Manners

Dear friends,

I realize I have not updated my blog in over a week. This is probably because nothing blog-worthy has happened to me. Well, that's not exactly true. Lots of blog-worthy things have happened to me that I didn't really remember when I actually had time to blog, so no blogging about these things took place, and they are probably lost forever. Or maybe I'll remember them later. Who knows.

Anyway! I would write about my trip to London today, which was very fun (met up with old friend from middle school, friend who did CME and is back in London now, and went to hear the LSO...again), but what I'm actually going to write about is my trip BACK from London, because it's far more amusing, and, let's face it, you've all had enough of my "and then I did this followed by this with a dash of this-and-that" entries.

The British are big on manners. This is well known. A littler known fact is that only MOST of the Brits are big on manners. I discovered this today on my really, really long train ride back from London.

I had the misfortune of catching the 2200 Liverpool St. -> Ipswich train, which is essentially a door-to-door service on rails. I think they built some extra platforms in the middle of nowhere and gave them creative English-sounding names just so the train could stop at more stations.

I had the additional misfortune of picking the World's Loudest Coach (aka "The Coach that I happened to board b/c I was sprinting to catch the train"). The train ride started with a very loud gentleman behind me making a call on his mobile phone (this is generally considered impolite). He then proceeded to have the World's Most Boring Conversation with presumably the World's Most Easily Amused Person (I don't know who else could have stood to talk to him for that long). I will fill out this description with a representative quote:

"The dinner was nice. Except there were these two queens there, and they were very bratty. You know, just so queen-like. They must have picked me out as a fellow queen, you know? And they were just going on and on saying things like 'Oh, we don't DO public transport.'"

Comment 1: I did not realize it was in style to announce things like this to an entire train coach.

Comment 2: Perhaps these two lovely men do not "do" public transport because there are annoying men talking loudly on their mobiles incessantly. Just a thought.

I wished several times over the course of the evening that I had some method of recording the conversation, because it was that ridiculous. Queenie then proceeded to ask his hypothetical conversational partner how his lunch went. Unfortunately, he had to ask this question about three times, because the reception was poor. Maybe the reception was poor because poor reception is a sign from God that you shouldn't be torturing people on the phone and in your general vicinity with your boring life. About every five minutes he would lose signal and promptly dial his friend back. At one point, he was talking (loudly) about how he'd gotten his driving license revoked because he, quote, "killed a few people and they're just so bothered about that kind of thing these days." I assumed he was joking, but then he went on to say "well, I don't actually kill people, but if I did, those two queens at the party would be at the top of my list." Once again, not the thing I would necessarily announce loudly on a train, but that's just my opinion.

If I were the kind of person who killed people, people who talk loudly on their mobile for half an hour on the night train when people like me are trying to sleep would be on the top of MY list. Just saying.

Not that sleep was an option. On the OTHER side of me were three girls of varying ages who were trying to arrange a ride from Ipswich Station to some adjacent town. They attempted to procure this ride, loudly, and via mobile device, while the teenager in the group whined incessantly about how this procurement effort was "ruining her social life."

The train ride was an hour and a half long. I thought my head was going to explode.

This brings me to my other point about manners. English culture forbids confrontation with an offender. You are allowed to eye-roll, sigh loudly, shift about, and complain to non-offenders (but not TOO loudly), but you must never, ever ask the perpetrator of annoying behavior to stop. English culture also apparently requires you to constantly inform people if they are NOT bothering you. Twice over the past week, I have had people change seats from sitting near me to sitting somewhere else, and they have politely informed me of their reasons for doing so, and assured me repeatedly that it WAS NOT because I was doing anything wrong. It occurred to me several times that I could a) confront the offenders or b) change coaches. Obviously, aforementioned rules forbids option a, and I chose not to elect option b because I was legitimately concerned that I was going to offend someone. Good lord I've become English.

In the English manner system, queue jumping is very, very bad. That might not seem like much of a denouncement to Americans, but keep in mind that "quite nice" in English means "outstandingly, unbelievably amazing," so "very, very bad" is something awful indeed. However, I have found it exceedingly hard not to queue jump, but only because there is a queue for absolutely everything. Case in point: when the tube (aka "subway") pulls up, everyone forms a queue to get on the train (of course letting all the other passengers off first, politely). However, the doors to get on the train are about 4 people wide, and yet there is invariably a single-file queue. This is not how it would work in Boston. It is physically uncomfortable for me to sit in the queue, and to resist the urge to jump it, yet I must, or I will be given very dirty looks (the horror).

If I think of anything else blog-worthy to post, you have my e-word that I will do it promptly ("promptly" being defined as "when I get around to it").

Most sincerely and politely,

Crazyank

Weekend in Ireland

I realize this is coming a full week after my actual Ireland trip. I was busy, and am not going to succumb to the typical English habit of apologizing for everything. I'm NOT sorry! Hah!

Anyway, my trip to Ireland was relatively uneventful, although I did have to get to the bus stop at 4:30AM to catch the bus to Stanstead. Ryanair is a wonderful airline if you want to travel to various parts of Europe essentially for free (my bus fair to Stanstead cost more than my round-trip ticket to Ireland), but not as good if you want to be able to pack anything more than a toothbrush (I wore about half the clothes I brought to Ireland with me on the plane. It was warm).

In Ireland, I was staying with my friend John. John's brother, Patrick, went to MIT, so I've known John since he came to visit Patrick this one time a few years ago. John is going to Harvard next year and had just finished his leaving certs (basically exit exams for the Irish school system), so I guess he was out pretty late partying the night before I came. This explains why John's dad, not John, came to pick me up from the airport early Saturday morning (I guess John's mom commandeered his phone and sent some explanatory texts from it, which I thought was very creative).

I flew into Shannon, and John lives in Limerick. After being fed a second breakfast of scones, jam, and cream (I cannot explain how delicious this is...I wish I could take an infinite supply back with me to the states) by John's culinarily (not a word, according to Safari spell-checker, but who cares) talented mom/mum Lily, John and I wandered into Limerick along the beautiful river that runs by their house. We met up with John's dad later to watch the Lions/South Africa match (my FIRST rugby match!) in a pub (my first Irish pub!), where I learned how to watch Rugby (i.e. cheer loudly and complain about the scrum, more or less).

