Back in the UK

Hello again everyone, this time from England.

Yes, those two weeks have elapsed, somehow.  Hmm, how did I spend them?  I picked up my new raincoat, which Marmot kindly replaced for me since my old one was losing its lining and therefore its waterproof nature. It's awesome that they provide that level of service, but I have to admit that part of me was sad to lose the jacket I wore nearly every day of my first year at Cambridge.  I finished (or at least gave up on) my Kemble paper.  I ate out at favorite restaurants and got in one day of quilting, which I haven't done in a year.  And let's not forget watching Stanford's football team mop the floor with San Jose State, 57-3.  That was a good last day in town.

On Sunday, I had a flawless travel day, which it's important to remember does happen sometimes.  My flight from San Jose to Chicago was early leaving and had a tailwind, giving me plenty of time to mosey down to the next gate, and then we were nearly an hour early getting into London!  Oh, and FYI: on Sunday of Labor Day weekend, a small airport like SJC has no one in it.  There was literally no one behind me in the security line the entire time.  When I arrived in London, I made my way to a hostel I like and met up with a couple friends for dinner.  Then I managed to stay awake until a decent hour before crashing.

It's now morning, and I'm sitting in the hostel lounge looking out at the rain, wondering whether I should make an effort to go see/do something before taking a train to Exeter.  I gotta say, the weather is not helping soften the blow of leaving home...  Hopefully, a good week of conference and travel will cheer me up.

Many worlds

It may be a small world, but it never ceases to amaze me how many incredibly different and distinct worlds it contains.  I just got back from nine days in Fiji, where the schedule most days looked like this:

7:00am -- Wake up
8:00 -- Breakfast as a group
9:30 -- Children's/family snorkel trip
10:30 -- Adult snorkel trip (sometimes only one of these trips)
11:30 -- Shower off
noon -- Lunch as a group
afternoon -- Private group snorkel, scuba dive, or lounging by the pool
3:30 -- Tea time by the pool, check email on iPod
6:15 -- presentation by the marine biologist
7:00 -- Dinner as a group
9:00 -- Bedtime

Granted, this was at a resort and therefore isn't most people's normal life.  However, there exists a place on this planet where people wake up every day under thatched roofs to tropical weather and could walk right out into an ocean filled with colorful fish.  Meanwhile, in Palo Alto, people are looking out the office window at the leafy trees of suburbia and calculating the traffic on the roads, possibly looking up what classic movie is showing at the Stanford Theatre that night.  At the same time, students in Cambridge might be fighting through the tourist crowds, zipping past 700-year-old buildings on their bikes.  I'm not even mentioning the even more extreme versions of life that people experience in a given day -- my personal experience is enough to make me shake my head in wonder.

Now that I've returned to the U.S., I'm starting to write my conference paper on good old J.M. Kemble.  I haven't read everything I intended to, but I already find that I'm going to have too much material for a 20-minute talk.  I'll have to force myself to tell a focused story rather than try to spew all the juicy quotes I collected.

It's strange to think that in exactly two weeks I will be back in England...  I find that when I'm in one place, I feel completely, naturally at home, and the other feels a bit like a dream.  I'm also anticipating a blistering pace for the month of September.  Once I finish this conference, I'll take another little weekend trip with my sister-in-law's sister (let's just say friend), then I'll have to read like crazy for another talk on the 24th, meanwhile expanding my Kemble report for an essay competition whose deadline is the 30th.  These are all things I'm excited to do, I just wish I had double the time for each of them.  Once we hit October, a new strangeness will occur: new incoming students to meet and make friends with.  Some of my friends from last year will still be around, and some will not.  The MCR seemed like a fairly cohesive group, so it's hard to picture the same thing happening again, but I'm sure it does every year.  Meanwhile, back to the grindstone!

Summer update

I started this blog primarily to give those who were curious a glimpse of my life abroad -- a response to the impossible, flustering question, "How's Cambridge?!"  I also like that I'm writing down the medium-sized picture of what's going on every week or so, because while I keep a diary, it's mostly ramblings about how I'm feeling, not information that I'll want to remember later.  In any case, though, I don't feel comfortable just leaving the blog alone while I'm at home, so here's a little update on how I passed July.

As you know, I've been reading up on my new buddy J.M. Kemble (see previous post).  This involves cycling out to the Stanford library a few times a week and reading in the Lane Reading Room.

It's funny, but when I walked in for the first time this summer, I was staggered -- almost offended -- by how much empty, open space there is between all the furniture in there.  I hadn't thought about this before, but the Cambridge libraries pretty much all cram books and bookcases as tightly as possible into the space they have.  Stanford's space felt like luxury indeed.

Dear, quick-tempered Kemble continues to amuse and enlighten.  I get the sense that he would have been a fun guy to invite to dinner.  No doubt I'm just indulging a fantasy, but it's fun to get to know someone from the past to whom few people really pay attention.  I feel like we're buddies in a way that, I suspect, I will never feel about Tennyson.  Maybe that's because T. could be grouchy and arrogant, but I think also because he's such common property that I can't get a sense of intimacy.

