in britannia

It's been exactly one week since coming back from England. I think it's safe to write on two related topics: what I miss about England, and what I've missed about America.

What I miss about England, in no particular order:
• dry heat. I know that it sounds really really odd, but Oxford was drier than Boston this past week. Of course, it might help that England as a whole has been going through a drought while Boston's humidity and temperature have been reaching near-record heights of late. And it's gotten much more pleasant today, so perhaps this will change.
• sky tv. I miss having eight channels of movies every night. I miss having the Simpsons on at 6, 7, and 7:30. I miss news broadcasts that don't make me freak out or want to mess my pants out of fear.
• pubs in walking distance. Now, I've not had anything to drink since coming back to Boston. For certainly, I'm not fussed about it: I'm not going through withdrawal or anything. I just miss having the option of popping down to the pub for a pint.
• bitter ale. Even if I were to drink a beer, there's nothing here that comes close. Someone on the Princeton Boston alumni list just emailed out that her British husband misses English pubs and wants to know if there's an English-y pub around the Boston area. So far: nothing.
• libraries. I really do miss the libraries: I miss being able to walk around and see all of these fantastic books on the shelves. Wonderful stuff.

What I have missed about Boston, also in no particular order:
• good food at reasonable prices. I think that it's important to note that not only does the food in England suck, it's expensive. Like they advertise that they're going to kick you in stomach and that you're going to have to pay for the priviledge.
• my family. I have really missed my family. It's tough living away from home at times: I remember one fantastic day that I came home from an incredible tutorial and I was bouncing off the walls. I told my friends, and I blogged it, but it's just not the same emailing to tell my parents. And I do miss having my parents at my orchestra concerts or choral concerts: I was spoiled in college: my parents came down to my concerts and visited a lot. My parents came to visit me once, and I wish that they could visit more.
• driving my car. Wow... I really miss being able to drive. It's not as good for me as walking or biking, but it allows a degree of mobility that is unparallelled.
• national public radio. Oh yeah. This incredible receptacle of current events, trivia, knowledge, and lighthearted fun. Car Talk, All Things Considered, This American Life, Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!, and Marketplace. I've missed them all. Though I do occasionally download and listen to Wait Wait and This American Life. Marketplace is probably the best analysis of the business world that is available short of reading the Economist. Not surprisingly, Marketplace and the Economist have a special arrangement by which editors for the Economist speak on Marketplace.
• sportscenter. This is the irrational, sports-loving, fanatic side of me. Like NPR, SportsCenter is a finely tuned blend of news, trivia, and lighthearted fun. And I've missed it.
• girlfriend. This one's a no-brainer. I had a lovely lunch with Diana today: went to a deli where we helped ourselves to piles and piles of meat and cheese and fries and delicious half-sour pickles. Mmmm... :)

So there it is. Also, dinner tonight was at Icarcus in Boston. It was a strange experience: it was delicious but oddly overpowering and completely lacking in nuance. I started with a BLT salad, which was wonderful but entirely over-dressed, with too much pepper, and too much garlic (even for me). My main course was cannelloni with chanterelles, ricotta calabra, spinach and peas. The cannelloni were delightful and light: the spinach and ricotta stuffing was creamy without being heavy, and the peas added some nice sweetness. But the chanterelles were woefully oversalted, and they overpowered the dish, not with the meatiness that could have arisen from well-sauteed mushrooms, but with salt, pure and simple. Dessert was a strawberry sorbet which, again, was delicious but... I'm all for sweet desserts but this one was over the top. The essense of pure strawberry is a powerful thing, and to distill strawberries down to such a potent form might be akin to concentrating the sun down onto a pin-prick of light and melting action figures on the sidewalk. Too much of a good thing. It was certainly an eye-opener, and I did enjoy the meal. As for the rest of the main courses, my father ordered a swordfish which proved much fishier than I would have imagined, and my mother and brother ordered a roasted chicken breast (or was it pan-seared?) which, unlike anything else I'd tasted on the menu, showed a degree of restraint. Overall, not bad. Not fantastic, but better European food than I've eaten for a long time. I throw "European" in there, because there's no comparing this to the best of the best of Chinese food, ie. my Dad's homemade cooking.

I remember walking into a health club in New Jersey to meet one-on-one with the trainer there. He showed me what he ate every day: four steamed chicken breasts on dry brown rice and a bucket of steamed brocolli. Certainly one loses weight: no one can stomach that much steamed chicken. I had never seen someone with such an adversarial relationship with food (with one exception: a friend of mine who was anorexic in college - that was scary). Sure, this trainer readily admitted that he hated his lunch, but that it was what he ate in order to look good.

I tried that one night: I only had white rice, but I steamed it as usual, and then threw some brocolli in on the steaming tray. I steamed a chicken breast and added pepper, being careful not to add any salt. It was inedible. I ended up shredding it the next day for chicken salad. I guess there's a reason I don't have washboard abs.

From the food sections of America today: some interesting morsels of information and fun.

My favorite for today is a delightful article subtitled as "The worldwide appeal of meat on a stick." Mmm...

This article on salt was printed a few weeks ago in the LA Times, I seem to recall. I didn't comment on it then, but I can now - it's entirely over the top and perfect food writing. It quotes Michael Chiarello, host of Food Network's "Easy Entertaining" show, as saying that "the great thing about olive oil, salt and wine is that they are affordable luxuries for everybody." I would disagree. Olive oil is not a luxury, it's a staple. Salt is a staple. Wine is generally not affordable. So I would beg to differ. I mean, I like salt a lot, and I enjoy salty food. I like my kebabs and my pretzels and my soy sauce. And I've been told I've got a pretty good palette. But I don't think that I could tell the difference between all of the different types of salt presented in that article. And after cooking, I'm not sure anyone else could either. The only thing I did do was buy a big box of kosher salt, since it can both season my food and detox my cutting board.

