journey home ii OR : can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are shooting stars, i could really use a wish right now, wish right now

Liveish blog: PART TWO

6:00 am wake up! WE MIGHT BE GETTING ON A PLANE TODAY
7:45 am well my flight is still happening, says BAA & Delta.com. SO NERVOUS!
8:15 am my cabdriver is hitting on me. i don't have the emotional capacity for this
8:44 am WELCOME BACK TO HEATHROW HELL, there are people still sleeping here
9:15 am Heathrow terminal 4 why are you complicated? This has been way more difficult to handle than it could have been
9:45 am hello, security // the feeling of being the whitest person in the airport today
10:00 am i don't have a gate until 11:20. This is the face of apprehension re: getting back to the us

10:08 am FLIGHT STATUS CHECK

10:20 am amazing things in the duty-free shop
10:38 am i am sitting at a starbucks drinking a (festive) peppermint mocha, because i am going back to America, and god dammit it's christmas.
11:30 am We still don't have a gate assigned yet. Going to all the duty-free shops and start getting free samples of baileys = coping mechanism
12:05 pm Called to the desk at the gate. Mystified; given a new ticket. But I already have one...
12:40 pm Boarding! OH LOOK I'VE BEEN UPGRADED TO BUSINESS ELITE. Have a glass of champagne, it's complimentary.
1:00 pm TAKE OFF / THIS PLANE IS ACTUALLY GOING SOMEWHERE
2:00 pm The on-flight lunch is a proper UK Christmas dinner- turkey and potatoes and a little thing of cranberry sauce.
2:15 pm While we serve christmas dinner, please turn your attentions to the tvs, where we are now showing How The Grinch Stole Christmas (1966, boris karloff)
2:45 pm HAVE MORE WINE it's still complimentary, up here in business elite class
3:30 pm and now for a nap
4:45 pm things to watch: 30 Rock, Parks & Recreation, Big Bang Theory, Inception ...
Sometime between 6:45-7:45pm TIME CHANGE
3:15 pm we are landing! an hour early! HELLO NYC

4:30 pm FAMILY MEMBER ROULETTE, who is meeting me here? The last i heard was "somebody will meet you there"
4:45 pm It's my uncle! off to his house in CT, where I will meet my parents for dinner there, then back home
7:30pm WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S NOT MIDNIGHT
9:30pm home! alive! inform everyone! go to sleep!

I am now back in new england, where a full-on blizzard, featuring upwards of 2+ feet of snow, is hitting us. My dad told me this morning that the equivalent of my flight from London to NYC today was canceled. Christ on a bicycle, I am glad to be home.

alone in kyoto

"This wasn’t a strange place, it was a new one." --Paulo Coehlo

The thing about London is that it feels instantly familiar, like i've been here forever. I realize how blasphemous this is to say, but London feels like America. Maybe it's because I can understand everybody without difficulty (ahem, SCOTLAND), and because it is MASSIVE - though I'm in London it takes about an hour to get into Central London. The trains and the underground feel instantly familiar too- like I could be in Boston or New York or San Francisco. (I wonder if all trains everywhere make everyone feel the same.)

Either way, Windsor's very self sufficient, and I've been living in the UK long enough to recognize stores and stuff, which is good; it's a lot less scary than it could be - I was very nervous about getting stranded in Paris next, to be honest. We've got a Wetherspoon's here, which does cheap food; there's a book store and a couple WH Smiths, a Boots, a H&M, a Marks & Spencers and a Waitrose (which looks EXACTLY like an American supermarket). So maybe I'm in bizzaro America. I've always felt like London was its own planet anyway.

I've been trying to enjoy myself while I'm here; it's an adventure, right? I went in to Central London on Monday to do tourist things in six hours, assuming that I was going to Paris the next day; on Tuesday I met a friend of mine who is a local Londoner for a film and few drinks (it was good to see a familiar face after all of this.) Today I think I might go back in and look around some more.

Luckily I read as about 25-26 rather than 22, which is working in my favor while I'm here; and I do use Scottish words in an American accent, which does throw people off. But So really, all things considered, I think I'm doing okay. In fact I'm very grateful to have not been at Heathrow Hell since Saturday; here I have a bed and a shower and I have all my luggage - I have not been sleeping in a departure lounge under tinfoil.
But I do want to go home. I just want to be back on my continent. I'm flying from London to New York City on Christmas day - this is my third flight booked, so I really hope it actually happens. Christmas here is sort of like Christmas + Thanksgiving rolled into one, so three of my friends have called and threatened me with bodily harm if I spend Christmas alone. All I want for Christmas is to be in the sky with a bunch of strangers.

winging my way home: epic journey part 1

Before I start this story, you should know that I'm a very calm traveler. I love flying, and I am generally unfazed by most things. I've been flying internationally since I was six weeks old, and by myself since I was 16. So the idea of flying back from Glasgow > London > Boston seemed like a non-issue to me.

Basically, I have a method of flying - "don't sleep until you get there" - that usually goes pretty well, especially when your flight leaves at 6:30 in the morning on a Saturday. So I was planning on starting Operation No Sleep Till Boston on Thursday morning at 8:30 in the morning and arrive in Boston at 1 pm on Saturday, and then stay up for a while after that to get back on the right time zone. This usually works beautifully, as it's easy to get coffee on airplanes. AND SO IT BEGINS...

(this was written in real-time as things are happening across my diary, my computer, and one sheet of paper, and will be updated accordingly until we get to part 2)

3:38 am hello glasgow airport! No, i totally don't mind standing around for an hour and a half before my check-in opens. And here I thought I needed to be here 2 hours before my flight leaves for security check-ins, traveling internationally and all of that

4:30 am I don't think people in the UK/Europe travel with computers ever. This country doesn't seem concerned with wifi access under any circumstances - there's never wifi anywhere ever.

