Author: Milan

In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. In the fall of 2005, I began reading for an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford. Outside school, I am very interested in photography, writing, and the outdoors. I am writing this blog to keep in touch with friends and family around the world, provide a more personal view of graduate student life in Oxford, and pass on some lessons I've learned here.

That clothe The Weald and reach the sky

Like so much else, the walking trip in The Weald was primarily a good mechanism for meeting new people. All told, fourteen people were part of the expedition. Something about rambling seems to attract people of a scientific or technical bent. I had long conversations during the five hour walk about mettalurgy, the GPS system, the manufacture of large organic molecules for pharmaceuticals, computer programming, fisheries, and the HIV fighting potential of a certain molecule that comes from sea fans. It was definitely a group of people I’d like to spend more time with. One even lent me the new Milan Kundera novel: Immortality.

The walk took place in and around the inspiration for A.A. Milne’s 100 Acre Wood, of Winnie the Pooh fame – though the terrain dates back to the establishment of a hunting park following the Norman Conquest. Marked features were low verdant hills, and idyllic stands of deciduous trees around small creeks. Throughout the hike (and the 2.5 hour minibus trips both ways), the sun was intense enough to make me fear that I will rosy tomorrow, despite the use of sunscreen and my wide-brimmed canoeing hat. I have an obvious watch tan.

Particularly appealing is the prospect of doing a trip to the Lake District with this group. I’ve been told that it’s an essential place to see, and to do so with such an obviously qualified and interesting sect is a welcome thing to contemplate. There is much about fit young scientists that appeals to me. Likewise, places of natural beauty that includes mountains.

After three days of devoted walking in the hot sun, followed by little sleep, my muscles are all clenched up and aching. I may allow myself to sleep in a bit tomorrow, before scrambling to come up with an excuse for Dr. Hurrell, explaining why I don’t have a paper for him. Given that we still have an undiscussed one to cover, he shouldn’t be too harsh on me.

PS. While walking to and from the rendezvous for the hike, I gave my first listen-through to Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. Some of the songs I can already tell are superb.

PPS. Being way too busy to read emails or blog posts is a novel and not entirely unwelcome experience. I feel like I’ve had a miniature vacation, right in the middle of an Oxford term.

London Gallery Tour

The primary focus of my trip to London with Antonia was art galleries. We saw sculpture in Canada House, off Trafalgar Square. We saw paintings in the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, and Tate Modern; also, photography in the National Theatre and additional sculpture in other places. Seeing art with a clever and interested fellow observer is wonderful for offsetting the overwhelming character of a place like any of the museums listed above. When that other person is also well versed in historical and mythological iconography, it is even more welcome. When you have dozens of original Dalis, Kandinskys, and Picassos strewn about, it can be hard to maintain focus.

Developing focus in the first place is hard when you need to wake up at 5:45am. As a reward, we were at the British Museum just in time for its opening. Right now, there is a fascinating temporary exhibit on Arabic calligraphy and artwork. Some of the material included is really superb; I especially enjoyed some of the examples where Asiatic kinds of calligraphy and Arabic lettering had been forged into elegant hybrids. Before leaving the British Museum, we also took a guided tour of the Islamic World section, as well as wandering on our own through the North American, Central American (where many of the sculptures have superb facial expression), and ancient British Isles areas. As always, the central atrium – installed sometime before my first visit in 2001 – is a striking piece of artwork in its own right, much like the turbine room in the Tate Modern. I love the elation and sense of safety I feel when enclosed in huge open-air geometric spaces.

After walking through Soho and Chinatown, Antonia and I arrived in Trafalgar Square. After a perfunctory security check, we were allowed into Canada House, though sadly not invited to the wine reception that was being prepared. Instead, I got around to finally registering as a Canadian national living in the UK and we had a look at some of the Canadian stone sculpture that was on display.

I really should dig through all the collected brochures to attach names to these descriptions, but I have neither the time nor the energy just now. Perhaps in future sittings.

Also at Trafalgar Square (aside from a version of Nelson’s column covered with scaffolding for repair, with the scaffolding decorated with sea life as a warning about global warming) are the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery. At the first, we saw a terrifically frightening dragon that I am hoping Antonia will identify in a comment. All efforts at photography there were quite effectively thwarted. As has generally been the case, the National Portrait Gallery was an illustration of how few British authors, politicians, and public figures I have heard of. They lack a portrait of Douglas Adams: an oversight that really must be rectified.

Between that and the next art viewing (at the National Theatre), we met with two sets of Antonia’s friends – the first a friend from ancient schooldays and the second the kind gentleman who put a roof over my head for the unplanned overnight stay. At the National Theatre, we saw an exhibition of the top photojournalistic images of the year. Some were extremely good – particularly a portrait of Kofi Annan that makes superb use of contrast, composition, and dynamic range. Many were exceptionally gruesome, as I suspect is not unusual for such compositions.

