New photos!

Oh, and I've put up a few photos from this past semester, see the link to the right.

Hunt of the Laptop

My computer has been dying for the past three months or so. I've needed a new one desperately, but was never motivated to do anything about it. I hoped that it would hold together until the end of the semester, which it did, though I didn't trust the little machine to hold my files. I relied solely on my little flashdrive to get me through the semester and spent many hours in the UVA computer labs to write my lab reports.

I don't know what finally motivated me to get a new one, I guess I was done with being frustrated every time I started my computer (a process that took about 45 minutes) or opened a file (requiring about three minutes, ridiculous for opening a word document), or any other process. Everything took a long time. Worse, I couldn't trust it to save my documents and be able to open them later. When I realized that my laptop would not last for another full semester, I knew it was time to buy a new one.

I did some research online. A lot of research. So I knew what I was looking for, and I knew about how much I could expect to pay for it. Monday night I went on a little survey of the local stores that sell laptops, to check my top choices for picture quality, keyboard lay out and feel, weight, so on. I fell in love with one I saw at Best Buy, a little 14.1" HP. I planned to come back and buy it online direct, but it was actually cheaper at Best Buy.

It was tough to wait a full day once I knew what I wanted, but I managed to hold off until last night to buy my little guy. She is fast, light, beautiful.

It will be some time before I'm finally "moved in" to this laptop, but an external harddrive holds all the important things from the old laptop. Slowly but surely, I'll reorganize this computer. A fresh start will be nice.

Hunt of the Haggis

There are no British specialty stores anywhere near Charlottesville, that I can tell, but there are a few in NOVA. When leaving home this weekend I remembered that I had set myself with a mission. I needed to find some haggis.

There is a place called the British Pantry out past the airport, in Aldie. They have British biscuits, chocolate, meat, and other products in one room and a tearoom in the other. I could tell I was at the right place because they had a British-style telephone booth in the front. The other cars parked there had license plates like "UKGIRL" and "CYMRU", my little Scottish flag sticker fit right in.

I bought 1.77 lbs of haggis for $15.71. It will probably not be worth it, but that's okay. It's haggis.

It wasn't too far out of my way, though the roads back there were little two-laners with passing zones and lots of hills. It probably only added about 30-45 minutes to my total drive time. I'm going to try and find someplace closer to Cville that doesn't mark up quite as much. First stop should be the Foods of All Nations just down the street, then we'll see.

Pictures should be coming soon, as well as stories of a third (and final?) Hunt.

Hunt of the Muffin

Last Sunday I decided I really wanted a muffin before church.

I spent about 45 minutes on Google, trying to determine what Charlottesville bakeries/cafes were open on a Sunday, and then finding one open at 10 AM was a tough job indeed. Luckily the church I was going to was downtown, and there are a lot of cafes in that general direction.

The first one was a cafe I'd been wanting to try out anyway, though apparently it moved about two blocks down the street from when I'd last seen it, this past summer.
It was in fact open. That was good.
So I go inside, and I look confused. When I asked the one employee if he had any muffins, he said no, they only get their muffins in on Mondays through Saturdays (wait, they don't bake them themselves? Hmmm, dodgy...) and sometimes leftover ones are half-price, but there are none today.

Employee started picking up the wrapped items on the counter. "But, we have a croissant, some... umm... carrot cake, paninis.... Cupcakes! Those are muffin-shaped!"

Poor boy.


I found my muffins on the third try. They were okay, the cinnamon-swirl one would have been amazing but the outside was a little stale. It definitely satisfied my muffin craving though, and the blueberry was spectacular.

I found a new church that I like a lot better and I think I'll keep going to. It's a bit smaller, of the two narrow sets of pews variety, but I liked the pastor and the atmosphere, so perhaps it's worth the drive downtown every Sunday.

walking to work this morning...

..I was reminded of one of those sights you see only on college campuses. Older, male professor-types riding bicycles to work, dressed in wool suits and dress shoes, with a reflective band around the right ankle and a briefcase bungee-corded over the back tire. Incredible.

Yesterday was the last day of exams and now the Grounds are empty, devoid of human life. It's kind of peaceful, kind of creepy.

Ten minutes ago I handed in my take-home exam. That was the last item for the winter exam period. So my penultimate undergraduate semester is now over!

It's funny, though I didn't have any "real" exams--no three-hour closed-book, in-class exam--this was probably one of the tougher exam periods I've had. A lot of writing to do. Yuck. But I got it all done, and now it is Winter Break time!

Between semesters, I'm going to keep doing research for Stefan. I wasn't able to actually collect much data during the semester in my independent study, and there are other things we'd like to know, so I'm getting paid for a few weeks this winter. It should be nice, keep myself busy during the days, and yet also relaxing.

Woes of Paper-Writing...

1. I just paid $1.45 for a 20-oz soda from the vending machines. I find that objectionable!

Dedication.

Oh wow, it's December.

Yup.

This week was the last week of classes for the fall semester! That's almost equally crazy. So today I had a presentation for my lab class, which was in lieu of a lab report for one of five physics labs this semester. My partner and I talked about a nuclear lab we did, in which radiation spectra were taken of a few different sources. But since it was the one required lab for everyone, we wanted to focus less on rehashing every single experiment and instead we focused on the practical side of the experiment. Namely, how do you decide what detector is appropriate for an experiment? So for a lot of our presentation we contrasted the main types of detectors.

Okay. So there's this class of detectors called scintillators, which means that the detector absorbs a high energy and emits a lower energy. The first scintillators used were in about 1906, way before technology caught up to the science they were trying to do. So they had materials that emitted visible light when hit by radiation. They would actually take a piece of the material under a microscope and count the flashes of light as it was hit by radiation.

Wow. That's some dedication to science.

kitty!

Last night I bought two more fish to round out the number of White Clouds in my tank to five (for the time being). And also I bought myself a catfish! YAY catfish!

The catfish just sits on the bottom of my tank and eats algae, it is very cute. I was going to name him Iceberg, but decided to call him Lettuce instead.

The other White Clouds are Magellan, Marianas, Archipelago, Amphitrite, and Kayak.