My arrival coincided with the 15th birthday party of Tommy, John's lovely younger brother. John's family already has a trampoline in their backyard, but for the occasion, a bouncy castle was also brought in (along with enough food to feed a small army, including Twitter-themed cupcakes...). John and I had spent part of the evening making questionable cookies, based on our sudden and urgent need to consume cook dough (ingredient ratios are important, it turns out. Who knew?).

Limerick has a reputation of being kind of a rough place. I heard from Lily that it sometimes was called "stab city." Well, within a few hours of being in Limerick, I already had a busted lip! The story is less interesting, and more or less I will leave you with the thought that lying down on a trampoline is almost always a bad idea, and being kicked in the face hurts.

Over the course of the evening, the trampoline migrated to be closer to the bouncy castle, and we spent a good hour or so diving from the trampoline to the bouncy castle under various premises (trampoline rugby is the best game every invented...you score a try by getting the rugby ball to the bouncy castle...but will England have a team for the 2012 Olympics? Stay tuned to find out...). I've uploaded a few videos to facebook.

It came up in the course of conversation that John's family still had Patrick's old violin lying around, which I had the pleasure of playing. Although it hasn't been particular well taken care of over the past few years, it's a really good violin! I kind of (ok, really) wanted to take it home with me. It's got quite an impressive, resonant tone. Oh well, reason to visit Ireland again, at least...oh right, that, and because it's one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

I have to say, after spending a few months in England, I was surprised at how social and laid back the Irish were. The English fear of social interaction with all but the closest of friends is completely counterbalanced by the Irish penchant for making random (and, in my case, totally unintelligible) conversation with complete strangers (good thing the smile and nod method works just as well in Ireland). And the people are so nice! And relaxed! I think "chill" is the word I'm looking for. Then again, if you lived in a place as beautiful and scenic as Ireland, you'd probably be relaxed too (no offense, English countryside).

John, me, and my new friend Alan went down to Dublin on Sunday (under the guise of giving Alan a ride home). I LOVE Dublin! I have to say, Dublin isn't a city like Paris or Rome (or London) where you go to SEE things...it's more like a city where you go to just hang out. But, for hanging out, there is no better city. I just loved the atmosphere there. We toured Trinity College (where Alan is going to school next year), including seeing the Book of Kells (the oldest surviving Celtic manuscript, which was absolutely amazing to see), the library, and the infectious diseases exhibit in the science hall. Afterwards, we went to the Guiness Storehouse (can't go to Dublin without going to the Guiness Storehouse!). The top floor is a 360 degree circular windowed room overlooking the whole of Dublin. It's breathtaking. And also there's something really cool about drinking Guiness from the place where it originated while looking out over Dublin. *sigh* We then went to one of Alan's favorite haunts, the Boar's Head. It was a traditional Irish pub, and I loved the atmosphere (and the delicious food, of course). It wasn't quite as happening on a Sunday afternoon as it might have been otherwise, but I still loved the experience.

Sunday evening was uneventful. John and I got home too late to really go out again on Sunday night, so we went to bed instead (after watching an episode of Top Gear...mmmm Lotus). The next morning, I packed up and John fulfilled his end of the Twitter deal.

Allow me to explain. John visited MIT last April before he made the (tragic) decision to go to Harvard. While there, he encouraged me to get Twitter, and I said I wasn't interested. He kept bugging me, and I kept saying no. Well, seeing as John was hosting me in Ireland, I was feeling conciliatory, so I agreed finally that if he arranged a picnic on the cliffs overlooking the sea (something picturesque that I'd always kind of wanted to do), that I would get Twitter. Unbeknownst to John, my work at this summer has required me to use Twitter on occasion, so I already had a Twitter account (@crazyank, for those interested in the random happenings of my life, updated biweekly or so, which is less often than my blog). John, being kind, still took me for a picnic at the cliffs of Moher.

A picture is worth 1000 words. Go on facebook and look at the pictures. And then remember that it is a million times more stunning in real life. I want to go back.

I flew out Monday evening, and, remembering my harrowing trip through immigration at Heathrow ("are you SURE you're not a terrorist?"), I was a bit nervous. However, they just waved all the passengers from Ireland right through Immigration, so I was pretty happy. I got back home just in time to collapse from exhaustion!

Interesting observation about the UK and Ireland:

The cops aren't armed. I'm not kidding. When John told me this, I literally said "but how are they supposed to stop people from committing crimes?" I mean, imagine if cops didn't have guns in the US. No one would take them seriously! "Come over here...I DARE you to stop me from robbing this bank? What are you going to do? Scold me?" Then again, I have a very funny image of a proper British cop doing just that:

British cop: (politely) "Good sir, stop what you're doing there at once! Please."

Robber: (politely) "Oh, my good man, I must refuse. So sorry"

British cop: "I must then be forced to scold you very sternly."

This probably wouldn't fly in the States. Gun culture is vastly different in the UK and the US. Gun control laws are very, very strict here, so it's actually safe for most UK cops to assume that your average criminal isn't armed. You can't make that assumption in the US. While not everyone has guns, like some people in the UK tend to think, it statistically looks like it to a UK citizen, because in the UK, almost no one at all has guns.

We have a long way to go...

In conclusion, I absolutely loved Ireland and know I will find a way to go back some day. I've been catching up on work since I got back, and will hopefully have another entry up soon!

Check pictures on facebook!

What a week!

I had an amazing week!

On Tuesday, Jeff took me to Birmingham to meet Aaron Sloman, a famous A.I. and cognitive science researcher. He does work similar to Marvin Minsky of MIT. Aaron is notoriously busy, so I was expecting to get maybe an hour to talk with him (Jia-Yan came along as well for the morning). Much to my surprise, Aaron spent most of the day with me (and Jeff, when he was there), and I spoke with him probably for a total of about 3 hours just about his research and ideas for A.I. systems. It was such an amazing opportunity! I also got an opportunity to sit in on some lab meetings and get a tour of one of the A.I. vision lab. It was such a great day!

