Travel – Page 48 – a sibilant intake of breath

Malta Trip Photos: First Installment

In some order determined by my patience and level of distraction by other ongoing concerns, I will be posting a collection of photos from the Malta trip here, as well as on my Photo.net page. Keep checking back for updates, if you’re interested.

The architecture in Malta frequently reflects its 98% Catholic population.

This shot was snapped between two chained and angry dogs, during our first hike.

Surprisingly elaborate steps down to a Maltese beach.

You can identify a traditional Maltese fishing boat by the Eyes of Horus near the bow, as well as a distinctive colour scheme.

Much of Malta seems to be either in repair or under construction.

From tiny island country to small island country

Well, I am back in England – where you can’t figure out how to turn on dryers and water heaters (the secret is often pulling on a rope hanging from some dark corner of the ceiling), where they will charge you as much for a half hour train ride as lunch and a whole day’s exploring in Gozo does, and where you will wrap your rain jacket around your shoulders while reading, despite being indoors, within the confines of a surprisingly sunny living room. That’s not meant as a series of complaints, of course. Indeed, I read about sixty pages of Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island while trying to dry my socks on an icy radiator and can therefore say that the above is positively chipper by comparison.

In a few hours, I am heading to Drury Lane to see The Producers with my mother before trekking myself and a great mass of dirty clothes to Marble Arch for the bus back to Oxford. One piece of welcome news, delivered by text message as my mother and I waited in line at passport control at Gatwick Airport, is that Louise will be in Oxford next week. Her presence will either mean that I will have someone to scrutinize my efforts at revising, even as I play the same role for her, or that I will have good company to look forward to in those periods when I will take breaks.

Tomorrow, it will take the greatest restraint to avoid spending hours sorting and editing photos. That is to say, I will almost certainly spend much of tomorrow doing exactly that. I will then work myself into a proper panic by looking through the dozens of exam related Word document attachments that are lurking in my email inbox. My mother is stopping by Oxford on Monday and spending that night, before returning to Vancouver the day after. Hopefully, she will have the chance to meet a few more friends I’ve made in the U.K., as further demonstration of how clever and interesting Oxford graduate students can be.

Final post from Malta

Happy Birthday Lauren Priest

We had our final Maltese walk today, along the many small bays of the southeast coast closest to Libya. The major path we followed was atop a long wall of white limestone cliffs. One got the impression that some excellent diving might be done along that coast. Partly because today is a national holiday, there were also a lot of locals swimming or just sitting in the sun in the bays. Along the ridge were hundreds more birds in tiny cages, being used by men in hides to lure in their fellows for entrapment and sale.

In addition to about 350 photos taken with my digital camera, I’ve nearly finished four rolls of film. In all probability, I will be able to have a few of the digital shots online tomorrow night, with more to follow on Sunday. The film has a longer journey to make, but will ultimately be online as well. I’ve been trading URLs with some of the other relatively avid photographers in our group.

Malta, in the end, was quite a pleasant place to visit. The appeal was athletic, aesthetic, and intellectual. This is definitely an appropriate time to make the trip over, given how blisteringly hot I expect it will be here in a few months. For those of the ‘long pants, a hat, and SPF 45 sunscreen’ school of solar appreciation, now is the time to take in the views without being overly exposed to the cancer ball in the sky.

The end of poverty

As Kerrie pointed out in a comment, it is unlikely that Jeffrey Sachs’ objective of ending extreme poverty by 2025 will be achieved. If his figures are correct, that is a fairly substantial indictment of the entire rich world. While I haven’t quite finished his book, his central claim is the much of the world is caught in a ‘poverty trap’ wherein it is too poor to begin the process of development. For about eighty billion dollars a year, sustained for a decade, that vicious cycle could be broken for all those inhabitants of the planet who presently live in extreme poverty. That’s about 10% of the GDP of Canada – a nation that is neither highly populous nor highly powerful. According to Sachs, if the OECD nations actually committed the 0.7% of GDP (seven cents on every ten dollars) that they have repeatedly promised for development assistance, the gap between what the developing nations can pay and the sums required would be filled.

