content, we wandered over to the archery range to watch a bit of shooting, and I laid back in the grass and just watched the clouds drift lazily by.

There was so much contentment.

Day 29: Musing

I like it here.

I really do.

I've been here about a month, which I think is about enough opportunity for routine to snatch away the glamour of a new place, so I feel a bit better about making that judgement.

Looking up at Great St. Mary's the other day on my way to Sainsbury's, I'd never before felt like such a stranger in a strange land, but instead of having this perturb me as, I will admit, it had upon my arrival, I felt myself metaphorically snuggle down deeper into the folds of an unfamiliar ocean.

Most of it, I think, has to do with nothing more than a change in scenery.

I like it at UCLA.

I really do.

I'd been there for three years straight, never leaving Westwood for more than a couple of weeks on break, and I was so familiar with the campus, the "culture," the shortcuts that, by the end of the last school year, I was thoroughly sick of it. It's Southern California, where everybody is more or less laid back and more or less more interested in partying it up, having fun, and just making the grade than, you know, well, understanding the things we're supposed to be learning.

A lot happened at the end of last year, and I remember sitting alone in my empty apartment wondering what had possessed me to believe I could last another five years in graduate school. I was sick of school in its entirety, both being at school and doing school things--going to class, to lab, complaining about going to class and lab, etc. etc. ad nauseam.

Here, life is slower when I'm not sprinting across Parker's Piece to catch the 05:35 coach to London. But even when I am rushing to make the next train or bus or deadline, I don't feel the weight of responsibility and expectation nearly as much as I did in LA. Nobody here knows who I am or where I'm from, so I get to be anybody I want.

Perhaps surprisingly, I am almost exactly the same person I was back at UCLA, save the morning lie-ins on my off days and a thorough hatred of paper-writing.

I feel safe here.

Ensconced in my large, corner room on the fourth floor of a centuries-old building that was once home to Alan Freaking Turing, I listen to the punters chatter by on the Cam below as the evening breeze silently explodes the curtains into my face. There is something old and knowing about the dust in the corners and the curious little bugs that take up residence on my ceiling light, something restful.

It still doesn't feel real.
 

Day 28: Going for the Punt

Well, I'm done with my Module One class.

That's all I'm going to say about that.

I spent the afternoon pounding out the rest of my topic synopsis for BruinMUN, alternating between typing furiously about the situation in the DPRK and screaming in horror at the sheer number of beheadings and throat-slittings and stabbings in the second cycle of The Hollow Crown. Holy toodlelikins. Benedict Cumberbatch is terrifying in this.

Auuuuuggh.

And then it was off.

To punting.

We collected St. Nick from the plodge and were off on our merry way.

Hello there, St. Nick.

 It was brilliant weather for punting--clear and cool, but not cold.

The poor geese bobbled about as I prodded them (unintentionally) with the exorbitantly long punting pole.

All said, it was a wonderful evening.

Day 27

I went for a long run this morning out along the river through thickets and thickets of flies.

Predictably, I got lost. I feel like it's not even worth mentioning anymore at this point.

"How hard can it be to follow a freaking river?" you ask.

Oh, my friend. 

It can be very difficult indeed if you find yourself on the wrong bank--the bank with trees instead of trails--and start taking detours through the little villages that dot the countryside. 

And so that's how I wound up running through (you guessed it) farmers' fields. Again.

These wispy plant-crop-things were well over four feet tall.
I'm not that short.

Despite having no map on my person to speak of (I'd rather be lost for a few hours than pay roaming charges. Really), I somehow plodded my way straight through Horningsea, completely overshooting my turnaround, Baits Bite Lock, by about a mile. Now that I'm looking at the place on Google Maps, I'm seeing that I somehow made a horrendously wrong turn somewhere around mile five that took me into Horningsea proper instead of back out across the Cam.

I should probably consult Google Maps before I go running.

Yes.

Day 25

I dragged my sorry behind out of bed early this morning and oozed down to the library to start cramming ferociously for my final exam, which is this Friday.

