Daily updates – Page 160 – a sibilant intake of breath

Oxford exploration

This morning, I was woken by the 9:00am booming of our local clock tower. Since it was already the time when I was meant to meet Sheena and Emily to start the Oxford tour for Martin Ziguele, the former Prime Minister of the Central African Republic, I had to roll straight out of bed and into a suit: arriving outside St. Antony’s at six past nine.

The tour itself was very generic: Christ Church meadows, the Radcliffe Square, and up Parks Road. One notable sight was an actually Greylag gosling, beside the Isis. It was your stereotypical yellow puffball, and the parents visibly and audibly disapproved of my attempts to photograph it. Emily and I made efforts to describe things in French, where feasible, and impart some of the anecdotal Oxford history that gets absorbed by all students here.

In the afternoon, I took another bike ride out into the village-strewn countryside surrounding Oxford. This time, I headed southward, across Magdalen Bridge and way down the Cowley Road. I went past the BMW plant at the end of the Cowley Road, then up the hill near Garsington (N51 43.191, W001 09.678). From Church Walk to there and back is 22km.

He hill didn’t offer as nice a view as the hills around Bath did, but it was nonetheless the most pronounced elevation I’ve climbed near Oxford. In response to Tristan’s post requesting top speeds, I made an attempt to see how fast I could go before my gears became more or less useless, on a slight downslope in the countryside south of Oxford. I managed 48.2km/h, which isn’t bad for a bicycle.

PS. I need to remember to email Peter Dauvergne about my thesis idea. Since I need to go a presentation on it in our methods seminar next Tuesday, I need to have a decent idea of the important methodological questions involved.

Disjointed thoughts

I don’t really know what to say about today, so I will talk about something more general instead. This term, it seems as though we are being presented with our first opportunity to take some initiative. That’s to say, elements of the workload are less focused on the completion of specific tasks and more tuned towards the advancement of general research. If I move quickly and find the right people, this might be a chance to step up involvement with the Environmental Change Institute. After today, I feel as though I need to be more aggressive in my questioning, when it comes to my thesis topic. In particular, I need to consider the very limited nature of some of the case studies I am considering. To say something really important, I need to do more.

Having just come back from the strategic studies dinner and presentation, I find myself hopelessly muddled. Somehow, it all combined to confuse things that had seemed fairly clear before. I am sorry to be vague, but I can’t even really comment on what’s eliciting such opaque responses. Since I need to be up early, I will read some Kerouac and go to sleep, rather than really contemplating it now. It feels like an idea that needs time to cook.

Emily and I set off fairly early tomorrow morning.

Technical difficulties

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to post anything for today. Firstly, that’s because I was unusually busy. Secondly, my internet connection at Church Walk has failed: probably because I don’t have user credentials at St. Antony’s and they reviewed network access at the start of the term. Hopefully, I can sort that out today, along with learning how I did on the QT and picking up my bike from the first month maintenance that Beeline Cycles includes with bikes they sell.

Despite having no time to get into details (I need to finish a presentation on the importance of nuclear weapons to the Cold War staying cold), I can assert that yesterday was an excellent day.

At the cusp of a new term

Trinity term officially begins today, which means half again as much reading and paper writing as has taken place so far, all in the course of the next eight weeks. The core seminar for this term is the development of the international system from 1950 to present, which basically means great power diplomatic and military history. I think we’re all appreciative of the fact that it’s territory we’ve basically all covered to one extent or another before. You could hardly get this far if you hadn’t.

Looking back over the break, it has been quite a good one. I travelled to Chichester, Arundel, and Malta. I saw Sarah get married. I spent a week with my mother. I met a number of new and interesting people. I read some good books. I applied (unsuccessfully) for a number of scholarships, as well as submitting a paper to the MIT International Review. I wrote the qualifying test, in fairly respectable fashion. I moved to a new place. I cycled a few hundred kilometres, in aggregate. That’s pretty good for six weeks.