5:40 am real things said behind me in the security line: "oh, i need another wee box." Scotland, I am going to miss you.

6:00 am BE AT YOUR GATE NOW! also your flight leaves at 6:30 am but, you know, no rush. Take your time.

9:11 am I have been awake for about 24 hrs now! Well, except for the 20 minutes i fell asleep on the plane from Glasgow to London, but that doesn't count… I'm just saying that if you are a 6:30 am flight you should probably be legally (if not morally!) required to offer free coffee on the flight. It was snowing in London when I arrived - I'm convinced that London is an entirely different planet unto itself, and there's no way that London and Glasgow are part of the same country (but maybe that's because i can understand everyone without difficulty…) My next flight leaves at 10:30 and we don't have a gate yet, so for now I'm just hanging out in heathrow's MEGATERMINAL.


10:25 am my seat companion is another American studying at Edinburgh University. This is going to be a good flight.

11:30 am AND THEN WE WAITED FOR SOMEONE TO DE-ICE US, because we were informed that heathrow had effectively closed, except for planes trying to land and us trying to leave

1:30pm AND THEN THAT FLIGHT WAS CANCELLED. Everybody get off the plane! We'll give you vouchers! Never mind the fact that we've just sat on there on the tarmac for 3 hours, it's almost like we went somewhere!

Somewhere between 2pm and 4pm: It's so close to being like we went somewhere that we get to go through customs AGAIN! awesome! Go get your baggage, you've arrived! (Oh look, my duffel bag is shredded… super. let's get that fixed.) OH HEY GIANT QUEUES HOW ARE YOU


4:00 PM: Dispatches from AA #1: "We're totally going to rebook you starting at 4pm" JK GUYS, we really meant 6 pm

6:00 PM Dispatches from AA #2: "What vouchers are you talking about? No, we don't have those. Well, we've closed for the day, you could try calling this number but you'll be on hold for ages, it'll be great! Or stick around for 5:30 tomorrow morning, we'll be rebooking then

6:15 PM Dispatches from AA #3 "OH WAIT, ALL AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHTS FROM LONDON ARE BOOKED FOREVER jk everyone, there's no going anywhere ever. But if you stick around you might be able to fly as a standby in a week and a half!"

6:16 PM: I JUST WANT TO LEAVE THIS CONTINENT AND GO BACK TO MINE. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK.

(intermittent panicked phone calls home between 3:30pm-9:30 pm)

8pm: Dad & Heather: OK! we've sorted most of this out! You've got yourself a flight going from London > Paris > Boston on the 21st, plenty of time for this to all calm down. You've got a hotel so you don't have to stay in the airport for the next three days. Time to figure out how to get to there!

8:30 PM LET'S CLOSE HEATHROW WHAT A GREAT IDEA NOW THAT THERE ARE NO TRAINS RUNNING EITHER GOOD LUCK YOUNG GRASSHOPPERS

9:30pm how do I get a taxi in this city!? Can i flag it down? does it work asdfghjkl

10:30pm in Windsor, where the queen apparently hangs out. Hi queenie!

11:30pm This is the current state of me & my luggage


11:45 pm Realizing that I am going to have to open my luggage in the morning and figure out what to do with my shredded bag. But at least I have my luggage.

11:46 pm SLEEPING for the first time since 8:30 Thursday morning

10 am the feeling of eating something that is not a candy bar for the first time in 1.5 days

11 am Hoarding little packets of Nutella. Maybe this won't be so bad after all


11:34 am the feeling of putting on a different set of clothes

12:45 pm well, at least I'm near stuff and not in the middle of nowhere like I thought I was. Time to buy a new suitcase...

2:30 pm SOHUNGRY what am i going to eat here without going broke? Oranges. Lots of oranges.

3:30 pm But I mean, I have internet access and british tv, so I think I'll be okay. And if there are trains running I might be able to see some touristy things while I'm here. There are definitely worse places to be stuck in...

4:44 pm I am watching something about the muppets and airports. I don't know what this is but it is both a) relevant and b) hilarious. british tv is so strange.

7:40 pm took myself out for dinner & watched the news. you guys, i'd just like to remind you that all of this airplane fuss/heathrow hell situation is over LESS THAN SIX INCHES OF SNOW

10:03 am I AM ALMOST MISSING BREAKFAST oh shiiiiiiiii-

12:00 pm (Central) London calling! 12 pound all-day, all inclusive rail pass FTW

1:10 pm LONDON YOU ARE MASSIVE, how is it possible that I am still in the same city and just arriving in Central London

1:40 pm oh hai ORIGINAL BEOWULF MANUSCRIPT HOW ARE YOU TODAY. this exhibit is amazing, you guys. Also, this was my #1 priority.

3:30 pm I am halfway through seeing all the touristy things in less than 6 hours. (The last time I was in London it was for 12 hours.) I'm really good at this, but I can't stop in anywhere, really, NO TIME.

4:40pm how is it this hard to find a pub in London? It shouldn't be. A Sherlock Holmes pub on Baker St? Yeah, okay.

6:40 pm Hm, I wonder how the trains are doing- I should go back to Paddington Station. I still have to get home... Oh, look, delays... predictable. This train to OXFORD will get me back...