Protesting a Protest

Last week was "Proud To Be Out Week", here at UVA, with events every day to make the general student body aware of the prevalence of and obstacles faced by 'out' members of the community, especially other students. On Friday was a performance of "The Laramie Project", essentially a play written from the documentary of the responses in the Laramie, Wyoming community to the murder of Matthew Shepard. A few other universities were also having performances, I think that PTBOW is a national thing.

On about Tuesday, word got out that Westboro Baptist Church (yes, that one: the small congregation that protested Shepard's funeral, as well as funerals for soldiers and even the victims of the VA Tech Shootings two years ago) was going to come to UVA to protest the "Laramie Project" performance.

A counter-protest was organized. Anyone interested in showing Westboro Baptist Church that their hateful messages were unwanted were to show up outside the performance venue wearing black, to line the pathways to prevent WBC from preventing the audience from entering. I decided that I felt strongly enough about the issue that I went, though I've never protested anything in my life.

We organized an hour before the start of the play and lined the brick pathways, which at that point of Grounds extend in three directions. The protest-protest organizers passed out candles; the plan was to maintain silence no matter what WBC did or said, just in a line of solidarity and light. It was incredible to see so many people there, to see the radiant candles against the sea of black.

Westboro Baptist Church never showed up. A rumor spread about that they might have gone to Richmond to protest their "Laramie Project" instead of ours. It didn't matter, really, that we had no opposition. I think the overflowing support for the rights of a play to be shown, for a group of people to exist without hate, was a message in and of itself. It's a shame that we couldn't do that without an outside threat, but all the same... it was beautiful.


In the news!:
Local CBS news (check out the video at the bottom!)
Cavalier Daily (student paper)

One of my favorite signs at the protest simply said:
Love One Another
As I Have Loved You

Catch-Up; and Elections

Okay, yes, it's been a couple of weeks. About a week after I last posted, "Lear" went up, the weekend of October 23-25. It was actually pretty good! A lot of people came out to see it too, which was great. We had good numbers on the Saturday matinee, which is always the worst attended show, and the Friday and Saturday nights we had to put out more chairs to have enough seats. I like to think that I did my publicity job well.

And ever since then it's been catch-up time for classes, labs, seeing friends, so on. It's been kind of a crazy few weeks, but also nice in a way.

Apparently Mark Warner visited Cville on Sunday for a rally, and once again I didn't know until the day after. It's nice that politicians come to this town in their campaigns, though it is extremely blue (something like 75%?) so it's a guaranteed base of support.

Tuesday night I did some work before heading over to a friend's for a pretending to do homework while watching election returns party. I stayed long enough to watch Obama's Hyde Park speech, then drove home. A few apartments in the neighborhood were obviously having real parties, and I recall hearing the chants of "O-BA-MA" as I fell asleep. Not nearly as exciting as the evening other friends of mine had, who live in NYC and Chicago, another more lively places, but still... it was kind of crazy.

I'm really glad that the voter-registration folks will no longer be hounding Grounds.

put your back into it!

WOW I've been busy.

There are more cool things about the Physics Department here that I would like to share. Both of these happened last Friday.

1. I ordered some parts from a supply company, to the tune of about $15. The parts themselves were pretty small, maybe pen-sized.

On Friday my package arrived, and it was huge, the size of a shoebox. What could possibly be in here?, I wondered. The supply company sent a 'snack pack', which was pretty amazing. I think the food they sent me was almost more expensive than the parts I ordered.

I asked the Stockroom Manager if the food came with the parts? Or was I just confused? "They're not allowed to send those," he said, "but we don't tell them that."

2. ALSO on Friday was the Fourth Annual Physics Department Tug-of-War. I didn't know we did that, but apparently it's something the grad students have organized for the entire duration of my undergraduate career. They had planned competitions between different grad years, between library staff vs. machine shop guys, faculty vs. staff, and different research groups. None were planned for the undergrads, but since the tugging-of-war occurred in front of the main entrance to the building, we knew it was going on.

So a few spontaneous competitions were arranged as well. Somehow I managed to get roped in to competing in the undergrads vs. 2nd & 3rd year grads, AND the undergrad girls vs. grad girls. For the latter, there were two on each side.

I thought the Tug-of-War would be short-lived, and then the grad students would go back to work. Nope. It went on for an hour.

You know they're serious when the experienced competitors wear cleats.


I took pictures, but well... those will be up eventually.

Life Skills

A week or so ago I posted that I like soldering. A lot.

I remembered another possible-life skill today, meaning it is a skill I may possibly need/use for the duration of my career.
Technical drawings.

I love technical drawings. I don't know if I'm any good at them, but it's amazing to me that I can imagine something in my head, sketch it out in 3-D form and as a combination of 2-D components, and then a few days later hold the exact embodiment of what I imagined. It is amazing.

Hopefully that will work out for the adapter piece I drew today, because I have a cylinder that needs to fit inside and be held securely. If my measurements were off, or my drawings unclear...

Who says that labwork isn't suspenseful?

Lear

I like that fall weather has rolled in. The downside is that I've discovered the window unit in my bedroom cannot be closed off from outside, so I wake up extremely chilly, but maybe I can work out a clever solution for that.

We have about two weeks before our show goes up, so I've been working on fun publicity things like designing and ordering t-shirts and copying massive numbers of flyers. It's fun and lets me be creative, but of course it is also time-consuming.

I'm going to try to upload some of the flyers here soon, so look out for those.

The Crimson War

One of our academic and athletic rival schools is fellow ACC member UMD (University of Maryland). Every fall, the week preceeding the football game between our two schools is the Crimson War. Each school has a blood drive, and the school with the most donors wins! I think they do it by sheer numbers, not percentages, which puts our school at a slight disadvantage.

So that's this week. Fortunately, I became eligible to donate on Saturday, just in time to participate. I was 'done' for the day at 2 and decided to go to one of the blood drive centers. There was a long line, as I knew there would be, but I also knew it would be pretty much my only chance all week to donate.