New duties

Along with the Vice-Presidential position, I have been given responsibility for the Strategic Studies Group website. I can already tell that it is orders of magnitude more complex than any website I’ve ever operated before. Looks like I will spend some portion of the next year learning how to use MySQL databases and the various content-management applications that keep the thing going. If all goes wrong, I made a full backup before I touched anything – a very time consuming task when there are thousands of sub-directories.

The first step, of course, is to quickly learn the nuts and bolts of posting informational updates. Later, I can really get acquainted with the innards of the site and the way it operates. Despite the fact that it doesn’t seem to use much more bandwidth than a sibilant intake of breath, they have an absurdly large amount allotted.

[6:03pm] Within hours of taking over the OUSSG site, I managed to crash it completely, by not understanding the way the content management system, the SQL databases, and the FTP server talk to one another. I managed to fix it by manually editing a configuration file, since the way I screwed it up completely disabled the web-based CMS. I am going to leave the whole thing alone for a while now…

Summary of summery pursuits

From late afternoon to early morning, today was a social whirlwind. I bumped into Lucy and Leonora on my way to Edwina’s sendoff. From there, I ducked out of The Turf for a bit to watch croquet in New College with Madgdy and Rob Moore. Then, I briefly went back to The Turf before heading to St. Cross College to watch more croquet and drink Pimms, in what I am told is an Oxonian tradition. It’s probably the influence of Dune upon me, but with her pashmina and blue eyes, Edwina had more than a bit of the Fremen look to her. She leaves for Australia tomorrow.

Later, I attended a dinner party at my new flat. All good fun, we listened to my ‘Demure’ playlist on the iPod Shuffle while eating, drinking, and exchanging stories. I appreciate the extent to which living with Kai and Alex draws me into new social environments, and into the company of new people.

That said, the party is ongoing, and it is anti-social to be elsewhere. Tomorrow, I delve into Kerouac, as well as taking over responsibility for the Strategic Studies Group website.

PS. This web comic I discovered today Diesel Sweeties will probably amuse those who make no attempt to suppress their nerdy tendencies. There are robots, and characters rendered as though on the SNES.

PPS. For about a week now, about five people a day have been finding the blog by clicking this picture of Tallinn at night when it comes up on Google Image Search. It isn’t a terribly good photo. I wish some of my better work was being showcased.

Well endowed with fiction

With the completion of the exam, I find that my way of thinking about things quite unrelated to it has changed rather a lot. A kind of generalized urgency that had been prevalent before has softened a bit, leaving me more willing to take things as they come. I used my book token from one of the brain scan experiments to buy two books this afternoon: Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. I hope to get a good start on both over the weekend, as well as finishing my re-reading of Dune and The Skeptical Environmentalist. Reading fiction is one of the best things about times not yet endangered by papers and exams; of course, I’ve not been known to cease completely even during such times.

Our respite from schoolwork is not destined to be long-lived. Lectures resume on Monday and on Tuesday, we have our first core seminar discussion for the history from 1950 to present segment. I am told it’s on nuclear deterrence: an especially appropriate topic given the ongoing kerfuffle about Iran.

PS. Those who have not yet seen it should check out my brother Mica’s White Rabbit video. You can leave comments about it on his blog.

Housewarming party

The housewarming party was a great success. The timing was good, the attendance was good, and the environment was good. At least half the program showed up, and probably a rather higher fraction. Food and drink were consumed; the completion of the QT was celebrated; and people interacted with one another in a way well outside the academic. In particular, it was interesting to meet the significant others of a number of fellow members of the program: Iason, Emily, and Tarun – for instance.

I am sure the gathering could have been a fine sociological opportunity, but I was far too entangled to reach any judgment. I just hope that people enjoyed themselves.

PS. There’s something about playing a Melissa Ferrick song in the UK and having it recognized that is profoundly cool. In the end, it is the unexpected that propels us forward in the social universe.