After pizza-walking-sleep-wake-shower, the next day proceeded to the Tate Modern via a picnic. From National Theatre to Antonia’s friend Jong’s house was one long arc with the Gherkin as the central point. The return trip to the Tate Modern was essentially the converse. Since the recent major re-hang, I don’t entirely have my bearings in that fascinating place. As such, every return visit has the feel of rediscovery to it, much as I lament the fact that Hepworth’s Pelagos has been relocated to Cornwall. There, we met another friend of Antonia’s who is on the Tate staff related to planning and executing activities for children and families. A great way to be initiated into such a wonderful collection of art, no doubt.

My thanks to Antonia for the company that was the highlight of the trip, and to Jong who was kind enough to accompany us for a long while, and house us as well.

I would write more, but I need to get to sleep. It’s another 6:00am reveille tomorrow.

Next step up the ladder

Partly thanks to your help, Mica’s Hives video has reached the semi-finals of the Google Video competition. I encourage everyone who thinks his rendition of “Walk Idiot Walk” is superior to the competing video to continue voting for him daily. This round ends on the seventeenth.

My original and most detailed post about this.

Quick London summary

Having just returned from London after one more day than I was planning to spend, I am living in hecticposttriptime. There is much that needs to be done before I leave for The Weald with the Walking Club at 8:00am tomorrow, outside Trinity. The trip with Antonia proved to be very good: we saw quite a collection of galleries and museums, met some of her friends, and generally accessed the city in a very satisfying way. I came back with about five kilos of tofu (bought at an eighth of the Oxford price, in Soho’s Chinatown), two kinds of black bean sauce, and wasabi peas.

Two big and welcome surprises accompanied my return: the discovery that Meghan Mathieson has extremely generously sent me a copy of the new Neko Case CD Fox Confessor Brings the Blues, along with a letter, and the reception of a message from Rosalind that indicates that there has been a miscommunication working against us. While she is only going to be in the country for a few more weeks, tops, there seems to have been a considerable and unexpected reconciliation.

I will post a more thorough write-up, with photos, sometime later tonight.

Northward along canals

By the fading light this evening, I took an unusually interesting ten mile ride. Initially cutting due north, I veered west until I found a canal I’d never seen before: lined with narrowboats and punctuated with weirs and numbered red brick bridges. After about four miles, I found myself at the intersection with the Oxford Canal. I tried an offshoot path labeled ‘River Thames’ but was rapidly foiled when the path narrowed almost immediately, became composed of unstable dirt clods, and proved to be flanked with shoulder-high stinging nettles.

Once you get more than a couple of miles up along the canal, it seems like a completely different world from the residential and commercial parts of Oxford, as well as the kind of roadway-intersected countryside around Kidlington or Cassington. The houses, which vary in frequency along different stretches, have yards opening right out onto the waterway. Cats and children fishing seem to be common, and the general sense of direction that it is easy to maintain on roads falls victim rapidly to the gentle curves of the branching canals.

The light – between about 8:10 and 9:30pm – was that really lovely warm and directed sunset light, though still bright enough to support ISO100 handheld shots at 50mm or so, in the open spaces at least. The only trouble is that the sky is completely blown out in every shot. Perhaps a polarizer would have helped.

Riding on gravel or dirt track takes dramatically more effort than doing so on blacktop: basically constant peddling in my second-lowest gear in order to maintain speed. The feeling is rather more substantial at the end, however.

Since I need to be at Gloucester Green for the bus to London at seven, I should try to get to sleep early. This is unlikely. Being ill the other day (and sleeping fourteen hours) has completely thrown off my sleeping schedule. I find myself waking up ravenous at random times between three and seven in the morning, always a sure sign that it will take a concerted effort to get things on track. That will only be possible once these two upcoming trips have passed.

PS. To anyone considering replicating the ride above, I suggest wearing glasses. The canalside bugs seem particularly drawn to the eyes of cyclists, and a few uncontrolled moments could easily land you among the floating ducks.

PPS. With two days left in this round, please keep voting for Mica’s video.

Another scholarship rejection

It was the J. Armand Bombardier Internationalist Fellowship this time. They lose points for sending out rejections by email. “Dear Applicant…” It was always a long shot, with 678 applicants for 25 fellowships and what I am told is a strong preference for people aiming at French language related programs.

Now, there are only two small ones left, plus the departmental bursary: for which all of these rejections (Commonwealth, Chevening, ORS, Bombardier, etc) are actually an advantage. I have never actually received any scholarship for which an application was necessary: only automatic faculty and departmental scholarships and UBC and funding offers from grad schools other than Oxford.

Any friends out there who applied for this and don’t get an email in the next few hours, take heart. A cool $10,000 might be coming your way.

[Unrelated] Someone left a link to this optical illusion as a comment. It’s well worth a look.

Syndication and RSS: a simple introduction

A few people have asked me what ‘syndication’ and ‘RSS’ are, so I thought I would write a quick, non-technical introduction.

Syndication intro

The content of this blog can be broadly separated into two types: the text that makes up posts, and all the formatting that surrounds it. What syndication does is take just the text, allowing it to be read through some other site or program than the one usually used to view the site. The big reason why this is helpful is because it lets you quickly check a great many information streams to see if any have changed.