It took about 45 minutes before I was in the bloodmobile in those weirdly-reclined seats, we had to register, then pass the short physical screening, then answer all those questions about our habits and histories. Before each station was another queue. During my wait I worked on a physics take-home midterm.

So there I am, sitting on the floor, scribbling some equations relating to the intensity of light, when suddenly it's my turn for the short 'physical'. I stand up, sit down, and immediately that blood pressure cuff goes around my arm.
They pulse they measured was the lowest I'd ever seen for a blood donation screening. The machine even beeped to alert the screener.

Apparently doing physics makes me very relaxed?


This was the fourth time I donated this year, and all of them were in Virginia. Which means I get a spiffy "Friends 4 Life" shirt from the Virginia Blood Services group! I think I'll try for #5 this December.

don't believe everything you hear?

Today I attended the weekly physics department colloquium, "The Ancient Science of Violin-Making". It was FASCINATING. Not as high-tech as most colloquia we have, but it drew a lot more people from the community/music department as well.

Two things I learned:

-When a faucet is turned on, the human ear can distinguish between hot and cold water.

-Researchers took three plates and adjusted them to play at exactly the same pitch. By computer analysis, the sounds were exactly the same. There was one each of the shapes circle, square, and triangle, and subjects could identify the shape when played.


The human ear is amazing. Amazing.

I got soul, and I like to solder.

My life is saturated with labs. I have lab classes Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday afternoons. Tuesday and Thursday mornings I work on my independent study, which is yet more labwork---although that will switch to paper-writing in a month or so. So as much as my life is dominated by labwork, it's no wonder I'm acquiring a list of new skills I find enjoyable.

The most recent: soldering.
This is not the first time I've soldered in my life, but it might as well be for the little I did before. And yet, the smell of the hot solder reminds me so strongly of middle school tech class where I completed a "circuit" unit. I kind of like that smell.

I don't solder very much, but I could happily do it all day.

I'm not very good at it. All my connections are messy and break and need to be redone after two weeks.


For those keeping up with my project, it no longer lives in a foil-coated box. I'm not sure what happened, because this summer the box definitely appeared to be necessary. Now, it's happy just sitting out where it is, without the low-tech Faraday cage
(Very basic explanation. Better but more confusing explanation?). Not sure why, but if it works it works...

Rally back

Two nights ago (Wednesday night), Michelle Obama visited UVA. It was kind of a surprise for everyone, I don't imagine it was a spontaneous stop on their Virginia tour, but the employees working in the plaza where she spoke didn't find out until an email was sent out less than 24 hours before it happened. I didn't go, I didn't even hear about it until I asked why traffic was so bad that night, but according to the Cav Daily (our student newspaper, the Cavalier Daily), it centered almost exclusively on women, especially the issues women face in the workforce.


The weather has gotten a lot more fall-like, which I think is wonderful. Soon it will be sweater season! Yes!

voli

It's been a while since I updated anything. Sorry. I've been pretty busy.

This weekend was a workday for RTF - the Rivanna Trails Foundation. There's a group at UVA that carpools to the worksite on the RTF day, which occurs once a month, and usually we work on a small chunk of the 20-mi trail that encircles Cville. This week I helped in paring back an invasive plant from the trail; we widened that section from about two feet across to closer to six. It looked a lot better when we were done. Other people removed poison ivy from trees and re-mulched the trailheads. The mulching is extremely helpful in creating safe & obvious entrances. It was really nice to get out volunteering again.


One really neat thing about UVA is the people the student organizations bring in. One great example is our occasional FREE advanced screenings of movies. Last week, they screened "Choke", from the writer of "Fight Club", which isn't due out for about a month. I don't recommend it highly, but it was okay. Some parts of it felt flat, the editting or the sound quality. It was as if the film was missing a dimensional quality---in pacing, in audio depth, something lacking that kept it from feeling real. (Also it was somewhat explicit movie, and I don't recommend it if you're not comfortable.)

This week they were showing "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist", which looked like a fun movie but I was too busy to be able to go. I know, that's really sad, but maybe I'll watch it eventually.

We don't usually have an advanced screening once a week. In the past it has been more like once a semester. Either the Arts Committee is trying to step it up this year, or we just got really lucky, I'm not sure which.

Glass Houses

When light passes from one medium to another, usually not all the light makes it through. Some of the light is reflected backwards, and some is transmitted through. (Think about when it's dark outside and you are inside a lit room and see your reflection in a window.) Usually the light rays are bent by an amount dependent on what is called the index of refraction of the media. That's why your legs look funny when you're swimming in a pool.

That's also why fish look bigger swimming around in their tank.

I found out in class on Friday that the fish see us exactly as we see the fish. That is to say that the same exact thing happens to light moving from the tank to the air as to the light passing into the tank from the outside. That's pretty cool.



I did a pretty thorough cleaning of my aquarium this weekend, and I moved it into my room while I was at it. It was pretty sad, having only Morning Breakfast Time interaction with the little guys. Now they're on my desk, so I can stare at them instead of doing my work. I forgot how entertaining they can be!

I think that soon I'll be able to tell them apart again. Maybe they'll get more permanent names than "Fish #4".

skype skype skype

Oh, so about a week ago I finally got my microphone to work. That's a much longer story, it turns out that because I don't have Microsoft Office, I don't own a driver for my internal microphone. As a result, I couldn't skype at all last year while in Scotland.

The super good news is that now I can! So if anyone has skype, you can find me at [myFirstName].[myLastName]. Just fill in those blanks, remove the brackets, and keep the dot in between. I'm not online a lot, but on occasion I am, and it's less expensive (Free!) than calling.

Fall Semester Plan

Though this semester will have my lightest courseload in terms of credits--at the school's minimum of 12.0---I'm going to be incredibly busy this semester.

-Half of those credits are split between two labs, one for Chem, one for Physics. Time in lab: 10 hours/week
time outside of lab: whatever it takes to write 1-2 lab write-ups per week.

-I'm doing an independent study, too, which is a required 10 hours of work/week, which is silly because I definitely don't spend that much time in any normal 3-credit class.

