Amazingly it's just over a year since I arrived in Michigan and started my postdoc at MSU. Time flies when you're having fun, eh? Well, the first few months didn't fly so fast... but it's been fairly well shooting by recently. That's not to say I don't miss home everynowandthen. Especially when I see videos like this about my hometown:
Last week I took a brief snowboarding trip to Utah. After two days on the fantastic Snowbird slopes we explored the area around Salt Lake City a little. One place we visited was Garr Ranch on Antelope Island, home of the oldest Anglo house still on its original foundation in Utah. Perched in the middle of the Great Salt Lake, it was quite a windswept location and impressive that it's also the longest Anglo inhabited site in the state. A couple of photos from the trip now on the photos page.
There's been some moving and shaking on my friends' websites recently (see the full list in the sidebar), so here's a quick update.
Nicky has added some new t-shirts and hoodies for sale at Creative Current. For the discerning geek... "There are 10 types of people in the world, those who know binary and those who don't".
Jamie and Helen and are still on the road but they've stopped off in Kyrgyzstan for a while where they've been volunteering for The Alpine Fund, "a small, non-profit, non-governmental organization using the incredible mountain resources of Kyrgyzstan to help the country’s most vulnerable youth." Jamie worked on setting up their fancy new website and blog.
Olivia has still been doing her musical thing - watch out for her on the circuit in London and check out some of her tunes at myspace. Finally, travelorphan has been offline for a while but I'm assured she'll be back to blogging soon enough...
Played in Sydney, the game kicked-off at 9am London time and we had to get to the pub early to get a good spot to watch. We ended up watching in The Wellington opposite Waterloo Station after trying to get into the Walkabout at Temple - I got there about 7.30am but it had been full since 4am! Such was the anticipation, and the game lived up to it - King Jonny slotting over a drop-kick (with his weaker foot) in the dying minutes of extra-time. But let's not forget the rest of the team; they were immense.
The Wellington was full of Chelsea fans (they were playing somewhere that day which required taking a train from Waterloo) - those footy boys didn't have a clue about rugby and my mate Neil and I had to keep explaining the rules to them as the game went along. They celebrated well though - we all did! I can't remember much about the rest of the day...
Watching again this evening at different times during the game I was shouting at the screen, my heart was pounding, I had butterflies and the hairs on the back of my neck were standing on end. And this was a replay. What a defence we put up that day. Intense. Inspiring.
It doesn't look like we're going to do so well this time round though - I'd say the All Blacks and Les Bleus are my favourites to win. I'll be impressed if England make it to the semi-finals. Hopefully I'll get to watch some of the games in the pub - no doubt I'll be explaining the rules to those unfortunately unenlightened about the great game here too. Less than a week until England vs. USA. I can't wait.
"I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night, and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye."F. Scott Fitzgerald
I, on the other hand, liked it immediately. Like London, it just has that energy that gets mind and body moving. I arrived the day after the tornado and the transport network was just getting back to normal. There were still a few problems though...
So, my highlights: Top of the Rock (the usual tourist thing of going to the top of something tall and checking the view - above); the UN HQ (below); Brooklyn Bridge (another US bridge about to collapse by the look of things); generally just hangin' out with old friends enjoying the atmosphere with a few beers (Brooklyn Lager was pretty good); and learning to play wiffle ball in the street at 3am (not the easiest whilst half cut...) All good!
If the wind is in the right direction the balloons drift across the city and land somewhere between Bristol and Bath. Sometimes they don't make it - I remember when I was about 7 or 8 a balloon landed on my primary school field as we were walking to school in the morning (they take off twice a day, the first at dawn). Pretty exciting! I've never taken a hot air balloon ride but I think I'll have to one day. It looks like graceful way to travel, looking out over the West Country landscape.
