Done!

I'm finally finished with the semester. My two major papers, the one an 8-page exercise, the other a heavyweight research paper that ended up running to 34 pages, are written, and everything's rosy. Now for a few days off.

As this man would say: Is nice! I like!

From the bottom up

I'm sure many of you are familiar with - indeed, have perhaps even used - a certain product by the name of Anusol. Much as its name suggests, it is intended as a remedy for afflictions afflicting the parts of the body one doesn't display during polite conversation. Obviously, in this brand-conscious age, their marketing gurus decided that hinting at the nature of their product rather too graphically was bad for business. So, equally obviously, it was decided to rebrand.

O brave new world, that has such people in't! What name, then, did they choose for their product? See for yourself.

Wonderful. As if I hadn't had enough trouble during my formative years with my surname and all it rhymes with, it seems it will now dog me throughout my working days as well.

Nobby, you work for Pfizer, don't you? Can't you have a word with them and...oh. I get it. Ha ha. Very bloody funny. This was your doing, wasn't it?

Ugh.

I am in paper research/writing mode right now and I think Dante Aligheri missed a trick when he didn't include this as one of the circles of hell. 15 hours yesterday, probably something close to the same today and tomorrow. Saturday I have off - I'm helping Kate move her stuff over to Brooklyn, then going to some British friends' place for wine and mince pies. Then it's back to the grind, probably pretty much til I go home for Xmas. Still - it will be worth it not to have anything hanging over me when back in Blighty.

Far from home?

One article that caught my eye in the news today and which seems to be common to most of the papers whose sites I frequent (mainly the Guardian and the Telegraph - I like to strike an even balance between Pinko Commie Do-Gooder Propaganda and Foaming-at-the Mouth Little Englander Diatribes) is this rather interesting piece of news that 5.5 million Brits - nearly 10% of the population - live abroad on a permanent basis. I suppose, thinking about it, I'm one of them. I haven't really lived for any length of time in the UK in the last three and a half years, and with my position at Columbia secured for the medium term, I'm not likely to any time soon. Apparently, this puts the British diaspora (a strange term) on a par roughly with the Indians and the Chinese.

Anyway, the wonderful thing about these news websites is that they have caught on to the blogging revolution, and allow people to leave their comments at the bottom of a good number of articles. This does two things - firstly, confirm my long held suspicion that a good percentage of people who post on internet BBs or leave comments on newspaper articles are mentally unbalanced, and secondly, provide some food for thought. Particularly the hilariously rabid Telegraph comments - read them for yourself.

While I was increasingly amused at the flight from reality that some of the comments above displayed - a yearning for a sort of mythical England that never really existed - it did get me thinking about my own lot. Why did I leave, and am I coming back? If so, when, and under what circumstances?

Short answer: no. I don't plan to, at least. Once I get my doctorate, I want to find a teaching job in the US and build a career - if I'm lucky, a home and family as well - over here.

I didn't leave because I hate the UK or think, like the Telegraph readers, that it's been turned into a PC over-taxed Socialist hell-hole of a police state. I mean, there are things I don't like about my native land - the random drink-fuelled violence in most city centres on weekends, the fact that everything is ludicrously expensive, veneration of the lowest common denominator, the unbelievably inane celebrity culture, the weather - take your pick. But Japan and the U.S. have their faults, too - everywhere does (God knows the U.S. and Japan are way worse than the UK in terms of celebrity worship and dumbing down).

It's just a case of quality of life, really. I have my passion - Japanese literature - and I took a decision that the USA would be the place to pursue it. Money isn't my sole motivation, but over the course of a career in American academia I stand to earn 2-3 times more than I would in the UK. That makes a huge impact on quality of life, especially as it's worth so much more in real terms. Even now, that's true. My $23,000 p.a. PhD stipend in simple exchange terms is worth about one-third less than what I would get were I at SOAS in London (ca. ￡13,000, I think). But - and this is the key - it goes about one-third to a half further here. It ain't riches, but I have a higher quality of life over here than I would do doing the same thing back in the UK.

I do like it here, though. No doubt about it.

I know New York is not the USA. When I'm job searching later, I will do well to remember that, as I could possibly end up somewhere godawful like Arizona or Wisconsin, and then I'll probably look on things in a very different light. But right now it just seems a better option in so many ways...

• The food in the UK (London excepted) just doesn't compare. Here, it's cheap, varied, plentiful and usually delicious.
  
• New York is the safest big city in the USA. I don't feel, as I do out in London or Cambridge from time to time, that I could end up getting glassed just for looking at someone the wrong way.
  
• Americans (even New Yorkers) are just more friendly than Brits. People start conversations with strangers on the subway, they say "Bless you" when people they don't know sneeze; they talk to people. On a related point...
• They think the Brits are charming, sophisticated and (if female) incredibly sexy. I'm not going to argue with that...had I been an American in London, I doubt I would have had the same experience. I can get free drinks for being British and start up a conversation with almost anybody very easily.
  
• I've said this before, but it's WAY cheaper. $2 to anywhere in the city on the subway, vs. ￡3-5? A 2-bedroom apartment 20 mins from Times Square for $800 per month?
  

There's more I could go into, but I think I'd probably end up giving the impression I was bashing the UK, and I'm really not trying to do that. For one thing, I can't watch cricket in any capacity over here, and that's a serious problem.

'Course, I'll always visit the UK as much as I can; most of my friends and family live there, after all. But I think in the long term, I'll join the British diaspora in our attempts at global domination (once again). I guess in the final analysis, I'm not coming home.

A Spot of Trumpet-blowing

The instrument in question being my own. Yesterday, I had without a doubt the best 2 hours I've had at Columbia since I got here. I've been taking a seminar course with Prof. Carol Gluck this semester, mainly because my field of interest often crosses over from literature to history, and Prof. Gluck is one of if not the most pre-eminent figures in the field today. Seriously, she's a hugely respected, nay titanic Japan scholar on a world scale.

The class was a translation workshop - we had had four translation assignments throughout the term in addition to our reading, two Meiji and two post-war ones, and last week, in a writing workshop, we had been informed that our translations basically sucked, that to use CG's words, "they were only just beginning to emerge out of the swamp". So I think probably all ten of us, all grad students, were expecting to get ripped apart for the two hours for which it was scheduled. We had copies of everyone else's translations in front of us, heavily marked up, crossed out and so on by CG, so everyone could see where everyone else had made mistakes.

Forty-five minutes and two or three eviscerated classmates later, CG starts talking about the mechanics of academic translation. And she says "Now, Rob..."

Here it comes, I thought.

"...Rob is the master at this."

Huh?

"His translations are fantastic. Read his work, he writes beautiful English. Right, the rest of you, look at his Aizawa translation. That's English. That's how it's supposed to be done. You'll recognise his one in the pile by the star I put on the front of it because I couldn't believe how good it was."

Oh, so that's what that meant. And why none of my translations had any marks on them. I thought she'd just forgotten. That was not what I was expecting. "The master?"

"It's not because he's necessarily smarter than the rest of you, but because he's been doing this longer. So, Rob, how do you do it? Why don't you tell the class some of your secrets?"

Bloody hell, I thought. So I did.

They're few and far between, these moments. The ones that make all the hard work, the lost social life, the breadline existence and all the hours spent in the library seem worthwhile. That was one of them.

You have my permission to refer to me as "The Master" from now on.

Nights're getting longer

Into December now, though it didn't feel like it last week as it was 67°F (about 19°C) last Friday. The first time in my life I've ever been outside in the month of December in just a thin shirt and been perfectly comfortable. We're back on form now, though, it's down near freezing in New York and will probably remain so for the next six months or so, God help us.

Not much to report, really...nose still at the grindstone, much as it ever was. Looking forward to paying a visit back to Blighty, though I won't be there for long - just 10 days or so.

We have a couple of visiting professors from Waseda here right now, one of whom, Unno-san, is heading back just before Xmas. So we had a little sobetsukai at a Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown (the guy's a coriander (cilantro) addict). One of the dishes was minced prawns cooked around a sugar cane...I'm pretty sure you weren't supposed to eat it, but some of our party did anyway, as you can see. Food was excellent, and we went for gelato on the lower East Side afterwards. A lighter moment before the real heavy lifting of paper-writing begins.

We've all been there...

Something I came across on my travels. A quote:

"Judd said Apgar told deputies he was smoking crack-cocaine at the adjacent park, but it was unclear why he was naked or why he was attacked by the alligator."

Not much I can add to that, really.

What part of Nō don't you understand?

