Reflecting

Well, if you haven't already heard, our time in the UK is quickly drawing to a close. I submitted my thesis a couple weeks ago and am scheduled to have my viva voce (defense) on July 19th. The guidance for the viva being rather nondescript, I'm a little at a loss as to how to prepare for it. Unlike the US, I will not be expected to give a presentation to my peers and committee....I don't even really have a committee anyway. I'll be examined by two people who have little to no knowledge of my efforts over the past three years. However, at the graduation dinner (to which all 3rd year PhD students were invited regardless of whether they were actually graduating) I sat next to the Master of the College. As she's been an examiner several times, I asked her what to expect, and was a bit relieved when she basically said they were just going to sit down with me and ask lots of questions about my thesis and the work I did, the main point being to convince themselves I had indeed done the work and written the thesis. I'm still a little worried about allowing "the examiners to probe your knowledge in the field" as that could encompass just about anything, but hopefully that is as minor a part of it as the Master suggested.

It was very sad to think that the graduation dinner would be the last formal dinner I'd have in the Hall. There will be two graduate formals before I leave, but they'll be held in the SCR rather than the Hall. Also, that was probably the last opportunity I'll have to talk to the Master. Having been on the MCR Committee for two years, I've had many opportunities to talk to her, and she's a really great lady. A Dame as well, which is pretty neat, but a very down-to-earth person, which you might not expect from the Master of the College. I've also attended my last evensong at the College Chapel; the good news on that is that I can always go again if I'm here in Cambridge on a Tuesday, Thursday, or Sunday during term time in the future, but as Chapel Clerk it was a tearful experience to hand over my key to the vestry after the final service, to think I'll never be responsible for lighting all the candles in our beautiful wood-lined chapel ever again.

I'm also drawn to think about all the things we thought we'd do. I had hopes of visiting all 31 Colleges; we've probably visited 10 of them. We thought we'd travel all around Europe, or at least all around Britain, but Aaron still hasn't been to Edinburgh, and neither of us has made it to Bath, the lake district, Dover, etc. But on the bright side we have enjoyed country hospitality in Hungerford, we took an unexpected diversion to the peak district, we've seen tons of castles, we saw a small community on a northern Scottish isle, and we've seen basically everything we wanted to see in London. After three years I feel at home here, I'm used to the oddities in the grocery store and the post office, I'm spoiled by the wealth of public transportation, and I don't think twice about hopping on my bike to cycle miles, something I never would have dreamed I'd be capable of when I first moved here.

Of course, whenever I start to get too teary-eyed about this, I think of all the things to look forward to back home - in addition to being close to family and no longer being in graduate school (a HUGE plus), we'll have screens on our windows, mixer taps, water pressure, biscuits from Hardees, bathtubs with bottoms that are at the same elevation as the bathroom floor (here they're higher, quite a slipping hazard), and outlets in bathrooms.

Still, our time in Cambridge has been wonderful, and I know when the time comes I'll be sad to go.

Crazy Cambridge HR stuff

I ran into two wacky Cambridge money related things which I felt like sharing.

First I got this email from the Cambridge HR department:

There were some changes in 2008 to the UK tax regime for individuals whose permanent home is overseas. You may well have heard news reports or seen media coverage concerning a new £30,000 annual levy for individuals who are non UK domiciled (domicile is best described as the country where an individual is regarded as having their permanent home which may not necessarily be the country where they are living from year to year).

You have been identified as a University employee who may be non UK domiciled i.e. who may have their permanent home overseas and who may only intend to work in the UK for a limited period of time.
...

Needless to say this freaked me out. It ends up that it only affects people from outside the country who are planning to live in the UK longer than 7 (or 9) years and who have foreign income as wall as UK income. It also seems like they are going after the rich types mostly. Since that is not me, I don't have to pay it and thus will not be living on the streets soon.