On Wednesday, I left work a bit early to go down to London. David (my friend from my lab at MIT who I stayed with in London) was supervised on his PhD partly by a UCL professor named Vince Walsh. David had told me what an amazing and inspirational guy Vince was, so I jumped at the chance to meet him while I was in England. David had told me that Vince was a huge classical music fan, so I asked if he might want to catch a concert. We settled on the LSO Concert on Wednesday (they were playing Beethoven Emperor Concerto and Brahms 3rd Symphony...AMAZING concert!). I will say that David did not exaggerate in his description. After accidentally heading in completely the wrong direction out of Liverpool St, I eventually made it to the Barbican, where I met Vince. We talked for about an hour and a half before the concert, and then went to a really fantastic French restaurant for a late dinner when the concert had finished. It's definitely one of the best nights I've had since I've been here! I'm quite glad it worked out.

Work has been uneventful for the last few days, but I'm super excited to be heading up to Ireland this weekend! My friend John lives in Limerick, so I'm flying into Shannon tomorrow morning and taking Monday off (flying back Monday evening). On the agenda so far is a trip to Dublin, watching a rugby match in a pub (an IRISH pub!!), and John seeing if he can't finally convince me to get Twitter (updates as they become available...I'm making him work for it!).

There will be loads of pictures up after the weekend, hopefully! Until then.

No, I am not a Mechanical Engineering Intern

I have had the same conversation at least several times a week since I've been here. It starts innocently enough, usually with people asking my major.

I tell them it's Mechanical Engineering.

And, almost 100% of the time, they say something like "BT does Mechanical Engineering?" or "How are you fitting that in with what BT does?"

Well, the truth is, no, BT doesn't do a lot of MechE, and no, the courses I've taken in my major are not immediately relevant to my work this summer. I'm doing User Interface (UI) design, which is unlike anything I've ever done before. The fact that people's first reaction is confusion when I tell them this concerns me, not just from a personal annoyance perspective, but from an industrial perspective. We are well past the days of Engineers sitting in cubicles at the same company their whole lives, working on their own individual projects for 8 hours a day until retirement. People obviously value outside opinions and advice (consulting industry, anyone?), and yet the gut reaction I still encounter when I explain that I'm a mechanical engineering major who does cognitive science research and is spending the summer doing UI design is "why?"

I would like to think I bring a lot to the table by doing something I've never done before. There's some thrill in diving headlong into a whole new area you know nothing about. It's that thrill that makes me creative and productive, and it's what you often don't see in "turn-the-crank" engineers who have been working the same "stable" job for 20-30 years. I would like to think I'm the kind of person who can learn quickly, and who can learn to do almost anything. I think industry should move past putting people in boxes based on their major or theoretical area of expertise and start throwing them into situations and areas they've never seen and saying "go."

The reaction I want when I tell people that I'm not just sitting around doing mechanical engineering this summer is "awesome!" Because that's exactly what it is.

A non-work-related trip to Cambridge

Jia-Yan, a Cambridge alum, has been promising to give me the insider's tour of Cambridge. Today, I finally took her up on it.

I had not believed that Jia-Yan did everything last minute until she slid into her seat on the train (quite out of breath) literally 30 seconds before it pulled out of the station. Impressive. We had a nice girl-bonding session the train ride up. The weather today was lovely as promised (a bit hot, but at least no rain), so the day was full of potential.

Stop #1 was the Engineering Centre [sic], where Jia-Yan showed me all her old haunts. We worked for about an hour on the Solar Car (Jia is still a member of the team) outside in the lovely sun, where I kept insisting that lying in the grass is more fun than sanding (which it is, but needless to say I wasn't invited to come back and work on the car again). Plus we spent about half our "work" time on an ice-cream run for the rest of the team (I was fine with this). 

Stop #2 was meeting up with Jia-Yan's (and now my) friend Talia, an MIT alum who just finished her first year of postgrad at Cambridge in materials (she was course 3 at MIT). We ended up at an Italian restaurant near the centre [sic] of Cambridge, where we sat at a table served by a man who puts the wait in waiter. We passed the time by building a heinously unstable tower of all our water glasses (balanced on a stack of one-pound coins). This was probably a horrible idea, but it was more fun than sitting around huffily commenting on how effing long it was taking to get the check.

Talia had to go after dinner/gelato, so we went and met up with Jia-Yan's friend AJ, who did CME the same year as Jia and is actually going to be starting his PhD next year at MIT in course 14 (economics). It was really nice to hang out with someone who wasn't course 6. After a brief jaunt we found a place that was renting out punts (it's hard to get a punt after 5PM here, unless you're specifically going night punting, and plus May Balls are on so it's hard to get punts from the colleges). For those of you who are unfamiliar with punting (and not in the MIT sense), "punts" are small boats you take on the Cam (the river that runs through Cambridge). They are propelled by a long stick that you use to push off the bottom of the Cam (which is really shallow). This makes them very hard to steer, but it's still fun! I punted for most of the trip, and apparently was quite good for my first time ("But I keep running into things" I insisted, "But you run into things less than most beginners," AJ and Jia said encouragingly). 

After about half an hour of punting Jia-Yan and I literally sprinted to the train station to catch the last train from Cambridge to Ipswich. On the ride back, we proceeded to have the nerdiest conversation ever about relationships (if you don't like control systems and/or are male, you might want to skip the next section):

Jia-Yan: I feel like I'm the only one who ever analyzes things. I mean, I know why I feel what I feel. Guys feel stuff but they never think about WHY!

Me: OMG, I know. It's like they're a black-box and they have the input and the output but they don't even CARE about finding the transfer function.

Jia-Yan: The data's there, but you have to guess the transfer function.

Me: I know, it's like guys just keep generating Bode plots but it's usually not good enough to get anything useful.

Jia-Yan: And there's no feedback.

Me: Yeah, I wish guys had closed-loop transfer functions.

Jia-Yan: That's why they're so unstable.

Me: I wish making relationships work were as easy as being like "ok, you need to add a lag compensator ASAP."

Jia-Yan: That would be nice. 

Me (degenerating into pun mode): Yeah, I think we all have a lot to GAIN from that kind of analysis...

*ensue groan-fest*

My inner nerd is satiated for the time being.

Pictures are up on facebook!

Fun with Sports and other Misc. Activities

If you're not a die-hard fan of the MIT women's rugby team, you might not know much about this lovely sport. I certainly didn't. But, thanks to a wonderful game of "touch" rugby this week, I can summarize pretty well: it hurts.