Well, most of it actually. That's as in Noh drama. We've been doing it this week in pre-modern lit class, and while it has no real relevance to this post, I thought it'd make a good title, largely because I intend to use the witticism therein in my future teaching career when I'm explaining Noh and some hapless undergrad says that they don't get it. I will, as you may surmise from that, be something of a sadist. Bwahahaaa.

Looking through the directory of classes on the CU website to work out what I'm going to take next year, I see that the Philosophy department offers a "Seminar on Vagueness". Taught at, um, some time in the afternoon, maybe toward the beginning of the week, by that guy, you know, what's his name, Bill something or other...

The pound is now apparently at a 14-year high versus the dollar, and basically ￡1 = $2. Which is great news for all of you spongers who are making plans to come and visit me, and terrible news for me, since now everything I bring back at Xmas will be denominated in USD and so worth about 10% less than it was when I came over here. Oh well - just illustrates the first rule of capital markets - you'll always get screwed. When in Japan, your yen will fall in value, rising as you leave - the same will doubtless be true for my sojourn in the US. As long as I'm still here, you can look for the ￡ to be worth about $5, some time in 2017...

Thanksgiving

Kate's aunt and uncle live on Park Avenue, the playground of the upper class in New York, and it was at their place that I spent Thanksgiving. Their apartment, while charming, is not quite the palace one could find over on the East Side, but it was cosy enough, and considering it was raining outside, the presence of turkey, wine and good conversation inside made it very congenial indeed.

It was, I suppose, my first American Thanksgiving, since last year I and some other international students had had a dinner at Reto's place, with pork chops, pesto, couscous, and so on, in short none of the traditional fare. Moreover, none of those present were American, anyway, so as they say over here this one was kind of a do-over.

Now, Kate's uncle used to work for what he refers to as 'the Agency', spending some considerable amount of time in the Middle East and Afghanistan in particular. So, also present was Iman, the couple's sort-of Afghan 'godson', who had left at the time of the 'first jihad' and was now an American citizen, running a bagel cart on the East Side. Nice enough bloke; he didn't say much, and didn't drink anything, as you might expect. He did bring some fantastic Afghan flatbread, which I and others devoured.

I think David, Kate's uncle, actually quite likes me, which I know will disappoint those of you who have seen Meet the Parents and were expecting me to talk about undergoing a polygraph before I could sit down to turkey. We spent some time talking about East Asia and where it was going in the next few years; having spent some considerable time over there, he's fairly knowledgeable about Japan, and Anita, Kate's aunt, has co-authored a book on Chinese poetry, so they're both well aware of where I'm coming from. Made for some fascinating conversation; and in case you're wondering, no, I did not ask David whether he'd ever killed anyone, though given that he talked about having been 'in the field' in Afghanistan...

Anyway, the food was delicious and the wine plentiful. Much of the Thanksgiving fare is heavily carb-centric (potatoes, bread, etc) and this, more than any tryptophan or whatever in the turkey, was enough to make for a very lazy and drowsy evening back at Kate's place later in the day. I think we fell asleep watching Top Chef or something equally trashy on cable. It was a good day.

Oh, and in the spirit of the occasion, and providing a slightly more self-reflective note...things for which I'm thankful...

1) I get to do what I love for a living.
2) I get to live in one of the great cities of the world for the latter half of my 20s.
3) I have a great girlfriend and great friends, all over the world - yep, I'm talking to you, dear reader.

Compliments of the season to all of you.

The Culinary Equivalent of an Orgasm

I think I mentioned that I MC'd the JETAANY career panel last month, which involved several successful former JETs (may seem like an oxymoron, I realise) talking about their experience so as to help out other recent returnees. Now, JETAANY reckons to thank those who help it out with a thank-you dinner, and as luck would have it, one of the panelists in October was a guy called Norman, who by funny coincidence happens to be the manager of both branches of a super-upscale Japanese place called Megu in New York. The kind of place that's listed as $$$$ (Very Expensive) in all the guidebooks.

So this evening, dinner was on JETAANY at Megu in Trump Tower on 47th St and 1st Avenue. And the food was simply nothing short of phenomenal. Try wagyu beef so good, we had a minute's silence to give it the contemplation it deserved. Or asparagus deep-fried in kaki-no-tane (yes, the same thing served as beer snacks in Japan), Kobe beef cooked on stone, toro tuna with daikon and spicy miso, and a yuzu chocolate cake so good I think I might actually consider marrying it. Seriously, this was the best meal I have had since I came to New York and possibly ever.

The best bit was not that I didn't pay anything for it (though that was good...), but that Norman (he's an ex-JET) and I got on like a house on fire, carrying on where we'd left off just shooting the breeze at the reception. So now he's going to hook me up next time I need to impress. Consider the scene - Kate's birthday. I walk into Megu - the manager shakes me by the hand, asks how I'm doing, greets Kate like a long-lost friend. "OK, so we've got your table ready for you - just the way you like it. Don't bother with the menus, we'll sort you out and take good care of you. You just relax and enjoy yourselves". Now that's classy. Nothing quite like turning to your date and saying, "Yeah, the manager's a good friend of mine".

One Day

Better get right back in the saddle, I suppose.

Thanksgiving's coming up. You can tell, because places around campus that are normally busy - the libraries, the gym - have thinned out considerably. I suspect a lot of the student body are pulling a fast one and taking the week off. Not that I would blame them - Columbia has a policy of scheduling classes even up to the day before the occasion, which, naturally, is extremely unpopular. This, I think, is somewhat unusual among the Ivies - Yale, for example, gives its students the whole week off. Mind you, considering how much the undergrads are paying for their education ($33,000 per year in tuition alone), one can't help but recall the nameless scholar who remarked that universities are the only places where people pay to attend and then try to get as little value as possible for their money.

I think my flatmate's going back to Chicago for Thanksgiving, but he's almost never here anyway so it's rather hard to tell. He's a great flatmate, to the extent that he pays the rent and doesn't seem to live here. I'm still not entirely convinced he's not a product of my own fevered imagination.

Kate, meanwhile, is having to move to Brooklyn. The rent went up on her place, and not everybody was willing to meet the increase, so unfortunately that means everyone has to go. It cuts both ways, really - it'll be a 45 minute subway ride to get to see her, which is a pain - it's been great that she lives so close by; but then, on the other hand, I'll get to explore a whole new part of the city of New York.

Fifteen Days

This might, I think, be the longest hiatus I've managed since I created this blog (did you miss me? I know you did. I'm feeling the love right now). The reasons are pretty easy to surmise; I'm hellishly busy right now with various papers and admin stuff that needs to be done, and that, aside from taking up a lot of my time, doesn't make for particularly interesting reading. I'm really excited about this big research paper I'm about to write on the use of the figure of Sugawara no Michizane in the Meiji period, but I think even those of you who've been to Japan would probably find it fairly uninteresting. In stark contrast to the rest of my blog, obviously. What? Oh.

It's not all bad, though, one does manage to blow off some steam from time to time. Ben Jennings, former fellow CIR from the UK, was visiting a couple of Fridays ago. He now has the job that pretty much every 12-year-old would kill for, in that he works for the company that runs Pokemon in the UK, and was here on business. We went for a few drinks, chatted to a few people, charmed a barmaid on the Lower East Side into giving us free drinks because of our cute accents, and wound up in a headhunter bar. I mean, literally a headhunter bar. Like, masks and shrunken heads on the walls. Different type to what I think most of you corporate types are used to.

But it gets hard to run a social life when academic work can be so all-consuming. After that it was 15-hour days pretty much every time, and will be most of the way to Thanksgiving, I think. It meant that I couldn't find time to see Sarah, who was in the US on vacation. Not the first time that'd happened...Nat passed through about a month ago, and I missed her, as well. Today a group of my friends from the Lit program went out to Queen's for Thai food, but I had to turn the invitation down because I calculated that getting there and back, plus dinner, would have taken 4 hours, and I simply couldn't afford to lose that much time out of my day.

Is this how it's always going to be? God, I hope not.

Though thinking about it, they do say that there are four good reasons to be an academic - May, June, July and August. Better hope that's true.

Musings

Americans seem to like to heat their buildings (at least in New York) until they're warm enough that you could walk around in just a T-shirt. I sort of understand the logic to heating buildings when the winters are so harsh, but inside they're about 22℃, which means that when you walk in wearing several layers (as everyone who's outside does) you boil within 30 seconds. Not quite the right balance, perhaps.

I accidentally called my Chinese teacher a prostitute last week. How could I have known that the word for chicken in Mandarin also meant hooker? And why was I calling her a chicken in the first place? Answers on a postcard to the usual address.

