Neither Here nor There

Summer doesn't seem to really know whether it's arrived in Manhattan yet; it's noticeably cooler than it was this time last year, and I was even (amazingly for mid-June in New York) rather cold last night. The reason why I can remember enough to make a comparison is that this time last year was the World Cup and also my first real involvement with JETAANY, as we held the pre-departure orientation for all the new JETs leaving from NYC. I - as always - was dressed impeccably in a suit, and remember being distinctly uncomfortable at the heat.

This year's orientation should be a lot of fun, though of course where I was unknown to almost everybody in 2006, I'm now going in there as El Presidente himself. I like to think that I worked my way up to the top through charisma, talent and strength of personality, but as we all know it was basically because nobody else wanted the job. Still, for this orientation at least I've done a significant portion of the work required to get all of the volunteers organised to give all the workshops and discussion sections. So fingers crossed.

I even get to give a short speech. I was going to make this joke:

"JET helps to dispel stereotypes, on both sides. I'm sure all of you have some pre-conceived notions about Japan, but bear in mind that the reverse is true. Many of the Japanese you meet will think that all Americans eat fast food, live in enormous houses and always carry guns. Though you might want to encourage that last stereotype - it'll make it easier to keep order in the classroom."

Now, of course, after Virginia Tech, I think it would be decidely unwise to link guns and classrooms in any way whatsoever. Oh well.

I've been working at about half-pace the rest of the time, inching slowly towards getting my papers and so forth done, and I also completed and sent of the application for the Mombusho (MEXT) Scholarship. If I get an interview, it'll be on the 25th of this month; I don't know for certain that I will, obviously, but I would be rather surprised if I didn't get so much as called in to discuss my proposal, which I thought was quite good.

Elsewhere, it was Kate's birthday, and making good on a long-held promise I took her to Megu for a culinary extravaganza. The place is simply phenomenal; the food, atmosphere and decor are all just unbelievable (though with prices to match). The two meals I've had at Megu have just been two of the best in my life, and on neither occasion did I leave feeling like I needed to go and get a slice of pizza to fill me up, as is not uncommon with some of the more expensive places, Japanese or otherwise. They do a 7-course prix fixe menu for $85 a head, which is actually fairly good value. I had beef and chicken tsukune, duck breast with sansho pepper sauce, lychee granita, and the best sushi I've had in New York. Kate loved it, too - a very successful evening.

And I'm back to the UK on Monday, so if any of the UKians are around, beers on.

Everything Can Change

Lyin' here in the darkness
I hear the siren wail
Somebody going to emergency
Somebody's goin' to jail - New York Minute, The Eagles

A few more details about Malik’s murder have emerged, though the whole affair is still distinctly sketchy (in both an north American and British sense). No-one seems quite sure exactly why he was shot, nor what relation – if any – the kid who pulled the gun was to him. Having turned himself in, the 17-year-old will now probably spend most of the rest of his life on Riker’s Island. Thanks for coming – see you when you’re 70, and thereby are two lives destroyed. Not that I have any great sympathy for the murderer. Perhaps what strikes me most about the whole incident is how utterly banal and pointless the whole affair seems. A guy goes out for a late-night visit to a crappy Chinese takeout and is murdered while waiting for his General Tso’s Chicken. The takeout’s cash register likely had no more than a couple of hundred bucks in it. And the next day life in this great city goes on, just as before.

I didn’t know it at the time, of course, but when Dad was here for graduation I took him to Citarella, the gourmet store on 125^th. We walked right past the Chinese where Malik was killed; my point was to show how Harlem was beginning to gentrify.

There was hardly any coverage in anything but the Columbia Spectator and the New York Post; even the other tabloids in the city didn't mention it. I don’t know why this should be; maybe it’s just that New York is too jaded to care any more, but the cynical side of me imagines a news editor making the decision that a black man being gunned down by black kid in Harlem isn’t that newsworthy. Same old, same old - what else is new?

Anyway. I’ve been working steadily on grant proposals and paper research, seeing Kate when time allows it, and attending or organizing various JETAANY events and dinners. Summer has arrived, and with it the hot inescapable stickiness that permeates the very air around here at this time of year and seems to cling to you as you walk down the street. It’s arguably worse than Japan; for all that people talk of the heat in Japan, my three summers in Tohoku were relatively mild, and I did at least have a salary on which to run the air conditioning.

Summer heralds migrations, especially in a University area like Morningside Heights. People leave – the lease for UAH housing is up, and on Thursday (the last day of the month) the streets were thronged with people laden down with backpacks and hoisting stuff into removal vans. Much like last year, I grabbed a load of stuff from friends and acquaintances moving out, filling in almost all of the stuff that I had lacked in my place. Small stuff, mostly – wine glasses, plants, a chest of drawers, even an air conditioning unit (which, for the record, doesn’t work very well – I’ve gone back to just using fans. They’re less expensive, too). The packrat instinct is strong in this one.

