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.

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.

Sony headphones, cont.

In response to my complaints by letter and phone, as well as sending back the broken old pair, Sony sent me a new set of MDR-EX71SL Fontopia earbuds (£25.67 on Amazon). While this is welcome, I would have preferred to have them send me a refund. On past form, the new pair will only last about three months before completely falling apart due to cheap materials and shoddy construction. My earlier complaint about them is here. To anyone considering buying Sony Fontopia earbuds: don’t. They are no longer the nice-sounding, solid things they were back in 2000 or so. Now, they are made of plastic so soft, you can literally peel it off the wires gently with your fingers. It is less tough than the brand-new shoestring licorices that you are surprised to bite into and not find toughened by months of exposure to 7-11 air and fluorescent lighting.

Rather than put the refund towards new Sony headphones, I would probably have gone with either the Shure E2Cs (£51.49) or Etymotic ER6Is (£68.51), which many people have told me are more durable and have better sound. They need to be earbuds, because I want to be able to wear them under a bike helmet and carry them virtually everywhere. While big ear-covering headphones would be great for my room, they hardly work with bikes and iPod Shuffles.

Since the replacement EX71s are new and in the original packaging, I could try selling them online somewhere, thereby generating some funds to put towards a better set. Of course, that would mean at least another couple of weeks with ear canals aching from button-shaped and unyielding hard white generic Apple headphones. What do cost-conscious audiophiles suggest?

Life on an upswing

I am really glad to have my bike in working order again. Using it for a mail-run to Wadham and finding a card from Sarah was doubly gratifying. Oxford is a really fun place to cycle at night, lights blinking. The familiar streets feel liberating without traffic. I am equally glad to have dropped another paper into the inter-college post for Dr. Hurrell. It’s the one I am presenting on tomorrow, so I hope it is acceptably good. Now, I just need to write another three for him in the next couple of weeks and the academic year will be over.

Having a trio of parties seems the natural response: one next week to mark the end of term, one on the 22nd to celebrate the summer solstice, and another on July 1st to celebrate Canada Day. It will be a grand affair and I encourage all the Canucks in Oxford who I know to come out for it. Those wanting to observe Canadians in groups may also be considered for admission, though you will be required to learn any one sentence in French, as well as the chorus to ‘The Log Driver’s Waltz.’ Anyone who can provide actual Canadian beer is automatically extremely welcome.

PS. Mica’s video contest quarter file is ongoing. Please take a moment to vote for him. His film is really dramatically better than the version of ‘Song 2’ it is up against. Incidentally, yes – I will continue advertising this contest until i

Please, please hold – ye patches

Getting a bicycle tire puncture while out riding is just bad luck. Doing so miles from home with no repair equipment is the compounding of bad luck and bad planning. Somehow getting four separate punctures – three in one cluster and another halfway around the wheel – seems genuinely malicious. Especially when one is at least 1mm in diameter, so you patch it and put the wheel back on, only to learn that there are three more holes so very tiny that you can’t even see them. It’s even worse when you only find the third whole after going through the whole rigamarole of putting the wheel back together (harder than you might think).

That said, I now have the experience of fixing a puncture three times, as well as a replacement pump for the one that has gone AWOL, and some tire irons, a fresh backup tube, and chain lube just to round the whole thing off. Total cost of new kit: about 20% of the value of the bike.

Now, the plan was originally to speed my twenty minute walk to the department by fixing the bike. After one and a half hours of mucking around with rubber cement, that doesn’t look so viable. Still, my productivity and cardiovascular fitness in coming weeks should both rise given the return of my bike to an operational state.

Provided my inexpertly applied patches hold…

Thinking about powers and polarity

I’ve been trying hard to sort out a decent answer for the unipolarity/great powers question on which I am presenting Tuesday, but still having a lot of trouble. The definitions strike me as very circular. The characteristics we ascribe to great powers (nukes, UN Security Council seats, big economies) are as much descriptions of the states we already think of as great powers as they are a checklist against which countries can be compared. Likewise, ‘unipolarity’ in the contemporary sense basically just means ‘the world how it has more-or-less been since the end of the Cold War.’