8:15 pm I'm gearing up for another 2.5 days of transit, better go get some food, thank god Waitrose is open. Candy bars, pita bread, and stolen cereal & nutella packets - that should keep me going for a while

8:45 pm MY FLIGHT TOMORROW FROM LONDON TO PARIS HAS BEEN CANCELLED, but it looks like my flight from paris to boston is still on asdfghjk

9pm can I get a train to Paris? No. Everything's booked forever, because we are all trying to get somewhere through any means possible

9:45 pm OKAY THIRD TIME'S A CHARM RIGHT? at least I don't have to be anywhere for christmas specifically. London > NYC, here I come, on Christmas day!

i'm coming home again

Can you believe it's almost Christmas? Christmas here is a big, huge deal - they take it really seriously. It's like Thanksgiving and Christmas rolled into one mega-holiday, complete with turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce. (Hmm... where were you a few weeks ago!) Everything about it is very serious and fairly traditional. We even have what I have been told is a German-style Christmas market near my flat. If I ever felt marginalized for being Jewish in the States (read: not celebrating christmas) I would probably be very unhappy here, as 'not celebrating christmas' is not an option. GLASGOW LOVES CHRISTMAS AND YOU DO TOO. Everyone has Christmas parties for every sort of group possible - so far I have attended six parties, no joke - two different department ones (Glasgow Uni's and Strathclyde's) and two for the reading groups I attend (Socioling and Corpus Ling), and two friends' Christmases. It's definitely been a traditional (UK) Christmas, complete with mince pies, which to my surprise do not have meat in them ("mince" also means "ground beef" here) and lots of mulled wine. It has all been very exciting - I've never celebrated Christmas before, and certainly not like this.

But Almost-Christmas means I've been here for a little over three months. I am one-quarter finished with my master's degree, which is a bit daunting! I'm starting to work on a PhD project next... Almost Christmas also means I am coming home for a bit soon. Meanwhile, I apologize for not having written much in here lately other than to complain about being cold all the time -- I've been trying to get a lot of work done so i can take a few weeks off and relax while I'm in the states.

My first flight back leaves at 6:30 AM on Saturday. I think I am going to live-record my travels again (See september for the original ones), so you all have something to look forward to when I am fairly jetlagged. See you all soon!

all swallowed in their coats

Good morning, world! I am getting ready to walk 10 minutes to my office.

POP QUIZ: how many layers am I wearing here?
a. 3
b. 3/4 of a sheep
c. NOT ENOUGH
d. all of the above

(No, I am not going to shut up about being cold.) I feel like I have American Nesting Syndrome, where I try to put on as many layers as possible all the time. You could probably reassemble the sheep all my wool things have come from.

And you guys, this is DECEMBER. It's going to get colder. I have a couple of American friends, one of whom is from Virginia; she's been wearing two (wool) coats already. WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO IN FEBRUARY

I feel it in my bones

It is November and I am freezing already. I have many more months of this, and I understand it is only going to get worse.

You would think that after 22 years of bitter New England winters I would be prepared for Scottish winters. I thought I would be! I'm a pretty hardy New Englander. Being cold doesn't really bother me - I am prone to opening windows in February in New Hampshire. In fact I don't think I ever thought to myself "holy HELL, it is cold." In New England, it's a really windy sort of cold - the temperature will drop really low and you can feel the cold on your skin.

Glasgow shares a latitude line with Moscow. Which, by the way, is in Russia. But I was assured that we get a "nice Gulf Stream warm-up" from being so close to the Atlantic. This was a lie. Every day I think "Holy HELL, it is cold." (On paper it doesn't sound terribly cold here - the temperature's been hovering around 45 degrees Fahrenheit, which isn't terrible. I would daresay that 45 is a pretty good temperature for the fall, especially this time of the fall.)

But it's not the same kind of cold. This whole country wears wool coats all the time, because it's the only way to keep warm(ish). By mid-October, I had to go out and buy a wool coat because my New England-Acceptable ski coat wasn't keeping me warm! It's not a windy sort of cold here - though we do have wind sometimes and then you just sort of want to die - it's more of a damp cold that seeps through your bones and into each individual muscle and you wonder if you will ever be warm again. Suddenly I understand the wool coat thing, they sort of act as insulation for your body.

In light of my blog slowly but surely becoming a food blog, this brings me back to soup. As you might know, I love soup. It's good for you and warms you up - what else can you ask for? Unfortunately, as I know all too well from my previous visit to the UK, the only sort of soup you can really get is Cream of Blank soup. Even straightforward things like minestrone soup is more like Cream of Minestrone soup. If you order chicken soup expecting chicken noodle soup you are going to be very disappointed, because you've actually got cream of chicken soup. Some cream of blank soups are delicious - cream of broccoli, for instance, is a magical thing. And then there are others that are just surprisingly lumpy in ways you don't want. (I imagine the Brits find American soups to be terribly weak.)

As a result of being cold all the time, I spend a lot of time around lunchtime thinking about how much I would like soup, but I would not like the cream form of it. (The last time I did this I got cream of lentil soup, which I would like to not eat ever again, thanks.) I would look around at the soup selections in the grocery stores, thinking, "This would be great if it was not going to be cream of blank." (I realize I could make soup myself, but that sounds difficult.) Imagine my surprise when I found pumpkin and coriander soup the other day!
yes, I do eat in my room rather than in the kitchen.

Pumpkin is not A Thing here - I saw a few of them for a hot second around Halloween, but they're not very popular, whereas you are all drowning in pumpkin flavored everythings. So naturally, this is all I have been eating for the past few days. Admittedly this is also a cream of pumpkin situation, but that is totally the correct way to do this. I am very pleased. All is right with the world again, or at least until they take this pumpkin soup out of the stores - it's a "limited release".

meeting people is easy

It would be presumptuous to say that I was a popular person at home. I certainly knew many people, though. If I wanted to do something, there would almost always be someone around. Also, I don't know how to talk about Having Friends without feeling like I'm six years old, but here we go.