Instead of having to check more than 100 different pages every time I want to see if one has been updated, I can take a look at one page that lists all the different syndication ‘feeds.’

BlogLines

One service that allows this is BlogLines. If you have a look at my BlogLines account, you will see that it tracks more than 100 different ‘feeds.’ These include things as diverse as all the LiveJournal, WordPress, Blogger, and other blogs run by friends of mine; listings of video clips from the Colbert Report and the Daily show; headlines from Metafilter, Slashdot, and other news sites; and a few miscellaneous other things.

If you sign up for a BlogLines account, you can add two different feeds from my blog. Both use a technology called RSS, which stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication.’ The addresses in question are:

Blog posts: http://www.sindark.com/feed/
Blog comments: http://www.sindark.com/comments/feed/

Opening either in a normal Internet Explorer or Firefox window will probably bring up a lot of confusing looking garble. This is the machine readable version of the blog. If you add one of those addresses to your list of feeds in BlogLines, however, you will see a list of recent posts presented, complete with short summaries and links back to the original. Whenever this site (or any other one you have listed) gets updated, it will turn bold on your BlogLines page.

Signing up for the comments feed will allow you to see whenever anybody leaves a comment on any post of mine, without having to check each one individually. I find it a useful way to follow conversations, without having to look at many different individual pages. For people running blogs, it can also be a good way to catch spam.

Firefox live bookmarks

Another way to read RSS feeds is to add them as ‘Live Bookmarks’ within Firefox. This can be done very easily. In Firefox, look over to the right hand side of the blog’s address, inside the white box near the top of the window. On the right hand side, there is a little orange icon with a white dot and radiating arcs. Any page on which you see that icon has a syndication feed available.

If you click that orange icon, a window will pop up asking you to name the bookmark and choose where in your bookmarks menu you want to see it. Then, any time you go into the bookmarks menu and select the name of that site, it will show you a listing of recent post titles. You can click on any of them to go to the post itself.

More information

Bloglines FAQ
WikiPedia on RSS (includes the orange logo I described)
Firefox Live Bookmark tutorial

Recuperated today, productive tomorrow?

Obviously, today’s photo is not from Oxford. I didn’t take anything good enough to warrant public display, partly because I slept until 1:00pm to purge yesterday’s acute and short-lived illness. The above is a photo of the Capilano Reservoir in North Vancouver: one of the important sources of water for Vancouver, and located about ten minutes’ walk from my high school. Taken during the last week or so of August, you can see how seriously the water level has been depleted by a thirsty summer. The closest mountain, on the right hand side, is Grouse Mountain (with the famous ‘Grind’ hike). The two distinctive peaks close together and farther off at The Lions. How I miss the mountains, the conifers, and the sea…

Today wasn’t really productive, in any standard sense of the word. Even so, it was a day fairly well spent. I recuperated, did laundry, washed linen, got a haircut, and sorted something important out. This evening was that really wonderful combination of the right levels of light, warmth, and humidity to make being outside really wonderful. As such, I just had to take a quick ride out to Kidlington. Now, when I do so, I make sure to at least bring tire irons, a backup tube, and my new pump.

Continuing my experimentation with British cheeses, I went through a block of Sainsbury’s Wensleydale today. It has a consistency similar to Cheshire and a common fondness for breaking into bits. Antonia apty described the taste as somewhere between mozzarella and feta, though quite pleasantly so. I recommend trying it on toasted dark bread, along with either tomato and some black pepper or zucchini slices fried in olive oil.

Hard to track friends

You would be fairly hard pressed to find a group that relocates as extensively and often as my friends do. I suppose that’s not unusual for students, especially students of international relations who are mostly in the undergrad to internship/job/grad school juncture.

Personally, since starting university I have lived in two different houses of Totem Park, three different Fairview Crescent units, my parents’ house in North Vancouver, one residence of l’Universite de Montreal, Library Court of Wadham College, and in the pleasantly cool basement flat that is my present domain. (Such welcome solace from the heat and sun outside.) As a result of the fact that I can never really count on the address I have written down for many friends to be a current one, I need verify it every time I want to sent something: a requirement that can rather ruin the surprise. It’s better than making further contributions to the dead letter offices of the world, I suppose.

PS. Anything getting sent to me in the UK should be sent care of Wadham College, Oxford, OX1 3PN. Wherever in Oxford I am living, I will check my box there nearly every day.

Brain feeling vaguely crunchy

Since I am going to London from Thursday night to Friday night, and finally doing my first hike with the walking club on Sunday, I suppose I really need to get to work on my third-to-last paper for Dr. Hurrell today. It is a shame that I have been feeling rather ill since yesterday afternoon. Perhaps I can spend today immersed in the reading of books, the doing of laundry, and the sipping of ginger ale.

At least the presentation on unipolarity and great powers managed to go fairly well, ably expanded upon by Alex.

[Update: 7 June 2006, 1:33pm] After sleeping about fourteen hours straight, I feel much better. Now to do laundry and have my hair snipped back to a helmet-friendly length.