Preparations complete

Living in a place with a proper kitchen has already taught me just how much better grilled cheese sandwiches with fried and marinated tofu are than the sort assembled on your desk, beside the computer. Like cleaning my room or sorting things, preparing relatively elaborate food (by my standards) is one way to escape the anxious clock-watching that my pre-exam hours tend to centre around.

During the last few hours, I have found myself at a bit of a loss, in terms of deciding what to study. Normally, I would be studying specific facts I thought likely to appear on multiple-choice or short-answer questions, but this test will include neither. You cannot cram broad themes and historical periods.

I really dislike the nights before exams: they are one of those grim times in life – like during exams themselves – when you are excessively aware of your position in time. In almost all circumstances where that is the case, it is because something at least potentially bad is about to happen. The feeling of being inescapably fixed in a constrained time-stream can effectively strip away the sense of being prepared or capable. Likewise, the feeling of being exceptionally awake contrasts unnervingly with my standard perpetual quasi-tiredness.

I should go for a walk.

[8:10pm] After a long and aggressive bike ride in the drizzle, I feel dramatically better. I headed north up Woodstock Road, eventually turning west onto a road that took me to Cassington. From there, I followed steeples along a much smaller road until I was in Yarnton. By then, I was pretty thoroughly lost – and yet, I sensed Oxfordness to the South and managed to get home before it was even really dark. The bit between Cassington and Yarnton – which you can see on this Google map – was definitely the nicest. It was the kind of countryside that makes one think about stealth camping, of the kind Meghan Mathieson pioneered with me.

Soon to be examined

The second-to-last pre-QT day has passed. It’s a good sign that I find myself going over things again, somewhat uncertain of how I should spend the rest of the time. That I am doing so seems to be an indication that I am fairly well covered, already. Thankfully, none of the examiners is a historian. As such, we are likely to get less badly criticized for failing to mention this or that theory or historian. As with the theory section, it is argumentation that is crucial.

Since a big part of the test is rhetoric, the wisest course seems to be to choose the questions to which you can give the most elegant answer – rather than the ones you know most about. That is why I am studying everything in reasonable detail – with a focus on times, countries, and questions that interest me – rather than preparing specific topics in hopes that they will appear.

Seeing Claire again this morning was really good. The return of friends to Oxford is the best thing about classes resuming.

A quick appeal to fellow students

Regarding the gathering of MPhil students on Thursday, after the QT: neither me, Alex, or Kai have a real stereo. If someone could lend us something with enough power to provide music for the party, we would be grateful. We have lots of music, but are distinctly lacking in watts.

iPod the Fourth arrived today; may it outlast its predecessors. I appreciate that it is actually possible to update two iPods at once, using my iBook. Even with the 20GB version available again, I suspect I will use the 1GB Shuffle frequently. The big advantages of the Shuffle are its size and simplicity: an excellent second iPod.
Today also brought the results of the interviewing section of the qualitative methods exam: which I passed, with nice things said about my work.
The clock tower near out flat tolls 156 times a day. I quite like the sound and experience of it; it makes me feel more in control of where I am, in relation to all temporal events.

One orbital notch

One year ago, today, I held my graduation barbecue in North Vancouver. Much like my departure party, it was a fun combination of good friends, nice weather, and satisfying food and drink. Most of the people who attended are now in Vancouver, though Nick Sayeg is in Australia, Tristan is in Toronto, and Gabe is in Helsinki. Karen Furstrand was there.Two years ago, today, Meghan and I were working on Milton essays and geocaching all over the campus of the University of British Columbia. Then, as now, exams were a few days away. Then, as now, I was especially worried about whether my knowledge of 20th century history would prove adequate.

Three years ago, today, I was incensed by the low quality of teaching in my comparative politics class, as taught by a pair of married professors at UBC. I noted with approval that the quality of teaching at a graduate program in the UK would be better, and that I would appreciate the chance to live for a couple of years outside of Canada.

The public face of my life has been remarkably consistent, though the hints and shadows of crisis and discord are in that listing, as well.