Even if Sachs’ most ambitious proposals are beyond what is politically possible, the idea of a poverty trap is potentially an incredibly important one. If it can be shown that countries can be lifted out of extreme poverty through what amounts to a one time grant, the prospect for eliminating extreme poverty is very real. That conjecture is certainly one that could be evaluated at a smaller scale than the laudable worldwide plan that Sachs proposes.

In any case, it is an inspiring book and one that people interested in world development should take the time to read – even if they happen to be on vacation.

Gozo visit

Today’s expedition was to Gozo: the second largest island in Malta, reached by means of a twenty minute ferry ride. Like the island of Malta, Gozo is speckled with churches of a distinctive architectural style, each of which serves as the most visible component of the towns of golden-yellow stone that dot the coastlines and hilltops.

Unlike previous days, our Gozo tour happened primarily by minibus. This allowed us to see what seemed to be a good cross section of the island’s attractions, and left our legs feeling strangely fresh at the end of the day. We saw a number of churches, the citadel, and a remarkable natural feature on the coastline called the Azure Window. I will make sure to post some images of it once I return to Oxford. It consists of a pillar connected to the land by a flat slab. Beneath it, the surprisingly violent waters of the Mediterranean churn.

The tour group format of this whole trip is quite unfamiliar to me. I am learning that it definitely has advantages: primarily insofar as housing and transport are arranged. Never having to mess about learning how to get places and waiting for buses really increases what you can see over a period of time. There is also value in being able to converse with relative strangers who you will nonetheless see again and again over the course of the week. I tend to work my way to the front of the column of walkers, pause to take a photo or two, and end up at the back again. This gives me a regular rotation through the ranks of our fellow travellers.

March may be the ideal time to visit Malta. The attractions of the place – like those of Italy – are split between the aesthetic and the historical. It has certainly been very sunny here, though not nearly so warm as July or August threaten to be. As such, we’ve been reasonably comfortable walking the terraced hills: looking at the cacti and lizards, as well as stopping regularly at the innumerable cafes. Malta certainly has more to it than you expect of a sun-and-sand style destination, and it’s certainly helpful that absolutely everyone seems to speak good English.

I dispatched a second wave of postcards today. Unfortunately, I forgot that the only copy I have of most people’s addresses is the one in my iPod – which I decided at the last minute to leave in Oxford. Thankfully, to send cards to people in Oxford requires only memory of which college they are at. I will also send postcards to as many people as possible who emailed me their addresses when I was in Estonia. With 81 emails in my inbox (as well as more than 200 automatically marked as spam) and the internet expensive and frustrating to use in the hotel, new contributions are not being solicited at this time.

The next two days are the last real touring days. Each is meant to involve a fairly long walk, which I am keen on after a day with relatively little exercise in it. I am onto my third roll of film (the second roll of T-Max 400, with another roll of HD400 untouched) and I’ve filled half of the 512MB memory card in my camera. Obviously, only a fraction of those shots will ultimately be good enough to post, but I am already looking forward to picking out the best (and removing the irksome fungus blotches from the digital shots). Mostly, the photos have been of the landscapes, though anything distant tends to be obscured by haze. I’ve also been chasing around some of the local wildlife. The birds in tiny cages that the hunters use as lures are easy enough to snap a photo of, though the result is as depressing as you would expect.

One thing that I miss about self-directed travel is the freedom to choose where you eat. The simple lunches of cheese, bread, and tomatoes that my mother and I have been eating are probably tastier, and certainly better value, than the hotel meals, which are fairly generic and not very vegetarian friendly. It’s certainly decent fare, but obviously geared towards meat eating Brits who are not very adventurous.

My return to Oxford will probably be late on the night of April 1st, after I see The Producers in London with my mother. Anyone who is burning with anticipation for an email response or a photo posted to the blog had best find something else to occupy their attention until then.

On Valletta and Jeffrey Sachs

Happy Birthday Robert Wood

My mother and I visited the fortified port of Valletta today. Aside from walking about in the centre of town, the group also took a boat cruise along the edge of the harbour, which divides into narrow sections like the fingers of two hands. Like Tallinn, Valletta has been subjected to a great many attacks and invasions, from different directions and in different periods. The ongoing strategic importance of a useful pair of islands in the middle of the Mediterranean is thereby demonstrated.

