in britannia

Today was the draw date for Keble's Graduate Student housing lottery. It's interesting, because Keble now has space for every single graduate student who needs housing. The catch is that you don't know where you're living until after the lottery, and the lottery was held tonight, and they need to know where we'll be living on Tuesday. So seriously, we have 48 hours to determine where we will live for the 2005 - 2006 academic year.

The good news is that I won the lottery. Seriously. I won the lottery. I got the very first pick of rooms in Keble College. I rule. I should note, just because I'm gloating, that this is not the first housing lottery I have won. In my Junior year of college, I also had the first pick of rooms for Senior year. Of course, I was competing against, oh, eight other people, but the point is that I won that one too. I had the closest Senior room to the Wa, a convenience store on the corner of Alexander and University that was a haven for quick junk food. Interesting note about the Wa, it's a WaWa store, but evidently, two 'Wa' syllables takes too much time to say, so instead, we've now re-named it as "the 'Wa", which is the same number of syllables. Stupid, but I digress.

I'll state for the record that housing lotteries are horrible, and this one moreso that the undergrad ones in the States. The reason for this is that you also declare your economic status with the room that you take - rents are not flat across the board at Keble. In fact, the rooms could be vastly different and the room rates will affect that. So by taking a large room, you might be saying to the rest of the MCR that 'money is not a factor' or 'I am extremely wealthy', or conversely, 'I took the smallest room in college, because that's all I could afford'. I took the most expensive room in the college. It's because I want the space, because the other rooms were tiny closets of rooms, and because I don't want to live a mile away from the college in a flat that I have to get to by walking through a very dimly lit alleyway in which two of my friends have already been mugged. This is, by no means, me saying that I am extremely wealthy, because I'm not. It's me making a conscious decision that I need to live someplace nice, and there are certain things I'll sacrifice in order to do it. Wish me luck...

On a very tangential point, I saw this article in the New York Times today. It's about the ability to steal the radio frequency in a car key and duplicate it, thus allowing you to steal a car with one of these little transponder chips. This has very limited applications in the real world - if you're going to steal a car, a flatbed truck is your best bet, and the cheapest is probably a crowbar and some wire-striping pliers. But the catch is that there are other products into which these little radio transponder chips are inserted, and therein lie the additional applications. They are being used currently in our Fastlane (if you're in Boston) or E-Z Pass (if you're in New York or New Jersey) car tags. They are also being used in the London streets to see if you're driving in the center of the city during the day. If you are, you incur an additional toll for the day. In fact, I'm pretty sure they're in Keble's library books as well, since we can check them out by swiping them across a little radio frequency reader - by the way, it's the coolest library checkout system ever. Applications are being explored to put these chips into inventory in stores, or to implant them into cadavers at the UCLA Med School to prevent theft. Seriously. But the one that brings me back to housing and security is this: they're being implanted into cards for Exxon/Mobil gasoline - the SpeedPass.

The SpeedPass is something that you keep on your keys which you hold up to the pump before you start. There's no authorization needed, no swiping a card, no fumbling around for cash. You hold it up to the pump and then you pump your gas. The money disappears from your bank account without a worry in the world. The SpeedPass technology was mentioned in the article explicitly. This next thing wasn't: Princeton University's housing locks use the exact same technology as SpeedPass. It even works in just about the same way. Your Princeton University ID card has a chip in it, and you hold it up to a reader on the door to get in. People leave them in their wallets and they jump up and bang their hip or butt into the reader to open the doors - it's really quite amusing. I'm just thinking, though, that Princeton isn't the only institution with these kinds of cards, and it'd be really really easy to start to duplicate these cards and their chip ID numbers, which might get people into hospitals, library archives, or storerooms of many kinds. I don't know what it says about me that my first instinct when I heard about the story was to think about my old PUID and who might gain entrance to the dorms with someone's stolen card number, but hmm... It probably just means that I'm crazy. Or creepy. Or both, and many many more things too.

Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell have, according to a Boston Globe Story, finalized their bet for the Superbowl. This has got to be the dumbest wager ever made. The losing governor will travel to a home basketball game and sing the national anthem wearing the winners' football jersey. Or, at least, Romney will. Rendell will be sending his wife, who is a trained opera singer.