-I'm taking one normal, lecture-style class. Which is still going to be difficult. Really difficult.

In addition, I have two part-time jobs.
-One is 8-9 hours/week at the library. I love working at the library, actually. I worked there last summer (2007) and have been surprised at how quickly a lot of the proceedures have come back.
-The other is capped at 5 hours/week. I'm not allowed to do more, which is nice because I would but I shouldn't. It's a gradership for one of the entry-level physics classes, though I won't write which in case any of my students find this blog. I'm the only grader for a large class, so I am grading mostly on completion of the problem set, and choosing ~2 problems to grade in more detail.

I bought a 10-pack of red ballpoint pens. The first problem set is due this week. I am so excited!

So between that all, I'm pretty busy this semester, and mostly I see myself living in the physics building. Which will be okay, I guess. At the least I'll be a familiar face in the department.

welcome back to class.

I remember my move-in day first year. It was hot, humid, sticky, disgusting. We had to carry large amounts of my stuff up a few flights of stairs and I unpacked in an un-air-conditioned room. It was horrible.

I don't know about anywhere else, but the weather in VA the past week or so has been downright chilly. Move-in day was cloudy-ish and only about 80F. Still humid, but it could be, and has been, a lot worse.

The temperatures kept dropping. Well, that's a lie, Monday was still hot and humid out, but it's rained every day since, with a high of about 70F. It's been nice, I've been able to break out my chocolate wellies and splash through the puddles without consequence, but I've also gotten a little bit soaked. It's cold, sitting in classrooms with the AC on high while my clothes dry out.

On the plus side, I find it a lot easier to focus on the lecturer when it's not sunny and wonderful out. The fake-fall weather has me tricked into studying, I'm more willing to make that transition than I would be if I felt like it was still summer.
-Also it's a lot like being in Scotland, this constant grayness. Only it didn't rain quite so persistently, it was more of a steady drizzle or intermittent downpour, not a 72-hour Rain Fest.

so speaking of physics

I'm not sure if I've posted this link yet. Pretty sure I haven't.

"So You Want To Be A Physicist"

Scroll down about a fifth of the way, and you'll see Part V: Applying for Graduate School. Just before it is Part IV: The Life of a Physics Major.

I feel the guide is pretty good, and is a good explanation for anyone at home unsure what studying physics really means, especially after the BS is finished and we move on to Grad school. [Edit: I just reread that sentence and realize it can be read two ways. That's pretty clever. I really meant a Bachelor's degree, not the other, but I'll keep it as it is.]

By no means do I think you should read the entire thing; for one, it goes on further than I intend to take my education, and for another, I don't want to think about a PhD thesis right now--as an example--so neither should you. It's a pretty long document, so I suggest only Parts V-VII and IX.

attic antics

The Physics building has a small attic on the top floor, which I suppose is the fourth floor. I call it 'small' because it doesn't take up the entire area of the floors below; if the building is an H shape, the attic represents only the middle, horizontal line and not the caps on either end. A better analogy is an I, but as you can see my font does not have capped, capitalized i's, so think of an H but with a longer middle and shorter ends.
It is also directly underneath the roof, so the width is shorter than the floors below as well, with a higher-than-normal height near the two stairwell entrances, and about a three-ft height on the opposite side. Like being stuck in an elongated tent.

I couldn't find the lightswitches, only delay timers that looked a bit like analog kitchen timers stuck to the wall, the kind where you turn a knob and wait, and it goes to 5 minutes past zero before the bell rings and you find your cookies have been burnt to charcoal. Except that these timers were in hours, not in minutes. But either way, they were dodgy looking, and I did not want to play with them. There were windows flush with the floor, and rose about two feet high. A good effect for the outside, but it was a little dark and light coming from the bottom of a wall is a bit unusual.

I was up there looking for something or another, a bright lamp I think, but I'm not sure.
I did not find a single lamp.
What I did find was fascinating, at least the stuff I could see. There was a cabinet in one dark corner with a sign on the sunlit-side reading "FREE TO A GOOD LAB", and though most of the equipment on the shelves were hidden by shadows it looked like balances (both analog and digital), small power generators, ampmeters, that kind of thing. There were many cardboard boxes, some stacked up and clearly empty, some overflowing with old books; filing cabinets with drawers partially falling out; ancient desks, chairs, coatracks; step-ladders and too many other odd pieces of furniture to mention.

I was surprised when I saw a Christmas tree.

I was even more surprised when I examined the attic further and found four or five of them.

How many artificial trees does one PC physics department need? Apparently the answer is less than five, since those have been gathering dust for who knows how long.

Olympics!

Fish Update: Last night I found one lone fry swimming around in the top. I guess I could live with one more fish, assuming he manages to make it to adulthood. Of course there's no guarantee I don't have more somewhere in the tank (they really are tiny) but at least the dozens I had last week are gone.

Sports: I really like watching the Olympics. As time goes on, I become more interested in watching sports, in general. If done well, it is real-life drama. I realize a lot of the 'drama' aspect relies on the network/sportscasters, but it can actually be gripping. A particularly good match never fails to capture my complete attention even when I have no emotional connection to either team.

Nothing made the reliance on the network presentation of games more clear to me than the coverage of the women's discus that was on primetime NBC last night. In the finals, each woman had six or so rounds to throw the discus. There were probably somewhere between 6-12 women competing.
I was shown three women throw a discuss five times all together, to somehow represent the 30-70 discus throws for the gold-medal round. One of the throws was shown a second time. There was zero drama, zero anticipation, just a narration of "Here is the representative from America throwing in Round 1. 210 feet, that's not bad. Okay, now in Round 3 the Russian contender's shot goes for 206, short of her standard. Oh look! Round 6, and this is the final throw of the competition. If [Smith] can get this one she's getting the gold. Annnnd, she has it!"

Thanks, NBC.
That is not how sports should be covered. I know there's already a lot of controversy about what sports 'deserve' to be shown in the prime-time coverage, but I feel that if you're going to bother giving these women a slot in the 9 o'clock hour, you might as well give them more than two minutes clearly intended to give a breather for the audience between men's sprinting qualifying rounds.