Rugby, at least to an uninformed American, seems to be pretty much as popular as football (aka soccer for those who choose to call a game wherein most of the time you don't touch the ball with your feet "football") over here. The rules are pretty counterintuitive though...especially the part where you're not allowed to pass the ball forward (I'm not making this up). You are, however, allowed to express levels of violence rarely found outside of inner-city gang beatings. Awesome! (if you're the tackler and not the tacklee, I guess). 

I found all this out when I was invited to play a game of touch rugby (aka "girly rugby" for those who particularly enjoy broken bones and dislocated joints) on Tuesday afternoon. The idea is that a "tackle" is touching someone with both hands below the waist (I subsequently have a theory that touch rugby was, indeed, invented by girls). The good news is, you rarely get tackled. The bad news is that someone running into you full speed in an attempt to grab your legs still hurts...a lot. Also, rugby is a LOT of running around, so the whole out-of-shape lot of us were more or less knackered after about 20 minutes of playing (I would point out that the teams were also very, very unfair). At that point we sort of retired to kicking the rugby ball around the field and attempting handstands (or epic handstand wipeouts, in my case). 

I've also joined the gym here at BT, since I'm in one of my phases where I attempt to acquire non-negligible levels of upper-body strength (this has yet to work out for me, incidentally). More impressively, I've actually been GOING to the gym two or three times a week (in the past I have somehow tried to get in shape via having a gym membership, which may not have been the best strategy). If I've acquired any extra muscle in the last week, however, I doubt I would notice since I can no longer move my arms (some combination of working out a few times this week and playing squash for the first time in two weeks yesterday). I quite literally had to roll out of bed this morning since I couldn't actually sit up.

BBC Weather has predicted a warm and sunny weekend, so I'm a bit nervous (that is if the correlation of BBC Weather being wrong about 100% of the time holds out). I've got plans to go to Primark with Jia-Yan (who has all the qualifications of a good shopping buddy...namely being female and wanting to go shopping with me) tomorrow and then to go up to Cambridge with her on Sunday (Jia-Yan is a Cambridge alum who did CME, so we get on quite well, and she's going to show me around Cambridge a little more). I mostly plan on nursing my sore muscles via moving as little as possible. 

In other news, I successfully drove John's new Mazda on a PUBLIC ROAD! And I didn't crash it! And I made it all the way up to 4th gear shifting with my left hand! Whooooo!!! Next step: roundabouts *shudder*

Linguistic observation of the day:

The British drop "that" at the end of some statements. For instance, if I said "Should I go to the store?" your typical British person would say "you could do"...not "you could" or "you could do that." I have almost seamlessly incorporated this new phrase-ology into my vocabulary, but am somewhat disappointed with how little notice it has received from my British friends ("you don't say that in America?" they ask, puzzled, when I insist they recognize my drastically improved linguistic skills). Usually I get lauded for things like the correct use of the word "football" or saying "loo," but somehow I am the only one who has noticed this difference between British and American English...how strange.

Next week I'm going to Birmingham to visit Aaron Sloman, a big name in Cog. Sci. and AI...I'm SO excited! I also have plans to go hear the LSO on Wednesday, so I'm super excited for that as well! I'm trying to plan my long weekend in either Paris or Rome, so if anyone has any ideas which I should pick either way (ahh, Paris so temptingly close...) let me know. 

Till next time.

I wish I had something really exciting and thrilling to title this blog post but I don't

The title says it all, more or less. This weekend was very relaxing and fun, and really utterly ordinary except for the part where I'm in England, making it thrilling for, well, me.

BBC Weather, everyone's favorite weather guru, predicted a harsh weekend of "heavy rain," so I didn't make plans accordingly. Imagine my surprise when I woke up Saturday morning (yes, I did manage to get up before noon) to find that it was...sunny? My reaction was appropriately British in that I immediately got really angry (BBC Weather had been wrong! Therefore depriving me of the opportunity to make exciting plans to do god-knows-what! "Typical!" I exclaimed to myself, British-ly). After frantically emailing a few people, Josh, John, and I had loosely stitched together a plan to meet up for lunch, after which Josh and I would get groceries and go to his house to make a barbecue, where John would meet us later. 

After lunch, Josh decided to take a "quick trip" to Primark to buy sunglasses. Primark is a huge clothing store filled with trendy and incredibly cheap clothes. Josh should have known better than to take a girl on a "quick trip" to a clothing store. About an hour later, however, I had come to the conclusion that British stores suffer from the same misconceptions about clothing styles that American stores do (that being that all women are either 6 feet tall and anorexic or 4 feet tall and morbidly obese). Not wanting to torture the male contingent of our party further, I agreed to come back a different weekend.

Because it was (shockingly) still nice out, I convinced Josh to buy all the BBQ fixings while I went for a run. The good news is that I know Ipswich well enough at this point to find my way back from more or less anywhere. The bad news is that not all streets necessarily have connecting streets at regular intervals that point in the right direction. I ended up running for a good half-mile down a road looking for the next right turn that wasn't a cul-de-sac before I finally gave up and went back the way I came. Silly curvy English streets.

After I got back, Josh picked me up and we went to his house to bake a cheesecake. While, ultimately, it didn't turn out disastrously, neither Josh nor I are particularly good at reading printed directions, so we had a few unfortunate misunderstandings ("oh, you're only supposed to put the 200mL in and not the whole container?" and "let cool for EIGHT HOURS?! Are they CRAZY?!" being among the utterances). Minus the questionable half-cooled cheesecake, though, the BBQ turned out to be a huge success, especially after it turned into a impromptu dance-party in the kitchen (Josh has portable disco lighting!). At one point, a slow song came on, and I jokingly told everyone to get their lighters out. Oli (one of the BT grads) got his iPhone out instead. I joked that someone should make a "lighter" iPhone app that people could wave at concerts. A few minutes of searching later, we all found out that someone had, indeed, made such an app. "The best 57P I've ever spent," said Oli. 

Things started winding down around midnight, when someone had the brilliant idea to go to a nightclub. One taxi ride (and me forgetting my ID and having to flirt my way into the club) later, we all ended up at Liquid, which is apparently the best nightclub in Ipswich (I mean that's kind of like saying it's the best nightclub in rural Montana as far as the UK is concerned, but it was still way better than US clubs). 

The next day, I woke up to rain pounding down outside. BBC Weather had finally been right, but I was still pissed off. I stayed pissed off just long enough to go back to sleep until 3PM, which was wonderful. By the time I had woke up, the weather had cleared, so I convinced John to take his new Mazda out for a drive to Felixstowe, the closest beach-side town. We wandered around the beach for about an hour, which was very pretty, and then head home. The rest of the day was uneventful.