Let's go Lansing Lugnuts that is. Last night I went to my first Minor League Baseball game. I've been to a couple of Major League games before, but on a nice summers' evening it was about time to find out more about what goes on in the lower echelons of the game that has always intrigued me. When I was about 8 my uncle brought me back a Red Socks baseball and pennant from a business trip. Maybe that got it started. One of my favourite writers Stephen Jay Gould was a huge baseball fan and used the apparent extinction of the .400 batting average as an adroit metaphor in one of his books to discount the idea of evolutionary progress with humans at the pinnacle in. And of course there are the parallels with cricket.
The lower levels of professional sport rarely get heard above the din and clamour for the biggest and best teams. The FA Premiership is now the richest football league in the world and followed avidly by many fans around the world. Its transition from a league with a reputation of violence and hooliganism to one of the most marketable sporting brands in the world has come via a change in attitude and facilities. I have a vivid memory from one of my first trips to a Bristol City game in the late 1980's (again, I must have been about 8 - I hasten to add City are not, unfortunately, in the Premiership). I needed to use a bathroom so Dad took me to the 'Gents' where I was confronted simply by a 10 foot wall painted black with a gutter of urine running along the bottom. The smell was 'colourful' as was the language around me. It was intense to say the least. How this experience has effected me later personal development I can only guess - Mum certainly didn't approve of me going along. But the violent and abusive behaviour that once embodied watching the game is no longer tolerated and the terraces have been replaced by more manageable and comfortable rows of covered seating (and more hygienic toilets).
Apparently a similar change has occurred in the minor leagues of baseball. In the game programme was a piece about the rise in popularity of Minor League games. Season attendances in every season since 2000 have been placed in the top 10 since the leagues began and in 2006 the current record was set at 41.7 million fans. That's more than the NBA, and more than the NFL and NHL combined, each year. Fifth Third Field in Dayton Ohio has sold out every game since it opened in 2000. But the continuing growth has come since the 1990's and a similar attitude toward the game as has changed football in the UK. And the programme article described a lady faced by a similar toilet experience as my childhood one - it's certainly not like that now. The emphasis has shifted toward entertainment and whilst the minor league game hasn't changed, the crowds have. In family-friendly America this means kids. And lots of 'em.
So whilst the high pitched screaming wasn't so good for my ears, the $9 seat in the third row along the first base line was good for my wallet and got me close to those 90 mph pitches. I have got to say though, even with my uneducated eye, the quality of play wasn't quite up there with, say, the SF Giants. The Lugnuts gave up 4 runs in the first inning and it wasn't looking good. But then South Bend gave up 5 in the second and from there on we cruised to victory (8-5). Highlights from 'the game' for me included a Lugnuts batter snapping his bat over his knee (golfer style) after he struck out with the bases loaded, and the genius sack race 'run' by some 'hefty' women from the crowd between 8th and 9th innings. I was less impressed that they wouldn't refill my plastic beer glass when buying a second and that I HAD to have a new one. Grrr...
Regardless of the quality of play it was a good night. And seemingly the growth of Minor League Baseball is good for the cities in which the teams are located. Oldsmobile Park is leading the much needed regeneration of the waterfront area of downtown Lansing. After the game, the fireworks reflected in the windows of the old Ottawa Power Station (above) that has lain empty for over a decade. Regeneration is needed in Michigan of all places in the States, where the decline of the American auto industry has hit hard. With manufacturing in sharp decline the state and the city need to turn to alternative industries for income and regeneration. The dollars spent in the stadium are now helping to boost the local economy, and give this part of town something to build around for the future. So, let's go nuts!
Two of my best friends are currently travelling across Eurasia. To document their trip they've set up a cool little travelblog complete with comic strip ('Hel on Earth - episode two out now!), movies (check the Black Panther in Belgrade), music, pics, food reviews and treasure maps!
"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls."
Genius. Oh, for the youthful innocence of certainty...
Before my impending departure to the States I've been out and about visiting a few places that I won't see for a while. This week, I took my Grandmother back to the town where she grew up on the English south coast - Lyme Regis in Dorset. I'd never been and she hadn't been back for a while so it was a trip down both new and old memory lanes.