No words, again

I just learned today that one of my colleagues in the Law Library was shot and killed in what seems to have been an attempted robbery at a Chinese takeout five blocks from here. I knew the guy pretty well; he did Aikido, and was interested in all things Japanese, so he used to drop by the library for a chat with Yukino and myself on occasion. He used to bring his son in to work from time to time, too. He worked in the copy room and I saw him every time I got sent in to make some processing slips or something. It happened nearly three weeks ago, and since my supervisor was back in Japan these last two weeks I only just found out. Nobody at the library said anything, and it didn't seem to make any headlines.

The last time I saw him was when I ran into him at the Sakura matsuri in Brooklyn, shortly before he was murdered. Still can't believe this happened.

Beginnings and Endings

Commencement this week, referring of course to the enormous ceremony that marks the end of the school year and the official conferral of degrees. I was eligible to take part since I had earned my MA, awarded sequentially on the way to the PhD, in February. These things are probably more exciting for the proud parents than the students themselves (though with undergraduate education at Columbia costing around $55,000 per year, both are surely entitled to a bit of ceremony), and Dad was here to see it all happen. It was, funnily enough, my first graduation ceremony of any kind; we don't have high school graduation in the UK, and I took my BA in absentia, though the Oxford MA ceremony will come later this summer. I suppose seeing how they do it on this side of the pond serves as a point of reference.

Each of Columbia's 19 schools has its own separate ceremony, followed the day after by a university-wide Commencement. Attire is of course cap and gown, a (to my mind) somewhat odd light blue colour, those being the colours of the University. It's different for BA, MA and PhD - as you can see in the photos, the PhD is much more luxurious, though hopefully in a few years I'll be wearing one of those myself. The Convocation, for the GSAS, was on Tuesday and held indoors in one of the University's auditoria. It took about 90 minutes, during which time we were photographed in front of the American flag and while shaking hands with the Dean, after being subjected to a couple of fairly mediocre speeches from the assorted faculty and one wide-eyed Iranian graduating student, whose address, though well-delivered, verged rather too much on being a polemic for the occasion. Wonder what the folks back home'll make of his shot in front of Ol' Glory?

The big one, though, is Commencement. As you can see from the photos, this one is held in the main quad of the University campus, and while I couldn't really see from my position, they welcomed something in the region of 25-30,000 people that day. The atmosphere was perhaps best described as a cross between a graduation and the Last Night of the Proms; an occasion for celebration, not for sombre ceremony as I fear we may get at Oxford, most notably for the Columbia College graduates (i.e., undergrads) for whom it represented the culmination of four years of varying degrees of application.

The main speaker was University President Lee C. Bollinger, whose address struck roughly the right note for the occasion - light-hearted, with a certain degree of the patriarch's advice to his charges about it. Honorary degrees were awarded, the Dean of each school requested the President to formally award the degrees, which - by the power vested in him - he did, and that, after about three hours, was that. We filed out to Frank Sinatra's New York, New York, not least because, as Bollinger said, "if you can make it here, you'll make it anywhere".

All good clean fun, though sitting out in the sun for that length of time with temperatures touching 30℃ was not the most pleasant of experiences. At least it didn't rain like it did last year.

In other news, I have my TA marching orders for next year. I'll be teaching East Asian V2361 Intro East Asian Civ: Japan, which is a survey lecture course on more or less the whole of Japanese history. I'm delighted by this appointment; although it's probably a bit more work than some of the other courses, it's ground I'm very familiar with, and the senior Professor, David Lurie, is a great guy - he's one of the younger faculty members here and his kanbun class was enormous fun this past semester. So basically, I have to mark papers, lecture a couple of times, and hold discussion section for two groups of fifteen students once each per week. I have no doubt it'll be very hard work, but this is rather what I signed up for, so I'm definitely up for it.

In other news, for reasons related to applying for scholarships for Autumn 2008 to go to Japan, it looks like I'll have to cross the Atlantic at least twice this summer. Nice to get to spend some time in Blighty, of course, but given my druthers I'd rather do it in just one swing than have to shuttle back and forth...

Trees' Company

The day after coming back from DC, I went down to the Botanical Gardens in Brooklyn for the Sakura Matsuri. As you can see, the flowers in Brooklyn were still a good few days off being really mankai, but they were still very pretty, and seeing as I'd not been to the BBG before, it seemed like a good way to waste a Saturday afternoon when I really should have been working, and to tell everyone about how the meeting with Abe had gone. As you might expect, there was a fairly strong contingent from JETAANY and related organisations; one could also spot a sizeable number of what must have been anime geeks dressed up as ninjas or wearing weirdo black and white numbers (if you've been to Harajuku on a Sunday afternoon, you'll know the kind of thing I'm on about. See below for reference).

The weather held, luckily enough, and it was even warm enough for me to get a little bit of a tan through the intermittent cloud cover. Kate and I left around 4 after a little stroll through other parts of the garden; it's very pretty, and well worth a repeat visit, though living where I do I obviously don't get down there that often. Parenthetically, I grew up with the Durham University Botanical Gardens at the bottom of our garden way back in the mists of time, so maybe I'm a bit blase about the whole botanical thing...

