I was supposed to go down to Philadelphia this weekend. It would have represented the first time I've actually managed to get outside of New York City (apart from going home at Xmas) in the whole time I've been here. The occasion was an alumni game of the college which one of my friends here (Indian, for reasons that will become apparent) attended as an undergraduate. Not just any alumni game, though - a game of cricket. A rare opportunity to play on the American continent. The idea was to have been to head on down there and turn the arm over, maybe bat a bit.
Not to be, sadly. It rained all weekend. Ironic, I suppose, that this most English of games should meet an appropriately English fate - i.e., a watery grave. I would have liked to have seen a little of Philadelphia, actually - it's not a desperately attractive place by all accounts, but it has some history to it (the Liberty Bell and, uh...), and getting out of the Big Apple almost seems like an end in itself. Still, not to worry, there will be other opportunities - and considering I'd been drinking the night before, the call at 7 a.m. that confirmed cancellation was actually quite welcome.
Today, I purchased for the handsome sum of $10 a print remaindered from an exhibition held recently at Columbia of photographs themed around Hirohito. Not a great fan of the man (personally, if each had their own he should probably have been first against the wall after WWII), but there was a beautiful shot of the sunset on the last day of Showa, January 7th 1989 which particularly caught my eye. It's from the offices of the Mainichi Shinbun, and in the foreground was Edo Castle, the background a construction site. The play of light and shadow, old and new was particularly fascinating, as well as the poignancy of the setting sun considering the date. I will get a picture up as soon as I can figure out how to take a shot without reflecting the flash off the surface...
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
And now, the end is near
Yeah, the end of term is creeping up. It's about a week and a half to go until the official end, although I have papers and a thesis due after that, so unfortunately rather than slowing down things are going to have to speed up. Which means less time on the blog, sadly, though it's not as if I've been keeping it particularly busy of late.
It's a shame that I'm having to spend so much time in the library, because the weather right now is glorious. It hit 26℃ last week, and I can tell it's going to be a good summer. I might even get a tan, who knows.
Went down to Chelsea with K last Friday to see Thank You for Smoking. I'm not sure if this has been released in the UK yet, but it's a superbly understated black comedy about a tobacco lobbyist. All star cast, with Katie Holmes, Rob Lowe and various others even outside the main star (whose name I can't remember, funnily enough). Laughed my arse off. Had to raise an eyebrow at the ads before the show - one for a particularly loathsome "psychic" (aka scumbag who preys on grieving people) called John Edward, and the other for the US National Guard. A bizarre sense of priorities, I suppose. Still, according to this view, at least you can still talk to people after you've gone to Iraq and blown them up. Though they might not be able to tell you much more than what letter their first name began with.
K's got a new haircut, incidentally. It looks fantastic, and so does she.
It's a shame that I'm having to spend so much time in the library, because the weather right now is glorious. It hit 26℃ last week, and I can tell it's going to be a good summer. I might even get a tan, who knows.
Went down to Chelsea with K last Friday to see Thank You for Smoking. I'm not sure if this has been released in the UK yet, but it's a superbly understated black comedy about a tobacco lobbyist. All star cast, with Katie Holmes, Rob Lowe and various others even outside the main star (whose name I can't remember, funnily enough). Laughed my arse off. Had to raise an eyebrow at the ads before the show - one for a particularly loathsome "psychic" (aka scumbag who preys on grieving people) called John Edward, and the other for the US National Guard. A bizarre sense of priorities, I suppose. Still, according to this view, at least you can still talk to people after you've gone to Iraq and blown them up. Though they might not be able to tell you much more than what letter their first name began with.
K's got a new haircut, incidentally. It looks fantastic, and so does she.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Not enough hours in the day
And there really aren't. Being a graduate student, especially at an American university, is bloody hard work. Let me give you an example of my day yesterday.
7:15 a.m. The alarm goes off. I hit snooze. Four times. Am eventually awakened by the noise of the whackjob next door trying his best not to cry, since he's on his last warning about behaving himself. I get up, eat breakfast and decide whether or not to hit the gym (I'm packing a few too many pounds these days - it's all the great pizza around me...).