However, best thing about the Olympics: Volleyball.
I'm not sure that volleyball is ever shown on TV otherwise, and I love watching it. I prefer the beach volleyball, it feels faster paced and requires a different kind (not more, and not less) of teamwork than the indoor six-person teams. And I think it's funny, but volleyball is one of those sports I think is better when women play it, which is hard to find---again---on primetime sports coverage. Men's volleyball is great to watch too, don't get me wrong, but there's a different dynamic when the women pairs play.

I've been enjoying the American Football preseason (that's NFL), too; but rugby??? where is rugby? I miss it.

extra fish no more?

My plan of withholding fish flakes worked pretty well, I'd say. It was on the first or second day I could no longer see any of the fry, so on day three I provided food again. These fish can actually go much longer without food, but with a food source right there, they went for it!

I'm glad that problem got taken care of sooner rather than later, better to deal with miniscule baby fish than bloated, floaty tadpoles in my aquarium. Ewww.

Except today I found another little fish fry when I did a partial water change. Alas, maybe this is a problem that will never completely go away.

Sushi, anyone?

I was out of town for a long weekend and had my flatmate feed my fish while I was gone. All four are still alive, so she did an exemplary job. However, we still had some issues when I returned on Sunday night. I opened the tank to discover...

fish babies.

My fish are only about an inch long and 1/4-inch wide, so these babies look like black specks with tails, not too big, but far too many to count. In addition, one of my plants had green webbing I mistook for algae but now believe was the net/sac that fish are hatched in.

I swapped out some water, about a gallon of the 4-5 the tank holds, and with it dumped out some of the baby fish. If I can barely see them in the water they don't count as living creatures. I'm not sure what to do about the babies, really, my tank isn't big enough for more fish, and the net I have is too big to catch the babies. The only thing I can think to do is not feed my fish for a few days. Hopefully they'll get hungry enough to eat the young'uns.

Meanwhile, I'm not sure what to do to prevent my fish from having sex. I doubt my flatmate did anything out of the ordinary that would excite the fish, except that their light was on all weekend. Maybe the warmer water makes for good breeding conditions? which I doubt, the websites I've found suggest cooler water.

On the other hand, I know the spawning happens, and I guess it's a sign of good health. Hopefully most will die off, though some suggest that it's a good way to keep the population sustained, as the lifespan isn't very long. That said, I still have an original fish from 20 months ago. Another site says the lifespan for these little guys is 3-10 years. Yikes.

One Day in the Life of

Alexander Solzhenitsyn died Sunday of heart failure.
Last summer I read just about every Russian gulag novel I could find: of course the list was topped by Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

Obituary: "Nobel Winner Chronicled Tyranny of Soviet Union"

Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn, 89, the Russian writer and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature whose pitiless and searching chronicles of Soviet tyranny made him a symbol of freedom and the durability of the human spirit, died yesterday in Moscow.

Solzhenitsyn always kind of puzzled me. His story is certainly fascinating; the fact he was able to survive such a long ordeal in the gulag system despite health problems and still come out of it intact enough to research and write accounts as detailed and informative as he did is amazing. I doubt most people would have that strength. I think the surprise in Solzhenitsyn's life was his politics, he still held on to an idealistic view of communism and the 'slavic heritage' that one might expect a gulag survivor to reject.

I wish the translations of his work had been better. They felt as though lacking in some way, and I assume it's a translation problem rather than Solzhenitsyn's style.

Sad news.

Summer TV news

My flatmate and I have started watching the MTV reality show "From G's to Gents", where 14 G's (gangstas) compete to most refine themselves, thus becoming a gentleman and $100,000. It's a pretty incredible show. Right now the contestants are each working to prove that he is a real G, and that he needs the money to improve his life.

I wish the show focused more on the challenges. Last week's episode taught the G's how to dress like gentlemen, and tested what they have learned in a fashion show. Their choices were critiqued, but they weren't given an opportunity to improve upon their knowledge. This week's was better: the ten remaining contestants learned to play cricket and to play like gentlemen. They were penalized for etiquette infractions.


I just remembered today that this weekend starts the NFL playoffs! It's Week 0: Redskins vs. Colts, Hall of Fame game.
I'm excited, folks, it's been a long year-and-a-half without live (American) football.

More about Farmers Markets

I see this Scotland blog is rapidly developing into a Farmers' Markets blog. Hmm.

This weekend I went home and went to the Farmers' Market my parents like to go to. It was a bit smaller than the Cville one, but it took up the entire parking lot it was set in so I doubt they could put in any more stalls. This time we correctly identified zucchini, as well as peaches, eggplant, and blueberries. Mmm. A lot of deliciousness was made throughout the day, including a peach and blueberry pie, grilled zucchini, an eggplant cassarole, and blueberry-peach-blackberry-OJ smoothies. The blackberries were wild, picked from unowned bushes around the corner from our house.

Also at the NOVA F.M.:
A miniature-donut machine!

One guy stirred up donut batter, which went into one side of an automatic machine that pushed the little rings through about eight different sections to fry. Last they were pulled up by a conveyor belt and deposited into a plastic bowl, where the second guy scooped into small bags. It was amazing! I wish I could do that thing justice.
For just $2 we got more mini-donuts than we could handle, and were able to decorate with our choice of toppings---powdered sugar, cinnamon sugar, rainbow sprinkles, chocolate sauce, maybe something else. I had cinnamon sugar on mine. Mm.

This link was just sent to me...

...and so now I'm sending it to all of you.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog

I was skeptical at first, but I love it.
Also the appearances of:
-Wolowitz from 'The Big Bang Theory'
-Nathan Fillion from 'Firefly'
-I'm pretty sure I recognize the main guy too, but I'm not sure where from.

Anyway, yes, go, go, look!

I think I had something of interest to write about last week, but I've been having some computer issues and was therefore unable to update with whatever it was. Hmm.