We went to see Hot Fuzz that night. It owns. See it.

Tuesday I had dinner at Kai, a very swish Japanese place on Madison Av., as part of a gathering in honor of the recipients of the Honjo/JAANY scholarship I mentioned a while back. The food, as is often the case with the really upscale Japanese places in NYC, was excellent, but there was nowhere near enough of it, and I wound up getting a slice of pizza on the way home. The people there as reps of JAANY were pretty much a who's who of business in the city; two CEOs, two partners in city law firms, a VP at Merril Lynch...you get the picture. And there was me as a scabby, impoverished graduate student trying to work out what the hell to talk about, but everyone there was really nice. And, of course, I actually got my hands on the money...

I'm told that this blog has achieved a measure of fame in the last couple of days, since it was discovered by one of the guys I talked to at the DC reception, and forwarded on to the Japanese embassy, which then proceeded to send the link to all of the consular offices in the US. All I can say is, it's a good job that last post wasn't anything like most of the previous 256, or most likely my ass would have been grass by now. I don't quite know what the procedures for impeachment of a JETAANY president are, but I'm in no hurry to find out.

And while we're on the subject...what the hell? One comment on that last post? I meet with the Japanese PM and all sorts of important people - probably the single most interesting thing that's happened to me in the last two years - and that's the best you lot can muster in response? You do realise that the entire diplomatic staff of Japan in the USA now has me pegged as billy-no-mates? Jeez...

This is why I have a blog in the first place.

Washington, D.C., April 27th, 2007. Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's first trip to the US, his first meeting at Camp David with President Bush, and, of far greater historical importance than any of that, his first meeting with me.

Four of us took the train down from New York - JETAANY Secretary Carol, Sasaki-san of the Japan Local Govt. Center in New York, JET Alum Linda Kim (invited because she was in Yamaguchi, Abe's home prefecture) and myself. That's us in a group at Union Station in D.C., just as we arrived at about 11:00 a.m. Along the way we had caused a minor scandal by talking in the quiet car, being asked politely but firmly by the ticket collector to move (hee hee). It wasn't the first time I had been to D.C. - I was there with my Dad and brother in 2002 - and it was more or less the same as I had remembered. We passed through Newark, Trenton, Wilmington and Baltimore on the way - Baltimore looked like a bombsite, at least what we could see from the train, some of the worst urban blight I think I've ever seen. Not everything is skyscrapers and investment banks on the east coast.

We had been scheduled to meet with the junior senator from Delaware, Tom Carper, in the morning, but that apparently was cancelled at the last minute. I'm still not entirely sure why we were meant to be meeting him in the first place, but we filled in by going to a place in downtown D.C. called Kaz's Sushi Bistro for lunch, which was excellent, especially as it was all on expenses. Dessert was particularly good - banana tempura and black raspberry ice cream, absolutely to die for. I need to find out where I can get some black raspberries so I can make some myself.

Spending almost all of my time in New York, one comes to think, wrongly, that everywhere in the US is like the Big Apple. It isn't. Despite its size and importance, DC feels much more relaxed than New York...people stroll. Nobody strolls in New York, damn it. We even saw a couple of people with smiles on their faces, and even the cabs weren't all yellow. O brave new world!

We got to the Ambassador's residence at about 2:30, around half an hour before the event was meant to begin. Or at least we thought it was his residence - it turned out that it was just the house of some random person, though as you can see the cherry blossoms planted by the hedge were worthy of note of themselves. After about 20 minutes we realised our mistake and walked a couple of blocks over to where the residence actually was.

The residence, as you might expect, is one serious piece of real estate. Inside it's quite astonishingly luxurious, possessing both a massive Japanese-style garden and a tea house to boot, as well as large reception rooms decorated in a peculiarly Japanese style of opulence that seems to be stuck in the 70s. If you've been in the conference rooms at the Keio Plaza or the Tokyo Hilton, you know what I'm talking about - flock wallpaper, large chandeliers made out of triangular bits of glass, you know the thing. It's hard to describe, but it is very distinctive.

Format for the day was to mingle first with other ex-JETs present, mostly from DC, but some from as far away as Oregon and Alaska. As a 2003-05 vintage, I was one of the most recent returnees; there was one guy with whom I talked for a while who'd been an Original - one of the first to go out in 1987, back before there was internet, skype, or indeed any sense of what a JET was actually supposed to be doing (some may argue the latter hasn't changed much). So we mingled and chatted and so forth for about an hour, before the main event - the PM's arrival.

With us lining up in the main reception room, Abe came in, chatted to a few of the people nearest to him, and then got up onto the podium to make a speech. As you can see from the photo, I was in the front row on the left and very close to the PM indeed. His speech - entirely in Japanese - lasted about four or five minutes, and was more or less what you would expect; he talked about his visit to Camp David that morning, about how happy he was that the JET program had celebrated its 20th anniversary that year, and how important it had been in US-Japan relations. Following that, I had kind of wondered whether he might pack up and go at that point, but to his credit, he didn't. Accompanied by his wife and Deputy Cabinet Secretary Shimomura Hakubun, Abe worked his way around the room, making a point of shaking hands with everyone there and talking to them for at least a minute or two.