And what steep lanes. Apparently they used drag cargo up Cobb Road from ships docked in 'the Cobb'. They realised it was a bit much like hard work up these steepled slopes and stopped a fair while ago. But there were other war-time stories about the inclines; run-away trucks with failed breaks, careening down narrow lanes toward the sea-front, their landings cushioned not by a sandy beach but by the solid walls of the old coal merchants (it seems it's still happening these days too). Line upon line of American soldiers snaking up and down Broad Street outside the old Regent Cinema (then The New Thing In town). Apparently it remains quintessentially British today - tea and biscuits from a china cups and saucers before taking your seats (aside the fact it shows the latest Hollywood block-busters of course).
The vertiginous topography has not only caused rapid runaway of trucks, but also the rapid (and creeping) runaway of the soil. Efforts to manage and reduce land slippage are being undertaken in parallel with a £17 million coastal defence and harbour improvement scheme. Whilst understanding that it is necessary if they want to save their sea-front industry (which has changed from sea-trading and fishing to sea-swimming and tourism), locals aren't happy about the large new shingle banks that provide the needed protection. Sand has accumulated in the harbour over recent years and has now been joined by a nice sandy beach imported from France.
Alongside visiting the sea-side we had tea and cake at some old friend's house - all in all a good day stocking up on memories of the British coastal landscape before I jet off across the pond.
OK, so I'm back from gallivanting and just beginning to get my brain back up to speed to after some well-needed mental free-wheeling. Well, actually, maybe free-wheeling isn't the best phrase - rather, I needed to get my head out of my thesis and back into the real world.
And what better place to escape from the ivory tower than to Rajasthan, northern India, former jewel in the crown. Here, my theoretical assumptions were confronted and summarily dismissed by the harsh practical realities of people struggling to survive amongst a billion countrymen all sharing a common, upwardly mobile, dream. Western rationalism met Eastern mysticism. Swirling scarlet saris, spiced sauces, sweet (and sour) smells sharply contrasted pale personal computing, drab digital logic and the dreary desk-bound slog of 'writing-up'. Confronting a hoard of fare-seeking rickshaw drivers is quite a different problem to attempting to find a single bug amongst several hundred lines of code (though a similar level of patience is useful). Needless to say this diligent young PhD scholar took a few days to get up to speed...
However, once the common ground had been found ("My name? James... Yes, that's right like James Bond...", "I'm from England... Yes, that's right we beat those Canadians in the cricket last week...") everything went swimmingly. Upon meeting some young street cricketers in Jaisalmer during the second week it was beginning to feel much more like home. The game was just like I remember my summertime street-cricket - same rules ("6 and out"), same characters (tempestuous batsmen, earnest bowlers and lackadaisical fielders) - just a little hotter and dustier than the suburbs of Bristol.
Our 'safari' into the Desert National Park aboard chapatti eating camels was an opportunity to get away from the mayhem - a silent night's sleep under the stars was welcome. But even in this more remote and inhospitable environment the population size and pressure continues to grow. The government has improved water supplies recently but even now there seems to be pressure on the limited resources.
Further south, the lake-side towns of Udaipur and Dungapur were much more relaxed than the manic Jaipur and Jodhpur. Here we had time to swim, and I to find out just how unforgivingly hard marble can be when when one lands on it back first. The grand finale of our tour was the majestic and ethereal Taj Mahal. It diffuses light like a cloud. And, I am adamant, it looks bigger the further you are away from it. Then it was back to Delhi for fond farewells and enlightening twilight conversations on the nature of being, reincarnation, Karma, Reike... Thanks to all the guys for their hospitality and the fun in Delhi.
I decided not to take my camera with me - I wanted to free myself of as much technical paraphernalia as possible. So all the pics here are thanks to Erin - permalinks to the others she's posted are listed below. Now, back to some work and preparations for my viva and impending departure for CSIS at MSU.