Also from this week's Chicago Tribune, an homage Gerry Thomas' invention, the TV dinner. Gerry Thomas is quoted in USA Today as saying "It's a pleasure being identified as the person who did this because it changed the way people live," Thomas said. "It's part of the fabric of our society." However, the rest of the article by the Associated Press which was excised by the USA Today editors, also have Gerry complaining that "I really didn't invent the dinner. I innovated the tray on how it could be served, coined the name and developed some unique packaging. If I'm the father of the TV dinner, who's the mother? I think it's ludicrous.” Indeed, the Tribune Article today reminded us of why we enjoy TV dinners: because they're fun and modular: because you can eat the dessert before you've finished the green beans, and because unlike with what mom or dad was cooking, you could choose something else. TV dinners are fantastic. I remember my younger brother Andrew: he used to cook the Swanson Hungry Man turkey dinners and then doctor them up. His favorite method was to take everything except the cranberry dessert and plop it into a big bowl. He'd add certain seasonings from our Dad's spice rack and then just stir up the whole mess into a sort of thanksgiving-meal-mush. It was surprisingly tasty, and I've done it a few times. Not recently: I wonder how they'd taste now that Swanson's gone to using all white-meat.

Still, the oddest pairing of articles came from today's New York Times and Boston Globe (incidentally, owned by the Times). Combine this recipe for Marinated White Anchovies with this article. Ew.

It's wonderful to be able to see the Red Sox play on TV. If you want frustration, click on the "GameDay" button on any mlb.com webpage. Then, for comparison, switch on the game that you're 'watching' online. It takes forever, you don't know what's going on, and what scant details are provided are maddeningly imprecise. And another thing I've missed? SportsCenter. Oh yes.

It's disgusting outside. It's hot and it's humid and it's sticky and it's gross. And it's been making me testy all week. So I try to stay in the bedroom, where I've got some air conditioning, but it's just so contained and what my mother might call "anti-social". And besides, according to this article in the Boston Globe, my air conditioner isn't working at peak performance anyway.

A note about anti-social behavior, while I'm on it. Britain has banned what it calls "anti-social behavior" by some teenagers. I think it's ridiculous. And if I choose to go off and be alone to read, I am not being anti-social. People don't criticize Thoreau for having been anti-social (though, to be fair, we do criticize him for other things, like being a pampered wannabe who had his mother bring him freshly laundered clothing).

Meh. Dinnertime, then back to the TV in my air-conditioned room...

Well, I've been home for a little over four days and I have eaten like a king. I love it here. Seriously.
Friday, Dad and I got a massive breakfast in Watertown. Now, I miss English bacon and the rest of the British heart-stopper that they call breakfast, but it was really nice to have s heaping mound of scrambled eggs with mushrooms and spinach and feta cheese too. Especially since it wasn't served out of a steam-tray. Lunch was quiet and at home. It was yummy. Dinner was a visit to one of my favorite Chinese places in Boston. Soooo good. :)

Saturday we went for dim sum, which couldn't have been yummier. Dinner was at a place called Minado: an all-you-can-eat Japanese buffet. Dignified it is not. Nor is it quiet. Or a place to savor the intricate delicacy of Japanese cuisine. Sushi is made in three different ways here: in rolls, nigiri, or hand rolls. The rolls are, I'm not joking, made by machine. Rice is spread onto a sheet of nori, and then the filling is placed in. The entire thing is then loaded into a machine, which presses and rolls the sushi into uniform almost-rectangles of fun, which are then sliced by hand. The nigiri rice is made ahead of time by packing rice into a mold and then cutting it, it seems. The sushi "chefs" behind the buffet were unwrapping plastic tubs of pre-made rice balls. I can only assume that they're making the hand rolls by hand. It's insane, and fantastic. Mom hates the place, so we only go there when she's not around, I guess.

Yesterday we went out to Tanglewood to look at the house and to see the concert. The house is great, though the town did rip down a ton of trees. It looks very surreal: not the nice tree cover we'd like, of course, but at least the road won't come crashing down... The concert was pretty good: the orchestra was sloppy, though. Soloist Pinkas Zuckerman was amazing in the Beethoven violin concerto. We decided not to stay for the Shostakovitch 5th symphony, which was fine: we were able to listen to it in the car home, and there were plenty of mistakes coming from the horns and the high winds. Disappointing. As for the food, we hit up Orient Express in West Stockbridge. We end up going there a lot because it's really yummy, even though it's gotten a bit more expensive than seems reasonable. Dinner was out in Somerville last night with Diana: we went for barbeque. :) Ribs is nice.

I'm hurredly trying to learn the music for our next Tanglewood concert, which is on August 7th, if you're interested and around the western Massachusetts area.

So I flew home yesterday. It was an interesting flight. Lots of very talkative children on the plane in front of me, which would have been OK had there not been two movies (Harry Potter III and Ice Princess) which cater directly to children. Oh, and Cartoon Network. Grr.

The food, incidentally, was *awful*. American Airlines is terrible. Boo.

It's good to be home: it's great to be in Boston and to see my Dad. Mom and Matthew are stil in Arizona, and Andrew won't be back from India for about a week, from what I understand.

I'm thrilled I got to see the Red Sox live on TV (as opposed to animated circles on MLB Gameday). And I'm psyched that the Red Sox have been doing well. Yay. :)

Well, I'm down to two suitcases, a duffel bag and a laptop bag. Everything else went off to my friend Derek's place for summer storage. Except for a big box of food which is being donated to the Keble MCR and two gigantic plastic bags of rubbish: one for general waste and one for paper.

I'm exhausted. Packing is a truly draining experience: one which I seriously do without. It is truly unfortunate that the end of term, which is sufficiently awful and emotional as it stands, is also the time that we must also take on the depressing and awful burden of moving out.

I am reminded of my experience moving out of my apartment last year in New Jersey, where the last night I spent in the apartment was on a blanket on the floor. My sheets are packed away and all I have now is a couch to sleep on. Unless I want to sleep on the bed sans sheets. I think not.

And I'm in the MCR because I've packed my ethernet cord and must use the wireless hub. I'm really looking forward to going hom tomorrow.

So I'm moving out today. Which is sad and depressing and difficult, and it's a pain because there's so much more stuff in this room than it appears. Truly, it's a pain in the neck.