If I were to move almost anywhere within the continental US, I am fairly certain that I would know someone (or know a friend-of-a-friend) who lived there too. And if I didn't, the time zone isn't different enough that I wouldn't be able to keep in touch with everyone. It's not like moving a seven-hour plane ride away! I don't like to keep harping on this point, but going from knowing a ton of people on one continent and then moving to a new continent where you don't know a soul is, quite frankly, a terrifying prospect. You have to go out and meet people, and you have to make friends all over again. And it's stressful! You have to remember to call them or text them and invite them to do things and try not to feel like you're bothering them. I spent a lot of time doing things that interested me, like going to art galleries and gigs and such, hoping that I would meet people who also liked these things. Unfortunately some of the things I'm into are not the most accessible things to invite someone to - "hey, do you want to come with me to a minimalist composer's concert?"

The international society has a weekly pub night, where we all converge on a pub and socialize, so of course I go to that - I now have a pretty solid group of international-student-friends who go every week (mostly Germans, they're a lot of fun) and I think I am friends with most of the people in my office (although I feel like I probably come off as a tool most of the time, to be honest; there's a handful of MRes students though, and we all hang out together as The Newbies). Everyone in the office is really nice and we all get along really well - it's a good group of people.

And then a really strange small-world twist of fate, I ran into a girl whom i had had been introduced to briefly once at a gig a few weeks ago - it turns out she is my advisor's wife's student over at Glasgow university, studying sociolinguistics. She runs something called Lock Up Your Daughters, which is a magazine & monthly club night - I met her girlfriend and bunch of her friends and they've been great. (Though I am definitely comfortable with my international friends and my office friends, I did need some gay friends. Sometimes international groups of people are not the best places to be out, loud & proud, you know? I live near a whole bunch of gay clubs but would never go to them alone, and I'd feel weird asking a straight person to come with me.) But yeah - I've been hanging out with the LUYD crew and getting involved in that, which has been fun; they're exactly the sort of liberalminded queermos I was looking for when I first arrived.

So there's that! YOU GUYS I HAVE FRIENDS.

(On a mostly unrelated sidenote, this is how I am apparently going to a party on Tuesday for the BBC tv show Lip Service, which is like The L Word but set in Glasgow. It's pretty terrible- seriously, check it out. LUYD has been asked to be there to do a DJ set, as they are a "staple of Glasgow's lesbian scene"... I'm starting to get involved with promotional stuff like flyering, so I'm apparently going with them. You guys, these are my friends!)

and you in your autumn sweater

It's starting to feel like autumn around here, which is exciting! Previously it was just raining and being warm a lot. Now it is cold and raining! No, just kidding, we've been having some really sunny days lately.

I really like Glasgow a lot - I can see myself being here for a long time, I think - but for now I live in the city centre, where there are no trees. No, that's a lie, I can see a couple trees on my way to my office, but it's not the same as a Proper New England Fall. (Glasgow Green, where I took this picture, is a park about 10 minutes away from where I live. Sometimes I go over to Glasgow University and get jealous of the beautiful West End of Glasgow, complete with trees everywhere.)

I've lived in New England for 22 years, and while I think I am pretty much over homesickness at this point, but I do find myself being surprisingly homesick for New England fall. I think living in New England ruins autumn everywhere else for you.

the dream of a common language

The Scottish accent is famously a pretty dense thing to decipher. It's a British English accent, but with more to it. I don't know how else to describe it - and on top of that, the Glasgow accent is like the Extra Super Mega Scottish Accent. It's like listening to Sean Connery talk every day. (Some people are less mumbly.) After living here for about 5 weeks I'm starting to not notice it anymore; it's starting to sound pretty normal to me. Ordinarily this would be a terrifying concept to not notice something as big as an accent, but I am generally taking it as a good sign - This is a vast improvement over my first few weeks here, when I understood about 45% of what was being said to me at any moment in time. Though I'm a native speaker of English, sometimes I may as well not be!

Here's a fairly accurate clip about the Scottish accent:


Anecdotally: the other day I was skyping with A, who is in South Korea, when a guy with a fairly standard Glaswegian accent came by to look at our shower and reported back to me that there was nothing especially wrong with it...and A was dying - "DOES EVERYONE SOUND LIKE THAT?!" Yes. The answer is yes.

You wouldn't think this, but American English and British English are more different than you'd expect. Scots English is different enough from British English (it even has its own dictionary: The Dictionary of the Scots Language) but from what I can tell it's close enough to British English for my general purposes.

There are still a lot of words I don't quite "get" yet, and I feel ridiculous saying almost all of these things. Here everyone would say "loads" where we would say "lots", and the word "wee" is liberally used here to describe something that is small. "What's on?" is equivalent to "What's happening?" or "What's going on?". I have to remember not to ask for "a bathroom", as I will be directed to a shower room; I need to ask for a toilet instead, and "loo" is often thrown around instead. Then there are the things I absolutely cannot wrap my brain around: I keep calling the kettle the teapot, and if I am looking for push pins, I am looking for "drawing pins", which go in a "notice board", not a cork board.

There's an interesting article floating around that discusses how language is directly influenced by the people speaking around you - I can guarantee this is is true. I am trying to let some Britishisms into my language though - I can hear myself trying to replicate the intonation patterns of native UKers, and I'm catching myself describe things as "quite _____", more so than I usually would. Especially in an international setting - where most people have learned British rather than American English - it's often easier to use Britishisms as common ground.

That said, I definitely can't replicate a Scottish accent at all. I sometimes still catch myself being very embarrassed when I speak, because my accent is so flat and boring and very, very American, while a good Glasgow accent is so sing-songy, and all the back vowels are dipthongized. (If you are not a linguisticky type person, this means that they actually have two vowel sounds smushed together. [iu] for /u/ sounds are the most noticable, though /o/ and /a/ have some pretty good ones too. I can't find you a page about this that doesn't involve a lot of knowledge of phonetic background information, but you can probably find something accessible on youtube.)

While I can use a lot of the lingo properly, I can't help but feel like I must sound like an idiot with my ridiculous American accent. (Thankfully, the phoneticists around me say I don't have much of a Boston accent but more of a Canadian accent - looks like Mom's Canadianness rubbed off on me more than I thought! I don't hate Boston accents, but now I am very glad to not have too strong of one.)