A missed bus gives me a couple of minutes to get online to point you in the direction of Erin's blog (http://travelorphan.blogspot.com) for some pictures of our Rajasthani gallivating (i.e. the pictures posted on March 29 2007 - permanent URLs to follow in a later post).
Briefly: Busy Delhi (no belly yet), Gangaur festival in Jaipur, lakeside downtime in Pushkar, Fort and pool in Jodhpur, street-cricket in Jaisalmer, camelback desert safari near Khuri, and now on to Udaipur, Bundi, Agra and Delhi (via this unintended stop-over in Jodhpur). More soon...
Due to my recent thesis preoccupation there has been a distinct lack of blogging going on here. This situation isn't going to be remedied for a while either - I'm off on a cheeky three-week vacation and will be offline for the duration.
I am less than two weeks away from submitting my PhD thesis. The BBC Radio 1 Positive Thought Generator has been helping me maintain my sanity over the last few weeks...
On of my good friends has just been putting the finishing touches on the second series of the cult engineering show 'Mega Moves' ('Monster Moves' in the UK). The series will be showing on National Geographic in the States and Channel Five in the UK. Checkout the trailer below - pretty cool eh?
By the morning of the second, the sky was as blue as could be out across the Firth of Fourth and our hangovers had just about receeded (though maybe not quite enough for a run on the beach...)
This week I´ve been in Madrid doing the final fieldwork for my PhD. On our Quixotic travels to interview local stakeholders about the credibility of the output from my model (more on that another time), we came across el Toros de Guisando. These guys have been here for over 2,500 years (though moved from their original scattered locations by the Romans) and have been characters in many a contested story...
CHAPTER XIV
WHEREIN IS CONTINUED THE ADVENTURE OF THE KNIGHT OF THE GROVE
Among the things that passed between Don Quixote and the Knight of the Wood, the history tells us he of the Grove said to Don Quixote, "In fine, sir knight, I would have you know that my destiny, or, more properly speaking, my choice led me to fall in love with the peerless Casildea de Vandalia. I call her peerless because she has no peer, whether it be in bodily stature or in the supremacy of rank and beauty.
...
Another time I was ordered to lift those ancient stones, the mighty bulls of Guisando, an enterprise that might more fitly be entrusted to porters than to knights. Again, she bade me fling myself into the cavern of Cabra - an unparalleled and awful peril - and bring her a minute account of all that is concealed in those gloomy depths. I stopped the motion of the Giralda, I lifted the bulls of Guisando, I flung myself into the cavern and brought to light the secrets of its abyss; and my hopes are as dead as dead can be, and her scorn and her commands as lively as ever.
To be brief, last of all she has commanded me to go through all the provinces of Spain and compel all the knights-errant wandering therein to confess that she surpasses all women alive to-day in beauty, and that I am the most valiant and the most deeply enamoured knight on earth; in support of which claim I have already travelled over the greater part of Spain, and have there vanquished several knights who have dared to contradict me; but what I most plume and pride myself upon is having vanquished in single combat that so famous knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, and made him confess that my Casildea is more beautiful than his Dulcinea
...
Don Quixote was amazed when he heard the Knight of the Grove, and was a thousand times on the point of telling him he lied, and had the lie direct already on the tip of his tongue; but he restrained himself as well as he could, in order to force him to confess the lie with his own lips; so he said to him quietly, "As to what you say, sir knight, about having vanquished most of the knights of Spain, or even of the whole world, I say nothing; but that you have vanquished Don Quixote of La Mancha I consider doubtful; it may have been some other that resembled him, although there are few like him."
I've finally got round to tidying up and completing the photos page of my website. Click on the map markers and photos taken at those locations will appear below the map. Use the links above the map to navigate. It may take a while to load first time (so be patient) and you will need JavaScript enabled in your browser.
It took a little while to get to grips with the Google Maps API, but by viewing and 'borrowing' code from other websites (London Satellite Photo Map was particularly helpful) I got there in the end! Go check it out! Comments? - leave them here by clicking below.