Problems with this wager:
1) This is not a bet within the world of basketball. This is football. If someone wants to sing at a game, have them sing at next year's Philly-New England matchup. Not at an NBA game.
2) Romney rejected Rendell's offer of cheesesteaks, saying that they're too unhealthy. Mitt will be at home during the superbowl drinking his soy latte and eating vegetarian bean dip? This is the Superbowl - the one day that unhealthy snacking is the only thing on the menu. I plan to be eating pizza, greasy kebabs, hoagies, crisps of all varieties, candy, peanuts, and drinking lots of American beer. This is also the only time in Oxford that I will be drinking American beer. ew. Nevertheless, a sporting wager should always be about food. Or personal humiliation, for which, see the next point.
3) If you're going to make a bet, you should have the guts to carry it out yourself, not to send your wife. Boo.

We can only hope that Mayors Menino (Bos) and Street (Phi) can come up with something more creative. Menino has always been really good with sports wagers. The wager he made against Anaheim was excellent, from the Bostonian point of view - what Anaheim shipped us was pretty awful (oranges, peppers, wine and beer?). He was magnanimous in his bet with Bloomberg over the ALCS, as was Bloomberg. And while he was incredibly generous in his wager with Mayor Slay of St. Louis, the goods which ended up coming to Boston following the breaking of the curse were pretty terrible. Furthermore, I'd have to imagine that Menino isn't one to refuse a nice, steaming cheesesteak. Plus, last year's exchange with Carolina was excellent.

Romney and Rendell are lame. That's all I can say. Lame.

Funny story in the Boston Globe today. Evidently, poop spontaneously combusts.

I love it.

note: this entry was written previously and uploaded with a revised time.

Introducing a brand new part of the blog – the most annoying person in my life today award! And our inaugural choice is…

Bearded guy on the bus. Here is a guy who, the moment he stepped onto the bus, committed two, yes count them, two fouls. Foul number one: talking loudly on his mobile phone. Now, I’m all for connectivity. For goodness sake, I’m traveling with my laptop, I’ve got my mobile in my pocket and, if it weren’t out of batteries, I’d have brought my palm pilot too. But there’s no reason to be speaking nearly that loudly. Foul number two: eating. Again, I’m all for eating. I’m addicted to eating. I even brought candy with me on the bus. And most of the people around me are sipping on juiceboxes or enjoying small sandwiches. This guy’s foul had nothing to do with just the mere act of eating: it was that he was eating a deep fried onion-thing. This is a bus ride that takes 1.5 hours if we’re lucky, and two if we’re not. And that last thing I want to do on this bus is smell the stale smell of deep fried onions and ketchup for 1.5 hours. Boo. Boo-urns!

Speaking of onions, though, I like onions. For the best onion rings in Boston, go to Harvard Square, to a little place called Mr. and Mrs. Bartley’s Burger Cottage. There, in addition to massively sized cheeseburgers named after things (the Titanic is two burgers topped with iceberg lettuce – groan), you can find the best onion rings ever. They’re wildly addictive and oh-so-oily and tasty.

And for a delicious onion dish here in Oxford, I finally went and tried Kebab Kid. Now, unlike the kebab vans I patronize so often, Kebab Kid is an actual store – which immediately lends itself a certain cache of upperclass eating. If I’m buy from Houssein’s, (which, incidentally, is still not there), I am forced to eat my juicy and salty and wonderful kebab on the street, leaning up against a building, or after having walked back to Keble. If I buy from Kebab Kid, I get a little bar stool and a counter on which to enjoy what is, quite seriously, the biggest kebab in Oxford. These are kebabs so big they’re served on naan bread and not pita. The meat is salty and spicy with more than a hint of sweetness. The garlic mayo is creamy, the chili sauce is lip-smackingly good. The chips were a bit disappointing, as they were a tad soggy, but boy, the best topping on this kebab was the onion. For some reason, onions and kebab go together naturally, and the Kebab Kid kebab was heavenly. Mmmmm…

---

Update: I sprinted off to London today after IT couldnt' do anything for me at Oxford. As it turns out, A.S. was right (see comment two posts ago). That I had also installed iTunes 4.7.1 was purely coincidental. I am so glad that I got the thing fixed. Digital photos of posh new MCR to follow soon.

Wow... from no substantial posts in a week to three posts in a day.

A very warm and hopeful Happy Birthday to Diana today. I wish that I could tell her in person, but this will have to suffice, as we are on two different continents. She's been such a wonderful friend, support, and confidant to me since 1999. Hey cutie, Happy Birthday. :) And thanks.

I've been slacking in my attempts to write about my life here in Oxford. A large part of it is that I am never sure if something is, indeed, interesting enough, not to mention that I'm so busy a lot of the time that when I think that I should throw somethiing up here, I never really get around to doing it because I have other things on my mind.

Well, phooey to that. I'm taking a good couple of minutes right now to indulge my fantasy that people out there are actually reading this and want to know what's been happening these last few days.