Second, I found out that the Cambridge/UK redundancy policy is downright cruel. For non-UK people, redundancy is like severance pay. It is 1 week for every complete year of employment. Quite literally. If you worked 2 years and 364 days then you get 2 weeks. They do not round up. In a hard economic time like this it is a heartless policy that could only come from greedy bureaucratic number crunchers. The bottomline is to make sure your contract lasts from start date to end date.

That's enough money fun for now.

And more British slang!

Okay, this one just really threw me for a while: Crimbo.

Guesses, anyone?

I had seen it here and there and hadn't thought about it, but just now received an email from my MCR co-president talking about the 'crimbo' formal.

Being fairly certain I had had a large part in planning all the MCR formals this term, I was very confused as to when and where we held this 'crimbo' formal. So I looked it up and wiktionary has this rather un-enlightening description. Turns out it's British slang for Christmas, though I have yet to see anything online (okay, I only looked at the first 5 Google results) that gives me a good description of HOW one gets 'Crimbo' out of 'Christmas.' The whole Gordon Bennett thing I could at least somewhat understand...but this?? Craziness. Again we're divided by a common language! Thank goodness for slang dictionaries on the internet!

God Blind Me = Gordon Bennett??

In my continuing adventures trying to learn the British language, I've discovered something so obscure for us non-British speakers I just had to share.

As you may or may not know, I'm supervising a 4th year Engineering Student in what we would call back home his Senior Design Project. Many thanks to the folks in the BSE department and the TMDL group for sharing data with me so I didn't have to go redownload everything myself to give this student so he could do his project on Beaver Creek.

Part of my supervision is teaching this student how to use various hydrological software packages. He is continually amazed by throwbacks to DOS that can still be found in several programs (e.g., ArcGIS) (recall this student is probably about 21...so born around 1988...since Windows 1.0 was released in 1985, he probably never had a computer with the old DOS interface that provided us with such wonderful things like The Oregon Trail as children...). Most recently, he discovered an oddity in the WDMUtil program wherein the path name (e.g., C:/Documents and Settings/My Documents/etc) has to be really short or you get an error saying it's not a valid file. I told him this (saying he would just love the latest example of ancient programs) and this was his response:

"Haha, Gordon bennett...you are right, I do love this."

I briefly considered that Gordon bennett was his new nickname for me, and was rather dismayed at the implications of that. However, Aaron did a quick search and found this link. So apparently this exclamation of surprise originally started as 'God blind me'...which makes enough sense in normal English. This became Gor blimey, which I could easily see given some of the thicker British accents here. How this finally jumped to an actual person's name, Gordon Bennett, is just one of those mysteries of the British language we may never understand...and which is completely alien to foreigners like myself!!

Adventures with hair and burrs

Aaron and I went to Hungerford about a week and a half ago to collect water samples for my research. We stayed with the same lovely couple that I blogged about before.

Cows grazing next to the canal in Freeman's Marsh in Hungerford

It was a bit of a slow day, as boats are ... well ... slow (4 mph max in the canal). Also, schools were back in, so the number of boaters traveling along the canal in the middle of the day wasn't what it might have been in the middle of the summer. So whenever a boat did come along, we scrambled to get measurements taken, notes made, etc., but in the 0.5-1 hour inbetween boat sightings we sat around, Aaron mostly bored of course. After losing interest in a game of can-I-get-my-hat-stuck-in-a-tree-without-it-falling-in-the-canal, Aaron decided it would be far more fun to play darts.