Days of rest

I'm over the worst of it, I think. All that needs to be turned in has been, and I can relax for a day or two since we have Monday and Tuesday of next week off. It's not an official holiday, but the University cancels classes on those days because, I think, they don't celebrate Columbus day. So time to relax a bit. I'm going to Chinatown tonight for a good feed - I haven't had a good Chinese meal in a long time.

So I can take a breather from doing press-ups for a while (while you are perfectly correct, Tori, in pointing out that they will give me killer pecs, you neglected to note that I already have pecs that are statuesque, nay godlike, in appearance). I also get to hang out with Kate a bit more than normal.

Got my stipend cheque just this week, so I am not poor again just for the moment. Booked my flight back to the US after New Year - I'll be back in Blighty from the end of term, though I'm not completely sure when that will be in practical terms. So I anticipate a bit of a knees-up with my British-based friends.

Called the Student Loans company in the UK to get another deferment application, got put on hold, and noticed that their music was Notorious B.I.G.'s "Mo Money, Mo Problems". I hope that was deliberate.

Weightlifting, clapping and juggling

My male readers have probably had the experience in physical education class or sports teams at some point of being asked to do press-ups (push-ups, for you Yanks) whereby you push yourself up, and then have to clap your hands together in mid-air before your hands touch the ground again, preparatory to doing another press-up. That's kind of what my life is like right now.

I have a five-page paper precis, the paperwork for my MA thesis, a 3-day conference and an 800-word position paper due on the 1st, at the same time as getting all of my regular coursework out of the way. You have to put in a hell of a lot of effort even to get to the point where you can clap - and then you have to do it all over again. As if that weren't enough, I've also had my mum here staying with me this week, which means that I've had to spend a certain amount of time with her as well. All I could really spare was Sunday morning; we went to the Guggenheim museum, which I hadn't yet managed. It wasn't as impressive as the Met or the Natural History Museum; I suppose I was rather spoiled seeing those first of all. The architecture inside is very cool, though, with the spiral structure inside leading you gradually up and up until you're at the top, kind of without realising it.

Mind you, on a positive note that's also a good metaphor for Columbia...I may feel like I'm going round in circles half the time, but when I actually stop and look I realise that I'm learning a hell of a lot of useful stuff.

Kate wants some of my time too, which is not unreasonable, since she is my girlfriend. But there is light at the end of the tunnel, and it's not the 1 train...two-thirds of my classes are cancelled next week, and with the Election Day holiday following on from the weekend coming I'll have a week or so of much lighter work, probably taking a couple of days off. Then, of course, it's Thanksgiving a week or so after. Just gotta hold on this weekend without losing my sanity.

The colour of autumn leaves

In much the same way as its antecedents in Chinese poetry, much Japanese verse esteems the seasons of spring and autumn above winter and summer for aesthetic reasons, as well as the fact that both seasons are relatively comfortable compared to the humid summer and frigid winters. If you've experienced a New England autumn, you can probably agree that they've definitely got a point.


I finally managed to get out of New York City. The occasion was the wedding of one of Kate's friends (yes, we're using full names now, and there's a picture of her below), now living in Auburn, New York, not too far from Syracuse. We rented a car and drove up there; it took about four hours, and we were still only about half-way across the state. It served to remind me of just how huge this country is in comparison to my own native land; drive four hours north from Cambridge and you can get most of the way up into the north of England.


It was also a very scenic drive, reminiscent of the spectactular mountainsides of Tohoku and other parts. We were perhaps a week too late, but it was still breathtaking in parts. After fifteen months of corporate canyon, I was just happy to see the sky. It was a beautifully clear day, too, at least until we got most of the way into the state, but bitterly cold as well. While we were upstate, a major snowstorm hit Buffalo, NY, leaving 200,000 people without power until it could be restored. Luckily, we were unaffected.

The wedding itself was an interesting social phenomenon, though it was quite fun. Those present were divided roughly between those of Irish extraction (who drank as much as humanly possible and danced away the night) and the bride's side, who were Baptists and so didn't touch a drop or cut any rug at all. As they say, "Why don't Baptists have sex standing up? Because someone might think they're dancing." Anyway. So I just drank in moderation, talked to those around me, and had a pretty good time, apart from embarrassing myself by nearly decapitating the groom's father when a champagne cork from a bottle I was opening bounced off a pillar and narrowly missed him.

The thing about upstate New York, from what I saw and from what Kate told me, is that it's almost the diametric opposite of the city - rural, simple, unsophisticated, somewhat conservative and overwhelmingly white. Not that those are necessarily bad things, but it served as a salutary reminder that New York City is not 'America'. The names on the Confirmation board at the church were all Anglo-Saxon, something I doubt anyone would see in the city. I suppose the wedding and the reception reflected that. One of the best bits was when one of the groom's guests, sozzled as he was, told me that I had a 'European' accent and "we hate Europeans". I just coldly reminded him that I'm not European, I'm British. Not sure how serious he was, whether it was a case of in vino veritas or if he was too hammered to make it clear either way. Apart from him, though, everyone was just as friendly and welcoming as I have come to expect Americans to be, and what the hell, the booze was free and the food was good.

Much of upstate New York is given over to farm land (well, the bits of it that aren't lakes), though the soil is quite poor in comparison to, say, the Midwest, and the climate is too cold to grow anything very spectacular. It's perfect for apples, though, and we stopped off at an apple farm on the way back to pick some Empire and Jonagolds, and grab a bit of farm pressed cider.

It was great to get out of the city for a weekend and relax. Things, however, are about to get hectic once again...

A tractor? S'pose I must have done... 

Just another day in New York

I don't think that this story about a small passenger plane hitting one of the high-rise buildings on the Upper East Side seems to have made the UK media, but for a few hours here it was quite a big thing, given the history this town has with planes hitting buildings. Still, I got in late enough that the TV was already reporting most of the details; perhaps for a few minutes people may have wondered if history was about to repeat itself. The dead were apparently a New York Yankees pitcher and his flight instructor. Maybe I should move to Nebraska, it'd probably be safer. And cheaper too.

Elsewhere, our Chinese teacher told us in class today that the best way to get a handle on the tones in spoken Chinese is to listen to the pauses and imitate them. Very Zen. Confucius he say, "Best way to learn Chinese, listen to what is not there. Ommmm..."

Nuke kook

Oh, and in other news, Tori, of 'comments on this blog' fame, is currently in North Korea touring for a week. As many of you will have noticed, North Korea alledgedly ran a nuclear test this week, or is at least trying to fool the world into thinking that it did. I hope she's all right - though I have no reason to think she's not - and can give us a little insight into just how batshit crazy that bunch in Pyongyang really are when she gets back. Take care of yourself, girl, and don't say anything derogatory about the Dear Leader...

Slumming it

Dad was here over the weekend, down from visiting my uncle up in Boston. As opposed to last year, when I was living in the shithole also known as Harmony Hall (n.b. - incredibly enough the whackjob is, according to reports, still there), I have enough room to put him up for the whole duration of his stay, thereby saving him several hundred dollars. Same will be true for my mum when she comes; a week in a New York hotel does not come cheap.

Anyway, owing to work the amount of time I could spend with him was limited, but we did manage to go down to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, which recreates (to the extent that it's possible) a set of tenement houses from the 1870s and 1930s, with a view to giving one an idea of what life as an immigrant to New York was like at the time. It was quite well done and rather informative, though as my Dad and other historians will tell you, perhaps the one thing that nobody quite grasps is just how bad most places used to smell until comparatively recently. This place didn't have internal plumbing, and I doubt that the people who run the thing want to have their guests coughing and gagging for air, so that much is, probably rightly, left to the imagination.

At the other end of the scale, we also had a look around Theodore Roosevelt's birthplace slightly further uptown and a world away in social terms. Roosevelt was, and is, the only native New Yorker ever to be elected president, and he was a truly remarkable man - naturalist, soldier, explorer, politician and educator, the sort of gentleman polymath that we don't really see any more these days.

Dad's gone back up to Boston now and I'm still slaving away in the library, though I was cheered by the visit of Isaac Young, late of Miyagi and now of this parish (well, sort of - he's at Cornell Law school), clearly in need of a bit of civilisation after a couple of months in the wilds of Ithaca. I myself will need to pack my survival gear - I'm off upstate this weekend for a wedding, one of K's friends, all the way up near Syracuse. Still - the weather has turned colder lately, and I'm even hopeful that we might see some autumn foliage. If not, then at least I'll finally manage to get out of the city and explore even a small part of the US for a change.