Last week, we opened the new Keble MCR officially. We've been planning this move for about 18 months, and I was lucky enough to see both the horrorshow that was the old MCR (an afterthought of a room, much like a bomb shelter, only not as friendly) and to get to experience the glory that is the new MCR. By the way, MCR stands for Middle Common Room - it is both a room, or in our case, three rooms, which are open to all members of the college graduate student community, but also is the collection of those graduate students as a standing body. Undergraduates have the JCR or Junior Common Room, and tutors and staff have the SCR, or Senior Common Room. We had two huge receptions last Thursday, both of which involved inviting all members of the college staff. The morning tea and cakes reception was amazing. We had a massive amount of all manner of typical English cakes and goodies, as well as huge amounts of tea and coffee. Most of the people who came to this were members of the college cleaning staff, kitchen staff, and grounds crew. Our college scouts were there, and they seemed genuinely touched that we would remember them in our celebration of the new MCR. Scouts are people who clean our rooms - yes, it sounds horribly elitist, but there are people who come around every day to empty the rubbish bins outside our doors and every week to vaccum and tidy up our rooms. The grounds staff and maintenance staff were instrumental in making the new MCR happen, from plumbing and wiring to carrying equipment and furniture and helping us move from location to location. My friend Sundeep asked one naively if he had been in the new space before. He looked at her and said, "dearie, we built this space for you."

The evening reception was much more posh, with excellent French champagne, cheeses and fruits and mineral waters. For this, we had to wear suits and ties, as our guests included the Warden of Keble, Senior Tutor, Senior Proctor, and Bursar, as well as collegiate academic staff. It really was an amazing evening, full of conversation about Keble, merriment, and revelry in the company of colleagues and friends. It was also really amusing to see the SCR members becoming progressively more inebriated as the evening wore on. I'd have pictures up of some of these things, but I'll get to why in just a moment. The aftermath of the evening reception were a full 32 completely empty bottles of champagne. Also, there were massive amounts of cheese. I honestly was not aware that cheese could be commercially purchased in wheels of this size: the brie was about two feet across and a good two inches thick. The English cheddar was 1.75 feet across and about 4 inches thick. The Stilton was only 1.25 feet across, but was about 8 inches thick. Massive blocks of cheese indeed. Quite a sight. Needless to say, there is still plenty of cheese in the MCR refrigerator.

On Saturday, I found out that I'd made the second VIII for Keble College Boat Club. I am thrilled - it means that I get to race and get to row a lot, but I don't have to do the compulsory training for first VIII. I'm also sitting 5th seat, which is one of the power seats. Unfortunately, being one of the better oarsmen on your team means putting up with people who are worse than you, which I'd not experienced before, since I'm usually the weakest member of the team. I actually like being the among the weaker members of a team as it allows me a goal to strive for. This is just me trying not to get frustrated. Oh well.

We had a race on Sunday, part of the Isis Winter League. Unfortunately, there was an alarm sounded while we were racing (almost 3/4 of the way done, no less), and we were forced to stop and scrap that run, and could not do another. Poo.

Finally went in to get my cycle fixed - double puncture. Who'd have thought... That's just bad luck, I think.

I'm having some computer issues, hense the lack of photos from the MCR bash. On Sunday, I downloaded the update for iTunes 4.7.1 as well as some Macintosh OSX security updates and program updates. I mean, I trust these vendors, right? So what happens? Well, my CD drive no longer reads music CDs. They spin up, they spin down, but iTunes won't pop open, the disc doesn't show up on the desktop, and I've got nothing. Data CDs are OK, DVDs are OK, but not music CDs. Also, my firewire port is semi-active. It will charge my iPod, but won't actually interface with the iPod, so iTunes again doesn't pop open, no iPod on my desktop, etc. Finally, and this is where the digital camera comes in: my USB ports do the same thing. So no flash drives, no digital camera, no interfacing with the palm pilot. Nothing. I'm taking it to the tech department today. The thing is, that none of those things really affects the way that my computer handles everything else. I can surf the web, I have email, and I have everything I need to write papers. But it's still really quite concerning, and I'd like to get the darn thing fixed, you know, ASAP. It might actually take my hopping on the bus for London one of these days, something I'm not really looking forward to, but which I might just have to bite the bullet about. What week it's been.

Of course, it'd have been easier to blog if I'd just thrown this stuff online as it happened. But I didn't, and I just had another backlog of news. Ooh! Today is the first OUO rehearsal of the term. We're doing Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique. This should be a lot of fun. :)

// posted by impressive_wang @ 8:26 AM 1 comments

Just got finished watching the New England Patriots rip apart the Pittsburgh Steelers. First off, I'm so glad they carried the game live here in the UK. Secondly, I love it when the Pats win. :) In fact, I was wearing my AFC Champions T-shirt from last year, and I'm psyched that I now have the opportunity to buy one for this year.