Was in a pub quiz yesterday - Me, Debbie, Seb, and Dan (all members of The Queen's College Choir) had a great time down at the Turf Tavern where our team, For The Glory Of Owen Rees, came in first. Indeed, it was so. There's a maximum prize of £100, but it's all rather dependent on how many people have entered. For the four of us, the payoff was considerably smaller, since there were only nine teams playing. But we came out of the deal £4 richer each, which almost covers two pints of ale at the Turf. Still, being as three out of the four were pub quiz novices (I've done two), we were most pleasantly surprised.

Red the new Harry Potter book. Interesting. Not as weepy as everyone else made it out to be. I'm glad I bought the British edition, though.

OK, back to more packing.

This is just too weird. I like sushi and I like cookies. But I don't know if I could handle sushi in cookie form...

Is the plural of bacteria 'bacteriae'? Or is bacteria already the plural of bacterium? I don't know and can't be asked to look it up. My bacterial infection is getting better: I can talk, drink liquids, eat foods, and generally engage the world instead of being curled up on my bed. Exciting. Of course, I still have to finish off the course of penicillin, lest the scourge return. Another two days of those nasty-tasting pills... A nice plus for the penicillin course, though. I had scraped my knee while in Genoa (fell down on a cobbled street: it was dark and I was wearing sunglasses due to my regular glasses having been swept out to sea) and, in addition to ruining a pair of trousers which now have holes in both knees, my left knee was not healing properly. The much more minor scrape on the right was healing fine, but the left would scab and then begin to weep and ooze again. It clearly had a minor infection which my body was trying to deal with, and the are just would not heal. Well, thanks to the penicillin, which I was taking for the throat, my knee is also healing up fine. Yay!

As for the viruses part of this blog's title, turn now to the Technology section of today's New York Times. A nice article profiles a few people who, so fed up with viruses and spyware, take the drastic move of ditching the computer altogether instead of wiping it. The photograph which accompanies the article is of one Terrelea Wong. The ditched desktop is some sort of nondescript Wintel machine. The laptop on her lap is an apple powerbook: it looks like mine. :) The article says that " Succumbing to the seduction of all the new bells and whistles, she spent $3,000 on a new Apple laptop" and further says that she will no longer click on pop-up ads or let her friends borrow her computer. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Can we take this to mean that she used to click on pop-ups? Also, why bother: the Apple has great protection from all of this: Safari itself can be set to block pop-ups entirely. Nevertheless, I'm happy when someone switches to Apple, regardless of how undeserving they are.

So sometimes working Conference Team is awful, and sometimes it's downright profitable. I mean, yeah, we're making money. Not good money, but enough. What's lovely, though, is that sometimes people leave stuff in rooms after they leave, and sometimes said stuff is very pleasant.

Jenny's team found £20. I think Jenny took it meaning to dole it out after lunch, but no one showed up for it. So it's hers. I found an electric fan that someone had purchased for £12.99 and had decided not to bring back to the US (I also found a dime, so I know it wasn't some European).

Now, we just finished hosting a massive conference in which delegates were given a gigantic gift bag of delightful things. I'd actually prefer not to name said conference for fear of getting into trouble and such. Anyway, these gift bags included an umbrella (which, to be honest, you'd have a hard time bringing on a plane, so most of them were left for us to take - I have one), Skype starter sets (includes 30 free minutes of Skype out of network calling time and two computer headsets - yeah, I have one), a set of 'Inspiration' cards by IDEO (51 cards which are meant to 'inspire' design - I have a set of these too), a Hulger P*Phone with adaptors (to retro-fit your phone - I've got one), a box of chocolate from Vosges (these were delicious), and various media subscriptions. Oh, and a Timbuk2 Messenger bag to carry it all in. And while said huge conference moved out yesterday, Keble Conference Team descended on those rooms in a cleaning frenzy and ended up coming across many of these items. Most common: the Hulger phone by far. Then the Skype stuff, followed by the media magazines and umbrellas. Then the IDEO cards (my team found 2 packs), then the chocolates (we found one, six chocolates split between three persons) and a Timbuk2 bag. Yup. It's on my floor right now.

Do I feel bad taking this? Not really. Should I? The guest didn't pay for it (aside from the $4400 registration and conference fee, and the separate and unknown at this time fee for accommodation. And airfare. And getting from Heathrow to Oxford. But other than that, the guest didn't pay for it...) and the guest left it (and *everything* in it, sans chocolates) behind. Is there a difference between taking an unwanted umbrella worth about £15 and an equally unwanted bag? Even if the bag is worth more? Certainly not, and I had no problem taking the umbrella. Or the bag.

So yesterday, in addition to working 4 hours and getting paid for 4 hrs. of work, I also picked up a fan (£12.99), a Skype starter set (£5), Inspiration cards ($49, NYTimes currency converter puts it today at £27.94), the Hulger P*Phone (£40), Chocolates (c. $5, or £2.85), and a Timbuk2 Computer Messenger bag that is built for my Apple laptop ($90, or £51.31). Total for the day, without counting my actual salary: £189.09. Add in also an umbrella that didn't have a price tag on it but which is nice and most functional, and I'm over £200! Outstanding.

Still a little sick, but the antibiotics are working and I'm feeling a lot better than I was on Tuesday when I could hardly talk.

Last night, I went to a talk: What Role Should Christians and Christianity Play in American Politics? by Tennessee State Senator Roy Herron. He's the author of three books: Things Held Dear: Soul Stories For My Sons, Tennessee Political Humor: Some of These Jokes You Voted For, and How Can A Christian Be In Politics?. It was an amazing talk run by the Oxford chapter of Democrats Abroad.