China, Charlie, and the rest

Chinese is hard. Why am I learning it? Because I thought to myself one day, 'my life isn't really complicated enough. What can I do that'll remedy that?' And obviously Chinese was the answer. The tones are kicking my arse right now. Mind you, the textbook is always good for some comic relief. You can tell it was written by an Englishman, because the first chapter is all about the weather. It is also refreshingly honest - where Japanese textbooks are uniformly sweetness and light and all about happy international communication, the following sentence appears in Lesson 3:

王太太不喜歓學外國話、他常説：外國人吃外國飯、應該説外國話。中國人吃中國飯、應該説中國話！

Which roughly translated means "Mrs. Wang doesn't like learning foreign languages. She often says, 'Foreigners eat foreign food, so they should speak foreign languages. Chinese eat Chinese food, so they should speak Chinese'". Wonderful. When it comes down to it, the Japanese and Chinese are basically the same (i.e., get the f*ck away, you filthy foreigner), but at least the Chinese have the decency to admit it.

In other news, I had a follow-up appointment with the doctor about my heart thing a few weeks ago. Everything is normal, including my thyroid, which I had thought might be a possible cause of the problem. I asked if there was anything I should or shouldn't do, and the doc said I should pay attention to my caffeine and alcohol intake. And cocaine. If I use it. Which I don't. Obviously. Not sure how she thinks I can afford it on a GSAS (or, actually, WEAI) fellowship. I wouldn't even know where to start.

I just hope the FBI aren't reading this.

WEAI, bonny lad

On Tuesday morning I awoke to an e-mail in my inbox informing me that I had been chosen as a fellow at Columbia's Weatherhead East Asian Institute (WEAI). Apparently they will now take over my funding for this year, relieving the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of the obligation. In practical terms this doesn't actually mean a whole lot; the funding is substitutional, not additional, so I'm no better off financially. It is, however, something of an honour, looks good on a CV, and involves turning up for dinners and panel discussions, etc. with fellow scholars. That's by no means a bad thing - though it may take up some of my time, it will widen my circle of contacts and get me a little better known in the field, which may come in handy in a couple of years' time when I'm looking for a job.

By a bizarre coincidence, WEAI - pronounced as one word - is also widely used in the dialect spoken in north-east England, where I grew up. Whey aye, as it's spelt, means something like 'Of course'. Can't imagine that had much to do with it, though.

Better

Things are looking a bit better after the weekend. I got most of my work done so it won't be hanging over me this week, and K and I have basically patched things up (for now, at least). The thing is, I will be going to Japan in 2008 - so some time in the next 18 months will come a crunch point. I don't know what's going to happen then...

Saw Corin, yet another ex-JET, on Sunday, now of this parish and job hunting. I helped her out with a bit of Japanese practice, as the job is at a Japanese TV firm. I'm not sure how much help I can realistically be - one can't teach Japanese in an afternoon, after all - but one likes to do what one can for friends and acquaintances.

Had a Chinese test on Thursday and Friday, the latter half of which consisted of speaking into a microphone and recording myself, to make sure I got the tones right. I'm not 100% sure I did...it's damn hard. Luckily, the objective is not to become completely fluent in Mandarin (though that would be nice), so much as to be able to read academic Chinese and classical Chinese poetry.

I got the paper copy of my echocardiogram from a few weeks back today. Apparently I have a 'trivial mitral insufficiency' and a 'trivial tricuspid insufficiency', which terms I can make neither head nor tail of, but I think the key bit is the 'trivial'. At least, I hope so.

Nadir

Ugh. Still running around like a blue-arsed fly. Lessons to prepare, reading to do, copies to make and stuff to hand in to people, and it rarely goes like clockwork. It's been particularly bad these last couple of weeks; it should ease off a bit from now on. Fingers crossed, but predictions about workload have a horrible habit of going badly wrong.

Someone in our School of International and Public Affairs thought it would be a good idea to invite Iranian president Mahmound Ahmadinejad to come and give a speech at Columbia, seeing as he's in town anyway to posture along with his fellow loonies at the UN. As one can imagine, that idea, when revealed yesterday, went down like the proverbial lead balloon, especially considering CU's rather large Jewish presence. It was perhaps the only time the college Dems and Repubs have actually agreed with each other on something. As it happened, he did accept the invitation, but on two days' notice it wouldn't have been feasible to get the security arrangements in place. If you recall last year, John Ashcroft's visit brought out the NYPD riot squad, so Ahmadinejad would probably have needed several tank divisions and the 81st Airborne to be safe. No doubt CU are very happy to have a plausible excuse not to have him around campus. As an aside, I think they're wrong, and that the way to deal with "hate speech" is not to suppress it, but to show it to all as the ignorant rot it is. As they say, free speech makes it easier to spot the idiots.

K and I aren't in the best of shape. We went for dinner last night and it was just bad - we had nothing to say to each other, it was horribly awkward. We talked afterwards for a while about various things. I think we patched it up, but we both need to do some serious thinking about where we're going.

All-consuming

I wonder if I'm turning into a workaholic. I spent between twelve and fourteen hours in class and studying almost every day this week (usually from 9 a.m. til 11 p.m.). It's not that I don't enjoy it - for the most part I do, the work's stimulating and I get a lot out of it - but it seems to be affecting my social life. Went out for dinner on Friday night to a sake bar in midtown with K; she was a bit frosty, mainly cos she hadn't seen me all week. Trouble is, this is just something I have to do right now; and these couple of weeks I have to prepare to lead the discussion in our colloquium, which means doing all the reading a week in advance. Perhaps this is what they mean by work-life balance, and maybe I need a bit more of the life side of things. Still. The bar was good, reasonably authentic (apart from the massive portions - not authentically Japanese, but welcome enough), and the booze was cheap. Got fairly hammered, blowing off steam I suppose.

I'm working through a 500-page book required for the Mod. Hist. colloquium right now, entitled Memory, History, Forgetting by some Frog philosopher by the name of Paul Ricoeur. To misquote and paraphrase Hermann Goering, "whenever I hear the words 'French philosopher' I reach for my revolver". It's not as bad as some - Derrida comes to mind - and it does have some interesting ideas, but in the general tradition of many theorists it's quite spectacularly badly written, long-winded, opaque, pretentious and generally annoying. If I might be allowed to quote another German of dubious moral heritage, Friedrich Nietzsche: "Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound strive for obscurity."

A rose by any other name...

Apparently it's standard procedure to give everyone in the Chinese class a Chinese name. Mine is

塗　英杰

pronounced Tú Yīng Jié, or, if you prefer the Japanese, To Ei Ketsu. Though not a lot of 'em would know the last one, it's rather unusual. It contains the character for England, which is also quite nifty. I think it's rather cool.

September 11th

Today, as I'm sure everyone is aware, marks the fifth anniversary of 9/11. By a strange quirk of fate, I have managed to be in the USA for three out of those possible five anniversaries, being here as a tourist in '02, and studying here in '05 (I was doing the GRE in Tokyo in 2004, and I can't remember what I was doing in 2003. So there). It feels odd to be in New York today, which in itself is rather strange, as it didn't last year, but this time round is a bit different.

For one thing, the five-year mark gives a sense - perhaps a false one, but the effect remains - of completing a cycle, of somehow ending the first phase of the aftermath. I suppose this feeling is reflected in the wall-to-wall coverage that the milestone is getting on U.S. TV right now. I don't wish to downplay the enormity of what happened on that horrible day, and I can respect a nation's wish to honour its dead, but the day-long blanket coverage (starting at 5 a.m. on one channel I saw) rather recalls the grief-fest that overtook the U.K. after Diana's death in 1997. It's probably just me, but I can't help but feel that a tone of quiet reflection would have been a more fitting memorial than a day-long media junket. Oh well. I guess my personal tastes just tend towards the understated, that's all. Maybe it's for that same reason that I never visited Ground Zero itself and always thought turning it into a tourist site was really tacky.

At the other end of the scale, of course, we have the certifiably bat-shit crazy bunch. You know the ones, the tinfoil-hat brigade who think that the CIA, or the Bush Clan, or the Illuminati, or the Jews, or Tom and Jerry crashed the planes into the WTC, or used explosives to bring them down, or any of a dozen or so quarter-baked theories concocted from the flimsiest of supposition and downright lies. This wouldn't usually bother me; I would normally be inclined to class such whackjobs with UFO nuts and those who think we never went to the moon or that the NSA controls the weather.

But damned if this stuff doesn't seem to keep popping up and affecting people I know. A certain somewhat flakey Miyagi couple who shall remain nameless originally tipped me off on this strain of thought - if it can be so called - by showing me a video doing the rounds on the net a few years ago. I thought it was crap then, and still do now that I've dug around a bit and learned for a fact it's total nonsense...but the idea just won't die. On the pole in a shot from October last year you can see their sticker; there are flyers up on all the lamp-posts round Columbia right now, the secretary in the Law school was watching that same video a couple of months back, and there was even some loony in a "9/11 is a lie" t-shirt on campus today. I don't know why this sort of stuff bugs me, but it does. It's not my fight, and yet...