Well, I rowed 2000 meters in a time of 7:20.7 just now. Sandy, the guy who rowed before me, and Mike, my cox, both said that afterward, I was white as a sheet and looked like I was going to throw up. I've never actually pulled that hard in my life, and it was a pretty lousy time, as I managed to get my splits down to a decent time (1:46/500m) but then between 750 and 250 meters left, I let the split bounce up and down between 1:38/500m and 2:00/500m. So I averaged out to 1:50/500m, which isn't bad for a first run, but should be a lot better and a lot more consistent.

My face is bright red, I'm shaking, and I couldn't feel my legs afterward. But at least it's done with and I can go have lunch now - I'm starving, and my lungs are severely unhappy. But a nice blt or chicken salad sandwich will cure that in no time.

Boy am I glad to have that over with. Geez.

So I'm taking my 2k ergo test today. It's for crew selection, and I couldn't possibly be more nervous. I woke up at 5 because I couldn't sleep, I've been having trouble concentrating as I read, and my stomach is about to invert upon itself. Our coach gave a pep talk on Wednesday - I wasn't there, thank goodness. Apparently, he said that a 2k is the meanest thing he can do to a rower, and it's the worst thing a rower can experience. It's 100% aerobic while being 100% anaerobic. Our muscles will scream out in pain for us to stop, but if we do, we'll take it again next week. And just a point of comfort in all of this, if we happen to die during the 2k ergo test, rest assured that we will pass out before we do. Oh goody.

Sheer terror of another sort as well: the inauguration of President Bush (or, as some are calling it, the coronation) yesterday was a stark reminder that the election results have now ratified our position on pre-emptive military action, our so-called defense of freedom through force, and President Bush's move toward an 'ownership society'. I try to have faith that a man of faith will use his wisdom (or the wisdom of his advisors) for the forces of good. But I wish that in all of this, there were a more sensible recognition that there's a lot of grey between the demarkations of good and evil. There are things that are always good, there are things that are always evil. And in between is a lot of muck. I was so bummed out about the inauguration and what I think was probably one of the worst speeches I've heard in a while (William Safire calls it the 5th best inaugural address in American history) that I watched a few episodes of the West Wing to calm myself down. And wrapped up in its unbridled idealism is at least one truth: that diplomacy and tact and conviction are more important than ever.

Well, thank goodness it's not raining.

I just got back from Godstow, where we train to row. We got off the water at 8:30, but thanks to a little pit of flatness in my bike tire (or, in England, tyre), I couldn't cycle home. In fact, with the nice puncture in my front tire, I couldn't even roll the bike home without shredding the rubber. So I just walked 3.7 miles while carrying my bike. It took me an hour. An hour I could have spent working, at hall having breakfast, or sleeping. But which I did not want to use carrying a rather heavy bike.

And of course the busses won't take bikes on board. Grrr... but as one person at the bus stop said, at least it's not raining. And hey, the day can only go up from here, right? Please don't prove me wrong...

It's interesting - whenever I actually log in and begin to write an entry, everything that I want to put in disappears from my head. I'll walk down the street and think, I should write about this. And then three hours later when I'm back at my desk, I'll log in and ... poof - it's gone. So here are a few of my posts from earlier which really escaped my mind before.

Exactly a week ago, I was involved in a concert at Queen's College for the Oxford Baroque Soloists. I was playing in an orchestra, backing up singers in an opera workshop - nothing but Mozart. It was a lot of fun; the singers were great, the action was funny, and the crowd turnout, at least the second night, was phenomenal. They did scenes from the Magic Flute and the Marriage of Figaro. It was a nice way for me to reconnnect to the Magic Flute, having performed in it while I was a kid way back in middle school (I was one of the three boys - first soprano!) in a Harvard production. It's always held a bit of fascination in my heart. Such a nice opera. And I'd never done anything from Marriage of Figaro, so that was nice to learn a little. My one complaint is this: I haven't played my bassoon in more than five weeks and the first thing I'm supposed to play in concert is the overture to the Marriage of Figaro? Honestly one of the hardest orchestral excerpts in the repertoire. Why hadn't I been playing? Not because I'd been bad and didn't practice, but because trans-Atlantic airline baggage restrictions being as they are, it was difficult for me to justify bringing my bassoon home with me.