So, if you're wondering how we came across a dart board in the middle of a canal in the middle of nowhere, southern England... Doubtless you've run across one of these before:You know, the velcro dart boards. The concept is the same. All you need are velcro-covered balls and a fuzzy board, right? Aaron, being ever the inventive and clever person that he is, found just that:

Velcro-Covered Ball

Fuzzy Board

After tossing 3-4 of these things in my hair, and having it whipped around by the wind, I must say my hair was a bit of a rat's nest (the picture above is actually after Aaron had started trying to remove them). So he slowly but surely removed the offensive items from my hair:

The gritted teeth really say it all. The most hilarious thing about all this is that in the first round, Aaron tried to blame the whole thing on me because I didn't take them out right away and thus the wind whipped my hair around and made it really bad. To prove his point, he went out and got ANOTHER burr, and again threw it in my hair. Then he came over right away and tried to remove it...and had just as much difficulty as he did the first time. At this point all I could do was laugh. It was actually more frustrating for him than me, since he was the one having to deal with pulling the things out of my hair. Serves him right ;-). All in all a rather hilarious experience I thought was worth sharing :-).

Coke vs. Coke

As I sit here with my can of Coca-Cola (in a valiant (yet fruitless?) attempt to stimulate my jet-lagged brain), I am led to ponder about the taste of Coke in the UK vs. Coke in the US. In the UK, as many of you know, Coke is made from sugar rather than corn syrup. To be perfectly honest, I didn't really notice a difference until someone mentioned it to me. Although it's my favorite soda, I must not drink it routinely enough to notice such differences.

However, this time upon my travel to and return from the US I can definitely tell a difference. Now I'm trying to decide which I like better. Most people seem to prefer the sugar Coke taste rather than the corn syrup taste. I *think* I do as well, but at the same time there is a nostalgic part of me that found it refreshing to drink the Coke I grew up with while I was home. When I first had Coke during my recent trip back home, my brain thought "now that's what Coke's supposed to taste like." But now that I'm sitting here at my desk in the UK drinking the sugar Coke, I'm thinking that it tastes a bit better than what I was just drinking back home.

So I guess I'm just confused!

Springtime in Britain (or why the masses come out)

As weather perks up here in England, I am finally beginning to understand the British (and probably European) obsession with being outside on nice days.

When we first moved here, we noticed that a nice day (defined as a day with more sun than clouds, no rain, and a temperature that doesn't require a winter coat - medium/heavy-weight coat maybe, but not a down coat) caused the populace to come out en masse and flock to every open area available, fill every last seat at outdoor cafes, etc. At the time this seemed rather odd to us. Now, having lived here two years (I arrived two years ago yesterday!) and endured two British winters, I am beginning to understand.

I am now a firm believer in seasonal affective disorder. The short days throughout winter in England are just plain depressing. I think this is why the British have this obsession with being outside on nice days. Today is one of those nice days, and as I was walking back from lunch I felt this inexplicable pull to just stay outside. Now, I've always enjoyed nice weather as much as the next person, but rarely have I felt the need to stay outside if I have other things to do. But today there was this very real feeling that there was a very distinct possibility that this beautiful weather may never (really, never) come again, and so I should stay out and enjoy it while I could! Of course this is nonsensical, I'm sure we'll have this weather again within a week, if not tomorrow. But my brain was convinced otherwise.

I will freely admit that the stresses of study may be affecting my judgment, that the lure of a beautiful day outside was far more enticing than an afternoon behind a computer. However, I think perhaps there is this irrational yet very real feeling when you live in a northern area that the sun may never come again and you need to enjoy it while you can. That's my working hypothesis anyway!

Tipp-Ex vs. Wite-Out

As I use correction fluid YET AGAIN during my research writing...I have cause to reflect on the merits of British correction fluid vs. American correction fluid.

While the common name of correction fluid in America - 'Wite-Out' - makes far more sense to me than the common name in Britain - 'Tipp-Ex' (I was very confused the first time I was asked for Tipp-Ex...the poor Brit had to think hard about what to call it so I'd know what he was talking about!!), I must say that Tipp-Ex wins over any correction fluid I used in America, hands down. I imagine the basic chemical composition of the two substances is basically equivalent, but the applicator for Tipp-Ex is far more effective. Rather than a brush, Tipp-Ex uses a tiny wedge-shaped sponge that is the perfect size to cover mistakes in a typical computer-printed type size. Double the width covers your typical College-ruled paper. The sponge applicator gives the correction fluid a very smooth application, none of that roughness that a brush leaves behind. It has all the adhesion of the fluid with the surface of correction tape (I find correction tape frustrating because it tends to tear when you write over it). Perfect!