I don't mind the weather, I've got scarves and caps and sweaters

I just wish I understood it.

The other day someone turned to me and said, "Oh, we're having a lovely fall!" It is sixty degrees and raining. Fall? I've been spoiled by beautiful New England autumns for the past 22 years. Living in a city often means "no trees", though. But as for the weather...


(image from thefuckingweather dot com)This is what my weather report has been telling me for the past week. Actually, this is all my weather report will tell me. (I imagine I could use a better weather website, but that takes the fun out of things.) Unfortunately, this is not the most helpful advice.

I've desperately been trying to figure out what Scotland's weather is like. Well, I mean, of course it rains; we are in the United Kingdom. But a lot of it is not intuitive. I also have rapidly figured out that I always need to have an umbrella on me - even if it has been sunny and beautiful all day, it is bound to rain at some point. It is also not uncommon for rain to happen while it is perfectly sunny - clear skies and rain (this happened repeatedly last week.)

A larger problem is that they insist on using Celsius here, which means that sometimes someone will say "It's so hot out - 22 degrees!" and I have a little heart attack for a second. (My idea of "hot" is American style 80+ F with humidity.) That said, we've been having a great few weeks in what I believe is the mid to high 60s. I have been informed that this is a "heat wave". Unfortunately this also means that sometimes it will be around 35-40 (F) and I will find people wearing just a t-shirt. I know I am not one to speak - I have questionable tastes of what is counts as hot vs cold - but even I know that 30 degrees is unreasonable for t-shirt weather.

I've also been told that winter here is "miserable", which to my New England brain translates to "wet, snowy, and cold as fucking hell." My office is on this gigantic mega-hill (as seen below, though I assure you, google maps will not do it justice, increase the incline by about 45% more. Today I saw three cars stall out while trying to park).
I asked the English department if I will need to buy ice picks for wintertime. They assured me that no, I will not need to do this. I don't see how this is possible.

Stranger in a Strange Land

Before I left for Scotland, everyone was telling me how very brave they thought I was - going so far away to a place I had never been, without knowing anybody there. And I appreciated that, but I never really thought of myself as being brave. I was doing what I had to do - the guy who essentially invented what I do is here, there's a lot of linguistics stuff happening here (sometime in the next few weeks I am meeting with someone who is working on the Oxford English Thesaurus!). It just made sense to come to Glasgow.

It turns out it was a brave thing to do.

I've been here a little over a week and things are going really well. Don't get me wrong - it's terrifying to be in a new city, let alone a new country by yourself! There are good days and bad days, good hours and bad hours, but it's really about little victories. I rode the tube by myself to go somewhere new and I didn't get lost! I went to the pub by myself and read some newspapers for a couple of hours. I asked someone to lunch and we talked for a while. I just got back from meeting another grad student who is also an American - we met up with a couple of her friends from her church, who were amazing and helpful and very kind.

Luckily everyone speaks English and everyone is very friendly. (This is the friendliest city I've ever been in!). The other students in my program are very nice and very helpful but I'm trying to not depend on them for everything, you know? I send them emails asking what I should do on a weekend, and they were all great, giving me some pubs to check out, and suggestions for theatres to go to.

But, it's hard when you don't know anybody. How do you make friends in a city? I'm trying to push my boundaries a little bit, be open to anything, and attend anything I am invited to. Do you have any ideas, dear readers?

jigsaw falling into place

As we get closer to Departure Day, I am finding out more things. It is exciting! I stopped counting each Day In The States because it stresses me out to think about. (I do know I am leaving a week from today, Wednesday the 15th. I am measuring my life in Wednesdays, much like how J. Alfred Prufrock measures his life in coffee spoons.)

Until about a week or so ago, I wasn't sure if I would be taking classes. This shouldn't have been this vague, but it was. Strathclyde does not offer a Masters in Literary Linguistics, but they do offer a PhD, and I need a Masters degree to be in a PhD program. (I believe I am a PhD-track student, but I'm not 100% sure. It's complicated, as you can see.) Way back in November 2009, which by the way feels like a lifetime ago now, I wrote up a research proposal for my application as a research ("PhD") student. Because I was not applying for a taught program - where there would be a set course structure - but rather a research program, it was unclear exactly what my first year would look like.

It looks like I will be taking two classes at Strathclyde -- one which is relevant to my research (!) and another which is a Postgraduate Research Skills Seminar of some sort. Additionally, I might be either taking or auditing classes at Glasgow University, which is our "sister school". (I am of the understanding that at Strathclyde I am in an English Department that focuses on linguistics, and Glasgow University has a linguistics department that focuses on English.)

It turns out that the day we arrive (Sept 16) is a book launch party for one of the creative writing professors. That night the English Department is having a party, which I will be attending, jetlagged and disoriented. Here I will be meeting the other postgraduates and my future professors for the first time, which will undoubtedly prove interesting.

Today I am wrapping up my research project at Harvard and Wheaton, and I still have to figure out what I am doing with my column. This weekend I am headed to Planet UNH to see a lot of people in a very short period of time. This whole-leaving-the-country thing is getting real!

Things I Do Not Have, Redux

1. My computer
Beverly is back! Well, kind of.

As I predicted, she had few problems with her logic board. On macs at least, the video card is part of the logic board. (I might not know everything about computers, like how to program them and build them, but I can recognize what parts are attached to other parts.) Basically the cost of an entirely new logic board + new hard drive as previously installed + LABOR = 1 new computer.

Since computers age in fruit fly years, Beverly was approximately 46821 years old (rough estimate. a fruit fly lifepsan is 10 human days, but then there was division and multiplication, so I made up a number). Rather than pay all that money for repair work on an ancient machine we bought a new computer. Beverly came back to me, a sad pile of metal and wires, soon to be retired forever. RIP Beverly! Have fun crashing in Mac Heaven!