It was about this time last week as well that the kebab van on St. Giles' Street disappeared. Now, I'd been going to Houssain's for all of Michelmas Term, and it's sort of my 'local'. And to find it missing was a real shock. I walked out there on a rather cold Wednesday night c.11:30. and in its place was nothing. Literally nothing. What was usually a hustling center of commerce and kebabbery is now silent. It's creepy! And a little sad. A lot of my friends reassure me that Houssain randomly takes holidays and he'll be back soon. In the mean time, I've tried two other kebab vans. Ahmed's on the High Street, which I wrote about last week, and last night, Hassan's. Now, everyone has been raving about Hassan's. Supposedly, it's amazing. And it is. The food is cheaper than Houssain's, it's a little bit tastier, the kebab meat is juicy, the chips are golden, the garlic mayonnaise is creamy, etc... But I feel like I'm cheating on my first kebab love... What's a guy to do?

The MCR has really gotten back into the swing of things. It's delightful to see that people are having fun and enjoying themselves in the company of others, and it's nice to be back with my friends. I have said it before, but it bears repeating: where else but in an academic setting are all of your really good friends in a 10-minute walking radius? College (and I extend this now to graduate school) is a really special opportunity. It's tough to remember that sometimes when it's three in the morning and you've got pages due at noon, but college is a place like no other.

Finally, I saw my friend Edith in the UK! We actually met up for lunch and tea in Boston when she came home for the holiday, but she's now based in London. But that's not exactly the whole story - Edith grew up in Oxford and then left in 1993 to come to Boston when her parents got dual appointments at Harvard. She and I went to high school together and became friends, probably because I had a crush on her at the time. She's an amazing violist, brilliant student, and wonderful friend. After graduation, she did a gap year and then went on to Oxford for her undergraduate work, then to London to study law. Now she's a barrister and seems to be loving her work. All of last term, we'd email to see if we could hang out, and nothing would work. But yesterday, she came to Oxford to see a lecture by her mother (a professor at Harvard), and we managed to get dinner in. Poor her, though - she was lugging a small suitcase full of legal briefs which she was reading on the train. I hope that I never have so much work that I need a dedicated piece of luggage for it. But she looks good and it was excellent to see her - what a treat.

After almost two years of constant abuse, my glasses are about dead. They were sitting crooked on my face, they were scratched up beyond repair, and they just weren't very comfortable. What they were, though, was fashionable. So I went to buy a new pair, and was able to find some that were similar, but not quite as nice as my old ones. Unless I wanted to pay something like $600 for them, which I didn't. My parents just mailed them to me today, and I got them adjusted down on Cornmarket Street. But while my eyes adjust to a new pair of lenses and the subtleties of now having my glasses straight and not crooked, I have very limited depth perception, which is kind of amusing, but also kind of nauseating.

First day of classes today - it looks like my Greek class is going to be awful again. This woman just cannot teach. We expect more out of Oxford University, but we're just not getting it. Trust me, complaints have been made.

And I was sitting at my desk this past weekend reading and minding my own business when my watchband broke. Randomly and without warning. It just broke. I don't get it. This is the second watch in three months, and the fourth watch in two years. I'm getting kind of sick of this. It will cost £7.75 to buy a new band at the store, if they had one, which they don't. They could but in a generic for £10 (isn't a generic supposed to be less than a genuine?), but I'm not sure the watch is worth that much money anyway. What a pain. This was a nice watch too. Unbelieveable.

Well, off to find food. Unfortunately, they ran out of dinner tickets at 1pm today, so I'm on my own for dinner. Perhaps a nice curry would hit the spot tonight.

This is hardly an uncommon refrain among graduate students, that they hate the undergraduates. As I have often reminisced, as an undergraduate at Princeton, I held a lasting distrust of two different groups of people: foreign students, and graduate students. The xenophobia of Princeton is certain: foreign students are strange, they have strange habits, they wear clothing with too many pockets and stuff them full of fresh fruit before leaving the dining hall, they smoke more than Americans on average, they bathe less frequently. These are the stereotypes. The graduate students were just weird: they wore all black, they talked about angst without irony, and they treated us, the undergraduates, the cream of the crop of America, the best and the brightest, as nothings.

Now, I know why they did. Because undergraduates are a stupid and intolerant lot who don't often know what to say or how to say it. Case in point, last night. I was standing at the kebab van on the High Street when two extremely drunk undergrads came up behind me, started spouting drivel, and then berated me for conversing with the kebab van guy. They also plowed into me, causing me to bump into the people in front of me, who gave me a sympathetic look as I tried to explain quietly why I was sorry but was not at fault for body-checking them.