As a disclaimer, I was so frustrated with the Wite-Out brush applicator that for the last couple years in the States I used correction tape rather than fluid. So if there has been an advance in correction fluid applicators in the US since I last used them, my apologies to Wite-Out!

Snow in Cambridge!

Well, I can't believe it, but we actually had snow in Cambridge TWICE in the last week! Of course, those of you living anywhere vaguely north will scoff at the 'snow' we received here, but I still found it very exciting to wake up to see white stuff on the ground :-). Last year the only snow we saw was at Easter! So this is an improvement. However, I still don't know where they get all those gorgeous photographs of Cambridge in the snow! These two not-so-gorgeous photos are taken from right outside our front door and from our back window.

There were a couple nice views on the way to work this morning. The one on the left is of Parker's Piece. On the right is a view from the huge window wall in my new computer lab.

Of course, the flip side of having snow that I can actually photograph is that it is very cold and cold enough to keep the snow on the ground. So cycling has been ... well, cold! This is a picture of a bike parked at the Engineering department (not mine fortunately...our bikes are stored in a nice dry shed overnight!). Below that is the frozen water on the fountain in the cycle park at the Engineering department.

So that's the latest excitement here - SNOW!

British Hospitality at its Best

Last week I went to Hungerford, in southern England, to collect water samples for my research. While there I stayed at two Bed and Breakfasts, as they were SO much cheaper than the local hotels (£35/night at a B&B vs. MINIMUM £95/night at a local hotel), and I like Bed and Breakfasts better anyway.

I had to stay in two different Bed and Breakfasts because I made my reservations at the last minute, and this being a popular tourist destination for cyclers on the Kennet and Avon Canal, and it being the end of summer, most locations were all booked up. So I stayed at one B&B the first night and another the next two nights.

The second Bed and Breakfast I stayed at was truly remarkable. It was Berries B&B, where the hosts are Mick and Lynda Berry. As I mentioned, I had to stay at a different B&B the first night, but couldn't check in until 5 even though I arrived in Hungerford at 2 (this was outside my control). I stopped by Berries B&B when I first came into town as they had agreed to lend me their bike to cycle up and down the canal (where I was taking water samples). Here the remarkable nature of the Berrys started to become evident. That they allowed me to use their bike was remarkable in and of itself - bikes aren't all that cheap, after all, if I happened to take an unintentional dive into the canal. But then they offered to let me store my luggage at their B&B while I went back out for the afternoon to start my sample collection. They were tremendously friendly, and I talked to them about an hour before heading out. That evening, once I was checked into the other B&B, Mick DROVE MY LUGGAGE over to the B&B so I wouldn't have to carry it myself. Amazing! The next day, the Berrys invited me to have lunch with an angling friend of Mick's who was coming into town to fish for the day. It just so happened this gentleman knew a bit about the canal and the river that I was studying. It was so kind of them to allow me to intrude upon their lunch for the benefit of my research! Later that evening, when I checked into Berries B&B, Mick drove me over to the old B&B to retrieve my luggage, and then drove me to a takeout restaurant to pick up some dinner. Unlike many bed and breakfasts, where they seem to shoo you off to your room and don't want to see any more of you until breakfast the next morning, Mick invited me to eat in the kitchen and we chatted a bit while I ate. The next day, Mick drove over to the train station to pick up Aaron, who came in for a day to help me. That evening, he drove us out to a local pill box - the canal was considered a possible point of defense in WWII and was lined with them. I had told him Aaron was interested in WWII history, and so Mick drove us out to see one just outside town. Then he dropped us off at a local restaurant, and we called him once we were done and he came into down to drive us back to the B&B. The next day he drove us to the train station at the appropriate time, and waited to make sure we set off ok. We exchanged hugs all around when we left!