You're a little behind, my friend, you say.

Indeed, I say, But only a little.

Summer has exploded upon the sleepy town of Cambridge, and it is currently a blasted eighty-one degrees outside. Now, that might not typically be an issue, but I do live on the fourth floor of a centuries-old building that was once inhabited by Alan Freaking Turing. Which means--it's really freaking hot up here. Predictably, there are heaters in every room but no fans because normal Cambridge students aren't around in the summer.

So it's just us. The miserable international students, sneezing and sweating away.

Holy madoodle. Housekeeping just came in and asked, "Would you like your room to be serviced today?"

Who are these people.

I had my (thankfully) final psychology lecture today and later in the afternoon turned in my final paper. Now, it's just cram time.

I went climbing again tonight, which was lovely. I'm sort of starting to get a feel for the really big moves of the routes around here. Tall people set big moves, apparently. The highlight of the night, however, was watching the intrepid Sir Andy attempt a 5 (V1) on a slight overhang. Oh, mama mia. It was like watching someone's grandfather try to shimmy up a tree.

Day 24: Nice, Leisurely

I went for a nice, leisurely jog this morning, during which the most noble and estimable Sir Andy dragged me across farmers' fields through God only knows what kinds of plants that reached above my shoulders. Then, somewhat predictably, Sir Andy got lost.

"No, no," he said, "I know where we are."

Yes, yes.

After being chased across a large field by two equally large dogs, we returned to King's in more or less one miraculous piece.

Following this, I had a nice, leisurely breakfast, followed by a nice, leisurely shower. Upon returning to my room, I checked the time, nearly suffered an aneurysm, then threw on some shorts and ran out the door in my flip-flops. I'd been due to hand in my first supervision paper at around 9:30 (because that's how things work around here--people still read things on paper), but somehow, I'd gotten lost in Nice, Hot Shower Land, and it was already a quarter to ten.

And so I bolted across King's in, I repeat, a button-down, basketball shorts, and flip-flops, hair still dripping wet, across the road to the music faculty library, where I jammed my paper into my supervisor's pigeonhole and prayed for the best.

Yes.

Day 23.5: A (Panicked) Interlude

As you may remember, I have two (three, in actuality, but the third's for MUN and I've motioned for a--wait for it--extension) papers due this week, and I've been proofreading my final paper for my nightmare of a psycholinguistics class. I am so proud of myself for making a fairly reasonable amount of sense in this discussion of material I do not understand in the slightest:


Developmental dyslexia is commonly characterized by difficulty reading and writing and is found in 5-10% of school-aged children internationally (CITATION). Given its prevalence, many efforts have been made to determine the etiology of dyslexia, with a consensus still to be reached (GIVE CITATIONS HERE). Arguments have been made that dyslexia arises primarily as the result of a dysfunction of the visual or auditory processing mechanisms, while others have instead supported models of phonological deficits.

The phonological-deficit hypothesis states that children with dyslexia have poor phonological representations, which affects processes at the phoneme level. An alternative hypothesis, the naming-deficit hypothesis, states that the abnormally slow rapid automatized naming (RAN) found in children with dyslexia indicates a deficit in the visual processing of familiar linguistic and non-linguistic stimuli presented in quick succession. However, still others believe that both these potential phonological and visual processing deficits are the result of either lower-level auditory deficits, visual deficits involved in the perception of motion, or a multimodal combination of these two, indicating overall deficits in processing dynamic stimuli.

The reasoning behind this last model is based on the importance of extracting quality phonemic representations from auditory input during the development of speech perception and production, along with reading acquisition. Analogous damage to the visual pathway could also result in later difficulty performing tasks such as the distinguishing of letter patterns, especially in reading. Reasoning behind RAN deficits has generated rather less of a consensus, with both low-level auditory and visual processing deficits suggested as causes. Here, the relationship between the auditory-temporal-phonological and the visual-temporal-orthographic processes has also divided opinions, with some both claiming and denying associations exist between the two. Taken individually, previous studies have indicated a relationship between visual processing and orthographic ability independent of phonological processing, though results in this area have yielded conflicting results.


et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam.
(But I'm just a little bit relieved.)