Work is still going well, and I've got some cool trips and events lined up for the next few weeks. Check out pictures from the weekend on facebook!

Weekend in Norwich

Sorry to be updating this so long after the actual weekend...I've been nursing my lovely sunburn and trying to catch up on sleep (haha, yeah right).

The sunburn is a result of spending a wee too much time in the sun on the Norwich Broads. To explain, Norwich (about an hour to the north of Ipswich on the eastern coast of England) has a series of interconnecting rivers called the Broads. It's popular to take boats out on the Broads on nice days, and seeing as this was probably one of the nicest weekends in the UK in recent history (sunny, warm, not a cloud in the sky), that's exactly what we did. One of the BT Grads, Danny, organized for a group of 18 of us to rent out three boats for the day. John and I drove up with two of the other grads, Marcus and Adam, early on Saturday morning. Since we woke up so early, I asked John the night before if we could stop for breakfast on the drive up, which he said was fine. Well, we were running late, so we didn't stop for breakfast. After we checked into our hotel, we were still running late, so we didn't stop for breakfast on the walk to meet up with the group either. Nor did we eat breakfast while we waited for the bus out to the Broads for about half an hour ("it's coming any minute now, don't go get food" said Danny, for about 20 minutes). We stopped at a grocery store before heading out so everyone could buy the equivalent of a six-pack or two of beer (I bought a sandwich, since it was already closer to lunch that breakfast). Favorite dialogue from my quick trip through the bakery aisle:

Me: "The donuts are so much smaller here!"

Marcus: "So are the people."

We finally got out to the boat rental place, which was run by a quasi-cheerful old man who looked like he had been recently yanked from his home in Appalachia. Danny referred to him for the rest of the trip as "ZZ Top." Once we were out on the Broads, at the relatively late hour of 11AM, everyone cracked open their respective beverages, and I cracked open my sandwich, which turned out to be so ridiculously disgusting that, even in my half-starved state, I could only eat half of it.

For whatever reason, there is a speed limit of about 4MPH on the Broads. Luckily, the boats we were in (when they were working, to be explained later) couldn't really go much faster, so the speed limit wasn't an issue. Not that it stopped us from occasionally crashing the boats into the bank/reeds/ground/other boats at regular intervals. Those things do not like going in a straight line.

What I hadn't known until we were about half an hour into the trip was that the plan was to stop at every, single pub we ran into. Being that this is England, there are already a lot of pubs. Since the Broads are a popular holiday spot, stopping at every pub involved almost as much time getting in and out of boats as actually traveling in them. My first error was deciding to go in for a pint with everyone else at Pub #1. Since my food consumption at this point consisted of all of half a sandwich, having an entire pint of beer at 11AM, given my aforementioned lightweightedness (see entry about my first pub trip), was perhaps not the best call. 

There were 18 people total, three of whom were girls, so it came down to one girl per boat. That was fine, except when I needed sunscreen put on my back. If you ever want to feel like a leper, ask a boat full of male engineers if anyone wants to put sunscreen on your back. Anyway, after an awkward 30 seconds of silence and blank stares, one of the guys finally volunteered, but was apparently so eager to get the sunscreening over with that he ended up missing huge swaths of back (which I found out later in the afternoon when my back had lobster-fied). Some day I'm sure my skin will return to it's normal color...

After pint #1, I decided it was unwise to drink more, so I kind of sat back and watched as the rest of the group knocked back a pint or three at more or less regular intervals for the next four hours. Unrelatedly (I'm sure...), we only had one working boat (of the original three) by the time we got back to the rental place. One boat stalled when Josh, class clown of the grad crew, decided to go boat-hopping (Josh later fell off a two-foot high fence, gashed up his knee, and had to go to a hospital). Unfortunately, we couldn't get the boat to un-stall and the boat rental company ended up having to tow it back. Shortly thereafter, the boat I was in started to fill with water. This slowed us down from the speedy 4MPH we were going to about 1MPH. The boat being towed actually passed us. We were probably on the verge of sinking when we finally pulled up to the dock ("Looks like you've sprung a leak!" said ZZ Top, displaying truly astounding mechanical intuition). All in all though it was an incredibly fun trip (pictures on facebook).

Because (apparently) people had not yet had enough to drink, most of the group went out to dinner and a bar after we got back to Norwich proper (while I went home and passed out for 3 hours). We all met up at a club later, which ended up being really cool. Clubs in the UK are SO MUCH CLASSIER! Really enjoyed myself (pictures of the club are also up on facebook).

Lee, who is from Norwich, met up with John and I the next morning and we went on a self-guided walking tour of Norwich. Norwich has two things of note: the castle and a whole bunch of cathedrals. The number of cathedrals wouldn't be impressive if the town of Norwich weren't relatively small (especially compared to slightly larger municipalities in the vicinity, like, say, London). Although each cathedral was stunningly beautiful, I couldn't help but wonder the whole time what on Earth the demand for so many cathedrals was. Maybe when the people of Norwich get tired of boating on the Broads, they built cathedrals. We may never know.

After we'd wandered around Norwich, we all drove up to the quaint beach-side town of Idonotactuallyrememberthenameshire, which looked like a standard beach-side town in the US except there was less a) sand and b) obese people (in general, the obese people were American tourists). There wasn't actually a whole lot to DO in said town, however, except kind of walk up and down the beach and eat at the various cholesterol-ridden establishments, so we didn't actually end up spending much time there.

We got back from Norwich Sunday evening, and since then I've just been catching up on work (but not on sleep, because apparently I can't kick my staying-up-late-doing-god-knows-what habit). I spent Wednesday in Cambridge again, where I continued to meet with really interesting and incredible people (this track record can't hold up for long...). Today I'm in London at BT Center/Centre meeting the head of BT Wales and doing some interviews about my work here. BTC is right around the corner from St. Paul's Cathedral, so I might go be a tourist for awhile (although, forgot my camera today *&^%$#@) until I catch the 4:30 train back to the 'Swich. 