Pics

Not much to add right now, just thought I'd put up some recent pictures that were floating around on my digital camera. I'd also like to add a note of congratulations to Pocket Rocket, now safely married off. Women the world over are crying themselves to sleep, mate. Though it'll probably be a while before you read this; or at least, I should hope so, you're meant to be having a honeymoon.

The demure Ms. Ngan, doing the touristy thing . 

I know I've put up shots of the view from the ESB before, but this time round it was so much clearer and the view way better than this time last year. You can see the George Washington Bridge in the middle-left of the pic. 

On top of the world... 

Self back in the Smoke, just on the Thames. 

And the beat goes on

Term is here, with all its gentle showers. I'm back on the treadmill of academia, polishing my mind to a keenly-honed edge with the grindstone of learning. Stop laughing at the back there.

It's good to be back in the saddle. I'm taking beginning Chinese this semester, and the first two sessions I've had so far have consisted of my comical efforts to get my tongue round the sounds of this rather esoteric language. I'm also taking three seminars, on modern Japanese history, pre-modern Japanese literature and modern Japanese cultural criticism respectively, so while a solid and demanding workload, it is unlikely to be quite as crushing as it was this time last year.

Before the grueling four-month semester kicked off, I hosted the lovely Miyagi belle Ms. Christine Ngan for a few days in New York. Having spent most of the last two years in rural Tohoku, New York must have been something of a step up, but despite her notoriously poor sense of direction she still managed to avoid getting seriously lost. I had feared that she would take my assertion that the grid system in Manhattan makes it almost impossible to lose one's bearings as some kind of challenge. But it was not to be, and we managed a few trips to Ellis Island, the Empire State building and other sundry landmarks in the few days she was here. Perhaps I'm getting a bit blase; it was my fifth visit to the Statue...

There's more to the title of this entry than merely the above would suggest. For the last couple of months or so I've been experiencing an irregular heartbeat and palpitations fairly frequently, for no obvious reason that I can discern. While I've had no other symptoms, I still thought it warranted getting checked out, and so I went to see the doc back home in Newport. She thought it was probably nothing - blood pressure, pulse etc all normal - but recommended an ECG as a precautionary measure. I learned upon my return to NYC that they had seen something there they weren't happy with, and I should get it checked out further here. I made an appointment on Tuesday, and learned that I have a heart murmur, albeit a very faint one, and should get an echo cardiogram at the hospital.

So I duly did, and thus was my first encounter with US medicine. I have no complaints; it was all done quickly and efficiently. I had some gel smeared on my chest, the readings taken, then again with the doctor present. The final result, after all the blood work and sonograms were analyzed, is...

...there's absolutely nothing wrong with me. Given the absence of any other symptoms, medical minds on both sides of the Atlantic are inclined to think that it's just one of those things. Bizarre, perhaps, but a relief nonetheless. Now I can bury myself in the library again, and hope that the only thing that'll get me flatlining is the reading list for this semester...

What all the fuss is about

I picked up my stipend cheque today from the financial office (though perhaps I should start spelling it check in deference to my hosts). It felt good. Very good, in fact. This year Columbia University will be giving me money instead of taking it away from me. As I'm sure I conveyed at times, life was tight financially as a MA student - I worked out that I survived on an operating budget of less than $10,000 per year, though that was after rent and tuition had been paid. This year, things are different - my monthly budget will more than double, I can start doing boring stuff like replenishing my savings and starting to pay off my loans, and fun stuff like travelling up to my uncle's pad in the countryside of Massachussetts, snowboarding and the like. With my job at the Law library kicking in, now, finally, thankfully, I don't have to worry about whether I'm going to have enough money to make it to the end of term.

It did help that New York City is actually one of the cheapest places I've ever lived. Most Americans will no doubt goggle in amazement at that statement, but it's true. You do, however, have to remember that my standards of comparison are Japan and the UK, neither renowned for a low cost of living.

I went a bit crazy in anticipation of the cheque, actually - on Sunday I bought myself an electric toothbrush, a duvet cover and a new MP3 player. OK, I admit it's not really very crazy at all - but to be able to go out and have the freedom to spend some money on things I want, rather than need, was a most welcome experience.

K's back from her friend's wedding in Illinois. Hadn't seen her in over a month, so you can probably imagine how the evening proceeded...

And in other news, to my delight I learn that my friend and that of many of my readers, Mr. Dave Fusco, is now back in New York after his sojourn working in Japan. Dave, bless his heart, is one of those types of people so peculiar to and ubiquitous in New York; the sort who, whenever he gets an idea, acts on it, no matter how misguided it may be, and who has the attention span of a goldfish on Ritalin. Needless to say, that makes him great fun to hang around with. I love the guy, really. Can't wait to get a night out on the beers organised.

Back in the USSA

I think I've used that heading before, but I'm too tired to care right now.

Flight back was endured - they're never a pleasure, and BA's selection of films over the summer has been crap. Still, I made it on time, which was rather fortunate - there was a 'fatality' on the King's Cross line as I was on my way down to London, which occasioned a delay of nearly two hours before the train could be re-routed. We saw a body bag with police on the platform as we went by - some poor bastard either fell or jumped in front of a train. Not uncommon in Japan, of course, and while I know I'll sound insensitive, I would say that if you're going to top yourself the least you can do is not make everyone else late on your account...

But it's good to be back. Spoke to K when I got in - she's away right now, coming back Sunday. I have a feeling that this is going to be a very good year.

New York State of Mind

After five weeks of bucolic relaxation, I'm headed back to the big bad city. It's been a tonic - the Essex countryside was just the ticket, exactly the right place to unwind and blow off the stress of the past year. Tomorrow of itself might be quite stressful - nobody seems quite sure what exactly I can take on board the flight, and I'm flying with BA, whose reputation for efficiency and high standards is not exactly flawless.

I was back in the Smoke this weekend, having dinner and drinks with Matt and Nina at a Sichuan place in London by the name of Bar Zhu. The food was, quite simply, phenomenal - the best Chinese I think I've had in this country, wonderfully piquant and (apparently) authentic Sichuan delicacies of all various flavours. Marvellous. Met Karen and my brother for lunch, once again in Chinatown, the next day, and hoisted a couple of pints. Mike was celebrating too - he just got a grant worth ￡26,000 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, quite against the odds, to do an MA in sculpture at the Slade (University College London's Art school). Beers on him then.

Sunday was my actual birthday, celebrated in a sort of aromatic haze of beer and Indian food. While the Indian on offer in New York - like, for example, Jacksonville Heights - is not bad, it's not British Indian food. I'm a creature of habit, a fact for which I make no apologies.

Will blog again when back in the wilds of NYC.

Smoke and Mirrors

By popular demand...

I've been told I need to update my blog more often. This is an unprecedented phenomenon; very few people indeed have ever told me that I should actually write more. Boringly enough, it's because there's not a whole lot to write about; I am at home most of the time, reading, watching DVDs (mostly The West Wing), and doing a bit of academic work from time to time. Even with the best will in the world, I doubt most of you really care about all the old books on my shelves I'm enjoying once again.

But at other times - namely weekends - I go down to London to meet friends. Saw Karen and Nat last weekend, took a walk by the river and remembered that London is just as amazing a city as New York is. I think perhaps one is apt to forget the qualities of one's own native land when one spends so much time overseas. As one of my professors remarked, London is like New York, only with history. And much, much more expensive - but that's a story for another time.

This past weekend, I reminded myself of an old and venerable English tradition, namely, the Session. Wherein a group of young men gather at a drinking place after work, and proceed to drink more than is really good for them in a turn-based system (known, I believe, as a round). Quaint and curious some may call it - others may prefer to think that it highlights the primitive nature of those who participate in it - but it's still damn good fun, especially when joined by old friends. It also proves that you can take the man out of college; but you can't take college out of the man. Of ten of us, I am the only one who isn't in a well-paid and prestigious job in London. Do we, then, enjoy fine wines and good dining? Do we hell. Eight pints of lager and a kebab on the way home. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

In other news, Al-Qaeda is once again trying to kill me. Or, if that fails, annoy the hell out of me. I'm not so worried about a fiery aerial death over the Atlantic - it'd have the virtue of being quick - as I am about being bored out of my mind in Heathrow, or not being able to have my laptop with me and thereby having it damaged by the heavy-browed baggage handlers at the world's busiest airport. It's 10 days until I fly out, so I have to hope that things settle down by then. Cos if my laptop were to get damaged - well, that'd put an end to the blog for, ooh, at least a week - and what would you do then, my loyal readers?