I've also started a bit of reading for a different presentation, which I learned recently I'll be giving at the end of September.  This one is just an interdisciplinary colloquium within Cambridge, so I'm less nervous about it.  The topic was so precisely on something I could talk about that I was pretty confident I'd get it, but it's always a great ego boost to get accepted.  Plus, it gives me the chance to essentially do a book report on something I have to read for my dissertation anyway.  I'll bore you with details another time.

The other big time sink has been learning to scuba dive.  I'm taking a trip to Fiji in less than a week, and I was informed by good authorities that I simply could not go without scuba diving.  So twice a week I've reported to the local dive shop, where paper tests and pool sessions prepared me for the ocean dives this last weekend.  Said dives took place in Monterey Bay, in the cold, cold Pacific Ocean.  I was fairly nervous, but my instructor was a real pro, and there were only three students, so everything was very calm and controlled.  And having been to the Monterey Bay Aquarium many, many times, noodling around underwater was just like being inside the aquarium.  What's scary about that?

So now I am a certified scuba diver -- hurray!  I've been so distracted with that process and with reading that the trip itself has snuck up on me.  Only a few more days before I leave, so it's time to start packing!

Summer Research

Cambridge friends might be under the impression that I'm whiling away the lazy summer days in Californian sunshine, feasting on succulent strawberries as I lounge in the garden.  Well, there is sunshine, but cold breezes have temporarily banished my shorts.  And I am feasting on the finest berries that Whole Foods can provide (mostly blackberries) -- but my summer is hardly lazy.

This is because I (perhaps foolishly) submitted a proposal for a conference paper on a person I didn't know much about.  It was accepted -- hurray!  But now I have to learn all about this guy, mostly reading everything he ever wrote.  I'm actually enjoying it a great deal, but time is of the essence in digesting a lot of material so that I can form some kind of argument or summary.

Meet John Mitchell Kemble.

  

He was part of the same secret society as Tennyson at Trinity College, Cambridge.  He's considered the first modern scholar of Old English, and he did a lot to bring good practices to translation and interpretation.  (First scholarly translation of Beowulf, and only the second one ever in England!)  He also didn't mince words when he thought other scholars had blundered.  This makes for some moments of pretty amusing reading.  For example:

"I beg once and for all to say that Norse forms have nothing whatever to do with Anglo-Saxon inscriptions.  It was by trusting to Norse forms that Thorkelin misread every line and mistranslated nearly every word of Beowulf.  It is by trusting to Norse forms that Dr. Repp has plunged himself into his ludicrous Christ-basin, and that Finn Magnusen has recorded his own rashness throughout 105 of the most adventurous pages I ever remember to have read."

Other times, he's pretty dry.  The other day I scrolled through a chapter that meticulously compared sources to figure out how big an Anglo-Saxon acre was compared to a modern one.  Zzzzzz...

Anyway, I'm going to talk about him at a conference on how people have looked back at the Middle Ages for their own purposes.  I expected Kemble to be much more nationalistic, but he's kind of all over the map.  He wants to get his fellow Englishmen interested in their own national treasures and emulate the good parts of the past, but here's what he thinks of the Anglo-Saxons' sense of humor:

They were an extremely dull, calm, sober, common-sense people, and as for satire, God help them! they had not an atom.

So I continue reading, and eventually I'll put something together to talk about.  It might just be a list of how he was a nexus of conflicting interpretations of medieval England.  But I'll bet that very few in the audience will know as much as I do already about Kemble, so I'm not too nervous.  But maybe that's just his arrogance rubbing off on me... :)

All good things must come to a (temporary) end

Well, I'm back home again after two last weeks of insanity and fun and sad goodbyes.  Since I left you hanging with May Bumps, I'll finish that story.  First, a picture of us with our first-day victory greenery:

The last two days of bumps, we had to row over twice a day, first to stay at the head of our division, then to try to claw our way into the next-higher division (unsuccessfully).  It was exhausting and fairly frustrating to keep falling short, especially since we thought that if we had been fresh, we could have caught that upper division...  In any case, the end result was a total of moving up four spaces (3 the first day, 1 the second) and never getting bumped by anyone else.  This makes you eligible for "discretionary blades."  But wait, what are blades, you ask?

Blades are the coveted award for bumps -- but they're often a matter of luck as well as skill, so they're hard to win.  Physically, it means you get an oar painted with the names of the crew members, like this.  To win them unequivocally, you have to have gone up at least four spots and have bumped at every opportunity (i.e., at least once a day).  However, if you go up four and never get bumped, your boat club captain can choose to award you blades.  And ours did!  What a very Cantabrigian thing I will have on my wall forever and ever!  :D  Here's a celebratory picture with the flag, which represents winning blades.