9:00 a.m. Decide not to. Spend the next three and half hours sitting in Starr library reading through Abe Kobo's Suna no Onna. Get about 90 pages done.
12:00 p.m. Have lunch with one of Hamilton Deli's excellent sandwiches. Eat lunch while reading the wonderfully parochial Columbia Spectator.
1:00 p.m. Go to work in the Law Library. Spend the next three hours cataloguing new books in the library, all of which are Japanese books on legal matters and most of which are dull as ditchwater. Although I did have to decide for one book whether it should go under Homosexuality - Law and Legislation - Japan or Sex Change - Law and Legislation - Japan. So it's not all dull.
4:00 p.m. I have to attend a talk being given by a prospective candidate for a 2-year teaching post at Columbia. I'm one of four graduate students who actually show up, the rest of the ten people there being faculty. It's reasonably interesting, but I'd rather be elsewhere.
6:00 p.m. Now there are certain perks sometimes. I and one of the other grad students are invited out to dinner with the prospective employee and half the faculty. Steak frites and crab cakes at the University's expense. Nice. The guy did his MA at Cornell, which one of our faculty remarks is the suicide hot spot in the Ivy League. I quip that I've felt like throwing myself off a bridge on the way to the library a few times too. Turns out one of the candidate's friends when he was a grad student killed himself there. Whoops. Nice one Tucky.
7:30 p.m. Back to the library and back to Suna no Onna.
9:30 p.m. Hit the gym and try to work out for an hour or so. It's very crowded, more so than I remember it ever being. Perhaps everyone's still trying to work off that Spring Break Excess.
10:30 p.m. Home. Knackered. Check e-mail and manage to get to bed by midnight.
7:15 a.m. The alarm goes off. I hit snooze. Four times. Am eventually awakened by the noise of the whackjob next door trying his best not to cry, since he's on his last warning about behaving himself. I get up, eat breakfast and decide whether or not to hit the gym (I'm packing a few too many pounds these days - it's all the great pizza around me...).
9:00 a.m. Decide not to. Spend the next three and half hours sitting in Starr library reading through Abe Kobo's Suna no Onna. Get about 90 pages done.
12:00 p.m. Have lunch with one of Hamilton Deli's excellent sandwiches. Eat lunch while reading the wonderfully parochial Columbia Spectator.
1:00 p.m. Go to work in the Law Library. Spend the next three hours cataloguing new books in the library, all of which are Japanese books on legal matters and most of which are dull as ditchwater. Although I did have to decide for one book whether it should go under Homosexuality - Law and Legislation - Japan or Sex Change - Law and Legislation - Japan. So it's not all dull.
4:00 p.m. I have to attend a talk being given by a prospective candidate for a 2-year teaching post at Columbia. I'm one of four graduate students who actually show up, the rest of the ten people there being faculty. It's reasonably interesting, but I'd rather be elsewhere.
6:00 p.m. Now there are certain perks sometimes. I and one of the other grad students are invited out to dinner with the prospective employee and half the faculty. Steak frites and crab cakes at the University's expense. Nice. The guy did his MA at Cornell, which one of our faculty remarks is the suicide hot spot in the Ivy League. I quip that I've felt like throwing myself off a bridge on the way to the library a few times too. Turns out one of the candidate's friends when he was a grad student killed himself there. Whoops. Nice one Tucky.
7:30 p.m. Back to the library and back to Suna no Onna.
9:30 p.m. Hit the gym and try to work out for an hour or so. It's very crowded, more so than I remember it ever being. Perhaps everyone's still trying to work off that Spring Break Excess.
10:30 p.m. Home. Knackered. Check e-mail and manage to get to bed by midnight.
Sunday, April 02, 2006
Almost literarily...