Notes from the Midlands

The occasion was the 21st birthday of my cousin, Sarah, at the family home in Bewdley, not far away from Kidderminster. In the final year of a teaching course at York University (while I, as she remarked, am in New York), she is a bright and very affable young girl, though no doubt teaching will change all that soon enough. One's 21st birthday is, of course, a moment for celebration and looking to the future; though left largely unspoken throughout proceedings, there was also a certain sense of poignancy, if not sadness, that my cousin - her sister - Claire could not be present. She had died while still a teenager in a minibus crash in the Midlands in the autumn of 1993. Had she lived, she would be about my age and have celebrated her own 21st five years earlier.

Still, it was a lively and boisterous occasion, the party being held in a marquee in her parents' capacious garden and supplied with copious quantities of food and drink. Most of the guests were Sarah's friends from York University and from her childhood in the Midlands, though there was still a sizeable representation of older friends and family. It didn't half make me feel old, though. Less than a month away from my 27th birthday, I was never entirely sure whether I should be chatting with the 2nd and 3rd year undergraduates that composed the majority of Sarah's guests, or making rather more adult conversation with the rest. I am ashamed to admit that I couldn't help silently drooling over one or two of the student body; one girl, in particular, was in possession of what I think were the two most perfect breasts I have seen in recent times and was not shy of displaying them. Proof, if it were required, that I am a drooling pervert. God knows what will happen when I have to start teaching (or rather, TA-ing) in a year's time. Put me and the English accent in a room with some nubile 18-year old American girls and it will probably be all I can do not to trip over my own tongue, let alone avoid getting kicked out of the University and summarily deported (needless to say, K is less than thrilled at this prospect, because, as she said, "we always fancied our TAs in college").

Still. It was all good fun in a teacher-at-a-school-disco kind of way, and I think most of them were suitably impressed at what I laughingly refer to as my 'jetset lifestyle'. I was rather happy that I didn't have to venture outside much, though - aside from the Worcester countryside, I find most aspects of the West Midlands - not least the accent - to be uniformly horrible. We went for a pub lunch on Sunday before I came back down to Cambridge at the pub at the end of the road. My family on my mum's side seem to have this bizarre obsession with pub lunches, even when they're manifestly horrible, and especially (as in this case) ridiculously overpriced. I got a leathery piece of beef and some overcooked vegetables for 8 quid or so, though everything else on the menu was at least ￡15. For the equivalent - $30 or so - I could get quite a feed in NYC. But then, as Mum reminded me - "this is the Midlands, dear, they're not very sophisticated round here".

Summer lightning

It's summer in England. You can tell by the rain.

Been back a week now, and though it seems to me pleasantly cool, those in the know and those on TV (usually not the same thing) are all on about the heatwave. It seems that summers in New York and Japan have given me a higher tolerance than most of my countrymen for hot weather; although whether this weather marks the beginning of a long-term trend, only time will tell. Certainly last year's summer was pretty cool overall, if I remember rightly - but right now the humidity has burst and there's a thunderstorm outside, which has been going on for a few hours now.

The flight back was passable - leaving at 4.00 a.m. was not fun, but the flight was 80% empty and I got a bulkhead seat, so I was able to stretch my legs out a bit. Normal modus operandi when coming back is to go to Stansted (it's only 20 mins drive from where I live in Cambridge), and so I did, but it was so packed with holidaymakers returning from the continent that I missed my Dad and had to get a taxi home. Was about 1 a.m. before I got to bed. But then, seasoned traveller that I am, I suppose I'm more or less used to that...

This last week has not, I regret to say, been very exciting. I've been reading some of my old books and magazines and enjoying my DVD collection again, partly through tiredness and the need to get over my jetlag and partly because I don't really have any money until I get paid tomorrow. This was always the point at which things might get a bit stretched financially, especially as I had to pay for a flight back to New York to resume my studies in mid-August, but I think I'll just about manage to squeak through. As from September 1st, Columbia will thankfully be giving me money instead of taking it away from me.

Off to Birmingham this weekend for a family function. May God have mercy on my soul...

Master of the Universe

So I got my MA thesis finished, finally. It's done, basically, though I will need to make one or two revisions to it before I submit it at the end of August. In the meantime, I have a translation to finish off, though that's not particularly urgent. In any case, it does feel good to have got the bulk of my work done; now I can relax for a bit back home.

It's hot in NYC right now; it hit 35℃ yesterday and will apparently be much the same way for most of the next few weeks. Thankfully I'm not going to be here, as I'm off back to the UK for a month or so. I managed to find someone to sublet my place, thankfully, so that's saved me a wodge of cash I would otherwise have had to pay on rent for the time I wasn't here.

The McCollums, friends from Japan, were visiting from California yesterday; we had lunch down in Bryant Park, then I showed them around Columbia and Riverside Park. Current and ex-JETs from Miyagi will no doubt remember both of them, especially their not insignificant contributions to Miyagi football. That's one of the great things about New York, people just are queueing up to come to visit.

In sort of related news, I'm also now the secretary for the New York JET AA association (which stands for Alumni Association; not, as one might think, Alcoholics Anonymous, although I think it's fair to say that there are more than a few JETs we know who would find the latter rather more useful). Not entirely sure how that happened, given as how I've only been to a couple of events, but I think it'll prove an interesting experience; I got an invite to a reception at the Japanese embassy at the end of the month because of it, but sadly I can't go as I won't be here.

One further invitation I sadly cannot respond to - my good friend Pocket's wedding in September. He and his bride-to-be have been great friends to me over the years, even coming out to visit in November of last year, and I'm genuinely distressed that I can't make their big day - but unfortunately I have to be here. I have no doubt it will be one to remember...but circumstances dictate otherwise for me.

Anyway...chances are the next time I blog I will be back in Blighty!

Red, white and blue

I celebrated the 4th of July down in Brooklyn, at a small gathering held by one of K's friends. We watched the fireworks from the south of the borough, from an area known as DUMBO - Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass - in the tradition of SoHo and TriBeCa. The fireworks were, as you'd expect, spectacular. Pics below for your viewing pleasure.

Sun, sea, sand and stupidity

Got out of the city on Sunday and went down to Sandy Hook in the neighbouring state of New Jersey. A long way south of New York, it's a peninsula on the east coast of the neighbouring state. It also represented the first time I had managed to get out of New York State, pathetically enough, so a jaunt out to the coast was really rather overdue. Went with Juliet, Jo, Tanya and Paul, friends and acquaintances of varying degrees of proximity mainly from the Business School - including me, two Brits, one Russian and one Frenchman, so a fairly cosmopolitan mix.

I can't imagine writing about lying on a beach would be very amusing for most of you, so I'll just post a couple of pics.















Jo, Juliet and Tania.














Self, Jules, Jo and Paul on the way back.

24 hours earlier, I was unfortunate enough to witness another England campaign fall short of expectations. In its manner of unfolding, it does rather bear out the adjective I used in my previous post, especially Rooney's stunningly brainless stamp on Carvalho with the ref less than two feet away. A further, more unpleasant aspect is that now the recriminations begin, and as they often do it's a case of let's-blame-Jonny-foreigner. Granted, Ronaldo's intervention was unnecessary and deplorably unsporting, but let's face it, Rooney has nobody but himself to blame for his actions. I hope that this event turns out to be an epiphany for him as a player, much as France 98 was for Beckham; I fear that too many excuses will be made for him and he will not have to accept the responsibility for his actions.

It's funny, really - there's always a scapegoat, someone or something to blame, never an acceptance that the players just weren't quite good enough. 98 was Beckham (or Simeone, for the connoisseur of xenophobia, or if you prefer, Alan Shearer), '00 was Phil Neville (or Keegan), '02 was Seaman, '04 was another cheating foreigner in the shape of the referee, Urs Meier. Always a sense that 'if only' that hadn't happened, then our boys would have gone all the way. English cricket didn't improve to win the Ashes by always looking for excuses; it recognised its shortcomings and took action to address them. I wonder how long it will be before English football decides to do the same thing.

In the meantime, though, it's all very depressing...

Fireflies

Most evenings, I'm at work til late in Butler Library, inching towards completion of my MA thesis. It's usually dark when I walk back along College Walk. Lined as it is with trees, I usually catch the blinking of one or two fireflies for just the briefest second before they disappear again.

They remind me of nothing so much as a discarded cigarette butt flying through the air.

And there was you thinking I was going to say something romantic and artsy.

On another, completely unrelated note...200 posts! My double-hundred up. Thank you, thank you, I couldn't have done it without you...