Unfortunately, the first introduction to Sen. Herron's speech was the chapter president of the Democrats Abroad Oxford, a guy named Eric, who is a student here at Oxford. Instead of making his speech (and therefore, the evening) about American politics, progressive politics, or the Democratis party, he started in on making the focus of his speech his belief in Christ. Now, he truly could have gone either way on this one: indeed he did not begin incorrectly, but rather than assuming that the entire crowd there was Christian (it was not), he might have better assumed that the majority of the audience was progressive. I think he irked a few people in his introduction. I was put on guard, not because I'm on guard about my faith, but because maybe I'm a little more sensitive to people who may not agree with Christian beliefs. Eric came on like an evangelical ton of bricks, and while his introduction was pertinent and interesting and truly heartfelt, I could see why it might have engendered some of the mild animosity voiced by some of the folks asking questions at the end of Sen. Herron's talk.

The second introduction came from a guy I met a few months back named Mike. He plays for the Oxford Kings baseball team, and I met him actually when I went down for batting practice one night in March. I think Mike is from Sen. Herron's constituency and called Sen. Herron his mentor, so I think they're pretty close. Mike's introduction was a lot tighter than Eric's: Eric is going to be a university professor someday, while Mike is going to be in government. It seems pretty clear from those two speeches. Whatever.

The real speech by Sen. Herron was amazing, both in what was said and what was not said (and how incredibly artfully it was done). First, Sen. Herron talked about his family, and a particularly traumatic period in which he and his wife were expecting twins only to find out that they had a rather severe complication in which one of the twins was getting more blood than the other. In many cases, both twins die, in the rest, only one survives. Sen. and Mrs. Herron were told to abort by six doctors, they did not, and they now have two healthy twin boys (and a third son as well). The story was told not as a lesson about abortion, which Sen. Herron opposes, from what I gather (he didn't actually say), but instead, the point was that the one doctor who recommended carrying the pregnancy to term, the family physician who delivered the children, the neonatal care specialists, the drugs they used, and the hospitals in which they work are all funded by government money, the personell involved were educated at public expense, and these are life-and-death issues just as serious as debates over abortion rights. Government has the power, far beyond Roe v. Wade or Terry Schiavo, to legislate life and death issues through the medium sometimes of funding public education, welfare, and healthcare.

Sen. Herron highlighted legislation that he fought for: seat belt laws, close to zero-tolerance for drunk driving among teenagers (under 21 legal alcohol limit is 0.02%) and a reduction from the 0.1% limit for other drivers to 0.08%. Drunk driving deaths are down, he said. He did this because it was the right thing to do, because it was the caring and responsible thing to do. He did not mention his Christianity in this. Nor, for that matter, did he mention the hot-button issues of Terry Schiavo, abortion, or gay marriage that have been a windfall for partisan politics in America: he didn't even mention them, much less come out on one side or another. He did say that he found it sad that a pro-life Democrat could not be found on the national party scene.

He did speak about the 2004 presidential campaign at great length. First and foremost, the Democrats have got to be better at speaking speaking the language of faith as a first language, he said. I'm an evangelical, personally, and I'm not sure *I* speak the language of faith as a very fluent second language, let alone a first language. I try, but I'm not very successful. Sen. Herron accused the Democrats of failing to speak it as a third or fourth language (with two exceptions: Al Gore and Joe Lieberman). In fact, when Democratic then-front-runner Howard Dean was asked in January of 2004 what his favorite book of the New Testament was, he answered "Job", but that he didn't like the way it ended. Dean was quoted as saying, "Some would argue, you know, in some of the books of the New Testament, the ending of the Book of Job is different. I think, if I'm not mistaken, there's one book where there's a more optimistic ending, which we believe was tacked on later." Meanwhile, Sen. Herron was no less disparaging of John Kerry, who's political CV while running for president still had that he had been an alter boy back in his childhood, almost akin to Bush saying that he was Student Council vice-president or something. And as for the Republicans, they are more adept at spinning the Bible to suit their needs, surely, but the Republican view of Christianity is just bad Christianity in his mind, and it's difficult for him (and for me, frankly) to read through the Bible to come up for the justifications for many of the Republican actions of late.

The most interesting part of the talk came at the Q&A session afterward. Here are some highlights:

• A man stated vehemently that he is an unbeliever and hates all organized religions and wanted a response to the statement that politicians who use religion in their dealings with the American people sound sanctimonious and ridiculous. Sen. Herron's response: yes they do, if they don't also act as though they mean it. But that action has to appear through their votes, their stances on issues, and not just being 'that candidate who prays more or goes to church more'.

• A woman told a story of her church pastor in Oklahoma who goes on the air to trumpet victory when liberal legislation is defeated and asked what role a pastor should have in American politics. Sen. Herron responded that the church should have a prophetic and detached role, speaking truth to power but not being seduced by it. The woman asked a follow-up: is it proper then for a pastor to sound off on political issues? Sen. Herron's response was that only on a very very limited number of issues the answers to which are found in the Bible. On all else, there is too much interpretation and ambiguity, and pastors who tend to get caught up in the Republican machine are being seduced by the powerful people in the Republican party.

• A man asked about the traditional separation of church and state. Sen. Herron's answer was this: The church should fight all attempts by the government to regulate it. The church should be very wary of government oversight of churches, of government rulings which infringe upon free worship by individuals. Government, on the other hand, is free to be influenced by the church. His basic point was that the separation of church and state was not a flaming wall to keep both out of each other's business but a one-way gate which prevents the influence of government on free worship by citizens but in which citizens, religious or otherwise, are always free to act as a prophetic voice as an influence on government. Certainly there should not be a single church in control of government, but there were never intended any barriers to the church's attempt to speak truth to power. He gave this analogy, which came to us actually from the floor of the Tennessee Senate: he was reminded of the guy who added horse poop to ice cream. It doesn't really do anything to the horse apples, but it wreaks hell on the ice cream. In the same way, the mixing of government and the church can't really do anything but help government, however weakly, but it will destroy the autonomy and abilities of the church.

• A woman asked about cultural issues: Sen. Herron has previously stated that "I'm from Tennessee, I'm not from California or New York or those places..." So yes there is a massive cultural divide in America. Can these be explained as cultural issues instead of moral clashes or mere partisan bickering, and how can the Christian church help to bridge that gap? Sen. Herron's response was less than lucid, stating that yes there are huge cultural divides and it's important to recognize them as areas of full-on disagreement and not just miscommunication.