And then tonight, I was asked to row tomorrow morning. Now, I'm not opposed to being asked to row in the morning. In fact, I take it as a given that I will, being as I row at all. But I told the captain of boats this past week that I did not feel comfortable rowing on Sunday morning during church time. I was so desperate to keep my space on the 1st boat last term that I would actually skip church if I had a conflicting rowing outing. Not so this term: God comes before crew, and I think that it's important to know that. But now, I've got a rowing engagement on Sunday. I fired off an email to our captain, who seemed incredulous that anyone would, for any reason, decline a crew outing.

Well, it looks as if Apple's Steve Jobs has finally snapped. While the newspapers tout the Mac Mini as a step toward making Apple Computers less expensive and more buyer-friendly, folks on Slashdot have been saying that this is a move by Apple to say that they had been wrong in exclusively offering premium computers. I disagree.

This is the equivalent of a BMW for $15,000. It's stripped down, doesn't come air conditioning, stereo, or power anything. Doesn't come with tires, but wow it looks cool. And it's a BMW! And it's only $15,000! The problem is that no one has really taken aim at BMW, Rolls Royce, Bentley, or Ferrari for only making premium cars. There's an entire market in premium ice cream, for goodness sake. What is it about computers that says that you can't make a living with good, honest computers for people who care a little more about craftsmanship, design, or forethought by the computer manufacturer as to how this piece of metal and plastic will function in your life? Apple has done so for many years, and while they certainly have made missteps (Newton, G4 Cube), they have done a good job getting back into things. This just sucks all of the momentum out of their line. Grr.

note: this entry was written previously and uploaded with a revised time. Also, times are now local to Oxford.

Half-way through this flight and I am starting to go absolutely nuts. I had been pretty content to sleep, but I’m somehow not sleepy anymore. It’s almost noon in Boston, and while I’m not in any mood to eat, my mind won’t let me sleep. However, if I try to pick up a book, I know I’ll go nuts. The only thing left to do is to watch the idiot-box until something interesting happens.

I tried to pull out my laptop to do some work, or possibly to watch a DVD. But the DVDs that I’d packed are in my checked baggage. And even if I could, the idiot in front of me has his seat back so far I can’t look at my laptop at a normal angle. I hope he’s happy, the jerk…

note: this entry was written previously and uploaded with a revised time.

I’m in Logan’s Terminal E waiting for British Airways to call my flight. I went down into the First Class lounge today, which was pretty darn cool: they’ve got complementary breakfast, they even had beer, if I’d wanted to have a beer at 6:45 in the morning (I didn’t). Free phones, comfy chairs, a really classy place. Unfortunately, I needed to come upstairs in order to actually get on my flight, which is too bad. Interestingly, Terminal E has rocking chairs in the terminal. It’s so cute. Useless, really, but very cute.

Well, the fun couldn't last forever - I'm headed back to the UK today. In fact, my plane leaves in 3.75 hours, which is why I'm even remotely awake ate 4:30 am. I went to sleep less than four hours ago and am attempting to convince myself that m having woken up early is not a vice but some sort of perverse virtue. Whatever, I just want to curl up back in bed...

So I think I'm overpacking a bit, but I don't really know how to remedy the situation: I've culled a few shirts, a pair of trousers, and socks and such, but there's just not enough room for everything. As a result, I'm going to be wearing a lot of layers as I get to the airport: heavy ones... This might get interesting.

Boston has been gorgeous: real snow, real Chinese food, the sights sounds and smells of home... I love it here. But as Diana tried to remind me this past week, Oxford is fun too. And it is: Oxford certainly has been a lot of fun. But when I get back, crew training starts (actually, they're already going at it as I type), and singing starts on Friday, and I'm playing in a gig, and meetings, and argh. So Oxford is fun. But lounging around the suburbs of Boston has been really nice.

It snowed again today. Which was nice - it was beautiful from indoors, which was where I stayed for the entire day. Down in New Jersey, my former employers had a 2 hour delay. My high school alma mater decided last night that they were going to cancel school for the entire day, as did a huge number of their partners in education. My younger brother's school did not, though, much to his dismay. Ha ha...

Unfortunately, at about noon, it all turned to freezing rain, which allowed the snow to develop a nice crust and which made travel on the roads particularly disgusting. One of my friends casually joked that this is weather that makes you long for England. No kidding. Slush is awful.

So I went to Costco and bought that tub of dry roasted peanuts. I know, I'm being bad... I also bought the official Major League Baseball World Series DVD. Man, I love this town. Yesterday, as I was driving into downtown Boston for a date (more on this in a moment), I stopped by Fenway Park to pay my respects. Drove all the way around it and parked and walked around a bit. OK, so I was looking for a scarf for a friend - an ultimately useless exercise, as baseball is a summer sport, and therefore in no need of scarves. So yeah, I watched the DVD when I got home. Excitement, desperation, exhileration, joy, pride. This is what it's all about. I so missed watching this with friends I could scream at and with whom I could celebrate. Watching a sport about which you feel passionate all alone makes loneliness that much worse.