It turns out that Mick and Lynda spent a year in a motor home in the US, and have so many stories to share. They run a bed and breakfast because they want to meet people and hear new stories. Lynda is a great cook, and served some of the best scrambled eggs I've ever had. They have three wonderful dogs - which are kept outside the main living areas, but are close by if you want to seek them out. The bedrooms are beautifully decorated.

These pictures were taken the morning we left - the rooms look much more stylish when you arrive. It was just absolutely wonderful, Aaron and I both agree this is the best Bed and Breakfast we've ever stayed at. We really felt like guests of our hosts, not like customers. If you ever have a need to be in this part of England (and they are centrally located for things like Stonehenge, the Avebury Standing Stones, Windsor Castle, Stratford-on-Avon, etc if you have a car), you should definitely check them out!!

St. Catharine's May Ball

There are a few fancy events in Cambridge which seem to be integral parts of the University and College culture. The common ones are punting events on the Cam, College formal dinners, and Evensongs. These all pale in comparison to the uncommon ones, the May Balls. These are extravagent affairs which last all night long and have live entertainment, games, food and drink.

The St. Catharine's May Ball was no exception. The theme was Narnia this year and there were people in character to greet guests as they arrived. There were 5 main stages on the Catz grounds with live music running on all of them for much of the evening. Some of the other notable things included: belly dancing, ice skating, fresh donuts, fire juggling, mechanical bull riding, unlimited drinks, lots of music and dancing, and a huge variety of foods from pizza to pig roasts to ice cream.

Some of the highlights for me included the tarot card reading (not that I believe in that, but I wanted to try it, I got a princess of swords card which means I need to cut out something, possibly obeying laws, I forget), the acapella band from Oxford (great show), the chocolate fountain (yummy), and the juggling where I got to participate and had a bread stick knocked out of mouth (and I was not even hurt). We whimped out and left around 3:30 am but the ball continued until 6ish at which point the survivors picture was taken (or so I hear). I was sad to miss that but Becky was not feeling well so we will have to catch that next time. It was certainly a night to remember and one of the many bonuses for students at Cambridge University.

Wicked in the West End

We watched 2 fairly big West End (this is the London equivalent of Broadway in New York) shows recently. Phantom of the Opera and Wicked. Of the 2 I have to say that Wicked was my personal favorite. It was a bit of a tough choice though since Phantom has fantastic production values and better music. I liked the story for Wicked better. It was actually an improvement over the original Wizard of Oz story in many ways.

Seeing a major West End show is something that anyone visiting London and the UK should strongly consider. I have not yet seen Les Miserables or Mousetrap but these are on my short list. The shows will probably run you around 50-60 GBP for decent seats and skimping on good seats when you are visiting is probably a mistake.

We grabbed a bite to eat in the nearby station so if you are watching Wicked or whatever show is playing in the Apollo Theatre there are plenty of nearby food options in Victoria Station. This is also a major underground station so transport is not a problem either. I recommend seats in the center of the forward half of the stalls or the forward half of the circle. They cost more but are worth it.

Z is for Zed

So, as many of you may be aware, in England 'zees' are 'zeds'. Now, I think in general this is actually a perfectly sensible way to pronounce the letter Z. I can't tell you how many times I've spelled my name for someone at a reception desk and they immediately start searching their files under 'C'... So then you have to spell your name 'Zee as in zebra, ee, cee, kay,...' And being able to just say 'Zed ee cee kay' certainly speeds things up and avoids lots of confusion. On the flip side, if I slip up and say 'Zee as in zebra' here I get a very confused look for a second before they think to themselves 'silly American' and move on. So I am all in favor of moving to the 'zed' system.