Day 23: Race for Life (Literally)

I have a race in two hours, and I'm literally falling asleep over my keyboard.

Today has all the indicators of being A Painful Day.

Let's go.
_______

I went.

If you ever want free entry to King's, just, you know, register for a charity race.

I've lost count of the number of bibs I've worn over the years.

But holy crap was I not expecting the weather.

It was baking today.

At least, in comparison to misty, misty, rainy, rainy Cardiff.

There were tons of people--a little under 5,000.

I ended up dropping from the 10K to the 5K because 24 hours of non-stop travel really takes it out of you (plus the whole Eating While Travelling Is Such A Hassle thing). I just basically ended up blitzing the living daylights out of the first two miles, deciding I was having too much fun, then sitting back and cruising on in for an unprecedented fourth-place finish.

I'm really going to feel this tomorrow.

So, logically, I went and played a little soccer (I just can't call it football. I'm sorry). 

Day 22: Cardiff

I got this email the night before I left for Cardiff.

It made me sad.

Sad that these alerts arrive with an air of weary resignation. Sad that I'd thought it necessary to subscribe to this service before I came abroad. Sad that I feel it is my obligation to be sad, not weary or resigned.

On that cheerful note.

This trip involved more time on a coach or bus than actual time in Cardiff.

I left King's just as the sun rose...

...Arrived in Victoria without too much of a delay...

...And transferred coaches to Cardiff.

Upon waking up from a slight doze, I realized we had, at some point, already crossed the border and arrived in Wales, where freaking forests grow right up against the motorway.

And all the street signs come in two languages.

Honestly, it's as if the Welsh language has a personal vendetta against vowels or something.

From the coach, I hopped on to a local bus, the Baycar, out to, well, the bay.

And.

Yes.

I took so many pictures in here. So many. You wouldn't believe.

It was well worth the six-hour journey, even though being around, alternately, ten-year-olds clutching action figures and middle-aged men clutching action figures made me feel a little... displaced.

IT'S THE FREAKING FACE OF BOE.
THE ACTUAL FREAKING FACE OF BOE.

 There was stuff from just the past season too, and I died about a million little fan-fueled deaths.

Ogling (and frantic souvenir shopping) done, I caught the bus back to the city center (or "centre," as it's spelled 'round here).

I might have thrown up a little in my mouth trying to pronounce this in Welsh.

Because this is Cardiff, of course there is a (reconstructed) 11th-century Norman castle smack in the middle of town.

Cardiff Castle hadn't really been high up on my List of Things to Do in Cardiff that, up until yesterday, had contained one item and one alone, but I had several hours to kill, so I wandered in and just kind of stood and stared a bit.

Having spent my childhood constructing trebuchets out of Tinkertoys and building Fortified Walls in Age of Empires, I thought I had a fairly reliable legit-ness radar when it came to castles and medieval things.

This was legit. Very legit.

From up on the battlements, I could see that this had actually been a proper castle with a keep surrounded by an actual moat and a wide, grassy area.

There was a reconstructed trebuchet standing off to the side, and I squealed internally at the sight of its massive counterweight.

I climbed into the keep, and every bit of my inner Medieval Times-loving self shrieked in wonder.

Arrow slit thingies for the garrison.

A round green place that had probably not been as well-ventilated several hundred years ago.

Steep, twisty stairwells.

(As mentioned previously) An actual moat.

From there, wonders never failed to cease.

I learned that during World War II, the people of Cardiff had tunneled beneath the walls to create air raid shelters, with barrage balloons anchored to the castle itself.

People in Cardiff hid from the Nazis in tunnels built on the remains of a 3rd-century Roman fort.

What even.

The actual remains of said 3rd-century Roman fort, now located opposite the gift shop.

I visited the apartments, where Rich People lived.