On the plus side, 'laptop troubles' has been a good reason to do a lot of work on the Year Abroad scrapbook I decided to do. I am really not very far in, but it's been a lot of fun. More importantly, I suppose, it's a good way to reflect on my time away and to remember the things I saw and did. It's strange how organizing words and photos can refresh memories and even reorganize them: I feel like the thinking I've done for scrapbook pages has helped to wrap-up the experience. Which is great.



This weekend I drove out to a small town halfway between here and Staunton, to go bowling. It was a tiny little town with many churches and many more ice cream shops. Who would have thought?

Saturday Morning Farmers' Market

Cville has a Farmer's Market in the Downtown Mall every Saturday morning in season. Despite living here for three years or so, I never went, probably because I didn't like veggies until six months ago. I finally went yesterday, and I really liked it.

Most of the produce stalls were about the same, but besides the vegetable farmers, there were quite a few people selling baked goods, homemade chipotle jellies, or jewelry & crafts. Some local coffee companies were there as well, so most people had a cup of Shenandoah Joe or Mudhouse in their hands as they browsed.
There was also a Barack Obama booth, to sign up for volunteering?, or to receive a free button/bumper sticker with a donation. I didn't expect that from a Farmer's Market, but it is Charlottesville, so I wasn't too surprised.

I was really tempted by some of the cut flowers I saw, I don't know how one goes about growing flowers to sell at weekend markets but they were beautiful!

Anyway. I bought a curried ginger scone on a whim from this nice old man and had it for breakfast this morning. It was delicious, though I added apricot jam to keep it from becoming overpowering. I'll bet his 'sweet' scones are better than the 'savory', maybe if I go again I'll try it.

Sad to say, I think I bought a cucumber when I actually wanted a zucchini. It was labeled corretly, too, I'm just not very good with produce.

oops.

For those of you playing along at home, I never made it to Monticello for tickets this morning. Though the local morning news did show me a few shots of people standing in the queue. I just plum forgot until then.

Oh well, I guess I can find other ways to entertain myself on the Fourth!

Monticello Madness!

Every year on July 4th, Monticello (home of our esteemed TJ) has an Independence Day celebration and Naturalization Ceremony. I've always heard it's a nice ceremony and well worth it, but have never gone.

I just found out this morning that President Bush will be this year's featured speaker, replacing filmmaker Ken Burns. I'm kind of tempted to go, although there are only 1,000 tickets available and I'd have to drive out to Monticello early tomorrow morning to get a chance at any. The tickets are free, but the crowds might be a hassle. Hmm. Decisions!

West Virginian MacGyver

This entry has little to nothing to do with Scotland, except perhaps the name MacGyver.

Saturday night found my parents, my brother, and myself in a small house in rural WV with no power, no candles, and only one battery-powered light, a smallish lantern. (It turns out I had a small flashlight in my car, but I didn't find it until much later.) The electricity went out just after dinner, giving us enough time until dark to figure out another light source.

After some brainstorming, we created our own oil lamp in an empty pickle jar. A strip of an old towel provided the wick, which protruded from the metal lid. The jar we filled with an inch or two of lighter fluid. A sheet of tin foil blocked drafts and reflected some of the light back onto our card game. It was brilliant! The only thing that needed adjustment was the length of the wick, ut turns out that it doesn't take much to provide a long-burning flame.

I wanted to make a candle with the plethora of crayons in the cabin, but we didn't even try that one.

Scots in DC

Last weekend I met up with my next-door neighbor from Edinburgh (who is American) and two Scots, who were all visiting DC. It was really nice to see them all, but also amusing to see the flip side of my situation in Edinburgh.

Though the week before was some 10 degrees warmer and much more humid, none of them cared for the DC weather at all. I thought it was pleasant, mid-80's and fairly dry considering the season. Boston and Scotland are both much cooler, though I feel Boston can't be much less humid.

Food. We spent a lot of time finding and eating American food. the BBQ pork sandwiches we had downtown were delicious, as was the Mexican we had for dinner. Apparently they've never had Mexican before! (Although after my experience with the Mexican place is Keswick, I can't blame them...) So I got to explain items like guacamole, enchiladas, and why refried beans look the way they do.
Also: these Scots love IHOP. Amazing!

They were pleasantly surprised to find that I could understand what they were saying without any problem. Most people they talked to in America could hardly understand a word, but it sounded perfectly natural to me, a clean---not cluttered---accent.

One of the Scots disappeared in the afternoon to watch the 'football' (soccer) on TV. Priorities.

Back to the Land of Science.

If anyone is out there who misses my updates on physics, fear not. The glory of science is back.

On YouTube:
A two-part animation explaining how to imagine the tenth dimension. Pretty good, I thought, perhaps not wholly accurate, since scientists now seem to think we need to use eleven dimensions. Well, we'll see, after String Theory and all.
Part One
Part Two

If you don't like YouTube, you can view these videos at the author's website: TenthDimension.Com


I found two popular physics/science blogs, linked to the right of the screen. ArXiv covers a wide range of science, Physics&Physicists is mostly physics, both discuss current happenings in the World of Science.

By the way, today's P&P links to an article about a new novel. Particle Physics Thriller!. COOL!

Enjoy.

Brought to You by the BBC.

I've noticed that since leaving Britain, I have watched a lot of British films/TV. "This is England" was a wonderful film that won some 2007 Independent film award, about a group of English Nationalists (much like neo-Nazis) in the 1980's. Depressing, but really good.

"Doctor Who". I didn't watch it at all in Scotland, but the DVD library here at UVA has the entire new series, at least as much as is released. It's a sci-fi show in which a girl from London and the mysterious Doctor travel through space and time, protecting planet Earth and vanquishing evil aliens.
The original "Doctor Who" series started in 1965 or so, this new series continues where the other left off.
The special effects are of questionable quality, and the acting is hollow at times, but it's enjoyable to watch and to have a laugh.

Speaking of "Doctor Who", I was reading a local weekly paper today that happens to have a cartoon in it called 'This Modern Life'. This week's cartoon features the Doctor in the first panel!


"Torchwood", which I followed this past year, is set in the same universe as "Doctor Who", but is set in present-day Cardiff, Wales. This time the aliens space-and-time-travel to Wales, and the Torchwood team are responsible for maintaining order.


