End of term

So here's to actually following through on the previous post and putting together another entry before another four months go by.

End of term - peaks and troughs of busyness and idleness, mainly involving getting papers done and whatnot. I spent most of the weekend writing a research paper for a seminar I was taking this past semester. It ended up being 53 pages, which is a monster; granted, it was a considerable expansion and revision of a previous 34-page paper, but even so. I have broken new territory in geekhood. I actually feel sort of dirty that I enjoyed it as much as I did.

On an entirely unrelated note, I thought I should point out a couple of things. First - this. For the record, it's Dartmouth business school, and yes, I have already bought a green hoody with the logo emblazoned across the chest. Be rude not to.

On another entirely unrelated note, those of my readers who follow American sport may have notice that this chap was one of the Superbowl-winning New York Giants' star players over the past season. Are we related? Well, maybe. Take a look for yourself and see how likely you think that is. In any case, I have, once again, bought myself a Giants replica shirt with his name on the back. Because, of course, it would be rude not to.

Nina and Matt were in town earlier this week, bringing Nina's mother over to visit. I wonder if they still read this blog? I notice Nes is still hanging around - dude, it's been inactive for like four months and you still commented on the post. I sincerely hope you've got the site on an RSS bookmark, otherwise you really need to find some better things to do with your time.

Up by My Bootstraps

Heh. Well, I said I would try and get the post count up, and guess what? I failed miserably. Nearly four months gone by and nothing posted on the old blog. But I think it's about time to get things moving again, since things seem to be moving in my actual life (yes, I have one).

First, thanks to all for the comments expressing concern on the lack of activity. It's somewhat reassuring that I do actually have something approaching a readership, though I'm not sure I still do after neglecting the ol' blog so thoroughly. It's been two things, really - being very busy with work and polishing up the dissertation project, and also a general ill-defined sort of ennui, a feeling that life as a graduate student and in NYC is not quite so shiny and sparkly as once it was. Sort of like second-year syndrome, if you see what I mean, only happening in the third year.

All of which is not to say that I'm not enjoying life here, rather that I have been somewhat less motivated to write of late. I don't know quite when Google decides to delete blogs for lack of activity, but I think I must have come pretty close...

So the main thing is that the blog will be coming full circle, as it were - I'm off back to Japan to do my dissertation research at Waseda University from the end of September of this year. A couple of weeks ago, I learned that I managed to get a Japan Foundation grant to cover fourteen months' research in Tokyo, which was tremendous news (though not for my academic work that week; I got nothing done because I was drinking every night in celebration). To explain why it was such good news, consider that I was going to be heading to Japan on the Mombusho fellowship (as described in previous posts). Nothing wrong with that, of course, but the Japan Foundation is almost double the monthly stipend while I'm in Japan, and for obvious reasons this makes a huge difference. Be able to travel, pay for Kate to come out to visit, and so on and so on. There are some things money can't buy; for everything else, there's Japan Foundation.

Not just the money, either - it's a prestigious grant and not at all easy to get. Checking the records over the last few years, it's rare for there to be more than one awarded for the whole UK, so I guess they must have liked my project (or maybe it was that 100,000 yen I slipped into the envelope..;-)). Trebles all round!

There is one major hurdle first, though - my qualifying exams. September 12th, 2-4 p.m. I have to pass to proceed to the second part of the program and fulfill all of the PhD requirements apart from the dissertation, progressing to a state known as ABD (All But Dissertation), from where one can start to seriously look for jobs. More normally referred to as 'orals', this involves answering questions from a panel of four professors for two hours or so on literally everything covered so far in my time at Columbia - for me, that's four subjects, namely pre-modern Lit, Meiji and Taisho lit, Showa lit and Meiji history. An intimidating prospect, as you can imagine. I'm going to have to work my butt off this summer. It would be rather embarrassing to have gotten a Japan Foundation and then fail my orals...

New Year, New Post

I must apologise for the lack of activity over the past couple of months. My workload, in combination with my teaching duties, has rendered it very difficult for me to find the time to really write anything of much interest. Not that there haven't been interesting things happening - rather, that I either couldn't find the time to post, or, if I could, that I was too damn tired and apathetic to do so.

I'm back in New York now, after a couple of weeks in Cambridge recuperating from an extremely gruelling semester. I basically did nothing, apart from a quick trip up north to see my grandmother, and that's the way I wanted - perhaps needed - it to be. Didn't even really go out on New Year's Eve, preferring instead to drink a couple of beers and watch the festivities on the telly.