Sense and stupidity

I've got nothing much of interest to report over the last week or so, I'm afraid. It's all about the hard yards; I've just been working away in the library and on my thesis, K's gone to Florida for the week (lucky her), and I'm still here watching the World Cup.

Which reminds me, I've been meaning to have a little bit of a rant about the WC so far. It's been pretty good stuff, all things considered - except, of course, when England are playing. And what's concerned me more than anything, really, is that you can sum up virtually all of the last two months for English football with one word. Unfortunately, that word is stupid.

It works on a variety of levels, really. In the Ecuador game, it was a matter of practical stupidity - Paul Robinson's kicks, for example. I don't think I exaggerate when I say that every single one went straight to an Ecuadorian player - in many cases the opposing keeper. Fair enough, you might think, these things happen - but ten or fifteen times? Didn't he notice and think, hang on, better try and distribute a bit better? And in any case - with Rooney as the 1 in a 4-5-1 - who comes in at about 5'6" or thereabouts and was never going to win a decent percentage of knockdowns - it was such a daft idea as to leave me utterly dumbfounded as to why he kept on doing it. Unfortunately, as his outfield companions showed, the instinct for the long ball is just so deeply ingrained in many English footballers that they cannot help it, no matter how inappropriate the circumstances. A bit of thought, boys?

And the manager. What the hell was he doing only taking four forwards, two of whom were not fully fit? Why does he not know his best team or formation? I have until now generally held Eriksson in fairly high regard, but increasingly I'm coming to the conclusion that he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, either.

And the FA who appointed him. We could have had a world-class manager who actually knows what he's doing replace Sven - namely, Luis Felipe Scolari - but the FA so utterly mishandled the affair that Big Phil got the hell out of dodge as soon as he realised what a bunch of clowns he was dealing with. Instead of a World Cup winner, we now have Steve McClaren, about whom the best thing that can be said is that he didn't get Middlesborough relegated.

And the English media. Before the tournament, we had our best side in 40 years, seven world class players, genuine chance this time. Oh yes. Four games in? Um...

But the stupidest thing of all is that there's a reasonable chance we could actually do the ridiculous and win the whole bloody thing. Portugal have to be weakened by injuries and suspensions - and once you get to the semis, well it's anyone's game...

Not that I'd put money on it, mind you, but mark my words. It's a funny old game.

From river to I-River

In a moment of unparalleled stupidity, I managed to put my MP3 player in the washing machine. And then put it in the drier for an hour as well.

Incredibly enough, it still works perfectly. I salute the makers of the i-River brand of digital music accessories. Well done, sirs.

Staying cool

K and I went down the to the Boat Basin Cafe on Friday night. It's right on the Hudson River, which forms the boundary between New York and New Jersey, and is a wonderful place for a long drink on a warm evening as the sun goes down on the other shore. It was, as it always is when I have been there, absolutely packed; it seems that all of New York had more or less the same idea that we did. Still, we got a table nonetheless...must be that inimitable British charm (cough).















We walked the mile or so back along the Hudson and Riverside Park. It was perfect early summer evening, balmy and fresh, and the park was full of people walking their dogs, barbequeing, playing football, and all sorts of things. Further up, back towards Morningside Heights, one could see the George Washington Bridge lit up along its span, which, along with the sunset and the leisurely walk, made for a quite perfect evening.















The following day, I went downtown to the Nippon Club for a little bit of nostalgia as I helped out with the orienation for new JETs departing from New York. It brought back no end of memories, and of course the peachy-keen bright-eyed young things all champing at the bit to get to Japan reminded many of the JET Alumni present of the shallow, bitter and cynical shells of human beings they have since become. I was responsible for orienting the new CIRs; in the event, there were only a couple of them, so I just sat down with them, had a bit of a chat, and let them ask questions.















I also got involved later on in the afternoon, with what was titled a "cross-cultural exercise", involving various role-play scenarios designed to get the new US JETs thinking about different cultural frameworks in Japan and situations they might encounter. In an inspired piece of casting, I was required to act the part of a scabby old school superintendent and sexually harass a young female ALT. As John F Kennedy might have said, ask not what JET can do for you...

This was followed by Happy Hour at a bar a few blocks away, where I and other JET alumni sank a few cold ones with some of the new recruits, showed off our knowledge about Japan, and generally tried to be as useful as possible. I think I may have been a bit less coherent after the fifth pint, but such is the way of things. I did advise them to encourage the stereotype that Americans always carry firearms, since it might prove useful in controlling the classroom.

And Sunday morning, I got up bright and early to attend the JETAANY brunch for the Japan-Croatia game. 9:00 is a little early in the morning even for me, but I did see this on my way through Greenwich Village. Those of my readers who work in consulting, perhaps the time has come for a career change...?

Ferries and football

Doubtless it will not have escaped my readers' attention that it's the World Cup. For a country that supposedly doesn't pay much attention to 'sawker', it's getting a lot of coverage; I was able to watch England's game on normal broadcast TV, to my delight, instead of getting lagered at 9 a.m. They were pretty bad, though they still managed to win. A good rule of thumb for the England team is that they're never as bad as they seem when they play badly, nor are they as good as they seem when they play well. It's kind of hard to get an objective opinion or a cool head anywhere; the British media were convinced England would win the whole thing, but one unimpressive game later and we're suddenly the worst team in the tournament. A little perspective and objectivity, chaps. Myself? I think many of the England players are vastly over-rated - but the team is definitely among the top four or five at the tournament. So who knows...?

Mike came back from Boston on Saturday, and we went to see the Da Vinci Code downtown for want of anything better to do. It was twaddle from start to finish - as I'd more or less expected it to be - but mildly entertaining twaddle nonetheless. I wholeheartedly agree with those who have said that the dialogue is as leaden as Victorian plumbing, though.


We took the ferry to Staten Island on Sunday, for a view of the island of Manhattan from the south. It's free, mainly by virtue of the fact that no-one in their right mind wants to go to Staten Island. We didn't linger - straight back on the next ferry to Manhattan, a course followed by about two-thirds of the passengers. That's Mike to the right - as you can see, he got all the looks in the family. Brief though my sojourn on Staten Island was, that does now complete my set of all the boroughs of New York City - Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island. Quite an impressive achievement. Well, not really, but I thought I'd mention it.

O brother, where art thou?

He's in Boston, actually, at least until Friday afternoon. He's gone up to visit our uncle in Cambridge, MA, and should be back in time for the England game on Saturday afternoon. It is, after all, the first game of the World Cup tomorrow, Germany vs. Costa Rica, and I shall be off to watch it in a nearby hostelry. I have a suspicion, given the neighbourhood, that there might be one or two Costa Ricans around to watch as well.

I've been slogging away in the Law library for the most part, doing my thing as usual. It's not a boring job; the time usually passes quite quickly, and there are many worse things I could be doing. And after all, I need the money; it was K's birthday on Tuesday (06/06/06, a number which, while of no real significance, caused a little bit of a stir here), and I took her out for a lavish dinner at a fancy French place. An excellent meal - you get what you pay for.

I was downtown on Sunday, doing some shopping, and saw an advert on the subway; a picture of a peanut butter sandwich with the legend "You don't need a therapist to get in touch with your inner child", and below it, "A friendly reminder from the peanut grower's association of America". Maybe I've been watching too much of the Sopranos recently, but the phrase "friendly reminder" did make me think that I might be losing one or more kneecaps if I didn't eat more peanuts.

In other news - and I know it's not really my business any more - but I had word of the whackjob from one of the girls I see occasionally in the Law library, who lives on what used to be my floor. Apparently, though his lease expired on the 31st May, he's still there - he never made any attempt to leave or gain an extension. He's been asked to leave, and if he doesn't they'll apparently call the police and have him evicted. I suppose that means he'll literally be out on the street. However much of a pain he may have been, nobody wants to see that happen - but if I were a betting man, I'd put money on that being the eventual outcome. I know, I don't live there any more and it's not my business...but I suppose it just shows what a complete mess Columbia made of the whole thing.

I saw Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind yesterday evening. Never seen it before, I'm ashamed to admit, but I have to say that I got the distinct impression that the cast, crew and most of the reviewers must have been on some pretty powerful mind-enhancing drugs for most of it.

Up steps the weekend

I can't say it's been an exciting last few days. I'm working extra hours at my job in the law library (legally, if anyone from the Department of Homeland Security is reading this. Lovely chaps, they do a great job), mainly with a view to buying a ticket back to the US after I go home for a month in July. I've more or less finished off my term papers, and now I've got to get my actual thesis complete. I've been saying that it's about 80% complete, which isn't strictly true...it still needs a fair bit more work, but I have about seven weeks left before I head back to Blighty.