2. My Visa
I mentioned that I needed to get my transcript from UNH to New York City in 7 days in my last post. Remember that I am a generally calm person.

This seemed doable. Okay! TIMELINE TIME.
FRIDAY 08/06 Notification arrives! Request 2 transcripts from UNH; one for my records and one for the British consulate. Remember that the weekend is coming up and the Registrar will probably not deal with it until Monday.
MONDAY 08/09 They have seen my request. If the registrar prints them and puts them in the mail today, they will arrive by Wednesday! It only takes two days for mail to get from MA > NH and NH > MA. Perfect!
WEDNESDAY 08/11 NO TRANSCRIPTS IN THE MAIL; commence panicking (see below). Anticipate the mail being hours late on Thursday, and then still not receiving transcripts. Anticipate not being able to fulfill British Government's demands. Request transcripts for pickup through Blackboard for Thursday.
THURSDAY 08/12: Nervously check the mail every 15 minutes from 9 am onward. (Feel like Dad.) Prepare to drive up to UNH if mail does not arrive by 11 am. Mail arrives at 10:55, with my transcripts; calm the fuck down. Sign envelope, write my application # on it, bring to UPS store to have it overnighted to NYC by Friday 08/13 as requested. Stop worrying! Call off impromptu trip to NH, go to Wheaton to work on research project.
FRIDAY 08/13 Resume panicking! No sign of delivery from UPS. Call UPS, find out they have no idea where my transcript is. They lost track of it somewhere after Shrewsbury, MA. Find out all of this at 4:30 PM! Offices close at 5! UPS guy says he will call back within the hour, as he is going to call ALL OF THE NEW YORK CITY DRIVERS UNTIL HE FINDS IT. UPS guy calls back - it is found but not yet delivered! Hastily e-mail the consulate explaining situation at hand and how it is not my fault.
MONDAY 08/16 UPS promises to have my transcript at British Consulate General by 9 am.

OK! I think we see a problem here. Namely that Monday August 16th is not Friday August 13th. So now I am back to worrying about my visa, because WHAT IF THEY TURN ME DOWN BECAUSE I DID NOT SEND THEM ENOUGH PAPER IN THE FIRST PLACE OH MY GOD. And by the way, it is their fault that I did not send my visa application in earlier. Oh, The Bureaucracy Parade, you are lots of fun!

3. Plane Tickets
As I think you have figured out by now, I still do not have plane tickets, as I am not allowed to buy those without a visa. If I try to do move to Scotland without one, I will eventually become an illegal alien in the UK, and that is generally frowned upon. I am only leaving in FIVE WEEKS. (Plane tickets are already expensive...they are going to be way more expensive than necessary at the rate we are going!)

Things I Do Not Have, A List

1. My computer
I've had my computer for four years (or 438475 years in computer-years). I've had a couple problems with it - but I was also one of the macbook pro early adopters. Macbooks came out in 2006, which is when I was looking to buy a computer for college. So, I have an early model which probably doesn't have all the kinks ironed out. In the past six months, my mac would freeze or black out randomly in the middle of whatever I was doing. I nicknamed my computer Beverly, as she was old and crochety, with a mind of her own. (Plus it made me feel better to yell at something semi-animate: "God dammit, Beverly!") If she decided she didn't like what I was doing, she would shut down on me. It was frustrating, but something I could generally work around. I knew I had to get it fixed before I left for Scotland, but it's not the worst thing. I figured I had a video card problem, based on extensive Google searching.

Finally I took it in to get repaired a little over a week ago. Their solution was to give me a larger hard drive, because I had used too much of it. Too much of my hard drive? If you don't want me to use the space provided, don't give it to me! Anyway, they installed a bigger hard drive and left Beverly alone to her own devices over the weekend to copy my files over. Beverly did not like this and seized the opportunity to freeze again. So, now the computer repair people are trying to replicate the problem organically so they can fix it.

My well-documented hatred of handheld computer things - I barely use my cell phone, don't own an iPod touch and would never dream of owning a blackberry or iphone - means that I am really, really disconnected, more so than usual. I'm using my dad's computer in the meantime. It took me three days to figure out how New Word worked so I could write my column; I still haven't figured out how to save anything. I don't have any of my bookmarks, I don't have stumbleupon, and these computers don't have sound cards so I can't watch youtube. I don't even have wikipedia to look up stuff while I do my research! You guys, I don't know what to do! It is kind of like living in 2003, only with Windows 7. Come back to me, Beverly!

2. My Visa
I submitted a small forest of paper to the UK consulate in New York about two weeks ago, and was informed that there's a 15-day turnaround time for student visas. Last Friday I recieved an email telling me that I needed to submit my UNH transcript by 13 August 2010. This is reasonable, as it was how I got into Strathclyde in the first place. I can't actually get UNH to mail it to NY, because I have to mark a couple things on the envelope so it gets sent to the correct person. I requested my transcript that afternoon, and it has not arrived yet - usually mail to/from UNH takes about two days. It is now August 11th, and I need my transcript to be in their hands by Friday. SO! tomorrow I am driving up to UNH to pick up my transcripts directly from the registrar, overnighting them to NYC, driving back home and hoping this all goes through in time.

3. Plane Tickets
Without my visa, there's no point in searching for plane tickets. I'm not supposed to have tickets until I have my visa; part of the paper forest I had to submit was a proposed itinerary (this means my itinerary has to be approved by The Government.)

I LEAVE IN FIVE WEEKS.
Can you tell that I'm stressed about all of this?