I'm not sure it's worth going into much detail as to what happened in the last couple of months; aside from being buried in the library, Kate and I did manage a couple of trips out of New York, once to Cooperstown, New York, home of the Baseball Hall of Fame and a couple of fine breweries, and then down to South Carolina for Thanksgiving with Kate's parents. Beyond that, I have had my nose at the grindstone teaching and trying to get my dissertation project into some semblance of order. I have enjoyed the teaching immensely, though it has been an incredible amount of work.

Anyway - I'm back now, will try to keep my post count up (I'm not teaching this semester, so that might make it easier), and would like to wish any of my readers who might still remain a very Happy New Year.

Eternal Summer

Good lord, has it really been over a month since my last post? I must apologise (though in some quarters, I realise, that could be viewed as a blessing). Been very, very, very busy with teaching and grant proposals and such; I will tell more about it when I get a moment or two to relax this weekend. In the meantime, consider this a placeholder so Google doesn't delete the whole shebang...

A Tale of Two Presidents

And two lectures, actually. It all went off without anything major happening, partly because of the massive presence of the NYPD (helicopters, paddy wagons, the works) and the sensible decision to keep non-students off the campus (they still protested outside anyway, though I don't think anyone was arrested).

The most problematic part of the whole thing was that I was talking at exactly the same time Ahmadinejad was, and as a consequence, only a little over one-third of our students actually showed up. Which was, in all honesty, a little galling - I had spent my entire weekend over the lecture, and, though I say so myself, it was actually pretty damn good. Oh well. I suppose I can't blame the students - it's not every day you get to listen to a nutcase via digital relay. And I have a suspicion that it won't be the last time I lecture to a half-empty auditorium...

With around 3,000 students gathering to watch the live relay, I could hear the cheers ringing across the main quad throughout the lecture, certainly for President Bollinger's opening remarks, in which, to be perfectly blunt, he tore Ahmadinejad a new one. Describing Ahmadinejad as having "all the signs of a cruel and petty dictator", remarking that his Holocaust denial was the mark of someone "astonishingly uneducated", he really laid into him. I'm kind of in two minds about this...on the one hand, I agree completely with what Bollinger said - Ahmadinejad's regime is a vile one, and he should be called to account for it. On the other, I do wonder how it reflects on Columbia to have the Prez laying into him in such brutal fashion.

I suppose on a third hand, Ahmadinejad's response did rather highlight that maxim that "free speech makes it easier to tell who the idiots are". For some reason this wasn't reported in the UK media, or so I heard, but Ahmadinejad asserted in response to a question on Iran's persecution of homosexuals that there simply weren't any in Iran, to a good deal of derisive laughter from the crowd. To choose a thoroughly inappropriate metaphor, I suppose if you give someone enough rope, they'll hang themselves.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

This Monday, at Columbia, a man will be giving a lecture. A man of some renown, one widely disliked, even detested in the circles in which he moves. Many believe he's a dangerous lunatic and not to be trusted; some even say that he could represent the greatest threat to Western civilisation in our times.

Oh, and the President of Iran will be talking, too.

Yes, somehow, in one of those bizarre twists of fate that make me think the universe really does have a sense of humour, I will be lecturing on campus on 9th and 10th century Japanese court politics at roughly the same time as Mahmoud Ahmadenijad gives his lecture elsewhere on the campus on, probably, something along the lines of how he'd like to kill all the Jews. Yes folks, what didn't manage to happen last year will come to pass, your friend and mine the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran is coming to speak at Columbia. I imagine that the scheduling conflict will affect attendance; but hey, Ahmadinejad can just wait until I'm good and finished.

I really did give this some serious thought, but, given the heavily Jewish demographics of the Upper West Side, I was genuinely unable to think of anyone alive on the face of the planet at the moment who could possibly elicit quite the reaction that ol' crazy Mahmound will no doubt get. I thought John Ashcroft was an explosive choice...let's see what happens tomorrow. We'll have Campus Security, the NYPD, and the US Secret Service swarming all over the place tomorrow, there's a massive anti-Ahmadinejad demonstration scheduled for 11:30 a.m., the whole campus will be locked down except for two gates, and only then to CUID holders. Even allowing for all this, it would not surprise me greatly if somebody still decides to do something stupid. Watch this space.

Crossing Over; or, the Wrong Man for the Job

As promised, here's some footage of me making a fool of myself trying to carry over what little skill I have at cricket to baseball (NB, the footage is at 90° for the first 15 seconds or so - do not adjust your set, it'll come round in due course).



You'll also notice that I'm basically playing a slightly deranged hook/pull shot to every ball. Kate also reckons that my hands are too high (hey, I was just trying to imitate Ichiro's stance) and my weight is too far back...I think I'll have to go down there again sometime and get some proper coaching. Now I have a cricket-mad roommate, of course, that might be rather more tempting...

Shot of self and bro afterwards. Do we look like a pair of prize prats or what?