It's hot, sultry and rainy here right now, reminding me of nothing so much as Japan in the rainy season. Summer storms are in vogue right now; barely a day goes by without a rumble of thunder somewhere along the line. There is, it's true, a certain majesty and even a sensual beauty about the storms; unfortunately, they don't make it any less humid like they tend to do back home once they've passed. And you should see the amount of grime that the rain brings down with it...we are, after all, right in the heart of the metropolis.

My brother is coming to town for ten days or so on Sunday. I haven't seen him since Christmas, and he will be the first of what will likely be many new guests in my new apartment. And to celebrate this momentous occasion - we'll be havin' ribs.

Central Park, today. Just a perfect day... 

New Digs

The apartment rocks. It's just orders of magnitude better than the shithole I was living in before. I'm sleeping better, partly because there aren't eight other people with their own schedule at all hours of the day and night, and partly because I don't have to worry about the whackjob any more. In fact, my flatmate's been out of town all week and I've had the place to myself. It's been very therapeutic to have some privacy once again.

I've been steadily furnishing the place - now is actually a good time to be moving, since everyone else is moving out and I can pick up their unwanted stuff cheap or for free. I've more or less got my room the way I want it, and tomorrow I'll be moving my couch (also acquired for free) up here from K's place, where I'm storing it. She's not so keen to part with it, understandably enough...

I've also been helping a professor at Columbia with his effects - he's moving to Kyoto fairly soon, and as one might expect he has a lot of stuff that needs processing. I and another grad student have gone out to his house in Scarsdale, which is in the suburbs and marks the first time in nearly nine months that I've actually been outside the city limits. Kind of lame, I know, but this place has a habit of being all-consuming. Picked up some free stuff from him - a couple of books, and the desk I'm writing this on right now.

And summer is here now. It's hot and humid - 27℃ out there today - and I'm off to spend a lazy afternoon in Central Park with K.

One year on

I realised today that it's been a year since I started blogging. I started this whole enterprise on the 13th May 2005, and in that time have managed 190 posts. Not bad, all things considered - that averages a post every other day, although it's actually not all that impressive since quite a lot of those are pictures. But still - it's been quite a journey. One year ago I was sitting at my desk in my place in Shiogama, wondering what life would be like in New York City and at Columbia. A lot has gone on in that year - the last rites in Japan, the terrorist attacks of that summer, the Ashes, moving to New York, Columbia, getting on the PhD track, meeting K (it's been six months now), the whackjob, and now, a new apartment as well. I've put some photos up below - it's not much to look at yet, but it's getting furnished steadily enough.

So it's been a bit of a rollercoaster ride, really.

My room, looking inward. It's about 13' by 12', a reasonable size. 

My room, facing outward 

The kitchen and living room. Not a lot in here yet - so far I've concentrated on furnishing my room.  

Good Friday

So I've moved. I'm installed in my new apartment, and very nice it is too. There's one sort of downside, in that there was not a stick of furniture in my room when I moved in, so that's something I'm going to have to sort out. I do have a bed, an air mattress which will doubtless come in handy when people come to visit. The place needs a clean, overall, but I can get to work on that perhaps tomorrow. It doesn't have ethernet, unfortunately, but as luck would have it the building does have a few unsecured wireless networks which I can tap into since I bought myself a wireless card to go with all the other new stuff I've acquired. I'll have photos of the place up as soon as I find the cord that connects my camera to my PC; it's in one of my moving boxes somewhere.

The move itself was smooth enough, though it was preceded by a torrential thunderstorm and I did get a bit wet moving stuff. Sure enough, it cleared up and presented blue skies almost immediately we got my belongings into the service elevator.

I do have a flatmate, a bloke by the name of Matt who seems agreeable enough. He actually left this morning with his girlfriend for a week in Thailand, so I have the place to myself, more or less, and he will be going back to Chicago for most of the summer after that, so for this summer it's basically my exclusive pad. Awesome. But it's a good sign that he has a girlfriend...it means he's not only not a nutcase, but sufficiently socialised that at least one woman is prepared to sleep with him.

It's a huge relief to have managed to get out of Harmony Hall. The place was just a shithole; it wasn't very nice to begin with, but having to live next door to that fucking nutcase took the biscuit. Now, at least, I have a space I can call my own, a proper apartment as opposed to a dorm room, one with natural light, space, and best of all one not shared with eight other muppets.

I think my luck is changing, all things considered. Especially as at poker that night, I came up with a Royal Flush on one all-in hand. Perhaps a bit of background - the Royal Flush is the highest possible hand in poker, consisting of Ace, King, Queen, Jack and Ten, all of the same suit (in my case Spades). In Texas Hold'em, where you can only possibly have a maximum of seven cards to call your own, the odds of that happening are astronomical - apparently something in the order of 650,000 to 1.

It's not changing that fast, though. I still only finished 3rd. Baby steps, baby steps...

For a few blocks more

I know where I'm going. I'm moving a few blocks north of where I am now, to a two-bedroomed apartment on the third floor of a building just next to Morningside Park. It's slightly closer to campus, and from the floor plans it will even have some natural light, which is a wonder beyond wonders as far as I am concerned. I'll be moving in on Monday. I don't yet know who my roommate is or even if they're there yet, but I guess I'll find out in good time. Frankly, I don't care - I'm just relieved to get out of where I am now and move to a place with a semblance of privacy to it. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my mind.

I and K (and K's parents, actually) went to see the Yankees play again last night. Just as last time, they lost, to the Texas Rangers on this occasion. It was actually a good close game, well worth going to see and we got excellent seats, by which I mean ones that weren't open to the elements as there was a delay or two thanks to showers. I love the atmosphere of Yankee stadium; it's hilarious to listen to the vendors shouting to each other and throwing bags of peanuts at customers.

It's been raining on and off for most of the week, and it was enough, just about, to put a damper on the graduation ceremonies that seem to be going on here at the moment. I myself won't be taking my degree until the autumn, but there're still plenty of proud parents and their offspring clad in blue robes cluttering up the sidewalk. The speaker was John McCain, a somewhat controversial choice as he's a rather conservative Republican who just a few days ago was talking for your friend and mine Jerry Falwell's mob. Not a popular choice amongst the whole of the student community; there were more than a few people handing out, or wearing, badges that said "John McCain does not speak for me" or some such. Not that I paid them much attention; I was too busy with my papers. And fantasising about my new place, too.

Biding one's time

It really is a great feeling to be getting out of here, to be honest, and I'm looking forward to it immensely. Not least because Mr. Whackjob is still here. And I'll be gone before he will.

It seems to boil down to legal matters. His lease (and that of most other people) expires at the end of the month and he will then have to leave anyway. New York housing law does not allow for immediate eviction except in the case of criminal acts, and so were CU to decide to evict him, which they quite easily could, proceedings would take longer than the remaning duration of his stay here anyway. So they've offered other people in the building the opportunity to move to another suite elsewhere in the building if they want. There was some discussion of asking him to leave voluntarily, but they either didn't do that (it's a little iffy legally) or he refused to do so.

An uncharitable way of looking at the situation, of course, is that once again they're doing nothing. It is, as you say, Tori, a shit situation and one which has been, in my view, mishandled by the college administration. Not uncharacteristically - the admin side of things here (in sharp contrast to the academic) has left me deeply unimpressed whenever I've had to deal with them.

So there's unfortunately not a lot I can do now in instances where, for example, I was woken up by him sobbing in the communal kitchen (like at 7:30 this morning). Let's just hope nothing major happens between now and the end of next week.

I can not wait to get out of here.

In other news, I finished a paper and turned it in this morning. One down, one and a half to go. This summer will be a complete change in my living circumstances, and a major one for the better, no doubt.

Out of Harmony

I'm getting the hell out of here. My PhD student housing application was approved, I will be assigned a new, proper apartment on Monday, and I will be able to move into it at the end of next week. Finally. The process was in no small part expedited by the actions of the whackjob next door to me, I think - seeing as I was due to move anyway, I guess they thought that it'd be a good idea to hurry the process up. But it's most welcome nonetheless.

This comes as a huge relief, because the crappy nature of my current accommodation has been a real source of irritation this semester. And while I don't know for certain where I'm moving to yet, I do know that it really couldn't possibly be any worse. I've been a bit of a pack rat recently, picking up articles of furniture that those who are leaving are donating, including a couch, rice cooker and microwave, all of which will now have a new home. I'm rather optimistic that my new place will be several orders of magnitude more comfortable, spacious, tranquil and generally like a home. Not hard given the current competition. Guess it turned out that living in Harmony isn't all it's cracked up to be.