Which, of course, included me. The President and the PM meet face to face. On your right, you can see yours truly telling it like it is to ol' Shinzo. We spoke for about two minutes - reading my name badge, he asked if I spoke Miyagi-ben, to which I replied んだちゃ, and I told him I was doing a PhD in Japanese literature and what my research field was. He responded that this was a very important field, not studied very much outside Japan (which isn't actually true, but still) and that he hoped I could be a bridge 架け橋 between Japan and the US in future. I didn't point out that I'm not American - no need to confuse matters further.

He was followed by his wife, with whom I spoke for a little while, telling her that the smokestacks from the powerplant in Shiogama had ruined the bay view at Matsushima and they ought to do something about it (well, it came up in conversation - and hey, you never know).

Then came Shimomura, with whom I and the guy next to me (a professor of Japanese anthropology at MIT, and a fellow Miyagian - Kurikoma, as it happens. More juicy networking goodness) had a three or four minute conversation. I told him about my research on Michizane, which he said sounded interesting, and that I should tell him about it when I was next in Japan. Even got the dude's meishi.

And that more or less wrapped it up. Abe was good enough to pose for an individual photo with everyone there, which was taken by the Japanese press and which will apparently be sent on c/o the New York consular office, so I'll post that as soon as I have it. We took a moment to inspect the tea house and the garden inside the residence, and to have our photos taken outside the main gate, and that was that. We took a taxi back to Union Station, and just managed to catch the last express train back to NYC. The sun was setting just as we were crossing what I think was the Delaware river - not a bad way to end the day.

Pecs in the City

Adam Vaught, aka Pecs, up from DC this week visiting and staying at Fusco's new pad (in a fairly trendy neighbourhood, and not quite as ludicrously messy as his place in Japan was). So Fuss, Corin, Pecs and I had a good few drinks last night to celebrate the old times in Miyagi - as a consequence of which I am feeling a little delicate today...

The gang together again. Just like old times.

Well, I didn't see that one coming...

So just as I'm posting about how boring my life at Columbia is, things get interesting in a hurry.

I'm sure you remember how last year I managed to meet the famous Debito Arudo at Columbia. I seem to remember the comments at the time, particularly from my JET friends, to the effect that that was 'pretty cool'. Well, this is going to knock your socks off. Next Friday, I'm going down to Washington, D.C., to meet none other than Shinzo Abe. Yes, I'm talking about the Prime Minister of Japan. I'll be going down there, at the Japanese taxpayer's expense, to meet with him at the residency of the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary (crazy name, crazy guy) from Japan to the United States.

<- The man himself. It's not quite as awesome as that sounds - it's not like he personally requested me so we could go out for a few beers and maybe tip over a cow or two (though that would have been fun). He's in the US that week, and apparently wants to meet with some ex-JETs in the USA while he's here. As I'm the President of the largest JETAA chapter in the US, the honour falls to me, among others, to drop by and see what's up. So I'll be like, "Hey, Shinzo, my man! Dude - the comfort women thing? What the hell were you thinking?" Or perhaps not, since I do actually want to have a career in the Japan-related world for the rest of my life. But still. While it'll likely be no more than a photo op, since the meeting is only scheduled for half an hour (and there's always the chance it'll get cancelled...), it's still kinda cool, no? Watch this space for photos and commentary...

Burning Out

Man, I'm tired. Term is drawing to a close, far too slowly for my liking. The 16-week semesters here are much, much more gruelling than anything I did as an undergraduate - about 1/3rd more time spent studying and reading than at Oxford. And of course, Oxbridge does have rather shorter terms than most other, lesser, institutions...

Looking back on it, I probably should have taken the opportunity at Spring Break to actually go somewhere and do something. In all of the time I've been in the US, I've still not managed to get outside the states of New York and New Jersey. Mostly a matter of money, partly one of idleness, but a break would have done me a lot of good. New York at this time of year is pretty bleak even at the best of times, but right now we're experiencing an unusually cold spring; it's barely managed to get above 7-8℃ the whole time, and the weekend had, I think, the heaviest rainfall in a 24 hour period ever in the city, or at least something close to it. Not that I noticed, though - I had my head stuck in my books at the library for pretty much the entire weekend. Kate was out of town, doing what I should have been doing and taking a trip away, in this instance to Canada. So while the cat's away, the mice will...study. Yay me.

So the weather sucks, it's gloomy and miserable, and the world seems like it's going to hell in a handcart, as detailed in yesterday's post. Of course, no Englishman's depression would be complete without a quite incredibly inept and spineless series of performances from the England cricket team, a subject on which we will not dwell.

I really can't wait for the summer, not only for the more cheerful weather but to get the grind of classes to go away for a while. I don't know quite what I'll be taking in terms of courseload next semester, in the autumn - I may also have to TA, which will mean a whole load more stuff to consider. And of course I will likely be working pretty hard throughout the summer itself, though luckily the grant I got earlier this month ought to make things a little easier and reduce the amount of time I have to spend on doing paid work.