In other news, I miss bagels. Today, I had a "bagel" at the BTC cafeteria, which was really just bagel-shaped bread with some weird British version of cream cheese (aka "whipped butter in a cream cheese container"). It was really disappointing. But the British make up for it with crumpets (so...addicted...). Must find a way to smuggle crumpet supply back to America.

Interesting linguistic observation of the day:

The British do not "wash things off." They just "wash things." I said I was going to wash my hands off, and I got confused looks until one guy said "are your hands going to be gone after you're done?" This kind of makes sense, actually...traditionally one washed something OFF something else...but in America we've kind of dropped the "something else," which confuses the hell out of the Brits, it turns out. 

In other news, I continue to use "pants" instead of "trousers," and I continue to get horrified looks from people. I'll probably fix this problem right before I get back to the states, where people will laugh at me for using the word "trousers." Ah well.

Until next time...

Second Day in Cambridge and a Near-Death Experience

As it turns out, I've been scheduled to have one "non-work" day a week while I'm at BT. Ok, to be fair, it's not like I'm not working, but I have one a day a week where I go talk with academics (at places like Cambridge) or meet people in other parts of the company (in such dull places as London), etc. instead of hanging around in Martlesham being productive (although I'd like to believe that I've gotten some good ideas for my project via my academic socializations).

That was the motive behind Cambridge trip 1. Cambridge trip 2 was equally as amazing, if not more so. I met with someone from the Engineering Design Center (EDC) who does inclusive design (user-focused design), and it seems as though Cambridge has a really fantastic program in that area (grad school...?). I met with a social anthropologist, and we talked about online social networking, which was fascinating (I also got an unofficial tour of some of the colleges at Cambridge, which was great). The MIT CME (Cambridge-MIT Exchange) students are still in Cambridge, so I ended up meeting with two of my friends for lunch at The Cow (a pizza restaurant in central Cambridge). It was so great to see MIT people and discuss the differences b/w Cambridge and MIT with people who have gone to school at both. I took a few more pictures that I'll upload soon. I think I'm going back next week to talk to YET MORE cool people. Tragic, I know.

In other news:

I've almost gotten myself killed here several times because I look the wrong way before I cross the street. I just can't get used to driving on the left half of the road, so of course I was petrified to try driving myself. Yesterday, Jude and I took his (nice) car out to run errands, during which he was making fun of me for not being able to drive manual transmission because "I'm American" (I'm also "the crazy Yank" and "the colonial"). I explained that I had learned to drive on a manual and could drive one just fine, thanks. Well, he didn't believe me, which leads us 10 minutes later to a parking lot where I demonstrate that I can, indeed, drive stick. However, at one point I accidentally got onto a semi-public road where I did not demonstrate my ability to drive on the left side of the road...or shift at all well with my left hand (it's really hard, as it turns out). Anyway, no one is hurt or dead but I don't think I'm going to try driving again any time soon (of course I've been officially banned from so much as looking at the driver's side of Jude's car but that's to be expected).

This weekend I'm going to Norwich to go boating!! It's supposed to be a GORGEOUS weekend (today is warm but not hot and not a cloud in the sky, which bodes either well or horribly depending on how optimistic you are). I'm so excited! I'll be sure to take lots of pictures for everyone! 

Weekend in London (aka Hooray for Bank Holidays!)

After a weekend of little-to-no internet access, I'm back online to (hopefully) scintillating recount my adventures in London.

Falling (coincidentally?) on the same day as Memorial Day, the UK also had a long weekend (called "Bank Holiday" here). That means I got to spend two full days in London without having to worry about getting back to Ipswich for work on Monday, which was very  nice.

My friend David (see my very first entry) invited me up for the weekend to stay at his house, which is in Hitchen (about a 20-30 minute train ride from London). I got to Hitchen on Friday night, where, having acquired a cold via my rather irresponsible all-hours-of-the-night galavants last week, I proceeded to fall asleep more or less instantly. 

Point 1: I love trains. David is, understandably, rather bored by trains at this point, but having spent at least 5-6 hours this weekend on trains, I have to say I've grown rather fond of them. There's something really relaxing about sitting in a (very comfortable!) train seat while the British countryside passes you by out the window.

Anyway, I woke up on Saturday feeling slightly congested but not incapacitated, so we head into London around 10AM or so. We first stopped at UCL to check email and schedules (pronounced "shejules"). David asked me what I wanted to do, and I insisted the only thing I was really set on doing was riding the London Eye (the giant ferris wheel where you can get some of the best views of London). Upon further investigation, turns out the Eye costs 17 quid, so that was out. 

After that, the day consisted mostly of walking up and down the Thames doing various touristy things while I tried to look as non-touristy as possible (hint: one cannot do this while carrying a camera and taking pictures of absolutely everything). There are pictures up on facebook documenting the exactly locations of the trip, so I won't go into too much detail here. 

We ended up near the end of the day at the British Museum, which is unequivocally one of the greatest museums in the world and, like all museums in London, free. This is great for several reasons, the first of course being that I would rather not pay money for things. The second, though, is that I actually enjoyed the whole experience of going more when I didn't feel like I had to get my money's-worth out of the place. I could go into a room, and if it didn't interest me I could leave without feeling like I had wasted my money at all. We spent most of our time in the Egypt and Greek wings, which were really fantastic. One of the highlights was seeing the Rosetta Stone...a really incredible experience. There was also an ancient instrument that was a relative of the violin (it had the four strings and a bridge except it was laid on the ground and plucked). Really neat!

After the British Museum we went to one of David's favorite cinemas in London to watch a new British film (biting yet hilarious political comedy) that just came out called "In the Loop." If this movie ever comes out in America, SEE IT! Really fantastic movie, in my opinion.

When were at UCL, David noticed that the Brahms violin concerto was playing at the Barbican (concert hall: home of the London Symphony). Of course we immediately bought tickets for Sunday night (more on that later). We ended up heading home shortly after the movie finished up.