• Lastly, a man asked if anyone on the national stage did wear his faith well, and also what remedy might Sen. Herron prescribe for the Democratic party? The response was more forthright than any of us had been anticipating: first off, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, also Al Gore has been seen to wear his faith well, but is uncomfortable doing it. Sen. John Edwards does, but his wife Elizabeth speaks much more eloquently than Sen. Edwards, as does Tipper Gore over her husband. And as for the remedy, the best thing that Democrats can do is to learn to speak the language of faith as a first language. And this begins, really, with the reading of scripture. Sen. Herron admitted that this does sound dangerously fundamentalist, but it's important: Biblical literacy in America is plummeting, and those who win the hearts of Christian voters (among whom Biblical literacy is also plummeting) are those who can 'fake' it the best. And if the Democrats want to outmaneuver the Republicans, they have to be able to speak that language.

The individual questions raised one-on-one also included questions of social justice (answer: read Leviticus, particularly about the redistribution of wealth for some very radical, if impractical ideas eg. the jubilee year), environmental stewardship (answer: the Republicans have seized on the words "have dominion over the earth" while Christians need to remember that the earth is not ours: it belongs to God and he lets us use it for a while, but we need to take better care of it), and the until-recently political inaction of the evangelical church in America (answer: descendant both from a sense of complacency in politics and also a tradition of the Anabaptist movement of England which taught that Christians should keep to what is pure and holy and not engage too deeply in the world).

Finally a point from me, Sen. Herron is a moderate Democrat, but he was truly an inspirational speaker and a very generous man. I may not agree with everything he says in his book, but I did buy it (and of course, asked him to sign it) and I think I'll enjoy reading it. For a different view of Christians in politics, there's a pretty extreme view profiled in the New Yorker about two weeks ago: it's Patrick Henry College in Virginia, and it's a place where you're taught both Christian ethics and also political theory. Unfortunately, it's entirely in the ridiculously conservative strain of the church, including rules on having to inform parents before you start dating. Both sides are interesting, but I'm much more of a Christian liberal, at least, politically. Socially, I think I'm more of a moderate, but my political views are pretty left.

This has been a long post: I hope it hasn't been preachy. That certainly wasn't my intention. Meanwhile, if anyone has any thoughts, including comments on either my statements or the answers that Sen. Herron gave, please don't hesitate to comment on the blog posting.

I work at Keble during the day to make a little spending money. Or rather, a little get-less-in-debt money. Or even, a little don't-go-as-deep-into-debt money. Whatever you want to call it. Keble is set up a little differently than many of the other colleges in Oxford, meaning that it has a lot of single rooms with ensuite bathrooms or, as is the case with my room, two rooms on a single staircase landing which share a bathroom. This may not mean a lot to you the reader, but it speaks volumes to people who want to host conferences. Not a lot of people who have gone to college would like to re-live the experience of dormitory life, and Keble's rooms are a bit more like hotel rooms than normal. So Keble actually hosts more conferences than any other college in Oxford. In fact, Keble was originally selected to be Hogwarts dining hall, but the one-off filming schedule would have meant turning away something like 15 different conferences which Keble has been hosting for years. So Keble said no to Harry Potter, and they went down the street to Christ Church and now Christ Church is even more famous and charging for admission to enter. Not that I'm bitter.

Anyway, I work in the conference team, which means hauling things or housekeeping or working in hall or as a guide. I've done all four. Housekeeping means stripping beds and making them up again, changing the instant coffee and sugar in the room, and dusting. I've gotten REALLY good ad making beds. It also means sweeping, mopping, or 'hoovering', which is what they call vaccuuming over here. The dirty towels and sheets get thrown downstairs where, with the rubbish, they're hauled away by men (always men: the housekeeping manager is a bit of a sexist when it comes to assigning jobs) with a cart. I've done that too. I was a guide on Monday, which meant standing around and directing people to the buildings on site. Not bad work. Finally, last night I worked in hall. This requires its own separate paragraph.

So Gerard, the hall manager, was an Oxford undergraduate who didn't manage to get a good grade. He got a 3rd degree, which is akin to a D+. I mean, it's the lowest degree you can get at Oxford and still graduate. Evelyn Waugh said that there are only two degrees worth getting at Oxford: a first and a fourth. The first meant that you worked really hard, applied yourself, and excelled. The fourth meant you had a lot of fun. They've done away with the fourth degree, so Gerard's third was pretty low. Anyway, he's a tyrant whose little fifedom is Keble Hall. He tries to run hall with the efficiency of a fine restaurant, and sometimes the food holds him back, sometimes it's just the complexity of serving dinner to 300 people at once. In any case, Gerard is an unhappy man. So he yells and screams and makes sure we're all in place. And then tells us that we are serving a choice of white wine: a sauvignon from New Zealand and a chardonnay from Burgundy. He even makes us say these words out loud, which is a good thing for some: there are a LOT of East Asians who don't speak good English on staff. Pouring wine and bussing tables is complicated enough in a fine restaurant, but in a dining hall, in which you're trying to get around people who are leaning close together to talk, it's virtually impossible to do well. I just ended up doing it rudely but effiently.

A word about the minorities on conference staff. The vast majority of them are Chinese in Hall, but those who work in housekeeping are both Chinese and Korean. I am the only Chinese-looking one who doesn't speak English with a discernably Asian accent. The guests for these conferences don't always know that, though, and the Americans especially talk down to all of us like we're children. In fact, a Texan came out of his room while we were cleaning the hallway last week and started to berate the Indian staff housekeeper (ie. not a student needing a summer job) about something. I came out and addressed him in flawless and American-sounding English and he totally backed off. Unfortunately, Suda was then berated by Texas-man's wife, whose comment while holding up a shopping bag full of fruit peels and assorted detrious: "this is trash. You throw out the trash. Then you bring me a new bag. When you do, then I'll give you some Indian coffee." really ticked me off. It wasn't just the words themselves, which are awful. It was the tone of voice: that sort of sing-song I'm telling you as slowly as I can stand to because it's like talking to a child tone that made me want to start screaming at her. I walked over and asked if there was any problem. "Oh. No problem. We're just working through the (and then she gets really slow, takes on a smirk, and makes hand gestures) language barrier." Language barrier? Suda speaks English very well. It's accented, but it's not 3rd grade, which is what this woman was insinuating with her tone. What made me even more upset was that these were people who had come from the United States for an evangelical Christianity summer school. As an evangelical Christian, I was embarassed by their behavior. And as an American, I was embarassed as well.

