Category: Travel

My actual travels, those I aspire to, and those of others

Six days to Turkey

Back Quad, Wadham College

I am now thoroughly excited about the upcoming trip to Istanbul. Before starting My Name is Red, my general notions about the Mediterranean had me expecting it to be fairly warm, if not as much so as Malta was in March. Now, I am expecting the real possibility of snowfall. Judging by my weather widget, the temperatures there are not incomparable to those in Oxford.

One more seminar and two reasonably short papers to write, largely on the basis of reading that has already been done: it will be quite a relief to have finished all elements of the Developing World seminar, with the exception of the three hour exam at the end of Trinity.

It would be easier to think of things to say if I weren’t so utterly exhausted. Hopefully, a bit of sleep before the OUSSG meeting will make my brain feel less as though there is a sea urchin knocking back and forth between my ears.

PS. Many thanks to Claire, who kindly took me for lunch at St. Cross today. For the uninitiated, it is widely believed to be the best lunch at any college. Quite unexpectedly, eating there also led to my seeing Dennis Danielson – the instructor for my Honours Milton course back at UBC. Of all the instructors I had at UBC, he seems the sort who could most easily cross over into Oxford style academia.

On the coming month

Wadham College crest, in dark brush strokes

In two weeks’ time, Michaelmas Term will have come to an end, I will be 66% through the academic portion of my Oxford experience, I will have turned 23, and I will be on my way to Turkey with my father. The last of those is definitely the most exciting, though I still have not done any real background research. With lots of reading to be done for every Thursday, a thesis meeting with Dr. Hurrell coming up on Friday, and other tasks looming in all corners of the town, it can be difficult to devote energy to anything else.

That may partially explain all my recent contemplation of being in other places – a phenomenon similar to that which I experienced during the short, cold days of this period last year. At least there is no profoundly flawed statistics course happening at the same time, this year.

I hope the new Canadian High Commissioner to London (James Wright) decides to perpetuate his predecessor Mel Cappe’s tradition of inviting Canadian grad students in the UK for a Christmas party in the official residence. I got my invitation at around this time last year, and had a good time in London at the start of December. It was my first trek out of Oxford, since first arriving from Vancouver.

No plans yet, for Christmas. My father is returning to Vancouver on the 14th of December and – barring the need to work on my thesis – I have no other commitments.

PS. Sorry to not have written something more interesting. My brain has been barely functioning all day, after staying up until after 4:00am having an extended philosophical discussion with Tristan. I really need to start enforcing a disengagement with MSN after 1:00am, no matter how interesting ongoing conversations may be.

Antipodean thoughts

Probably prompted by the miserable weather in the past few days, I have been looking through photos online from the Burning Man Festival. For those who haven’t heard of it, the festival is an eight day long event in Black Rock Desert in Nevada. It involves the creation of a temporary city and lots of crazy art and expression. This year’s theme – about the relationship between nature and humanity – sounds especially pertinent. If nothing else, it would provide some superb photographic opportunities.

I think it would be an awesome road trip objective: especially if the cadre of those going included Tristan and Meaghan Beattie.

[Update: 4:30pm] The more I read about this, the more intensely I want to go. Who else would be up for it and thinks they could spare the time at the end of this summer? It runs from Monday, August 28th to Monday, September 4th. Jonathan? Alison? Kate? Neal? Lauren? Sarah P? Lindi? Sasha W? Others? I would be keen to go with any/all of you.

Carbon offsets

Bug on a flower

Cycling home with a £5 quarter-kilo of Fair Trade coffee, I found myself thinking about carbon offsets. These are financial instruments in which an individual or group pays someone else to reduce the carbon emissions they would otherwise have produced, so as to offset the buying individuals own carbon emissions. Al Gore used them to make the production of An Inconvenient Truth carbon neutral. They were also used by The Economist to make their Survey on Climate Change (Subscription required) carbon neutral. At the end of the opening article, they explain:

This survey, which generated about 118 tonnes of carbon dioxide from flights, car journeys, paper production, printing and distribution, has been carbon-neutralised through the Carbon Neutral Company. The cost was £590; the money was spent on capturing methane from an American mine.

According to the calculator at climatecrisis.org (the site set up by Al Gore to accompany his book and film), my annual carbon emissions are about 1.6 tons, including two trans-Atlantic flights a year. Not having a car and living in a shared dwelling makes a big difference, even if all our power is coming from the huge coal plant at Didcot.

At the rate The Economist paid, I could offset that for £8. It might be a worthwhile thing to include in my thesis. My only problem with it all is that it is hard to tell which of the many websites that sell offsets actually provide what they claim. There has been a kerfuffle recently about dodgy wind power cards. Does anyone know of a reputable place where I can offset those 1600 kilos of carbon? This site looks like a possibility.

Obviously, paying for the offsetting of your own carbon isn’t an adequate response to the issue of climate change (any more than buying Fair Trade coffee is an adequate response to global poverty), but it couldn’t hurt. It is also a potentially useful demonstration of how seriously you take the problem

[Update: 5:00pm] According to the company The Economist used, one round-trip flight from London to Vancouver generates 1.7 tonnes of CO2. As such, it would seem appropriate to offset at least four or five tonnes a year, to cover electricity, heating (however St. Antony’s does it), and travel.

There and back again, in defiance of road work

Cherub decorating a London building

All told, today’s London expedition went very well. As always, it was a great pleasure to spend some time with Sarah and Peter Webster. Conversations with them are always engaging, and there is enormous value in spending time with an old friend, especially when you live in such a socially disconnected place. My wanderings around SoHo beforehand were also worthwhile, though I was able to resist the urge to return to Oxford with several kilos of tofu, as is my normal practice. (To initiate such aggression in the ongoing contest for space in our fridge would be neither polite nor prudent.) The weather was ideal for London: cool enough to be comfortable, overcast but not raining, and everywhere imbued with nice, soft, photogenic light.