I finally made it to my first Bristol Rugby game of the season last night. It was pretty old-school affair against Sale - the rain persisted down all game making handling tricky, confining the ball to the forwards which worked to Bris' benefit in the end. Plenty of catching and driving from lineouts. Not a try in sight - though Bris' should have scored during a period of extended possession and territory soon after half-time. In the end it was a battle of the kickers, and our new Kiwi man (after a dodgy start) kicked us to victory!
So then it was off to the pub to dry off with a couple of pints of Badger and Fursty Ferret in the excellent Upton Inn... Quality.
England's loss to the All Blacks on Saturday reminded me of an email I sent over a year ago from New Zealand, detailing my adventures on the day after the Lions first crushing defeat of their tour. I've posted it here for posterity...
Sunday 26th June 2005
Hi Guys! Only me. I know what you're thinking; "Oh No, it's that boring bloke on the other side of the world with another email the length of my arm rambling and ranting about rubbish...". Don't worry this one's shorter (maybe) but definitely has more pictures.
The Skytower: Auckland's newest landmark and the tallest human-made structure in the Southern Hemisphere (does that make it the shortest in the Northern Hemisphere?). The Skytower is your point of reference for navigating this city, you can see it from pretty much everywhere and it always seems to be lurking in the background somewhere. Look at the first pic of the University of Auckland Clock Tower.
Quite nice eh? But there's the Skytower loitering in the background trying to steal some of the limelight. And then here's me, an honest Geographer trying to improve my botanical knowledge of the local flora and there's the lanky thing looming in the wings again.
So nursing my Sunday hangover (I had a lot of sorrows to drown on Saturday evening - but let's not talk about the Rugby, I've heard enough already) and seeing from under the covers that it was a nice day I thought I'd go and see what the view was like. As with all really-tall-landmarks-in-big-cities-that-you-have-to-go-up-to-see-what-the-view-is-like, and because you're always noting it from afar, when you get to the bottom you HAVE to look UP. Case in point;
As you've paid your money and climbed all the way to the top (well actually you took the lift didn't you?) you may as well check out the view. A prime here, as Auckland's Harbour bridge basks in the evening sun and a flotilla of sailing boats bob in the foreground (Auckland is the "city of sails" doncha know?). Very pretty.
Then you think, "Doesn't Auckland sprawl an awful lot" (sorry to go on about it). The harbour's nice, you can see for miles 'cos its a nice day and you can see a couple of old volcanoes hanging out in the background. Then you start daydreaming 'cos you really can't think straight after last night and you try to take some fancy reflexive-type photos to reflect how really spaced out everything feels. But there's something missing...
No matter, lets mess aroung taking some night shots. You're no Hannes Opelz; but who'd want to be? you chuckle to yourself.
Jeez this is a bad hangover. Not as bad as we played last night though. What are those people doing in that window?
So in the lift on way back down I got chatting to the girl who clearly saw my photographic prowes when she asked me to take her photo with Auckland as backdrop ("OK, where's the loser wandering aimlessly around in a daze and won't mind taking my photo" she was more likely to be thinking to herself; she knew she'd struck gold when she saw me). She asked me what I thought of the view; the sound of cogs grinding echoed around the lift as I struggled to string a sentence together (we really did play badly didn't we? But those sorrows didn't have an chance even in the "city of sails" and its many life-bouys). And then it dawned. It's a good view from the top. Auckland looks nice in the sunset on a nice day. And the city-scape at night is cool.
But the thing that is missing is the thing you're stood in. The Skytower is nowhere to be seen and you're free of that feeling that there's someone looking over your shoulder. At least that's what I thought. I'm not sure what the noises coming out of my mouth sounded like...
So I've finally finished this summer's compilation, the fourth in a growing series. Music I was listening to and a reflection what the summer was like for me. The subtitle? That's due to a summer spent in isolation trying to break the back of a PhD thesis whilst trying not think about people a long way away... How was it for you?