No matter how it ends, no matter how it starts

How's research going? It's alright. I don't know very much about pragmatics, which could be accurately described as "linguistic philosophy". Linguistics is heavily based in logic - it's sort of like math, but with words. Philosophy is also - predictably - heavily based in logic. The study of pragmatics in linguistics focuses contextualizing language for both the speaker and the hearer using philosophy of language. I am basically reading about the logic of language - specifically how logical arguments construct context. As Dr. Green's research assistant, my job is to read articles and books about pragmatics and take notes on them, summarizing their arguments.

I've never taken a class on logic, which is therefore making this more difficult than it has to be. I basically failed every math class ever from algebra onwards, and therefore was not very pleased to find out I had a math requirement in college. I had the option of Finite Math or Logic. Figuring that I had at least taken Algebra variations something like 6 times, I would sign up for Finite Math and try really hard to not fail. (I scraped by with a C+. I was very proud of myself.)

I do have a basic idea of how sets work, and I know how to read syntactical analyses and I understand how surface vs deep structures work in language, but I don't know how to read logic problems. This is, of course, a major hinderance in progress. I have been reading about propositional logic and kind of staring blankly at proofs like (this is a real example taken from one of my texts):

1)
a. Sam wants Fido.
b. What Sam wants is Fido.
c. It is Sam who wants Fido.

2)
a. Wants (Sam,Fido)
b. λx(Wants (Sam,x))(Fido)
c. λx(Wants (x,Fido))(Sam)

3) It is Fido that Sam wants.
3a) λx(Wants (Sam,x))(Fido)
4) Who wants Fido is Sam.
4a) λx(Wants (x,Fido))(Sam)

Heather wants fewer parenthesis. But I am fairly certain that I am supposed to understand that these are varieties of ways to say that "Sam wants Fido", and they are perfectly clear in every context. Something that would not be clear (comparatively speaking to Sam & Fido) is "Noam likes bats" (What kind of bats? flying bats? baseball bats? an otherwise non-defined bat? What if 'bats' is an acronym for Bad Ass Tattoos? etc etc). I am either reading about logic, ambiguity, or both. This goes on for pages. The first article I read was 30 pages about how the sentence "I love you" is perfectly contextual and logically sound as it has a subject (I), a verb (love) and a referent object (you).

In case you were curious, all of it is this ridiculous. (The pragmatists would hate that sentence.) Although context is important because it tells us what is happening in the sentence so we can go on to presuppose and imply things accordingly based on what we understand to be true, the pragmatists are champs at stretching context a little bit too far - Bad Ass Tattoos? Come on now.

For the most part though, I do get it...it just takes some time. A lot of the logical arguments I'm given look a lot like the ones above, and they are pretty straightforward. It's when you give me symbols like ¬, ∀, ⊕, and ⊢ that I have no idea what you are talking about. I can't even guess what "∀x" would mean - I have been relying heavily on Wikipedia's Basic Logic Symbols page as a reference and hoping I am kind of right in my analysis. Maybe when I finish this research I will have a basic working knowledge of logic.

We mostly work to live, until we live to work

Previously on The Fake Palindrome:
I was fired from my job after working four days. You will recall that in an act of desperation I emailed a bunch of English and Linguistics professors at the nine million colleges near me, offering myself up as an Unpaid Academic Slave. (Does all of this sound unfamiliar? see more here.)

Who would say no to free labor? And - if I can say so - I have a damn impressive academic resume. I am insanely qualified for academic research, which is good, because I think it might be the only thing I am good at! The next day, checking my email, I had a response from a Dr Green at BU. He was on his way to the Biannual Chaucer Conference - it was love at first email.

He's preparing to write an article about Modern English pragmatics and wanted to know if I would be interested in working on a bibliographical survey for him. And, he added - "that would assure you weekly conversations and lunches until your plane leaves. It could be a way to escape the dog days of August." SIGN ME UP! I immediately wrote him back to say yes, and schedule a meeting with him. It might not be paid, but I'll get hang out at BU and Harvard libraries for a month! And it is not sitting on my ass at home, which is a very, very good thing.

***

Once upon a time, back in June, I was a viable job candidate. I had the whole summer ahead of me! I was applying for a bunch of administrative jobs, as I decided I wanted to work in an office. I don't see myself ever working in an office long-term, but it seemed like a good way to spend the summer. They would have AC, I would feel like a Real Person, and I would have some semblance of real-world experience.

Back in June, BBC* had an open position for an administrative assistant/grammarian for Complicated Science Documents Written By Scientists. Aside from Obscure Research, I am also ridiculously qualified to be your In-House Grammarian (even if this blog doesn't always show it!); I sent them my resume with a pretty good cover letter. And then I never heard back from them. So I kind of assumed that it was a lost cause and kept job-searching.

AND THEN THEY E-MAILED ME BACK ASKING ME TO SCHEDULE A INTERVIEW, the day after I had agreed to work with Dr. Green. I can only work part-time until early September. So I guess I am on my way to absolutely blow a job interview today.




*NOT the broadcasting company. This is a company near me; I'm not naming them by name for hopefully obvious reasons.

Cash Rules Everything Around Me

Once upon a time I had a job at a bagel place in my hometown. I worked for exactly four days. I was let go on my first full shift.

I had been hired to replace a girl who was going to school in Providence in the fall after working for Bagels for 3 years. By training me over the summer, I would be capable of doing everything she did. Disregarding the fact I was planning on leaving them high and dry come September - brb, going to scotland - this was reasonable. Kerri was still around - she was training me - but announced yesterday morning that she was having a hard time finding a job in Providence and she had decided to drive back every weekend to work her usual weekend shift.

As (Irrelevant) New Kerri, I was let go after my first week of work yesterday. I'm not amused. Because she's still there, they won't need me. But I'm not even really entirely terminated! I'm now permanently on-call, meaning (despite the fact that I never finished training - I can't use the cash register still) they can call me and be like "oh hey, want to work today? So-and-so called out." Fuck that!