Day 2 started much the same way. After a trip to UCL for email-checking we went to Hampstead, which very quickly worked it's way into my heart as place-I-want-to-live-except-will-never-be-able-to-afford-to-do-so-without-selling-soul. Ah well, perhaps property values will do another nosedive and I'll win the lottery. You never know. Anyway, Hampstead is a really, really trendy neighborhood in London bounded by Camden (another neighboorhood in a trendy area of London with a slightly different feel) and Camden Market (a very youth-centric counter-culture outdoor market) and Hampstead Heath, which is essentially I giant park in the middle (ok, not the middle, sort of the periphery) of London. Except it's not groomed or manicured at all (with the exception of Kenwood House, more later). It's like one second you're in London and the next you're walking on trails through the woods. It's AMAZING! A few highlights:

1) Kenwood House: an old mansion that was converted into a museum and picture gallery. It has paintings by many famous artists, but of note is one of Rembrandt's last self-portraits

2) Parliament Hill: you climb a hill and all of a sudden you have a view of all of London. It's hard to describe just how breathtaking it is.

On the way to the Heath, we stopped for tea at one of David's favorite tea shops in the Camden/Hampstead area. We had traditional British Tea and cakes (so delicious), after which I could not even think of eating for about 5 hours. I really want to visit that particular shop again before I leave. It was so charming.

We head back from the Heath through Camden Market, where I tortured David by looking at all the trendy clothes and then deciding I couldn't afford them (although cheaper than the rest of London, even Camden Market is pretty expensive). We ended up at the Barbican, where we had an hour and a half for me to go around and take pictures of the absolutely amazing building to my heart's content (and slide down the banister!). 

Funny story:

There are a lot of stairs and at the Barbican, and the banister's basically scream "slide down me!" Of course, I wasn't going to, until David confessed that he did it all the time. After convincing myself that no one was going to notice (or at least pretend not to), I finally got up the courage to slide down. It was really fun! At the bottom, though, I was stopped by an elderly gentleman, who I was convinced was going to yell at me. Then this incredibly formal, cultured, British man says "you know, I've always wanted to do that." Unfortunately, my "well, you should, it's never too late you know" arguments went unheeded, but I'm pretty sure seeing a 70 year old upper-class Englishman slide down a banister would have made the entire trip to the UK worthwhile in and of itself.

Anyway, back to the concert. 

It.

Was.

Incredible.

Really. The acoustics were wonderful. The orchestra was unbelievable. The soloist was amazing (I love Brahms, I loved his interpretation of Brahms...really, the soloists are better in Europe). That, and the huge concert hall was packed on a Sunday night. It was just a great experience all around. I can't wait to go back for more concerts.

We went back to Hitchin after the concert, and then in the morning I head back to Ipswich (where I am now) after a brief sight-seeing tour of Hitchin itself.

In other news, my coworker lent me a copy of this book called "Watching the English," which is an English social anthropologist's dissection of English culture. I read a decent amount on the train back, and I am horrified at how many gaffes I have already made. Apparently you're not supposed to introduce yourself outright and shake hands (oops) or disagree with someone's assessment of the weather (double oops), accept a compliment (good thing I already suck at this), share any personal information about yourself (triple oops)...etc etc. Must rectify behavior immediately (become more awkwardly polite, I suppose). I really should have read this book a month ago...

That does it for now! Looking forward to the four-day week!

Going to London...

Item of business 1:

Pictures are up on facebook. If you don't have a facebook, you should obviously go get one so you can see my Cambridge pictures.

Item of business 2:

I am spending the long weekend in London! I'll be staying with David, but probably meeting up for drinks with my BT buddy Jia-Yan, who will be in London on Saturday. I am so excited!

Last night, I didn't go out and do anything, and it was fantastic. I did take a 3 hour nap, though, which was absolutely wonderful (followed shortly thereafter by going to bed for real). I also have a bit of a sore throat, which I attribute to going-out-two-nights-in-a-row-instead-of-sleeping-itis (not swine flu). Hopefully it will go away by tonight.

Will update blog more next time something interesting happens!

Cambridge and a Pub

I spent yesterday in Cambridge...the UK version. It was amazing. In the US, "really old" buildings are 200 or maybe 300 years old. In Cambridge, those are considered modern. There is so much history packed into a little area, and the architecture in particular is absolutely stunning. Pictures will be posted on facebook soon.

 I woke up at 5:30AM to catch the 6:50 train to Cambridge (the station is a decent walk from my house), and then spent 1.5 hours munching on an almond scone (so delicious) and enjoying the English countryside. Cambridge the university is an experience. Since I spent most of the day meeting with faculty, I got quite a different view than a typical visitor might get. We spent much of the day in a private meeting room with really classy catered food (fruit and cheese platters, shrimp, roast turkey and ham, etc). There was unlimited coffee, tea, and biscuits (except "biscuits" actually means cookies, but I have yet to turn my British friends round to this). Although people don't actually walk around in black robes or anything, there's a really strong sense of tradition, ritual, and hierarchy at Cambridge that you don't get at MIT. It was fascinating. During lunch, I have never been so petrified to eat food (although I'm relatively well-mannered by American standards I had no idea what I was doing when it came to polite consumption of food at mealtimes in the UK). I can only hope I didn't offend anyone.

I got to go around near the end of the day and take pictures, which was fantastic. I'm going back next week and will hopefully have lots of stories!

Feeling like a college (sorry, "university") student again, I got home around 7PM and decided to eat cereal for dinner. That and I had my very first crumpet! Delicious! I highly recommend them.

After that, my half-housemate Jude decided to take me to a real British pub (since I insisted we had to go to one). It was far less seedy than I expected, but I have never seen so many kegs in my life (they had to keep a bunch out back because they wouldn't all fit in the bar proper). I will not go into details about the rest of the pub trip except to say that it was perhaps not the best idea to have my first pub-going experience with an ex-navy Brit...whoops. Interesting observation: I can stand on one foot while rubbing my stomach with one hand and patting my head with the other while being unable to do other things, like, say, walk in a totally straight line. I have witnesses.

Pictures up soon, like I said. Cheers.

I sound all wrong

I was raised exclusively in America. The standard mid-western-ish American accent is all I've ever known to be normal. I always wondered what it was like to hear a different accent as "normal."

Well, now I know. And the answer, at least for me, is "uncomfortable."

Not necessarily uncomfortable in the way you might expect. I've always found foreign accents intriguing, charming, fascinating, or some combination thereof. But now that I'm the one with the foreign accent, I realize how alienating it can be to have your voice come out of your mouth and have it sound all wrong.