The city itself reminds me a great deal of the quieter parts of Rome. The streets are narrow and flanked by multi-story buildings with shuttered windows. Wild cats are numerous and fearless: sunning themselves and adding to the menace posed to Maltese birds by the many shooting clubs you can hear off in the countryside. The main cathedral is quite an unusual building, with a floor plan markedly different from that of any Christian church I can recall seeing, as well as a profusion of patterned wall sections composed of deep grooves cut in stone.

Today involved much less walking than the first day – a shortfall that it seems will be remedied tomorrow as we walk to and around the old capital of Rabat. I hope that the many photos I took over the course of the boat ride and wandering in Valletta will turn out well.

While I have been in Malta, I have been reading Jeffrey Sachs’ The End of Poverty. While it’s not the most well written book – his excess of exclamation marks is especially annoying – it is nonetheless one that strikes me as extremely important. The idea that we could eliminate the kind of extreme poverty that cuts people off from any chance of improving their lot and that of their children by 2025 is a profoundly inspiring and exciting one. It’s the kind of idea you really wish could take hold within the corridors of power and the hearts and minds of people in the developed world. It’s the kind of project that is enormously more important than any one life, or even the entire history of any one country. The imperative is to act as a collective in a way that humanity has never managed: to conjure the mechanisms by which bold ideas and conceptions of justice can be converted into reality out in the world. To be shown fairly convincingly that we have the power to end untold misery around the globe creates a real obligation to make good on that potential. It’s an effort that I hope to become a part of.

Malta introduction

My mother and I have now passed an enjoyable day in Malta. We arrived yesterday evening and met with the group of mostly retirees with whom we will be walking over the course of the week. The first walk was today and, while it was not strenuous, it was nonetheless more challenging than I had expected. We got a couple of quite stunning hilltop views of this part of the island, as well as St. Paul’s Bay. Malta has the overall look of a Mediterranean country, with rough stone walls separating terraces and rows of somewhat parched hills extending down into bays. I expect that it will be a pleasant place to spend a week.

The group doing the harder hike seems to be largely composed of retired scientists and engineers. As such, I spent a good deal of the nine hours of the expedition talking about either engineering or photography. Everything from point and shoot consumer digital cameras to relatively ancient screw-mount Pentax SLRs were represented on the hike. Between the six or so avid photographers, these walks promise to be well documented. Personally, I used both my A510 for more documentary shots and my Elan 7N for the photos that I hope will prove artistic. Examples of both will doubtless find their way online. The vistas are quite nice and the architecture reminds me of Latin America: primarily because of the pastel colours and rectilinear forms.

The climate here is cooler than I expected, but certainly very sunny. After a few straight hours of walking in the sun, my brain felt positively cooked. I will probably need to regulate the temperature with some Maltese lager before I turn to my qualifying test notes. Surprisingly, the main local brew tastes a great deal like Sleeman’s Cream Ale, from back in Canada.

On one of today’s hilltops, we stopped to watch people arriving at a wedding reception. Between the appearance of the building – which declared itself to be a ducal villa – the stream of shiny black Mercedes automobiles, and the security men in suits around the perimeter, the whole affair had quite a godfather feel to it. Aside from some ludicrously dressed trumpeters, who looked as though they came from a bad imitation medieval restaurant in Tallinn, it certainly seemed a very classy affair. My pity goes out to all the foxes that died to adorn the necks of women standing in the hot sun.

With out buffet dinner starting in a few minutes, I should probably turn to academically related emails. Unfortunately, the computer in the hotel is too crippled in its functionality to be used to post images to the blog. That’s a bit surprising, since the place is far more upscale than the kind of accommodation I am accustomed to while travelling. My mother and I, for instance, have a better kitchen than the one in Library Court right in our room, as well as quite a nice view of the bay and the church on the next hill from our balcony.

First familial visit

My mother arrived in Oxford this evening – the first family member I’ve seen since I left Vancouver in September. We will be in Oxford until early Saturday morning, when we are heading to Gatwick for our flight to Malta.

By the time my mother had deposited bags in my room and the one in college where she is staying, it was already getting dark. We took a quick spin around Wadham – looking into the chapel and gardens – before walking past the Radcliffe and across the Magdalen Bridge for dinner at Kashmir, on the Cowley Road. Fortified with curry, we stopped for a pint at The Turf, sitting outside beside one of the coal fires while something like a bachelor’s party raged within.