But it could be worse. JETAANY is taking up a lot of my time right now, though it's mostly fun stuff - dinners, drinking etc - and I'll get to go down to Atlanta this summer for the JETAA national conference, which ought to be a lot of fun, not least because I'll get to see what the South is like in the Summer. And I'll also be off home again for a few weeks, just to get my regular dose of Blighty and cricket. I'm just really, really tired right now...I've spoken before about how graduate work feels like doing push-ups half the time. Never more so than right now.

I don't like Mondays..?

A bad day to be a college student in the US, or at Columbia.

Gunman dead after bloody campus rampage

Columbia student raped and tortured

What can you say?

Well, it's one option, I suppose...

1) Go to Google Maps.
2) Click on Get Directions.
3) Type in "New York" as your start point and "London" as your destination.
4) Click "Get Directions".
5) Look at Step #23.
6) Laugh.

What you know

I don't usually write about academic stuff, since for most of you the ins and outs of Japanese literature in the Meiji period are of little to no interest. You're more interested in all the spicy goings-on in my life. Well, this post is no exception. I'm still not going to write about Japanese literature, and I'm also not going to write about all the spicy goings-on in my life, largely because there aren't any, really.

Kate and I went to see Blades of Glory last weekend. You know what to expect - anything with Will Ferrell in it tends to lower the horizon somewhat - though that said, I was actually pleasantly surprised by how it managed to actually be, you know, funny. Most of his stuff, aside from being plain dumb, just doesn't strike me as very funny, but I even managed a few belly laughs. It helps, perhaps, that ice dancing and the attendant world is inherently ridiculous - you can't go wrong, really.

The theatre was packed, too, and the film got a round of applause at the end, an act which strikes me as completely pointless, but there you go. One thing that did pique my interest was the trailer for Hot Fuzz, featuring what looks like the complete cast of Shaun of the Dead, one of my all-time favourite movies. I'm on it, soon as it comes out. How's that for a slice of fried gold?

I did also have a couple of JETAANY things this week, my first now that I'm officially president, including a Happy Hour at a pub named Galway Hooker on East 36th (apparently, it's a type of boat, though the staff drag about as much comedic value as is humanly possible - i.e., not a lot - out of the title). We got around 40 people in the end, including Mr. Fusco, who is now our co-Social Chair. Also the Consul for New Zealand to the US, who is apparently an ex-JET.

One thing that the evening did drive home was just how phenomenally powerful a networking tool this JETAANY lark is. I would never have heard of the scholarship if not for the organisation, and when I'm applying for the heavyweight ($30,000+) grants next year I think it might prove helpful, for the following reasons. Consider - one grant is administered through the Japanese Consulate, and I know many of the staff there, including the Consul himself. Or the Japan Foundation, which administers another grant. I'll be having dinner next month, courtesy of JETAANY, with the very woman who deals with the PhD grants, by a happy coincidence the field I'll be applying for. I'm fairly sure that can't hurt. Sometimes - and particularly in academia - it's not so much what you know...

Green Shoots, and I Score

There are many reasons to relish the advent of Spring in New York City. One, obviously enough, is the departure, not a moment too soon, of the bitter winter weather. Aside from that, the whole city just looks so much better, the parks come into bloom, you can put away your bulky winter clothes, you can sit outside on the pavement cafes and drink, and (most importantly when you spend most of your time on a college campus) women tend to wear a lot less in the way of clothing. Naturally, this is something I wholeheartedly endorse.

It's 71°F right now (or 20℃ in proper temperatures), and that's reason enough to be elated, but I have another very good reason to celebrate. Back in February I applied for a grant from the Japanese-American Association of New York/Honjo Foundation, and this morning learned that they will be giving me the princely sum of $5,000 to do with as I please. I don't need to explain how absolutely over the moon I am about this. For one thing, it's about $3,000 more than I had dared to hope for, even assuming I did manage to get it, and for another, that sum is equivalent to one-quarter of my annual income. It may not sound a lot on the face of it, but consider, my JET friends, how you would feel had you just learned you were going to be awarded Y900,000. The more high-flying of my friends back home in Britain (or elsewhere) may wish to do the calculations accordingly.

This is a very, very good day.

What's cooking?

In all sorts of senses. I've been blogging a bit for the JNTO, the Japanese national tourist agency, who are based in New York. They wanted JETAANY people to help out, and I thought seeing as I'm shortly to become president, I should probably do what I could. You can read the essay, if you want - it's not very long, is about Shiogama, and is mostly a rehash of photos from the Port Festival of Summer 2005. Most of these have already appeared on this blog previously, but not everyone was paying attention...

And while I'm on the subject, what the hell has happened to all of my friends' blogs? With the honorable exception of Nick, just about everyone I know seems to have given up the ghost. And of course Arunabh has a fairly good excuse in the shape of Chinese internet censorship, but still. I hope this makes you all appreciate how lucky you are to have me as your host.