I've found that many people can't understand the accent spoken in British program(me)s; last week my roommate asked, "Is that English?" funny enough, it was. And from England, too.

Summer in the City

I guess that travel can include Charlottesville. I am not sure. Either way, it's interesting to note what is different since coming back. Many of these things are particular to Cville, the plethora of summer construction, including the physics side parking lot, tearing up the main road through Grounds, and work as always and yet with little progress behind Cabell. I used to park behind Cabell a lot, it actually had spaces... I wonder where all those people got displaced to. The sculptures in the medians are mostly changed, as are certain restaurants/bakeries/cafes. I can't find anything in the grocery stores, but that is a problem wherever you go.

Even the Cville Kroger has a British food section, of two small cases at the end of the Frozen Pizza aisle. Most of the shelves are empty, but they have McVittie's Digestives. I'll be honest, I was tempted. I'll bet Harris Teeter has more, and Foods Of All Nations more still. The cider situation is worse than I thought, but it's nice to know exactly what's in the food I'm buying. Amazing how different packaging can be. As yet the only food I would like but can't find is haggis. No one understands haggis.

I'm slowly adapting to American currency, American prices, and American attitudes. Sometimes my friends tease me for using British phrases, but "half-seven" for 7:30, "queue", and "can't be bothered" will stick for a long time I hope. I know how to drive on the right-hand side of the road, and I'm getting used to looking left-right-left when crossing the street. Life skills, life skills.

Keswick (reprise)

There's really no wonder that Americans traveling in Britain have such a hard time pronouncing certain words, especially place names. Even if the name is new, the rules of pronunciation are different. But ignoring that, we like to name cities and towns after ones in England or Scotland and then change the way they're said entirely. A sense of heritage with a large amount of independence.

Keswick. At first look it should be pronounced just so---Kess-WICK.
And indeed, there is a Keswick just outside of Charlottesville that is pronounced this way.
But the English town I visited in the Lake District was KESS-ick. No W.

Why put in a W if it's not to be used? I think the British are worse about this than the Americans.

Either that, or Americans take things more literally.

Another example:
Lieutenant is pronounced Left-tenant, but there's no f's in the word at all. And yet the American pronunciation is the one considered "daft". Isn't the French way our way too?
But then, we still use Colonel.

In summary:
-I discovered a Keswick in Virginia! Cool!

American cars

I've had a little bit of trouble with American roads.

Mostly I'm fine but every here and there I have to stop and think about what I'm doing. Usually this is a problem when I'm out walking, say with the dogs, or running. I can't quite remember which side I should be on, where cars will be coming from, or how to cross the street. It's not instinctual, I have to give it conscious thought.

That doesn't surprise me; though I didn't drive in Scotland, and never adapted to driving on the left-side of the road, I'm definitely used to being a pedestrian in such situations.

However, I have since noticed a little trouble driving. Not always, but in strange situations.
Case in point.
I went shopping the other day and was driving (in the right lane) in the parking lot towards a space I wanted. Another car ahead of me, coming towards me, was in to my lane, presumably to make the wide left and snag the same space.
But for a few moments I stared blankly at the car head-to-head with my own. My mind raced. What country am I in? What side of the road am I on? What side of the road am I meant to be on?
And finally, So, if I'm in America, then why is he in my lane?

Too late. My parking spot was gone.

Photos!

Lakes photos up, see the new link.

Keswick Adventures

We visited the Lake District for two full days: to be honest, three might have been about perfect, I could have used one more day to explore Keswick. Any longer would require a change in locale, and I've heard Lake Windermere is a good place to go on a two-stop tour of the Lakes.

The first thing we went to in the Lakes was the Cumberland Pencil Museum. Wikipedia is probably more informative on this, but in the 1850's or so, graphite was discovered in Cumbria. One particular pencil compant, Derwent, is still in business today and has had a factory in Keswick since the beginning of the Cumbrian Pencil Industry. Next to the factory is a pencil museum, documenting the development of the pencil industry throughout the world and in particular in Keswick, with special attention to the technology of the pencil and its materials. The colored pencil section was really informative about how the color dyes are mixed to create colored graphite pencils.

I learned a lot about pencils.

Unfortunately the information was a little bit outdated. Signs referred to the 1960's as "25 years ago" (phrases like that are never a good idea for a museum display) and Russia as the USSR. But it was pretty cool too, the wood for the pencil is cedar, and comes from "the Great American states of Oregon and California", hah! Clay was originally mixed in with the graphite to help lower production costs and was soon found to help writing quality as well: it is the clay:graphite ratio that determines the hardness of the pencil.

Cool stuff.

Two long walks were accomplished in our two days as well. The first was up Walla Crags, located just south of Keswick, which had an absolutely perfect view of Derwent Water. The second was up Skiddaw, elevation of about 3000 ft or just under 1000 m, and consequently the smaller peaks of Little Man, and 'bump' of Latrigg. Skiddaw is the fourth-highest peak in the Lake District but 'just short of the tallest', though nothing ever told me what the margin of difference actually is. I'm pretty sure that Scotland was visible to the north, though I can't be positive it was actually Scotland I saw, and we could see a lot of the lakes and ridges in all surrounding areas. Climbing up Skiddaw was great, it helped create a sense of the geography and geology of the area, the farming areas, the lakes, the treeless mountains. I'm still not accustomed to such a profound lack of trees.

If anyone is ever planning a visit to Keswick, I highly recommend dining at Bella Roma, which also has excellent desserts, and coffee/drinks at 26. I highly discourage patronising Salsa, a Mexican place. I know, I know, I shouldn't expect good Mexican food in England, but even bad Mexican food usually tastes of something. This was just bland. Unimpressive.

Lake District

The Lake District, I have been told on many occasions, is the most beautiful part of England. It is located in the NW corner of England, just south of Carlisle and Hadrian's Wall, in the area known as Cumbria.

According to one sign, some millions of years ago, the continents of Europe and the Americas slammed into each other, and many mountains were created at this time, including those in the Lakes. After ages of erosion by glaciers, wind, rain, the mountains became rounded, lakes filled in some of the valleys, and the result is the lush green farming area today.