Yesterday, Diana and I went to see the Art Deco exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts. First of all, it was nice to go on a date for the first time in ages. Secondly, I love Art Deco, and this was quite an exhibit. Some of my favorite posters (the famous ones, like the Normandie one), wrought iron gates, jewelry, even dresses and odd looking pieces of furniture. Having admired Art Deco from afar without much real knowledge, it was nice to get a chance to learn a bit about its influences and different constituent styles. Well put together, though a bit steep, price-wise. Lunch was also good: Brown Sugar Cafe, in the Fenway (just blocks from the park!). Brown Sugar is a nice, well-hidden jewel of a restaurant with really authentic Thai food. It serves Pad Thai, of course, but then it also serves real Pad Thai, which is spicier, more flavorful, and just more appetizing than the nonsense that you get elsewhere. I had the Drunken Noodles, which packed quite a bit of heat, but which also contained probably a few dozen cloves of garlic and a lot of Thai basil. Delicious. *THIS* is what I'm going to miss about Boston. That and the Sox. And my family. And my girlfriend. And cable TV. And the Patriots. OK, you caught me - we have cable TV in Oxford.

National Public Radio has been doing an occasional series on the best college classes in America. Today's class was Far Side Entomology, a look at the world of bugs using the cartoons of Gary Larson as a starting point. The class is not run like a lecture, but as a collective, in which teams of two students each get up to teach the rest of the seminar a little something that they have researched, all while using the Far Side as ubiquitously as my old middle schoolers used to use clip art. Professor Michael Burgett said something today though that really reasonated with my own teaching philosophy. His goal was not to be the "sage on the stage", lecturing down at students from a dais at the head of a room, but as "the guide on the side", prodding students toward the intended outcome, but not leading them there through his own words. I wish that I could have had that advice before I went into teaching: my classes must have been kind of dull: chalk and talk for 44 minutes. Of course, there was banter, and class participation, and the occasional powerpoint or student presentation, but overwhelmingly, I was the sage on the stage, and I probably could have been more innovative in my teaching.

The statement touched me for another reason today: my own guide on the side is leaving. This statement, of course, merits some background. When I was 17 and about to graduate high school, my Mom took me to Saks Fifth Avenue in downtown Boston to buy a suit. I'd never owned a suit, and my Mom had, to my knowledge, never really gone to buy one. And we sought out some help from a very helpful and stylishly dressed gentleman who pointed me in the direction of a Hugo Boss navy blue suit, fixed me up with a shirt, some ties, and then sent us on our way. Everything, save the tie, was on sale at huge discount. Mom and I were in awe. We would return several more times over the course of college as I required suits for the Nassoons or for various occasions. When I started teaching, I'd ask Philip for advice on what to wear in the classroom, and each trip home to Boston was sure to include at least a small stop at Saks to say hello. It seems pretentious to announce to the world that every suit that I own is from Saks. And it is pretentious, until you realize that Philip only steered me toward suits that were being sold at severe discount, usually around 50% to 70% off. So today I got a suit for about 1/3 of what it should have cost: not too shabby. Philip, unfortunately, is moving to Tampa, Florida to start up a Sports Bar & Grill called Sidelines. I wish him and his family the best of luck: his wife and daughter will stay up in Boston for one more year for the daughter to finish High School. I will truly miss him: he would always give me tidbits of advice regarding clothes: which buttons to button, which belts to wear, what shirt, what tie, what suit, etc. He never steered me wrong, and in the past seven years, he's made me look better, dress sharper, and has been one of the incentives for losing all of this weight. I'm really going to miss him. But if anyone's ever down in the Tampa region starting in mid-February, check out Sidelines. And get the most expensive thing on the menu. Philip deserves it.

I'm taking a little break from my research to rave about this gorgeous space. I'm currently at the central branch of the Boston Public Library, the first large municipally funded free library in the world. I am sitting insidde a gorgeous barrel vaulted room called Bates Hall, which retains its majesty as a stately temple to intellectual curiosity and scholarly endeavor. What a place to study... Even at the Bodleian Library in Oxford there is no such wide-open space to enjoy books in this manner.