Tomorrow, I am planning to give a couple of short walking tours for her. The first will sweep northward, past Rhodes House and the Natural History Museum, stopping at St. Antony’s and the Church Walk flat where I will live for the summer. Heading back through the university parks, we will stop by the department before returning to Wadham via New College. The second, longer, track will go into the Codrington and then University and Magdalen Colleges, before heading to the Christ Church Meadows through the botanical gardens. Stopping at Christ Church itself, we will then go have a look at the main quad of Nuffield. That should constitute a good introduction to Oxford that includes most of the places that are personally important to me.

Along with some new clothes, my mother brought other valuable provisions. Pens – including nine of the four colour pens that are my note taking staple – and bike accessories are both very useful, as I suspect the small sling style pack may prove. She also brought a travel alarm clock, wicking toque, and book by Jeffrey Sachs that was a gift from a family friend. Unpacking it all in my room in Library Court felt like a kind of belated Christmas. Once again, I feel very well equipped.

The upcoming Malta trip is increasingly exciting, even though Claire’s studiousness is making me anxious about the upcoming exam. I will be sure to acquire what books remain at the SSL to accompany me to this small Mediterranean country, though I have no doubts about how many of their pages will get flipped while I am there. The pressure of immanent examinations is good for young minds, anyhow.

PS. Congratulations to my friend Matthew Tindall, who got his iron ring today. In Canada, they are given to new engineers, as a symbol of responsibility, in reference to a bridge in Quebec that collapsed due to miscalculations. More information is here.

Sarah’s wedding

The whole experience surrounding Sarah’s wedding has been a valuable and enjoyable one. It was a pleasure to have the chance to witness her and Peter getting married. My thanks to them both for inviting me, as well as to Sarah’s parents for their extensive hospitality. I wish Peter and Sarah the most enriching, prosperous, and enjoyable of future lives together.

I arrived in Chichester on Saturday more than three hours before the service began. It had been my intention to ensure that – even if I missed a train or something else went wrong – I will still get to the wedding on time. The early arrival gave me the chance to explore the city a bit, as well as have my suit dry-cleaned, as seemed appropriate. As everyone who attended will surely recall, the day was as cold as it was brilliantly sunny, especially after we emerged from the church for the reception. By the time the professional group photos were being taken, the sunlight had a lovely golden hue that seemed to suit the occassion.

The service was held at St. Richard’s Church and was markedly more religious than the only other wedding I’ve attended. There was a good deal of prayer, Bible reading, and the singing of hymns. I particularly enjoyed those, despite how I had never heard any of them before. Attending the ceremony was a surprisingly moving event. While I had always recognized its significance, I didn’t anticipate the extent that it would affect me personally. The subsequent reception included good food, good wine, entertaining speeches, and a celtic band that played rather more songs that I recognized than were included in the service. It was nice to meet some of Sarah’s other friends, as well as her husband’s.

I’ve known Sarah for five years now, since we were students together at the University of British Columbia. She was starting her master’s degree at the time, and I was in my first year as an undergraduate. Since then, I have come to very much value and appreciate her friendship, as well as the correspondence we have exchanged. Hopefully, freed of the burdens of wedding planning, she and Peter will have the chance to come visit me in Oxford at some point soon after they return from their preliminary honeymoon in Menorca. Sarah should be finishing her doctorate (making her and her husand into Dr. and Dr. Webster) around the same time as I will be completing my M.Phil. I hope that I will get a few chances to see them both over that period, after which I have no real idea of where in the world I will be.

Arundel

After spending the night at Sarah’s parents’ house, her father suggested that, instead of spending a few hours in Chichester before my train, he drop me off in Arundel. Very hospitably, he showed me a number of interesting places within what seems to be both a beautiful and quite historic area, and even picked me up to drive me to Chichester in time for my return to Oxford. The day was enormously better spent than it would have been in some coffee shop in Chichester, and I got a chance to get to know Sarah’s father a bit. The wedding was a reminder of how little I know her friends and family.