I'm not saying that they were all like that: far from it. But there were enough to make me want to tell them off. And I'm not trying to sound off of evangelicals either. On a not-too distant topic: I'm going to a lecture tonight at 7:30 on What Role Should Christians and Christianity Play in American Politics. Believe it or not, it's being funded and hosted not by some right wing nut, but by the Oxford chapter of the Democrats Abroad. Speaker: State Senator Roy Herron of Tennessee, who is a former minister, attorney, and is currently a professor in both the law and divinity schools at Vanderbilt University, from which he also received M.Div and JD degrees. This should be really interesting.

And on a side note, I'd been complaining a lot of a sore throat so I finally went to the Health Center to get it checked out. For the second time in three years, I'm on a full week's regemin of penicillin. Bad bacterial infection in my throat. I'm feeling palpably better after just 30 hours on the stuff, but the throat's still quite raw. If I'm not feeling much better by Friday, they'll have to test for mono, which I really hope they don't have to do.

OK. I'm starving, and the 1 hr. wait between taking the penicillin and eating is about to expire. I'm gonna get me some food.

Happy Birthday to my brother Andrew, who turns 24 today. He's the med student, and I wish him all the best as he goes off to the Himalayas on Saturday for a medical volunteer thing. In truth, I have no idea what he's doing, but it sounds impressive.

Worked for college today. Boring. Now I'm cleaning my room and packing it up for my friend to cart bits of it away to his place for the summer. This is the first time I've packed myself out of a place without the benefit of a car to haul remainders home in. Princeton? I drove. P. school? I drove. Tanglewood? I drove. Heck, not being able to decide on a spur of the moment when I leave Oxford drove me nuts this year. It used to be "I'll come home Friday or possibly Saturday depending on how I feel - if I've had a rough day and need the rest, then I'll start driving really early on Saturday." The decision would be made a full 4 hours before I'd have to hit the road. Now, I have the dates for when I have to be back in Boston, and I'm pretty sure I'll be leaving Oxford on December 15th. That's a full five months away!

While I pack, I'm listening to one of the funniest writers out there: Sarah Vowell. She's the voice of Violet in the Incredibles, but she's gained a lot of fame as a contributor to This American Life, a public radio show broadcast from WBEZ Chicago. This episode talks about music and the lessons that taking music lessons might have impressed upon us when we were kids. Absolutely hilarious. Click here for the actual episode.

Today's New York Times presents an editorial-type article about movies that are made from books and which sometimes overshadow said books. They use the old standards, What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, Jaws, and now War of the Worlds. But there are so many movies out there made from books which have less obviously overshadowed the book. Yet many people would rather not go to the library to pick up a volume. Among my favorites are these:

• Blade Runner. Based on Phillip Dick's story Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, Blade Runner isn't able to include all of the nuance of Decker's emotions, nor does it realize the deep yearning of the androids to be human as well as the book. Yet most people wouldn't even know that Blade Runner was based in literature. Still, the one thing that Blade Runner does really well is to give voice and form to the terrifying new world of the Dick's prose. The architecture, lighting, and culture are all so vividly shown on screen that it's impossible (and unhelpful) to excise those images when reading the book.

• Troy. OK, now here's one where I didn't see the movie because I'm too fond of the book. Or rather, books. As I understand, there are bits of the Aeneid and Odyssey in here, but the majority of the story is cribbed, poorly, from the Iliad. It's one of those movies I'll probably rent later on to see what the hype was. My old college advisor from Princeton was interviewed on NPR saying that it was fun and that she liked all of those shots of Brad Pitt, so if Prof. Fantham can see past the Hollywood tripe, then so can I.

• A Clockwork Orange. This is one of my two favorite films. It really captures the struggle between good and evil, between learned and innate behavior, and still serves as a fierce commentary on our times. Unfortunately, many people are turned off by the movie and don't even consider the book. Or they open the book and find all of the pseudo-slavic slang confusing. But the sad part is that A Clockwork Orange (the movie) is not a good film representation of the book. It's a great movie on its own, but as a retelling of the book, it's off. This is because of the complex relationship between the British author and the editor of the American version, who left out a very beautiful and moving last chapter which redeems the main ultra-violent character because he didn't think it would fit with American sensibilities. This was the copy that Kubrick picked up and transformed into film.

• A Room With A View. This is my other favorite film (strange juxtaposition, I know). The movie, made by the team of the late Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, is a nod to the E. M. Forster novel, with the actual chapter headings written out in beautiful script. I love this movie because it's poignant without being cloying, sweet and funny without being terribly ridiculous, and overall because I'm a bit of a romantic who really likes Florence.

Of course, there are many other books turned movie, but these are just the ones that really hit me personally. In reference to the article, I am also really excited to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Johnny Depp, which I think is going to be hilarious and dark and wierd. I can't wait. Work now. Back in the afternoon, probably.

By now, most everyone has heard what's gone on in London today. I haven't yet heard from my friend Edith as to whether she's OK, but I did hear from others. I don't know what to say - I'm pretty shell shocked and stunned. These were places I go to, and particularly also places I was planning on going this weekend. Not so much now, I don't think.