The William Townsend art show was also great fun. I had never seen his work properly on display before, and I was glad to see such an excellent and varied selection. One autumnal scene was particularly fine, though the £10,000 asking price is a few notches above my art budget for this quarter. As is the norm for events organized by Ian and his wife, the collection of people present was highly diverse. I spoke for a while with an economist whose textbook I used during my short but interesting period in UBC’s honours economics program. Also, three members of the gallery staff, at length, a graduate student working on medieval Latin and a fictitious saint, and many others besides. I regretted the need to be prudent and catch a relatively early bus back to Oxford. I have two presentations to draft tonight, on the off chance that I am called on to answer the assigned questions in seminar tomorrow. Since I am meeting Margaret for coffee in the morning, my normal span for such final preparations is spoken for.

I promise to write something substantive soon. I have acquired 31 emails requiring responses between the time when I left the Apple store (around 1pm) and the present moment.

Morocco Hitch update

Remember when I mentioned hitchhiking to Morocco for charity? Here is the information page from Link Community Development, which is now accepting registrations. The actual hitch takes place at the beginning of March. For me, this is far from ideal: my thesis is due on April 22nd and taking five days off to travel to Morocco (probably longer, because I need to budget extra time to be sure of catching a flight back) may be a tad reckless. That said, I remain fairly tempted. Such opportunities do not arise often. Those not terrorized by thesis timelines are very much encouraged to consider this adventure.

The registration deadline is February 1st, with a discount for registering by the end of December. The cost is £25 for normal registration, with £5 off for early registrants. You need a team of 2-3. Somewhat controversially, it must include at least one male participant.

Great circles and airline routes

When flying between western Canada and England, it sometimes seems surprising that such a northward trajectory is followed. On my way back to Vancouver, for instance, we were treated to an aerial view of Iceland’s unique landscape. Of course, the reason for the path is that the spherical character of the earth is not well reflected in standard map projections. The most famous – the Mercator projection – is arranged such that a straight line drawn on the map will correspond to a course that actually passes through each point on the earth depicted. This kind of map is called ‘conformal.’ As such, the notorious distortion (enlarging the apparent size of polar regions while reducing that of equatorial ones) is an emergent property of its design.

That said, the most efficient course between any two points on the globe is probably not the one that connects them on a Mercator projection line of the shortest distance. Mathematically, the most direct course is based on what is called a ‘great circle.’ That is to say, imagine marking your present location and your destination using a marker on an orange. The line you could draw all the way around, intersecting both, is the great circle. The line segment between the points is the shortest distance that can be transcribed between them on a sphere (or near-sphere, in the case of the earth).

Unless you are going due north, due south, or straight around the equator, actually following a great circle path requires constantly changing your heading. This is because of how the line you are on does not maintain a constant bearing with respect to either magnetic or true north. In the days before computers and long haul air travel, few people would probably have bothered to calculate great circle courses. A more venerable option can be found in the Rhumb line. Now, GPS and autopilot systems have made doing so all but automatic. Hence the genesis of those gracefully arcing lines printed in your in-flight magazine.

On a separate note, the precision of modern location and navigation systems in aircraft can sometimes cause problems. (Via Philip Greenspun)

Turkey in December

In December, my father and I are planning to spend a bit less than two weeks in Turkey. The prospect is very exciting to me, for various reasons. It will be a chance to spend time with a member of my family, which is always very welcome when they are so distant. It will be my first substantial foray outside of North American and Western Europe since I went to Costa Rica when I was 15 or 16, though perhaps Estonia and Finland counted as well. Also, it should contribute some diversity to my growing collection of travel photographs.

Turkey is an interesting country for many reasons: diverse, on the cusp between Europe and the Middle East, and quite politically important in the contemporary world. Turkish history, both in the post-Ottoman period and under previous arrangements, definitely warrants investigation. EasyJet flights from London Luton to Istanbul also help make it an easy and affordable to visit.

Has anyone been to Turkey recently? We have not yet decided where we will go, except that we will be spending at least a few days in Istanbul. Taking train to somewhere less urban is part of the plan, though we have not yet decided where. Also, do people have any fiction or non-fiction books particularly related to Turkey that they recommend?

The power of place

Capilano Canyon, near the Cable Pool

The contrast between the two weeks in Vancouver and my two days back here has amply demonstrated the simple fact that, fine a place as it is to take a degree in, I couldn’t actually live happily over an indefinite period in England.

Indeed, I would have a great deal of trouble anywhere that does not approximate the most essential features of Vancouver-ness: natural beauty (ideally, mountains), certain styles of food (ideally including inexpensive sushi), the acceptability of a Gore-Tex shell as a constant item of clothing, multiculturalism, reasonably good prices and customer service, good public transport, and myriad other factors that are less distinctly noticed than felt and appreciated at an intuitive level. In the end, it comes down to feeling properly yourself in a place or not. I have that feeling in Vancouver, I quickly had it in Montreal, parts of Toronto (Kensington Market) can evoke it, and I felt it in much of Dublin.

Being in a place that challenges you is certainly an essential part of education, but when the time comes to choose a place for the long haul (provided you have that luxury), the way to do it must be through proximity to friends, family, and those other things that define a place as one’s own.

All that said, it’s time to get back to cracking rocks for the thesis, and sorting things out for the upcoming optional paper (not a paper at all, but a series of seminars, for my fellow bewildered North Americans).