At least my boss paid me in cash for my past few shifts, and told me that I can "totally use her as a reference". HA - yeah right.

But this presents some new problems, namely that
a) I don't have a job
b) I am not going to be able to get a job for only a little less than two months
c) It took me nearly a month and a half to get THIS job

So now it's back to the drawing board. I've been emailing English and linguistics professors at local colleges, offering my services as an unpaid research assistant (read: Academic Slave Labor). I have the resume for it, at least. I pleasantly discovered while writing a cover letter that from my majors and minor, I have backgrounds in literary theory, history of language - specifically that of English, word-formation, issues of syntax and grammar, as well as gender theory and queer theory. I am literate in Old English as well as some rudimentary French literacy. If that's not qualification enough to do academica, well, you can go fuck yourself.

A Day in the Life

Hello blog friends! I have not forsaken you, I promise. It's just that nothing of extreme interest has happened to me as of late. I was in NH this past weekend; it was great to see many people in a very short span of time. Then I came home and continued to look for a (second?) job.

I also started my next casual research project, which is to prove that the latest Muse album is actually about George Orwell's 1984.

Don't get me wrong, I love being a columnist; it's a lot of fun and gives me an excuse to do things I would normally never do and call it "research" - for example, I watched Game 6 of the NBA finals so I could write this article. I might use it as an excuse to watch all of the World Cup next. However, it's not very lucrative at ALL - I have written 7 articles and made $3.53. I have no idea how people actually make a living as a freelancer. Maybe they don't write for The Examiner. Either way, I'm back to job-hunting. I'm friendly, reliable and smart... anything you throw at me, I will pick up very quickly. Someone please hire me!

In my mind, the URC is like a very large-scale science fair. I hope someone brings a paper-mache volcano.

When I signed up for the Undergraduate Research Conference in March, I hadn't planned on having to restart my thesis. I also assumed that a poster presentation would be a fairly straightforward thing, which is why I decided to do a poster presentation AND a thesis reading. This may have been an error in judgment. But, there wasn't much I could do about it.

Last Thursday I very sleep-deprivingly drove to every nearby place that would print a 32x40 semi-gloss professional poster. Due to my tiny department of 35 students and three professors, I was in charge of my own poster. Conveniently, UNH offers these printing services, but they said they needed a 5-7 day turnaround time. This was the 5-7 day turnaround deadline before the URC, and I had nothing to give them. Worried, I went to Kinko's and Staples to get quotes. For the convenience of approximately a 2 hour turnaround time, I would pay nearly three times as much. I had planned on working on my poster the week I got back from spring break. I didn't even start rewriting until two weeks ago.

This weekend I started working on my poster. I sent it to print an hour ago.

To be honest, the nature of my project is that it is quite simply not accessible to everyone. There aren't a lot of pictures which are applicable to native and adopted locative prefixes. It requires a lot of very wordy explanation. There is no way to make this "user-friendly". I tried, believe me. It was a stretch to come up with two graphs.

Helpfully, the last time I used Powerpoint for ANYTHING was middle school, and we all had to make a metaslide that showed we knew how to use powerpoint. I had no idea how to make a poster using it... but there is no time for a learning curve. Luckily for me, someone compiled a How-To. Beverly, my old and rather crotchety computer, decided that this was a good time to let Powerpoint crash every 20 minutes or so. This was frustrating.

But, Shelly approved of my final poster draft while I was in class this afternoon. I ran to get it printed through UNH's copy center, which apparently is three days ahead of schedule and not costing me $92.25 for 32x40 inches of semi-shiny paper with things printed on it. So this is all going very well; much better than anticipated, really.

My non-denominational public university is closed for Easter.

Easter is one of those holidays I really just don't get. Your leading prophet died... which is somehow a positive thing (Good Friday) and then 48 hours later he rises again (Easter), which somehow actually means bunnies, jelly beans and chocolate. Right.

At least my holiday (Passover) makes moderate sense: A bunch of plagues happen because a large group of people are being oppressed; and in order to be spared from the final plague (death of the first-born), Jewish families had to mark their doors so they would be passed over (PASSOVER). From there, the Jewish families escape their oppressor by fleeing the country. This seems like a much more reasonable holiday. All of the traditions at least fit the [percieved] historic background.

But I digress. Apparently my non-denominational public university is "closed" for Easter weekend. This means it operates much like a curtailed-operations day; only "Essential Employees" are here. Granted, there aren't a lot of people here - unless you don't celebrate Easter or live too far away to go home for the weekend, not a lot really needs to be going on. But why couldn't you have TOLD us, UNH? We could have planned ahead. I was surprised to find myself kicked out of the library until 4 PM tomorrow without any warning. I wasn't the only one there, either! There is work to be done; where are we supposed to go? What if I needed something there tomorrow?

If I was an angrier person I would probably call the university out on being oppressive to those of us still here and/or not celebrators of Easter. But I am not that angry of a person, and I suppose it IS unfair to anyone (read: nearly everyone) who celebrates Easter to make them work. But, really! What would happen if I were to celebrate every Jewish holiday? "No, I can't go anywhere tonight or tomorow; it's Shabbat and I don't do anything which could quantify as 'work' until Sunday morning." "I can't. It's Yom Ha'atzmaut. I'm celebrating Jewish independence. I have to go light twelve torches." This wouldn't fly! I barely get any sort of university recognition on Hannukkah; I'm amazed every year when the dining halls when they designate a Passover-appropriate section, which mostly features matzah for build-your-own matzah adventures featuring the rest of the dining hall.

I think I'm just mad because nobody provided a heads-up in case you were planning on sticking around. That would have been nice. I know it's difficult, New Hampshire, to recognize difference sometimes. But I had work to do, and planned to be here in hopes of getting it done.