Anyway, back in the physical world, I've been doing a lot of cooking recently. Kate gave me some old back issues of a wonderful magazine called Cook's Illustrated, and it has some truly wonderful recipes in it, which I've been trying out as and when. One thing I did notice was that both in there and in the cookbook she bought me for Xmas (amusingly entitled How to Cook Everything*) there're far more recipes that involve grilling (on an open flame, not just in the oven) than you'd find in your average British cookbook. Anecdotal evidence from a reliable source concerning the average American family (above) suggests that a sizeable percentage of them do actually have grills and so forth readily accessible. Not in New York City, though. I have a smoke alarm in my apartment, and Columbia's Real Estate Office frowns on students lighting fires in their apartments, anyway. What is an aspiring gourmet to do?

Surprisingly simple, actually. I bought a grill pan - an aluminium pan with raised ridges in it - and it f*cking rocks. It kicks arse. Seriously, it really is about the closest to barbequeing you can get indoors, and the food is great. It's so good, in fact, I've given up going to my local deli in favour of making my own sandwiches. For your delectation, I offer a shot of my dinner this very evening - grilled pork chops with vegetable couscous and lime-coriander dressing. Check out the grill marks. That's what I'm talking about. Carnivore heaven.

*It turns out that this isn't in fact strictly true. There's no recipe for paella.

The Luck of the Irish

St Patrick's Day saw an amazing win for the Irish cricket team against Pakistan, one of the biggest upsets in World Cup history. I'd be inclined to dwell more on the stunning nature of their win and laugh at Pakistan were it not for the fact that the defeat, which spelt Pakistan's elimination from the tournament, was followed the day after by the death of the Pakistan coach, former English test player Bob Woolmer, from what looks like a suspected heart attack. I'd harbored a sneaking hope that Woolmer might coach England after Duncan Fletcher's reign was over, but it looks like it was not to be. A sad day.

The win itself couldn't really have been better timed, although as I mentioned earlier I'm fairly certain it meant absolutely nothing to most of the participants in the St Patrick's Day parade. I went over to 5th Avenue to meet Kate and one of her friends who was in town visiting, and we stood behind the barriers and watched the various groups go by. I was somewhat surprised by how few people there were; perhaps the cold weather (we had 4 inches of snow the previous day) might have had something to do with it. It all seemed very well organised, though, featuring groups from as far away as Orange County, CA, and New Hampshire (if you look at the badges on the arms of the marching band below, you can see the NH).

It wasn't quite all fun and games, though, at least as far as I was concerned. I had kind of half-expected it, but I was somewhat dismayed to see a group (of about five or six people, admittedly) marching with the banner "Irish Republican Army Veterans". I assume they chose that because "Retired Murderers and Terrorists" doesn't quite have the same ring to it. Later, once they'd gone past, the dickhead standing in front of me in a green Oirish beret yelled out "IRA, all the way!". I was tempted to add my own shout of "Go Al Qaeda!", but there's a time and a place for everything...

Obviously, there's always one fuckwit in every crowd, but it's disappointing and, as an Englishman, somewhat uncomfortable to hear that kind of thing. I had hoped for a degree of circumspection given New York's recent history with acts of terrorism, but apparently not. Oh well. It played on my mind for a while, until I recalled that the IRA is dead and buried now, largely by their own actions. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, mate.

Moving on, we wandered around Times Square for a little while. Having Kate on my arm we naturally wandered into a sweet store, that being the M&M shop just off 42nd Street. They don't do things by halves - as you can see, they have 30-ft high tubes of the stuff available for the public to pour into bags. A bargain? Well, no, not exactly. It's $5 per half-pound, which makes it more expensive than salmon, at least by my reckoning. Just as well I don't have a sweet tooth, then.

And in other news, I got the certificate for my MA, which as I wrote a little while back has now been formally awarded, as a sort of stepping stone on the way to the doctorate. I had a little debate with Kate as to whether I should frame it or not...my family kind of has a tradition(?) of not displaying their academic qualifications (though that might be because there'd be no room for anything else on the wall if we did). I'm still in two minds, at least for the moment. The actual ceremony takes place in May, so I'll make sure to post some pics of me looking daft in a light blue gown and mortar-board (for such are Columbia's colours).

Apart from going home in the summer to get another MA, I now also have a rather more pressing reason to go back; I need to renew my visa. When admitted to the US, I was given a 2-year visa as an MA student, and it runs out in May. Which isn't actually a problem - it's perfectly OK for me to be here with an expired visa so long as all my other documentation is in order - but if I want to get back in again once I leave for any reason, I'll need another one. So this means a repeat, most likely, of the whole rigmarole I went through in June of 2005, recorded for posterity on this very blog. All just a little bit of history repeating itself...

Spring Unsprung

Or perhaps not. I'm writing this in the middle of a winter storm that's been going on for a good 15 hours now, so, despite some very clement weather on Wednesday, it may have been a little premature to declare the advent of Spring. Either way, it hasn't affected me much...I've been sitting in the library reading for the most part. Kate and I got together to make margaritas on Tuesday night, as sort of a token nod to the whole 'Spring Break, woohoo!' kind of thing. Apart from that, though, it's been very low-key.