The following post was written offline and added later with a revised timestamp

So I’m meeting my friend Sarah for coffee at a delightful Starbucks in Concord, Massachusetts. Concord’s a beautiful place: it’s bordered by Lincoln, which is my own hometown, and both towns are classically gorgeous New England hamlets with narrow roads winding through rolling hills, and autumn foliage like you wouldn’t believe. On the border between Concord and Lincoln is Thoreau’s own Walden Pond, which is as picturesque as it must have been in his day, except for the parking lot and visitor’s center. All else, though, is lovely.

Which is what brings bikers to this nice suburban haven: not the Hell’s Angels bikers, no. I mean the eco- or health-conscious freaks who ride their bicycles and wear their lycra and tend to congregate in packs of four or more. Occasionally, there is the single biker, who is out for a nice ride, but invariably this one is a local. Today, on my way to Starbucks, I found myself behind a quintet of these out-of-town scenery addicts who were obviously friends, as they clumped together as they rode, slowly, through the above-mentioned narrow and winding roads. I was very effectively trapped behind them as they continued, quite oblivious to what they were doing. When you’re riding along on a nice road with your friends and there aren’t any cars coming in any direction, I don’t care if you ride five abreast and block traffic in both directions: you effectively own the road. But if, for any reason there are cars coming up from behind, the courteous and SAFE thing to do would be to fan into a single-file line and to allow cars to pass. Instead, these muppets stayed in the middle of the lane riding two and sometimes three wide, forcing me to follow at a snail’s pace for approximately two miles.

When I was in high school, I played bassoon in a music festival on Cape Cod, for which I stayed with a host family who, incidentally, manufactured their own jerky by salting and dehydrating generous inch-and-a-half thick cuts of prime steak – heartbreaking. Once, their father was out on his own, just cycling for his daily exercise when a couple of locals who’d decided that they’d had it with out-of-town bikers came up behind him in a pickup truck and leaned out the passenger side window and whacked him in the head with a rolled up newspaper. He got their license plate number, though, so all ended up well. I was sorely tempted today, but although I was driving a pickup trip, I did not have another passenger who might be so kind as to lean out the window to deliver the blow.

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So back to the peanuts for a moment: one paltry pound of dry-roasted peanuts was hardly enough to satisfy my craving, so I went back to the store for another quick fix. And wouldn’t you know it, I picked up the wrong jar, not noticing until I’d gotten home and hurredly downed a handful of lightly salted dry roasted peanuts. Ruin.

Or, as my friend Graham would say, in imitation of countless cartoon villains, curses! I mention Graham because I was in Border’s yesterday and I came across a book that he’d been telling me about this past summer: Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader, Political Edition, for which he is a contributor. Very cool, Graham: you’d have a tip of my hat, if I were wearing a hat.

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Oh, and I met this girl, right? A long time ago, and we dated for a while, and then I was stupid and dumped her. And then we kinda-sorta got back together, but I wouldn’t commit even to calling her my girlfriend, and she got fed up with my using her as an emotional crutch, and she dumped me. We have since stayed the best of friends, and despite having dated other people in the interim, we never really got over each other in full. Like I said, I got dumped for not committing myself to having her as a girlfriend. And I’m not making that mistake again. Introducing my best friend in the whole world, and my new girlfriend, Diana. :)

OK, so it's new year's day, and i'm really tempted just to go to sleep. i'm exhausted after a day of preparation for a nice big new year's party at home and then going to another one. i do enjoy seeing all of these people and such, so the effort is indeed worth it. but at the same time, me and my whole family are quite tired. i try not to write useless messages up such as this one, but it's difficult to let a major non-sectarian holiday slip by without a posting. so i'm torn between my dual obligations right now: the temporal continuity and relative quality of this blog, and sleep.

i was talking with a friend about my blog, and how a lot of vanity bloggers (ie. not those who are paid by media outlets or such) tend to put up one or two sentences about the most mundane things in life, like strange daydreams or what they had for tea. i recognize that this familiarity and casual nature is key to the life of a blog, but at the same time, there are only so many details that you can bore people with in a day. i've posted my fair share of rubbish, to be sure, but i chalk those up to rookie mistakes. i hope.

well, enough people are calling bloggers the people of the year, or blog as the word of the year, but i don't think that i personally have earned that title. yes, i've got a blog, but i'm not a pioneer: it's a tool that i use to keep in touch with friends around the globe and to vent from time to time in the preservation of my sanity. i'm not one of the elite corps of bloggers who exposed dan rather's gaffe or reported from the floor of the political conventions or who updated the world in the wake of the tsunami. i certainly don't have a book deal coming (or if i do, would people please contact me asap), and i've not been fired for blogging on company time or anything like that. so in the grand scheme of things, i'm pretty insignificant. but i already knew that.