After bumps, all the rowers celebrated with Boat Club Dinner, a convivial (read: drunken) event, as always.  Then after a short night's sleep, I headed into my first Suicide Sunday.  It's a day that consists of a series of garden parties -- men in blazers whose colors indicate the sports they play, women in summer dresses, everyone drinking bellinis and other cocktails.  Why is it called "Suicide Sunday"?  I've heard two theories: 1) It's so booze-soaked that you wreck yourself; 2) It's your last chance to kill yourself before exam results come out.  Cheery, huh?  In point of fact, it's fairly civilized: a chance to relax on the grass in the sun.

The week following was May Week, during which people attend various college balls.  The only actual balls I attended were Queens' May Ball and Trinity Hall June Event (same idea but more casual and doesn't last all night).  However, the week filled up with many other activities, as well.  And then it was time for people to start dribbling away, some for good.  It seemed like nearly every day there were sorrowful leave-takings.  Eventually, I managed to scrape together some boxes in which to store my things and bid farewell (temporarily) to Cambridge myself.  I'm so grateful for the amazing year I had, and I look forward to another great one.  Meanwhile, time to do some research for my first "real" conference talk, first thing in September...

Things I love about Palo Alto

Inspired by the blog of an impossibly-hip former tour client, and to ease my pain as I approach my (temporary) departure from Cambridge, I thought I'd make a list of things/places I love about my home town.

• The Stanford Theater.  I always think this should be on the tourist route in addition to the university campus -- except I don't want it cheapened.  I love that a theater that rarely shows any films made after the 1960s is a vital part of the community in the heart of Silicon Valley.

• The Peninsula Creamery.  Probably the same as any number of 1950s diners around the country (though it was founded in 1923!).  Still, it's an institution -- my dad even used to take his engineering textbooks and study here during college.  Mmm, extra-thick milkshakes. 

[Note for locals: apparently, the actual name is the Palo Alto Creamery, and it's no longer run by the Peninsula Creamery dairy company.  But no one knows that or cares.]

• You  never know who might secretly be a m(/b)illionaire or other impressive person.  When Steve Jobs gave my class's Stanford graduation speech, he wore an honorary gown...with shorts and sandals underneath.  This epitomizes what I'm saying.  If your everyday fashion tends toward the casual, it does not imply anything about your abilities or talents.  Actually, I'd say it's the same at Cambridge -- it's just that here we have a fair number of events for which you specifically go black tie.  [It's a great speech, by the way.  Read it here or watch it here.]

• The view from the Dish.  In the words of my alma mater's school hymn, Palo Alto lies "where the rolling foothills rise up toward mountains higher, where at eve the Coast Range lies in the sunset fire."  Take a little hike and the reward is incredible.

• San Francisco Symphony Chorus.  Okay, it's not in Palo Alto, but you're never going to be disappointed with these guys, especially (in my case) if they've gotten hold of some Russian music.  If flights of angels sing me to my rest, I'd like to request Rachmaninoff's All-Night Vigil, please.  Failing that, I'd accept the SFSC performing the same duty.  And did you know that something like 70% of them are volunteers?  They are Grammy-winning pros and yet most don't get paid at all for giving up their time to be so good.  [Pop quiz: what's the literary reference in this bullet point?]

• University Church.  Tight-knit yet welcoming, supportive in everything, and incredibly active in making the world a better place in a hands-on way.

May Bumps 2011, Days 1 & 2

For those who need a little reminder of how bumps works, see my old post here, or the explanation by one of the boat clubs here.

Day 1
Our first day was absolutely epic and possibly the most pain I've ever experienced from exercising.  Thanks to the brother of one of our rowers, you can watch a video of one of the crucial moments here.  We come into view rounding the corner about 35 seconds in, wearing white t-shirts.  You can see the two boats in front of us bump and move aside, and we take a very wide course around the corner in order to avoid them.

We were something like 6 boat lengths behind the boat we now had to chase; we and everyone on the bank thought we were destined for a rowover (just finishing out the course).  But the coaches kept yelling at us to try for the overbump, telling us that we were now only 4 lengths behind, then two (for a long time), then 1.5...And right at the very end of a 2K course, we actually bumped them! I was in so much pain trying to breathe, it was not remotely funny.  We've all developed "rower's cough" -- which sounds like we've got tuberculosis or something.

Day 2

We came into today feeling fairly confident.  Thanks to moving up three places with our overbump, we were starting at #2 in our division.  It was a close one, though.  The boat behind us was inching closer to us as we inched up on our prey...We were actually overlapping them for quite a while, but at that point in the course, you have to physically touch to earn a bump, and they were taking evasive action.  Eventually, though, they hit a corner and had to turn, bringing themselves nicely into contact with our bow.

Then the hard part came.  Having reached the head of our division (yay!), we became the "sandwich boat" -- i.e., we were now also the bottom rung of the next division up.  We had a 45-minute break, and then we had to try again.  We came out swinging, but our coaches soon told us to back off and save our energy.  So we slowly finished out the course (no one chasing, since we were the bottom).  It was somewhat disappointing, because it means we have to do the same thing tomorrow -- and potentially the next day, too.  But on we go!

In the Stanford Band, we have a saying: "If every week were Big Game Week, we'd all be dead."  I think the same applies to Bumps.  But by golly, I want to win blades!