If I ever am lucky enough to have a library in my future supervillain lair, I want it to look a little like this:

All around me were these strange, strange contradictions.

I left Cardiff at seven in the evening, got held up in Newport for about a half hour by a screaming lady who tried to get on the bus with an invalid ticket, resulting in the appearance of several cops and a very grouchy coach driver. It was around eleven when I made it back to London, and I arrived in Cambridge at one-thirty Sunday morning to drunk people singing Journey in the pub.

It was oddly comforting.

Day 21: Writing for My Life

I went running with Sir Andy this morning east along the river. It was nice. There were cows. And horses.

Playgrounds here are first class. Yes, I interrupted our run to go play on a swingy thing and a ropey thing. (Remember that playground at La Mirada by Suicide Hill that we'd always get yelled at for ogling? Yeah. Like that. But in Cambridge, which is so much cooler.)

I got my schedule completely mixed up this morning and so ended up unintentionally skipping class. Whoops. I'm probably going to hear about it sometime soon.

Anyhow, I'm signing off on this thing until I get all my papers written. Hopefully, some vestige of sanity will remain.

Day 20: Running (Out of Time)

I ran to Coton via Grantchester today and nearly wound up pancaked on the motorway (aka freeway) after one of many wrong turns.

Sir Andy tells me that there is a way to Coton that doesn't involved nearly being pancaked on the motorway, but I will have to see it to believe it.

It was a fairly intense run, not because it was particularly far or because I took it particularly fast, but because I was literally running in the middle of the street all the way from Grantchester to Coton, a distance of perhaps three miles that felt like an eternity because roads here don't have margins, just overgrown green stuff that's not very walk-able, let alone run-able.

The Footpath back to Cambridge from Coton, however, was lovely.

I then spent the rest of the day in a self-induced panic because I realized that I had three papers due within the next four days. 

And I'm going to Cardiff on Saturday. 

And racing on Sunday.

I have priorities, clearly.

Day 19: Talking

Last night, I'd also had my seminar (think discussion section but actually a discussion) for my philosophy class, and we talked about Plato's Euthryphro and the relationship between piety and the gods. One major question posed was, "Are actions pious because they are loved by the gods, or are these actions loved by the gods because they are pious?"

Needless to say, our unfortunate professor spent the better part of the seminar admirably restraining himself from strangling us all. In an effort to guide our snarled lines of thinking, he asked, "Name something that has a specific quality."

At this point in time, yours truly, who'd had more run-ins with Plato than she'd care to admit, was lounging away in the corner trying to look interested.

The silence stretched on.

I couldn't bear the awkwardness anymore, so I blurted, "All squares are rectangles."

Defenestration, unfortunately, was not an option for my professor, located as we were in the basement, but I'm sure he considered it.

I spent the next few minutes desperately dredging up the vestiges of the geometry I'd learned almost a decade ago.

The seminar went more smoothly after that, as if some human sacrifice had lubricated the wheels of cognition with her blood.

Anyhow.

Tonight was the second plenary lecture, and it was given by Lord Smith, whose first name is not actually Lord but Chris. Meaning he is, in actual fact, a Lord.

He talked about Brexit and its consequences.

It was thrilling.

Today being David Cameron's last day as PM, it still didn't really strike me what a huge deal it was that there would soon be an entirely new British government until someone ran up to the stage in the middle of the lecture to hand Lord Smith a note. He read it, then turned to us and said, "We have a new foreign secretary."

We stared.

"It's Boris Johnson."

 The entire lecture hall erupted.

I know I keep saying this, but I have never been in an environment in which so many people are so willing to think together and put actual weight into discussions on issues that people my age back home couldn't care less about. On the way back to King's after the lecture, I discussed the talk with a friend, weighing the consequences of an EU without the UK and the UK without the EU. Fascinating.

Day 18: Because Cambridge and Climbing

After a quick morning run down to Grantchester with Sir Andy (that's just what I'm going to call the guy), I packed myself off to a full day of classes that were made more excruciatingly painful by the harsh realization that I have my final exam for psycholinguistics in a week, and I still have to think kind of hard about the difference between a morpheme and a phoneme.