The importance of the term ‘great power’ lies in the ways in which the distinction changes the thinking of states. While largely reflective of underlying capabilities, the confidence associated with such status is a capability in itself. Likewise, it is in the psychology of the great power distinction that the concept most forcefully manifests itself in the world. As such, the criteria of great power status change over time with both the real and perceived values of different national capabilities: an overseas empire, for instance, or nuclear weapons.

Since the United States is generally accepted to be the most powerful nation in the world, there is an obvious incentive to create arguments that might sway its behaviour. This is a strategy that manifests itself in ways like opposition groups attempting to secure American support for the removal of autocratic or unpopular rulers . It also manifests itself through the manipulation of the United States’ perception of its own security, and what the enhancement of that security requires. A prime contemporary example of this trend is the support that some truly grim regimes in the Arab world have been able to extract from the present administration, in exchange for security cooperation. To make attempts at lobbying based on assertions about the role of superpower states in general, or the conditions of unipolarity, is a less transparent way of trying to influence American policy today. Arguably, such initiative is aided by the generally positivist conception of the social sciences in the United States at present. Faith in the existence of valid laws of state behaviour opens the door to manipulation of that behaviour through the manipulation of how such laws are understood. For instance, consider the ways in which South Asian governments interacted with the ‘domino theory’ during the Vietnam War era.

The most common way in which unipolarity is used as a justification for policy by liberals is to assert the moral responsibility of the superpower to at least lead the drive towards greater international justice. Likewise, the classical realist response is to develop and immediate and abiding concern about new great powers rising to challenge the superpower: hence the intense present concern about China. Both perspectives are important for understanding how the idea of unipolarity affects policy prescriptions.

I think I basically just need to poke at these ideas for a few more hours – as well as reading some more sources – and I will have a decent, though perhaps somewhat unusual, paper and presentation.

Mica’s Michelle video

Mica has a new video online, made for his girlfriend Michelle. I think it’s really sweet, somewhat explicit, and almost perfectly reflective of his overall character.

I hope she is the kind of woman who will appreciate it. The very last segment, shot at Cleveland Park in North Vancouver, definitely makes the greatest impression, for me.

PS. Remember to keep voting for his contest video.

Parties, walking, bikes, and gratitude

Anna's cake After walking about six miles home from Anna’s birthday party, my father talked me through the repair of the puncture in my rear tire. Now, I just need to buy a pump to replace the one I have deemed hopelessly lost. Since the cycle shops wanted to charge me eleven quid, or so, just to repair the punctured tube this is a very welcome development. Indeed, the eleven quid will cover most of the ‘go to Heathrow to meet Linnea’ shortfall. Excellent.

Now, I should sleep. My thanks to Anna for an entertaining party.

PS. Aside from being a very cool kind of cat, Cheshire is also a tasty – though very crumbly – kind of cheese. I actually find the cheese to be rather like the cat: it vanishes fairly quickly, but leaves a smile.

Summer day, time to vote for Mica again

With the summer solstice nineteen days away, it is dazzlingly bright outside and all of Oxford’s green spaces are strewn with sleeping, reading, shirtless, ice-cream eating, ultimate-playing students. The University Parks look like English Bay, in Vancouver, on a sunny summer’s afternoon. While I don’t overly appreciate being irradiated by the sun, myself, I enjoy the spirit that seems to accompany the collective exodus to the outside world: even if I am appreciating it through library windows.

On Mica’s ‘Hives’ video
On a different matter, my brother Mica’s video has made it to the quarter final of the ‘Google Idol’ competition. I highly recommend that people take the time to go vote. You can also leave him comments on his blog. He is winning by a rather smaller margin this time, so people are especially encouraged to have a look.

My post about the previous round is here.

For my part, I am going to read a few more articles before heading off to Anna’s birthday party, way down Abingdon Road. I will also continue to dream of Amsterdam, where I feel increasingly compelled to go for a week or so, once classes end. Ideally, it’s a trip that I can convince someone interesting, with whom I have a stable and engaging relationship, to accompany me on.