However, the Brits are weird about their zeds in other ways. They seem extremely averse to using them. Stabilize becomes stabilise, analyze becomes analyse, fertilize becomes fertilise, etc. In fact, unless the z is an integral component of the word (for example, as in zebra), there's a good chance the Brits use an s instead. So what got me thinking about this (again) is that I have just completed a 25-page homework assignment (hooray! thus ends my homework requirement FOREVER!!), and the word processor on my computer in the engineering department will convert things like labor to labour but for some reason doesn't convert fertilize to fertilise. So I just did a search of my document for 'z', and in most cases replaced it with 's'. I was just going to leave it as is, proud of my American heritage and all that, but since the word processor had already changed all the o's to ou's, and I remembered reading for professional journals you are typically allowed to use either American OR British usage, but you may not use BOTH, I thought it would look better if I made everything British. This of course assumes that there aren't other hidden usages I don't know about and completely missed...

Sleeping in!

Today the UK went on Daylight Saving Time. I am very excited that the sun will now be rising at 6ish instead of 5ish. Since my body seems determined to rise with the sun, this means an extra hour of sleep for me! Of course, by the middle of June, the sun will be rising at 4:00am and going down at nearly 10pm...but we're just not thinking about that right now.

Street signs

We hired a car to drive around East Anglia a bit yesteday. It was a lot of fun but we got lost 3 times and mostly because of the lack of street signs! It seems like the english are not big fans of labelling their streets and we often found ourselves at an intersection with no idea what road we were on or what the other road was. Not sure why the street signs seem to be so scarce here in the UK but I would recommend getting a GPS map thing if you plan to do any serious driving.

UK food labels

There is a fairly universal food labelling system they use here in the UK that I like a lot (see the image). It makes it pretty easy to tell at a glance how good the food is for you. It includes Calories, Sugar, Fat, Saturated Fat, and Salt. They tend to print this on the front of the food packaging so you don't even have to turn it over. Recently, I have noticed that they are now including a color scheme as well. Red means high (bad) and green is low (good). I hope they start doing something like this in the US to make it easier to tell how good or bad something is for you.

Earthquake?

Apparently we had an earthquake near here. The BBC news site has information about here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7266136.stm
I did not feel it or even wake up but some friends have been telling me it was "intense". I guess there will be more information about it later but apparently it was the biggest in the UK in a couple decades or so and was about a magnitude 5 on the richter scale.

Spring is Here! ...Almost

Today has been an absolutely beautiful day. Sunny, not cold (I won't go so far as warm yet), birds singing, the whole nine yards. I actually got a little too warm walking around in my winter coat today. It is interesting how rapidly the seasons change - I felt that the change from summer to fall was very abrupt, happening in just a week or two. Now again, it seems that over the past week the sun is finally staying up until a decent hour of the night (doesn't go down until 6 now!), the temperature's improving, and overall the signs of Spring are everywhere. My spirits are lifted. However, my happiness was doused a little today when one of my supervisees told me that this was very unusual weather for Cambridge at the end of February. So perhaps we'll have another relapse into Winter...but I'm enjoying my temporary Spring while it lasts!

The Eagle Pub

I went out to the pub with some coworkers Friday night. This is sort of the common thing to do as far as I can tell since all pubs seem to be packed on Friday nights. We went down to The Eagle which is one of the most well known and central pubs in Cambridge. This one is particularly famous for hosting World War 2 pilots and being the place where Watson and Crick announced the DNA double helix. It is a nice pub with a fairly relaxed atmosphere (not unsual really) but is pretty crowded. I would say this is a must see for visitors to Cambridge. It is typical english pub sized so there is not a whole lot to see but it is worth stopping in for a pint.

Catz Connections

While we were at the Gielgud Theatre (see Aaron's post earlier today), I ran into an alumnus from St. Catharine's College! I was wearing my College scarf as I typically do in the cold, and he leaned over and said 'perhaps you'll recognize these'....he was wearing cufflinks with the St. Catharine's College shield. Apparently he went to St. Catharine's in the 60s and studied philosophy and law. It was pretty neat that he recognized the scarf and said something.