Our professor finally got the attendance charts (halfway through the course, good on, admin!) and so spent the entire 75-minute seminar going around the table and literally picking apart our family histories by our names and pronunciations thereof. It was just one of those very long "you can't be serious" moments when he spoke with a student from Shanghai who had come to UCLA for school and concluded that she must be a spy because her American accent was too good for having only been in California for two years, but at the same time he pointed out the final devoicing she presented in words like "good" and "hard" that was absent in American English. I sat there wondering if this was what John Watson felt like on a daily basis. For another student, he deduced she was descended from the Parsi (and then gave us a history of the Parsi) based on her last name, despite her Yiddish-derived Hebrew first name.

Because Cambridge.

In the evening, I had the second of my Seminars for Scholarship Kids (not the actual name of the series, but you get the idea). Stefan Halper gave a little talk on the global issue of water and international security. Again, it should have been mind-numbingly dull, but of course it wasn't.

Because Cambridge.

There were only about ten of us in the Old Parlour at Pembroke, and a relatively diverse group we were--Americans were in the the minority, for once. Some students from Singapore talked about how water has always been a major political issue in their country since World War II, given that it is an island nation with virtually no natural resources of its own, therefore relying primarily on Malaysia for its water. I talked about living in Southern California and my work with the LADWP, and I also posed a question that'd been itching away all evening:

If the United Nations is incapable of effectively dealing with even these issues [of water], what, personally, do you think should or could be the role of the UN in the international community?

He laughed and sighed.

Again, it was more about The Idea of A Thing rather than the Actual Thing itself. The UN, in essence, is powerless. It has no means (or right, really) to enforce its decisions. It can send in peacekeepers to protect a population, but it can't take this population out of danger. It can provide humanitarian aid to refugees, but it can't force other countries to take them in. What it can do, Dr. Halper said, is make proclamations such as the one issued earlier today on China's rights in the South China Sea. Of course, the UN has no way of enforcing its ruling, but this is a proclamation that indicates the glimmering existence of an international consensus.

That might not seem like something big, but it's an idea.

The seminar ran incredibly late, but I found I didn't mind so much and was almost sorry to dart out the door to Kelsey Kerridge for a bit of climbing. Of course, it being eight o'clock on a weeknight, the place was packed, but I did manage to send a few routes that had sent me spinning hopelessly through the air last week, including a rather interesting roof. There was another one I started working on with a massive dyno in the middle, and given about maybe a foot in vertical height, I might have managed it, but it was all good fun to go leaping haphazardly about and generally looking like an idiot whilst Sir Andy laughed his head off at the door, sensible badminton racket in hand.

It's Wednesday morning now, and my shoulders (and neck--that whiplash, man) are in pain, but I wouldn't give up climbing for the world.

Day 17: A Supervision

I'm backdating my posts (yes, I know, cheating) because it's been absolutely mad these past two weeks and Blogger still appears to think I'm in the U.S.

On Sunday night, I realized that I had virtually nothing written for my first supervision meeting on Monday. Because I am terrible at noting down these sorts of things, I couldn't remember if I'd been instructed to prepare anything beforehand. And so I frantically spent the night drafting an outline of my final project.

On a side note, there are an unsurprisingly large number of irons available for use in the laundry room at King's.
Because Cambridge.

In other words, I'm massively intimidated by my supervisor, who most closely resembles the terrifying child of Tom Hulce's Amadeus and Daniel Day-Lewis.

I felt underdressed at our orientation meeting.
I vowed never to feel so again.

This issue was not helped by the fact that, upon reaching our supervision room together, the first thing Mr. Shell-Caressing Supervisor did was remove the analog clock from the room because "it's too loud." And then we sat down and started talking.