I can speak half-British at this point. I've picked up a large number of common phrases that make me both a) more intelligible and b) less likely to stare at someone blankly when they say something. I've even started thinking in a British accent, but I somehow can't make it come out right quite yet (although under the influence of some relatively strong cider tonight I did give it another not-entirely-unsuccessful go). The unfortunate truth is that I can't say "I'm going to pop to the loo" in an American accent without sounding like the world's biggest moron. I dare you to say it out loud, and you'll see what I'm talking about. But hear a British person say it and you'll think it's the most natural thing in the world.

The other problem is that I've gradually begun to distinguish between regional UK accents. Granted, I can't tell which are which, but I can tell the difference when they are spoken (as in, that is not the same accent). I realize that my quest to come back to the US with a bona-fide British accent might be in vain. The only thing I'll ever come close to is a posh Londoner's accent, which, as I'm realizing, is kind of not the most desirable accent to have anyway. Ah well, I won't give up yet.

Words I cannot say:

pants (must instead say "trousers"...pants means underwear here)

spunky (will not go into details of what this means, but it's not good)

In other news, I love BT, and I love my job. I met loads of new people today, and they were all fantastic. My housemates and I went out with some other BT employees who are all recent college grads, and they are all wonderful people as well. I'm so looking forward to getting to know everyone this summer. We went to a restaurant called "Pizza Express" and spent about 2.5 hours there (apparently "express" refers to the speed at which you receive your menus and not a whole lot else). 

I love being here. I don't think I'll ever want to leave.

More later. Toodles!

I'm alright

It turns out that the slang term for something like "what's up?" or "how are you?" over here is "you alright?" That would be fine, if it weren't the American way of expressing concern for someone who looked hurt or upset. After congenially being asked five or six times if I was alright yesterday, I thought I must have huge bags under my eyes or look like I was about to cry, but after I took a quick look in the mirror I couldn't figure out why everyone seemed so worried. Finally, I asked someone today what exactly they meant by it, which is when I was told what it actually meant. Case closed (must incorporate phrase "you alright?" into new vocab).

Amusing Observation:

People here actually stop at crosswalks (which, incidentally, are called "zebra crossings"). I was informed that they did this because "it's the law." I couldn't quite explain to anyone why I found that explanation amusing (I mean, it's the law in Boston too, right?).

More later.

Oops (?)

It has been brought to my attention by my lovely Irish friend John that many people in England actually take their tea with milk no sugar, making the URL slightly incorrect. Apparently this distinction is quite important (?). So I apologize in advance to anyone I have offended.

A (not really) Brief Introduction

I know I'm against personal blogging. Well, in theory. However, I'm (finally) overseas, and therefore cannot update all my friends on my goings-on on the regular basis to which I (and they) am (are) accustomed. That, and my good friend Jen suggested I keep a travel journal, which seemed like a great idea except for the laborious hand-written part.

Hence: blog.

So, welcome to my (hopefully often-updated) chronicle of my life whilst abroad.

For those of you who don't know, I'm spending 8 weeks this summer working at British Telecomm doing some stuff with user interface design. Today was my first day, and I have to say I absolutely loved it. I work with fantastic people and my project is really great.

But more on that later.

First, to explain the URL, it is how most people in England take their tea. They drink a lot of tea, as do I. I'm in heaven (except for the no sugar part, of course).

Life in the UK thus far:

I arrived in the UK around 8PM on Saturday, May 16. Having not slept the night before (hint: don't start packing for 8 weeks in a foreign country at 10PM the night before departure) and having slept maybe 3 or 4 hours on the plane, I was sufficiently disoriented when I arrived. After a nail-biting trip through immigration, I was met at the terminal by my good friend David (a post-doc in my lab back at MIT who happens to be in the UK renewing his visa, as he is conveniently for me and inconveniently for him a UK citizen). We proceeded to galavant around London for about four hours before spending the night at his brother's house.

Observations during London galavant:

-The subway in London is called the tube. Similar to Boston, the final destination of the "tube" is announced after every stop. On the ride back from the airport, the final destination was Cockfosters. I laughed every, single time it was announced, therefore earning much-deserved glares from fellow passengers (and eye-rolling from David).

-Everyone really does drive on the left side of the road. This almost got me killed a few times because I (out of habit) look left and then right before crossing the street. This is not the correct order in the UK, it turns out.

-London is an amazing city. More on this later.

-Everyone has British accents! Those of you familiar with my feelings about British accents are no doubt smiling right now.

-The Thames is absolutely stunning at night.

-London has a GIANT ferris wheel. Plans to ride said ferris wheel are in the works.

-The buses are all double decker. Like a true tourist, I insisted to David that we ride on the top level at the very front ("right, we can pretend like we're driving the bus," David said sarcastically, not wanting to also be mistaken for a tourist by association). Fun fact: sharp turns feel a lot sharper while sitting on the top floor of a double-decker bus, but it's amusing for everyone else when you dramatically get flung into the aisle.

-It is not necessarily the best idea to, in a jetlag-induced haze, scream "oooooo! Americans!" when you hear fellow tourists with American accents.

-It is very convenient to have a tour guide who is 6'5'' in Picadilly Circus, which is, incidentally, a wonderful way to wake oneself up whilst jetlagged.

Because of my inclination to talk like whomever I'm spending the most time with, I attempted to have a British accent a few hours into being in London. David bluntly told me that if I continued to talk like that people would think I was making fun of them. Ah well. Perhaps I'll try again in a few weeks.

Words that I cannot say:

"College" (must instead say "university")

"Truck" (must instead say "lorry")

"Shopping cart" (must instead say "trolley")

"Subway" (must instead say "tube")

"Umbrella" (must instead say "brolley")

Still cannot bring myself to refer to bathroom as "loo." Working on it.

After spending the night at David's brother's house, we woke up and galavanted about a bit more the next day. I got on the train to Ipswich (my base of operations for the next 8 weeks). My host here, John (who works for BT) picked me up at the station. I've got a very small but very comfy room here and there's free wireless, so I can blog whenever (awesome). John cooked a FANTASTIC dinner last night (Sunday) for me, our other housemate Lee, and an ex-Cambridge-MIT exchange student working at BT named Jia-Yan (of course we got on famously, as we traded MIT banter). If you ever have a chance to try toad-in-the-hole, I highly recommend it.

Like I said, I started work today and loved it. Jeff (my indirect supervisor) is taking me up to Cambridge on Wednesday to meet some people and experience the place in general. I'm quite excited.

Amusing observation of the day:

News stand called "Cockram."

Over and out.