Arundel itself is quite a stunning place. A river runs past the town and, by following its winding and rush-lined banks, you can get a sweeping exposure to the countryside that ends at a pub called the Black Rabbit, where I had lunch. Additionally, the streets of the town itself are worth exploring: particularly since they contain a number of top-notch outdoor equipment stores. While it was surprising to find them there, it was a nice reminder of Vancouver and the wonders of Mountain Equipment Co-Op.

Both during the reception and in Arundel, where I happened to run into them, I spoke with several members of Sarah’s extended family who live in Richmond, a suburb of Vancouver. I remember Sarah visiting them fairly frequently while she was in Vancouver, but I never met them during that period. I expect that their exceptionally photogenic daughter is on several hundred memory cards by now.

Unfortunately, the whole weekend was relatively unsuccessful photographically. I didn’t want to make myself obtrusive during the wedding and reception – which were both professionally photographed anyhow – and the tendency of the A510 to blow out highlights is annoyingly and frequently manifest in the outdoor photos I took. Several people have already indicate that they will send me some of their photos, which will hopefully turn out better than mine did.

Off to Chichester

Let it be known, far and wide, that 5:45am is a beast of a time, and something I would not lightly wish upon others. On Sunday, I will let you know of how the trip went.

Ides of March, safely passed

First Easter break expedition imminent

My train to Chichester – via Basingstoke and Cosham – leaves Oxford at 7:15am on Saturday. Despite the best intentions of shifting my sleep schedule to make the requisite 6:00am wakeup more tolerable, I have been pushed further and further towards the pattern that I can only conclude is natural for me at present. That is to say, going to sleep sometime after 2:00am and then waking up at about the same point after 10:00am. Without classes or lectures in the morning or the burning shame of the scout discovering you still asleep, there is little that is able to propel me into wakefulness before then. Even my best efforts at setting the alarm on my phone and then hiding it across the room with a can of highly caffeinated energy drink have met with no success whatsoever.

In the end, it’s not much of a problem. I will have plenty of time to sleep on the train.

I am meant to arrive in Chichester three hours before the wedding and it seems probable to me that I will be able to walk to St. Richard’s Church, wherever it may be, from the train station in a fairly small fraction of that period of time. After the wedding and the reception, I will have most of Sunday to spend exploring the area, prior to my 4:30pm train back to Oxford. Is anyone familiar with the region? If so, is there anything you would suggest having a look at? The distance to the seashore seems modest, so I may go have a look at that.

Where there’s smoke

After five months of exposure to the social lives of Oxford students, my leather jacket is now thoroughly saturated with the smell of tobacco smoke. Despite efforts to air it out – sometimes even hanging it directly in front of an open window where I induce air flow – the scent seems to have become fairly deeply ingrained. Maybe entombing it in a box with some baking soda or activated charcoal for a while would be more effective.

The psychological impact of wearing the jacket has become odd. My earliest associations with tobacco have to do with somewhat threatening, carpeted places where I wasn’t happy to be. It’s a feeling that lingers whenever the stale smell of absent but infused smoke is present. The odour is certainly not one that I enjoy, or an happy to have lingering around me. It seems to be much more easily and thoroughly integrated into things made of natural substances. My wool and leather clothing has all taken on some measure of the smell, while no article of clothing made from artificial fibers has done so to an overly great extent. It all makes me disappointed about how months still remain before the smoking ban in British pubs comes into effect.

I have set up a temporary fix for the Blogger images problem. For the present, I will host the images on the BlogSpot servers, using a different account. Once the bug is fixed, I will repost the images on my FTP server. [19 March: This has now been done.]
I got more useful mail today: information on the Malta adventure, from my mother, along with details on the next student loan installment. Once this arrives, I should have this year and about 20% of next year covered. Still waiting on word from the Chevening Scholarship, Armand Bombardier Scholarship, Canadian Centennial Scholarship, and the Oxford Overseas Research Scholarship. The next batch of applications goes out in April.
In terms of blogging and being on instant messengers, internet activity among my friends in Canada seems to be markedly down. Is this because nice spring weather is starting to appear?
Did you know that light bulbs in England don’t screw into their sockets, like their North American equivalents? Along with running at twice the voltage, they also have somewhat fearsome looking sockets with large bare electrodes spring-loaded to hold the bulb in place.