I can say right now, after just our first session, that this is something that is seriously lacking at UCLA, by virtue of the fact that there are simply too many students and not nearly enough faculty for every student to have the opportunity to sit down, one-on-one, with a supervisor for an hour or so to debate (yes, debate!) the topic of interest. It was both mind-meltingly terrifying and exhilarating.

We thrashed out the general look of my project after some fairly spirited debate on the purpose of music.

Dear me. I'm turning into a regular old academic fart.

I then went for a quick (or so I thought) run down into the wilderness beyond Grantchester amidst ferocious wind.

Those are actual sheep, my friend.

Days 15: Twelve Hours in London

On Saturday morning, I was up at 4:30 to catch the National Express into London.

I opened my curtains to see this just outside my window.

Well.

After sprinting across the the warzone of Parker's Piece (it's Cambridge's Big Weekend, well, this weekend, which means concerts and fireworks and loud people exhibiting blatant disregard for the proper disposal of hot dog wrappers), I was off to London. Again.

Now, I won't go so far as to say I like riding buses (or coaches, as the long-distance ones are called around here), as I'm sure I'll be thoroughly sick of them by the end of this trip, but I do like travelling alone in the gray of morning when nobody is awake. It makes me feel like I'm somebody important off to do Important Things.

We arrived at Victoria Coach Station at around 7:30, where I was met with pay-to-use public toilets, which, well, surprised me. Turns out this is mostly the case across London. I'd rather expected this to be the case in a place like Taiwan (where, granted, they do charge you for toilet paper in some places), not London. 

Anyhow, after a fair bit of confusion, alleviated by the very tourist-friendly maps posted on nearly every cross-street, I made it to Buckingham Palace for Touristy Stop #1 of the day. It was, predictably, deserted at this hour, which suited me just fine.

The first of many statues.

From Buckingham Palace, I walked to Green Park, which was indeed very green, to take the Tube.

A brief interjection: I'd originally planned on this tour of London being a running tour, to save on transportation costs and, well, time, to be honest--I can run faster than it would take to pop down into a Tube station, wrestle my way onto a train, and pop back out to look for my destination--but the timely arrival of my Oyster card persuaded the lusk in me to see London by Tube instead. It was actually a good thing I'd decided not to run London because first, I didn't realize how many people smoked around here (even walking around made my throat burn); second, there are an absolutely ridiculous number of vehicles on the road at any given time going in all sorts of weird directions--it's as if 90-degree street corners do not exist around here; and third, tour groups on the sidewalk = instant pedestrian traffic jam. No running.

And so I took the tube from Green Park to, um, er...

Baker Street.

I mean, come on. 

This is London we're talking about. London, that "great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained." I was raised on a literary diet consisting of Arthur Conan Doyle and J.R.R. Tolkein. When I was eleven or twelve, my father gave me a hardback copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which was actually a collection of the original The Strand magazine articles, complete with Sidney Paget's original illustrations, and I about shot through the roof.

So. 

Baker Street.

And then I hopped back onto the Tube to Euston Square to see fake Baker Street, where, apparently, Giuseppe Freaking Mazzini used to live in between planning Italian revolutions. 

Clearly not my photography skills.

Back on the Tube I went, and I hopped off at Bank but somehow emerged from Monument, and spent about five minutes in a daze. If you thought roundabouts are confusing just for drivers, think again.

Somehow, aided once again by central London's spectacularly helpful street maps (and my GPS watch), I made it to St. Paul's Cathedral, where I wandered through the gardens, looked at statues and stuff, and made John Donne's acquaintance.

I be much proud.

If I knew anything at all about architecture, I'm sure I'd be more impressed. In actual fact, all I could think about was how much the cathedral resembled the Capitol building, which was, in my opinion, much shinier. A budding historian is what I am.

Here I suppose you could say was the beginning of The Grand, Entirely Unintentional Walking Tour of London, which was apparently eight-and-a-half miles long. Whoops.

From St. Paul's I crossed the Millennium Bridge, which is an exclusively pedestrian bridge over the Thames.

...And I arrived at the (New) Globe Theatre.