Just for reference, I've included a couple of pictorial examples of the sort of thing I didn't get up to.



Anyway. The storm will not, I'm sure, have much effect on the St Patrick's Day parade coming up tomorrow. Given that this is New York, I'm fairly certain that Ireland's valiant efforts in the World Cup will pass almost totally without notice, which seems something of a shame, but there you are.

About the wildest thing I did was to go down to Bed, Bath and Beyond in order to buy a shoe rack. I think I've officially hit middle age.

Spring is sprung

It's Spring Break, which means I get a week or so without classes. Unfortunately, as I've been tasked to provide a dissertation proposal by the end of the semester, this doesn't really mean that I get much of a break - I still have to be in the library for much of the day. But hell, the weather's warming up, the snow has thawed, and summer is on its way. I'm in a pretty good mood right now.

That might have something to do with not having done any work for the last few days. I decided to goof off a bit and spend some time with Kate. She made good on a long-standing (actually, dating from my birthday last August) promise to take me to see Spamalot, so up we dressed for a night at the theatre.

It's not Tim Curry and David Hyde Pierce - they're long gone - but it's still very, very funny. In large part it's a stage version of the Holy Grail (which, geek that I am, I know almost verbatim), but it does have some very welcome new twists. And some contemporary stuff, too - apparently the Tall Knight of the Knights of Ni is, in fact, the father of Anna Nicole's baby. Makes as much sense as the rest of it, really. Oh, and while we're on the subject, if you really want to geek out...try this for a laugh.

We went to see The Last King of Scotland the following night, which I thought was rather well done. Forest Whitaker's performance was quite excellent (can see why he got the Oscar), though some of the more gruesome scenes apparently made Kate somewhat nauseous. Or it could just have been the result of sitting next to me for two hours - I have that effect on women sometimes.

¡Viva la Revolución!

I am President!

Of JETAANY, admittedly, but President nonetheless.



The fact that I was elected unopposed is, of course, not in any way an indication that no-one else wanted the job, but rather that the sheer awesomeness and force of my personality scared all challengers away. I heard that Fusco might be running - he was nominated - but for whatever reason, he missed the deadline to confirm his candidacy.

Anyway, I am therefore now the President of JETAANY, a 501 (c) 3 NPO. What does this actually mean? Not a whole lot, really - it means I have to show up at meetings and events, talk to the Consulate more than before, and start being a lot more proactive in making things happen. In a sense, it's kind of like being a part-time CIR (actually, that's kind of a tautology) in that I have to make speeches, go and talk to various worthies, organise events, and so on and so on. It should be a lot of fun, actually - I am now demanding that everyone call me El Presidente, largely because I like the sound of it. I may switch to The Dear Leader later on in my term; I haven't made up my mind exactly how despotic I'm going to be.

Revolution in the air in other areas, too. Kate's got a new job, believe it or not at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum I visited late last year. It's just about the perfect job for her, really - she wanted to get back into the museum business, and given that she did her MA in American History, it's difficult to think of a job she could have that would have used her skills and experience any better. Naturally, she's delighted, and I'm thrilled for her.

Everything else has been much the same as it ever is. I've been occupied with writing summer grant proposals, partly to keep myself afloat this summer, and partly because I'll lose my funding if I don't (it's a technical thing - we're required to make "good faith" attempts to secure as much outside funding as possible so as to alleviate the financial burden on the department).

We had another snowfall last week, but the weather's much warmer this week and I think spring is on the way. Of course, that brings Spring Break, too - only a week away now. Woohoo!

The Three Degrees

I checked my account at the online admin thing we have here at Columbia (which keeps track of grades, registration, fees etc) and learned that my Master's Degree was officially awarded on the 14th of February. I didn't actually notice until now, because they don't seem to reckon on telling you by e-mail or anything, and in any case I won't be taking it until the main Commencement ceremony happens in May. Still, I suppose it's the culmination of a year and a half of hard work; on the other hand, I'm still only just getting started with the PhD, relatively speaking. But either way, I am now Robert J. Tuck, BA (Oxon), MA (Columbia).

It won't be long now until I get a second MA to go with the one I actually earned. Some of my British readers, particularly the Oxbridge ones, will know all about this, but for those who don't, 21 terms (that's 7 years) after you matriculate at Oxford, you become eligible to take an MA degree simply by sending the University ￡20 (you don't even have to turn up at the ceremony if you don't want to). You do not have to have done any work, academic or otherwise, in the meantime - so you could quite happily sit on your arse for three to four years after graduating and still collect the MA. All that is required is that you send them the money. Needless to say, the qualification is almost totally worthless in real terms, and causes a considerable degree of resentment amongst other universities that award real MAs (a taught 1-2 year MA at Oxbridge is known as an MPhil, confusingly enough). For a fuller explanation, try here.