It sounds really cliched to say that though. My friend Adam was in a playwriting class in Hopkins in the fall of 2001. He wrote, if I remember correctly, a play in which the phrase "I only live a block away from the world trade center" was stretched to "I live in Buffalo, but with a four hour drive, yeah, that could have been me up there." A little too soon, perhaps, but the idea that we all tried to share in that sense of dread and awe and near-miss by saying and in some ways exxagerating how close we were to actual tragedy is indeed kind of ridiculous. But I am a little spooked that I did live just over an hour away from NYC on Sept. 11, 2001, and that I now live about an hour outside of London. I wonder if July 7, 2005 or 7.7.05 is going to mean anything like what Sept. 11, 2001 means in terms of the date.

Work has been going well, except that there are some very rude Americans here who seem to talk down to the cleaning staff (myself included) because they think that we don't understand English. What a shock for them to find out that I'm from Boston. More stories of life in housekeeping later - this isn't exactly the appropriate time.

So I just got back from a Magdala tour to Genoa. Since I was trying to travel light (more on this in a moment), it was impossible for me to bring my laptop. No matter, I figured, since I can always update my blog from an internet café. Well, as it turns out, that’s prohibitively expensive, especially when I’ve got friends waiting to go to the beach and I’m chained to the computer in the youth hostel. So I apologize for this extra-long blog, entry, which I’m actually writing in Word before posting. Note: this post was to be uploaded on Tuesday night, but because I fell asleep while writing it, it didn't get done until today (Thursday). It is being retroactively posted on Tuesday night.

We left for Italy at the ungodly hour of 7:45 AM from London Stansted Airport. There is some debate as to whether Stansted really can be considered a London airport, given that it’s more than an hour and a half outside of central London. It’s relatively easy to get to from Cambridge, but it’s an absolute nightmare trying to get there from Oxford. In fact, Diana and I were going to try to fly to Italy from Stansted but found that the costs involved in getting to the airport from Oxford would ultimately offset any saving we could find by using a budget airline. We flew to Paris instead for only about £10 more.

So flying out of Stansted at 7:45 means getting to the airport at 5:30. Which means leaving Oxford with a wide enough margin to make it to the airport: 2 hours. Yes, that’s right, we left Oxford at 3:30 AM. My friend Bill was coming up from Chilmark (I stayed with his family on the Queen’s Choir trip) and he stayed in my room for that tiny little slice of a night. We were kindly driven to the airport by Magdala member Paul, whose girlfriend was borrowing his car for the week. So she came for the ride and then drove the car back to Oxford. We’re flying Ryan Air, which is a budget airline out of Ireland – they are known for stupidly cheap fares in and out of rather ridiculously positioned minor airports like, oh, Stansted. Amenities are paid for – drinks are purchased, don’t even ask about a movie, and goodness help you if you even think about eating. On some of their newer planes, Ryan Air has actually eliminated the seat pocket and the windowshade, as these just raise the turnaround time for each aircraft.

Paul and Bill and I were some of the first Magdala people at the airport. As others began to stagger in slowly, I quickly became aware that there are a *lot* of people that I don’t know very well in the choir. In fact, there are a lot of people whose names I don’t even know. This is going to be quite a learning experience.

Ryan Air is pleasant enough, actually. There are two rows of exit seats over the wing, which Magdala snatched up with all speed. It’s good to be sitting in a row fully a foot wider than the others: I can cross my legs and still be comfy! Excellent. I sit, contentedly listening to my iPod on my Bose noise-reducing headphones. I mean, it’s not first class, but it has its moments too.

Immigration is suspiciously easy at Genoa. Finally, we make it to the train station. I learn, in the interim, that we are not staying in Genoa, but going directly on to Levanto. The bus ride from the airport to the train station reveals that Genoa is a phenomenally ugly city. It gets better as we get closer to the center of town, but really it looks like an industrial dump. We manage to sneak into the first class train cabin, which is beautifully air-conditioned and cushy.

Levanto is a tiny little resort town just north of Cinque Terra in Liguria. it seems to try very hard to be posh, but it is a little too small, and in recent years it’s been outshined by the towns of Cinque Terra, so it gets very little American tourism. There are a fair number of northern Europeans here: instantly recognizable by the paleness of their skin.

The church we’re singing, the Chiesa di San Andrea, in is gorgeous. Like many of the other churches of Liguria and Tuscany, it is striped in green and white marble. The interior is pleasantly cool and the icons are gorgeous. After a quick rehearsal, we all go out for some food. We have never actually eaten together as a choir: Magdalen College does not provide us with food, unfortunately. So I sat down among a few of the guys I don’t know at all. As it turns out, and I’m glad about this, I will be eating a lot of meals with these gentlemen.

The meal started out with a generous portion of antipasti, comprising marinated anchovies, various sliced cured meats, salami, caprezze salad, stuffed mussels, ground fish, octopus… Amazing. In fact, there was enough for a meal. Then the time came to order our actual main courses: I had a fried mixed seafood, which was delicious. Squid rings and tentacles, clams, mussels, shrimp, and some beautiful herring. I also managed to try some of what the others were eating. The cheese and spinach ravioli in walnut sauce were delicious, though the sauce was not at all nutty. There was a wonderful spaghetti with seafood sauce which had a spicy kick just under the incredibly clean taste of pure olive oil. And the pesto gnocchi were excellent too, though I’m usually not one for gnocchi. The wines were flowing nicely and we all had a lovely time. Over at the other table (there were two), Chris bought two bottles of €50 wine, which was a bit excessive. The meal, sadly, came to a €33 conclusion: fair, I suppose, for what we’d eaten and drunk, but much higher than I was comfortable paying. Then again, I got a free trip out to Italy and had no expenses except food.

Life in the youth hostel has been grand so far. Very hot, yes, but otherwise not too bad. I had a wonderful amaretto gelato today. Brilliant stuff – I’d missed gelato. Brings back memories of my wonderful month in southern Europe after college graduation. Boy does that sentence sound snooty.