I joined a tour (the only thing I paid for today) and almost died of happiness.

I mean, look at that.

I know the original theater burned down centuries ago (but not as long ago as the founding of Cambridge, oh no no no), but sitting in what was, to archaeologists' and historians' best knowledge, a nearly-exact replica was fantastic. 

As actual plays are still performed at the Globe, the stage was set for The Taming of the Shrew, which was (predictably and unfortunately) sold out.

The gift shop divided things up by play, which I found amusing.

There was also a typewriter (not for sale) scanning Twitter in real time for words to type out the entirety of King John.

Fantastic.

I then took a stroll (hah) down the south bank of the Thames as the skies had cleared a bit.

Realizing I'd seen nearly everything I'd wanted to see with it still being before noon, I wandered into Tate Modern, which was just next door.

I appreciate that the majority of museums around here have free admission, but I don't much appreciate modern art. I poked around for about fifteen, twenty minutes, then made a beeline for the exit (and reality).

I crossed the Thames again, this time via the Waterloo Bridge, which, as I am an unfortunate human being, led me to think not of a certain French emperor, but of that one ABBA song.

I passed the Somerset House without knowing what it was really about, but the name rang a very distant bell in my cavernously empty mind, so I took a picture of it and walked on, thinking it looked rather large for a house, but then again, this was London, and nothing came in the correct proportions.

By the time I made it to Trafalgar Square, the place was crawling with tourists and citizens alike--turns out it was hosting an Eid Festival. With plenty of time on my hands, I wandered around, hands in pockets, smelling spices, scowling at schoolchildren.

And then, of course, I wandered into the National Gallery (which was blissfully free). 

I am such a sucker for 18th- to 20th-century art because this is what I studied when I was a wee babe in Saturday morning art class, clutching oil pastels and sexy pencils.

I almost lost it when I entered a room dedicated almost entirely to Van Gogh's work for an entirely different (and rather more embarrassing) reason.

Auuuuughhh.

All I could do was stand there, take a picture of a picture, stand there some more, and stare.

Yes, I know that last one's not Van Gogh, but I did paint it when I was younger. It was so strange to see the real thing just hanging casually on the wall for all to see.

Anyhow, another toilet interlude.

The National Gallery really puts the towel in hand towel.

From there, it was a bit of a walk down Whitehall past all the Anti-Brexit protesters outside No. 10 to Westminster Abbey.

And then on again past Buckingham Palace...

Along The Serpentine in Hyde Park...

And into Kensington Gardens.

By this time, I had begun to question my sanity. Who did I think I was, Forrest Gump? Granted, I'd definitely run much longer and faster before, but I had approached those excursions with a sense of purpose. Here I was, trekking around London in jeans and shoes that were most certainly not made for walking.

I then sat down on a bench and stared around at all the greenery. I could hardly hear the cars going by outside the park; the predominant sounds were those of quiet conversations and the occasional ping of a bicycle bell. I wouldn't have seen this from the Tube. Heck, I'd have barreled straight around all the parks and gardens in less than ten minutes.

So I sat some more, and when I felt reasonably sure I wouldn't tip over if I stood up, I continued on.

And holy crap, there was the Royal Albert Hall, the venue of my dreams.

And, of course, Albert himself (kind of).

Eventually, I made it to Kensington Palace.

Having achieved this goal, I thought--well, I'm in the area, so might as well--and set of for 23/24 Leinster Gardens because I had to see this facade for myself and because that scene in Sherlock was just so wonderful.

No tourists were around. Unsurprising. And wonderful.

When I finally arrived at the Marble Arch station, all I wanted to do was sit down, but everywhere was swarming with everyone swarming to go see Take That, who (I just learned) were playing in Hyde Park right at that moment. What the heck, man. I wandered right past one of the biggest summer events in London without even knowing it.

I took the Tube back to Victoria Station, hopping lines twice because, for some reason, there were no trains running on the Circle line.

It was a bit strange, feeling welcomed by my return to Cambridge.

Even with the Big Weekend.