Anyway, I've paid my dues, and will be collecting my MA in July back home in England. It's mainly in order to keep my Mum happy - I took my BA in absentia because I was in Japan, and so she never got a graduation ceremony. Between that and Commencement in May, I think she should have a couple of good photos to stick on the mantlepiece. The qualification is actually not totally worthless, since it does entitle me to reciprocal alumni privileges at Cambridge (and, bizarrely, Trinity College Dublin) - so I can use Cambridge's libraries and facilities as if I were an alumnus of that university. Which, given that my parents live in Cambridgeshire, is actually quite handy.

One other typically eccentric Oxbridge point is that it is very much not the done thing to actually put this on your CV as if it were a real Master's degree, but to assume it replaces the BA (so I'd be MA (Oxon), MA (Columbia), not BA (Oxon) MA (Oxon) MA (Columbia). No doubt for reasons of space as much as anything else.

And finally, speaking of degrees and the like, I'm delighted to report that my good friend Arunabh was accepted to do a PhD in Chinese History at Columbia after having been on the MA program, just like what happened to me. You can't underestimate what it means to have someone else around who understands cricket. A hearty congrats from here, and a beer or four when he gets back.

Jet Setting - and some random Japan photos

It might be pure coincidence - I have no way of knowing - that the Daily Yomiuri newspaper in Japan has been printing a series of letters bashing the JET programme recently, just as the yearly selection process gets under way again. In the e-mail that brought this to my attention, we were implored to deluge the Yomiuri with letters pleading its case. I'm not really inclined to do so, partly because I have better things to do, but also because I believe that the criticisms raised have some merit. Anyway, more on that later.

I've maintained for some time (even before I left Japan) that JET is a good idea, executed with a degree of ineptitude that verges on the breathtaking. To what extent such flaws are the fault of the participants remains an open question. It was, however, somewhat illuminating to be able to take part in the selection process and see why and how people are chosen to go out to Japan. I will have to be careful here - the interviews and subsequent scores are meant to be confidential, and won't be disclosed until mid-April - but I think I can still give some general remarks without breaching any confidentiality agreements.


I was actually pleasantly surprised by what seemed to me a relatively high standard of applicant throughout the process. I had - perhaps on the basis of some of my colleagues in Miyagi - been expecting a group of unqualified yet somewhat enthusiastic fresh graduates with little real idea about Japan or what they were getting themselves into. It wasn't as bad as I expected - we had a surprisingly high number of actual qualified teachers and TESOL holders, as well as those with informal tutoring or teaching experience. Some had been to Japan before, most hadn't, and I was quite disappointed with the general knowledge of Japan that many of them displayed - though almost all put that they had "always been interested in Japan and its culture", few could give concrete examples or convincing answers as to why they wanted to go to Japan and not South Korea or Thailand. And equally few had a realistic grasp of what a Japanese public school environment was like - almost all of them thought that it would be focused, disciplined and orderly. Boy, are they in for a shock.

Still, for the most part I was quite taken with the general level of enthusiasm (or ability to fake it...) and desire to teach that many of the applicants seemed to have. I have no idea how the people we chose will actually do - that's very much in the lap of the gods as regards where and with who they're placed, but I think we had in the nine we selected some people who, if the cards fall right, might genuinely bring something worthwhile to the programme. Unlike myself, of course, as you can see to your left.

I don't think you can really defend JET from the allegation that overall it is a miserable failure and complete waste of money as regards improving English teaching (the scores speak for themselves - the only nation worse at English in Asia is North Korea, and they have some pretty good excuses for that). But I think that to make that attack is to show a poor grasp of the actual thought processes and priorities behind JET and behind Japanese English language education in general.

It wasn't as if, when creating the programme, the powers-that-be thought "Wow, our English scores suck. We need some young native speakers over here to help out with that. Best if they're largely unqualified and inexperienced, and we'll make sure to can them after three years just as they work out what they're doing." It seems to me that it was more like this:

Faceless Bureaucrat A: Wow, the Americans hate us. Look at all that trade friction. What if we get some young college kids over here and show them how great Japan is?
Faceless Bureacrat B: Well, that's all well and good, but what the hell are we going to do with them while they're over here? They won't speak Japanese and most won't have any useful skills, so...
Faceless Bureaucrat A: Hmmm. But they can speak English, right? Get 'em to teach English!
Faceless Bureaucrat B: Brilliant! Let's go look at some schoolgirl p@rn to celebrate!

Being a part of JETAANY serves to confirm this impression; we get a surprising amount of our funding direct from CLAIR, who are very keen to know about what goes on with us (though the fact that, at CLAIR's urging, we have recenly become a 501 (c) 3 NPO - capable of independent fundraising - might suggest where they think this relationship is headed). Sometimes, though, they're more obvious than that, like when they asked if we could give them the names of any ex-JETs we knew in places like the Federal Reserve, the State Department and so on - the people who actually have power to influence policy.

The point, which I'm admittedly labouring, is that JET is not and never really was about teaching English. It is, if I may put it in crude terms, one gigantic and hugely expensive PR Stunt. And judging by JETAANY, it seems to be a spectacularly successful one, too. Banzai!