The mercury's risen again, and this time it looks like it's there to stay. The trees on Broadway appear to agree with my assessment, and have burst into bloom in most agreeable fashion. Likewise, the pavement cafes are back in force, the girls are wearing a lot less in the way of clothing, and everything's right with the world, or so it feels.
It's been a good week. Term is creeping towards its conclusion in about three weeks' time, so I have a fair amount of work to get completed, but it's still possible to smell the roses. A bunch of us took one of next year's J-history PhD people out on the lash to persuade him to come to Columbia, fairly successfully, I think. I also got an e-mail from Prof. Shirane thanking me with my help in the recruiting process for the J-lit side - which is fair enough, as I think the role I played in persuading me to come to Columbia was instrumental. Although unfortunately I can't claim expenses for the dinner I treated myself to to sweeten the deal.
On Friday night, something a little different, a literary reading at a bar in the East Village by the name of KGB. I'm not really the sort to go to readings, but it was K's idea, and I thought I'd give it a try. The bar itself is decorated entirely in red, with old-school Soviet era propaganda on the walls, some of which K (who minored in Russian) was kind enough to translate for me. Before the event began, we grabbed some fish and chips at an English-run place called A Salt and Battery (ho ho. Yes, I am so classy, taking my girlfriend to a chippy on a date).
There were three readings, by amateur authors looking for a relatively non-hostile audience. And in all honesty, they weren't bad at all - basically some good stuff, though with the kind of flaws one would expect from the amateur - about one third too much description, at times somewhat forced humour, and so on. But definitely with some merit to them.
Except for the last guy. And boy, he was terrible. He read what he described as "some of my poems" in an absurdly affected pseudo sing-song voice, way too close to the mike and generally making a right prat of himself. The stuff was trash - clumsy, unnecessarily crude, one-dimensional, obvious and banal in the extreme. I wouldn't have minded, except he obviously thought he was hot shit, writing in the evening's guest book "remember the name!" and making a big thing about how he was submitting spec scripts to The Office and My Name is Earl. The only laughs he got were ones of embarrassment. Apparently he has a day job in the city's fish market - and I have a suspicion he'll be wiping herring guts off his apron for a long time to come.
It's been a good week. Term is creeping towards its conclusion in about three weeks' time, so I have a fair amount of work to get completed, but it's still possible to smell the roses. A bunch of us took one of next year's J-history PhD people out on the lash to persuade him to come to Columbia, fairly successfully, I think. I also got an e-mail from Prof. Shirane thanking me with my help in the recruiting process for the J-lit side - which is fair enough, as I think the role I played in persuading me to come to Columbia was instrumental. Although unfortunately I can't claim expenses for the dinner I treated myself to to sweeten the deal.
On Friday night, something a little different, a literary reading at a bar in the East Village by the name of KGB. I'm not really the sort to go to readings, but it was K's idea, and I thought I'd give it a try. The bar itself is decorated entirely in red, with old-school Soviet era propaganda on the walls, some of which K (who minored in Russian) was kind enough to translate for me. Before the event began, we grabbed some fish and chips at an English-run place called A Salt and Battery (ho ho. Yes, I am so classy, taking my girlfriend to a chippy on a date).
There were three readings, by amateur authors looking for a relatively non-hostile audience. And in all honesty, they weren't bad at all - basically some good stuff, though with the kind of flaws one would expect from the amateur - about one third too much description, at times somewhat forced humour, and so on. But definitely with some merit to them.
Except for the last guy. And boy, he was terrible. He read what he described as "some of my poems" in an absurdly affected pseudo sing-song voice, way too close to the mike and generally making a right prat of himself. The stuff was trash - clumsy, unnecessarily crude, one-dimensional, obvious and banal in the extreme. I wouldn't have minded, except he obviously thought he was hot shit, writing in the evening's guest book "remember the name!" and making a big thing about how he was submitting spec scripts to The Office and My Name is Earl. The only laughs he got were ones of embarrassment. Apparently he has a day job in the city's fish market - and I have a suspicion he'll be wiping herring guts off his apron for a long time to come.
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