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Anyway, the following day (Friday), we monopolized the church and turned it into a massive recording studio. We recorded the first of seven pieces in 33 takes. David Skinner, our conductor, doesn’t so much record individual takes for patches as much as he throws down fifteen takes of the same thing just to be sure. After we continued to get more and more nervous with his nit-picking, I decided to do something about it. I started a betting pool: how many takes will each piece require? Suddenly, we’re interested in recording again. And yes, David’s nit-picking will definitely serve us well when the recording comes out. Meanwhile, Chris seems to be winning big. Well, as big as one can if the stakes for each piece is half a euro…

We had a recording session in the morning, then a long break for lunch. Lunch was at a focacciateria filled with excellent offerings. I had a mushroom focaccia and a tomato-mozarella-basil focaccia. Like a very thick pizza. mmmm… :)

We finished up the recording session and then went out for dinner – I had a lovely spaghetti in seafood sauce. Next to me, Brady had a sea-bass, which smelled amazing. Overall, a great day.

Then I did something stupid. We went sort of wading into the Mediterranean, and although I wasn’t meaning to get wet above the waist, I wasn’t watching carefully and I was knocked on my butt by a huge wave. When I came back up, my glasses were gone. I mean, really and truly gone. Luckily, I had a pair of prescription sunglasses in the hostel. A truly unhappy ending to what had been a really lovely day.

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Saturday saw the completion of our album recordings. Thankfully. Overall, I don’t think that the recording could have been better – every nuance we wanted to put in got in, and yet we had fun and were relatively relaxed. A huge concert in the church followed that evening, which was incredibly well attended. They spoke to us through translators to tell us how honored they were that we had decided to come to share our music. In fact, the reason we had picked the church was that one Giovanni Joachino Passano had come from Levanto to be the ambassador of Genoa to France, and then later the French ambassador to the court of Henry VIII. The concert (and CD) is all music that he would have heard in his travels. In fact, Passano brought back to Italy a chalice from Westminster Abbey: the chalice was on display during the concert and we each got to see it and take photos of it. After the concert, the ladies of the town choir got together to make us food: more focaccia. It was all a bit much, really, but the sight of all off those people enjoying the music was wonderful.

Of course, I did the entire concert in my sunglasses, which were complimented by our choice of concert attire: black shirt and black trousers. In celebration of this, I also shaved down to a goatee, which made me look more menacing. The overwhelming consensus is that I look ridiculous. Fun. :)

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Sunday was a day off of sorts: we moved out of the hostel and got on trains to get to Genoa, but not before having some time to chill out and enjoy a leisurely breakfast on the boardwalk above the beach. We went to a few stores for fruit, fresh bread, and salami, and then made a bit of a picnic for ourselves. I had cherries, apricots, tomatoes and a beautiful salami Milanese. When we got to Genoa, we immediately set off to explore the city. A few of the dingier palazzi were actually quite nice on the inside, and the Via Garibaldi was a wonderful place to walk through. It didn’t take long for us to find parts of Genoa that were beautiful, but it does take a good amount of effort. Lunch was had at a lovely little restaurant overlooking the wharf. I had a wonderful seafood risotto, while the majority had a rather spicy tagliarini with prawns. A few of us went to the Palazzo Rosso, Palazzo Bianco, and Terme museums, which were pretty good. Unfortunately, there was a lot of schlock art in there with the good stuff. We did get to see Paganini’s violin, though, which was amazing. Dinner was at a lovely restaurant situated in a neat little piazza somewhere in Genoa’s old city center. The food was delightful (I had a nice antipasto of prosciutto e melone & smoked swordfish on arugula and then a main course of squid and eggplant stew) but the really wonderful part of the meal was that we had a live guitarist and singer just behind us playing for us and taking requests. We got him to play Autumn leaves and some Beatles music. He was just sitting there, plucking away when we arrived, and then slowly and very quietly broke into Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. We attempted a rendition of John Sheppard’s Salvator mundi Domine, but fell apart rather quickly after about 18 bars. Conductor David, myself, and a Californian named Elysha rang in July 4th with a few drinks and a toast to Christopher Columbus, whose house was down the street from the bar.

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Monday was free until our concert at 7:30, so I spent the morning walking around Genoa sightseeing. The palazzi were open again but almost all of the museums were closed. We hit upon a marvelously inexpensive place for lunch (I had another pasta – fusilli with pancetta and peas, mmm…) and then went off on my own in search of shopping. I found it on the Via Roma, which is a wonderful street full of high-end boutique stuff. Unfortunately, neckties from Salvatore Ferragamo ended up being priced at about €120, if I understood the woman correctly. Not exactly a bargain. I also managed to trek all the way across town to the south-eastern part of Genoa, which was a long walk but worth it for the scenery. It certainly was not the picturesque old town, but even the fascist era buildings with their austere white marble and their stylized Roman arches can be beautiful. The concert was a bit ragged around the edges, really. It was difficult to sing after such long days (and nights) and we were all pretty tired of the music. But the audience was glorious and they really did seem to have a good time.

Dinner, of course, was a lavish affair. Unfortunately, we ended the concert at 9:45, and were struck with the difficulty of actually finding a restaurant at that hour. Eight of us finally found a wonderful place called the Schooner restaurant: it had wonderful food, good ambiance (Toulouse-Lautrec paintings on the walls) and great jazz. It being our last night, I suggested that I might go in for a more filling meal of two courses. What I meant was a first plate – second plate. What everyone else thought was starter – main. No bother: I had a delicious plate of marinated anchovies, three of which were covered in a basil and olive paste, the other three in garlic and fresh herb. They were incredible. To my right, John had another prosciutto e melone, while to my left, Benedict had an amazingly fresh capreze salad. Further down the table, Stephen had an artichoke flan. I have no idea what it tasted like, but he looked a little less than pleased with it. My main course was a phenomenally fresh seafood taglialini. John had fish ravioli with a seafood sauce, which was also very nice. Down the table, three people had deep fried zucchini blossoms and fish. Dinner rounded out very nicely and we were all immensely satisfied. And as the food started to kick in, so did the jazz, which moved from blues to a whole lot of soul. Wonderful.

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The ride back to Oxford wasn’t so bad the next day with two minor hiccups. I had to remove my sunglasses so as not to appear suspicious while going through customs and also immigration. None of these things was particularly easy. But I made it back to Oxford and here I am now. Work starts tomorrow, so wish me luck. :)