The Lake District was the famous retreat of many English artists, the more famous of whom are writers like Beatrix Potter, Wordsworth, Coleridge, the creater of Postman Pat (a British cartoon character). Back in the day, it was the summer home for loaded gentry, as one might find in Jane Austen novels.

Here, mountains are called fells.
Small lakes are tarns.
There were a lot of weird names. Keswick, pronounced Kez-sick. Just south is a lake called Derwent Water. Towns like Penrith, Cockermouth, Threlkeld. Lake Windermere, and the town Windermere, is a popular spot for walkers, just as was Keswick.

Keswick managed to cater to weekending tourists with its charm and remain genuine; it was also a Fair Trade and organic food haven. Almost every single house, even those outside the 'town centre', were B&B's. There were a few pubs and taverns, mostly associated with small hotels, and Keswick even boasts a nightclub open seven nights a week, though I didn't go inside. Most of the shops were either cafes, outdoor goods, or cute baubles (antiques & crafts).

The whole area was beautiful! More later; also, pictures coming.

whoops?

You know that Patrick Dempsey movie, "Made of Honor"?

I first saw adverts for it about a month ago, mostly posters on telephone booths and the sides of buses. The first wave were advertising "Made of Honor"

More recently I noticed a second wave of adverts plugging "Made of Honour".

Amazing!

speaking of kilts...

My friend Sandy works at a kilt shop on the Royal Mile and was interviewed by CNN today. For some reason.

Anyone want to tape CNN for me?

the kilt

Let me tell you a story.

The original Scottish kilts looked like the ones in Braveheart. They were longer, and draped over the shoulder, and were a lot warmer.

Once there was a forest in England the landowner wanted cut down. As the English do, he brought a bunch of Scotsmen down to do the hard work. The longer, baggy kilts got caught in the tree-cutting machines/equipment/stuff, which I imagine was quite a problem. What did they do?

The Scots worked naked.
What a solution.
No more dangling articles caught in machines. (Actually, I'm not so sure on that...)

The English landowner didn't seem to agree, and was really quite affronted by the nakedness on his land, so he designed a new kilt that just went around the waist.
The modern kilt! An English innovation.

Drinks in Spain

One evening in Spain I ordered a glass of orange juice to go with my dinner. ("Tiene, um, jugo de naranja...?") What arrived was essentially a glass of liquidized orange. It was pulpy, there were seeds in my drink, and it tasted exactly like an orange, nothing added it. On the side of the saucer was a large packet of sugar and a long spoon. Which, of course, I didn't use.

However, that sugar packet provoked me to look around at the other cafe drinks being served, and all of them came with giganto sugar packets as well. I'm not talking about the square-ish shaped ones that hold more sugar than they look, these are the cylindrical ones about four inches long that probably hold enough sugar to sweeten a third-world developing nation.

Most people used their sugar packets, even in the cafes con leche that I found to be sweet to begin with. I take my coffee as black as I can manage, and the orange juice was naturally sweet, so I never used mine. I think it struck the servers as odd.

oh yeah....

I forget why, but we were talking about babies in the shop last week, and the manager used only the word "bairn". Which is the Scottish for baby, which I knew, but it still struck me a little bit.


Happy Mother's Day!

At least in the US.
In Spain, Mother's Day was last Sunday (May 4) which I think is the day for most of Europe. Not so for the UK, where it's always the third, or fourth maybe?, Sunday of Lent.

It's refreshing not to be surrounded by Hallmark adverts.

Sometimes it actually does rain in Scotland.

All of last week we had absolutely gorgeous weather, up in the 70's, bright blue skies, lots of sun, the kind of weather that makes it impossible to revise for exams. Instead the entire student population turned a brilliant lobster pink.

Last night we had a thunderstorm.

It was a bit odd, really. I know it doesn't storm all that much over here, because storms require instable conditions and the constancy of the weather patterns preclude that a bit. But yesterday saw some heavier rain than usual, paired with rumbling thunder for a few periods of about fifteen minutes each. As far as I can tell, there was no spectacular flashes of lightning anywhere, just some thunder high up in the atmosphere somewhere.

Of course the 70F weather is gone as well, the storm heralded in cooler, foggy weather.

At least it's easier to focus on physics?

Paper

I think I've already mentioned this, but the standard paper size is called A4, and measures 21 cm by 30 cm, or 8.3" by 11.7". The hole-punched variety have two holes, roughly 1/3 of the way down the page. I've gotten used to it, but during my revision I brought out some notes on US Letter and I forgot that many people had never seen it. It was "so short!" and had "too many holes!" Hah.

I learned that the equivalent of the "nuclear family" is known as the "A4 family".

"So.. if you don't have A4 paper, then what do you call the A4 family?"
"The what?"

Notes on Spain

-I tried, whenever possible, to speak Spanish while in Spain (English in Gibraltar, because that seemed to be preferred). I think it surprised a lot of shopkeepers and receptionists, but though I completely butchered the language, I do hope they appreciated the attempt. Many switched into English after I started talking in Spanish, and in all these cases their English was much better than my Spanish. Others looked confused, so I used a few more hand gestures. It was pretty easy, anyway. I used the formal-you tense while asking questions, which generally has fewer conjugation tricks.

-The ice cream in the heladerias was amazing! There are two flavors distinctive to the region, one called something like Carapino which was vanilla with caramel and some kind of nut--macademia?, the other usually called Malaga or Malagueno or something else, that was a light chocolate flavor with what seemed to be raisins. I admit, the raisins surprised me at first, but this was possibly the best ice cream I've ever had.

-The coffee I had with breakfast was typically cafe con leche. This was also what was served in most cafeterias (being cafe'-teri'as, where the 's are accent marks, not the school cafeteria it looks like) in the evenings. In the latter case, the waiter would bring a small glass filled about 1/4 of the way with espresso. Then he'd fill in the rest of the way with steaming milk out of a pitcher. Cafe con leche!

-A lot of tourists, I am told, go to Spain and drink sangria. But the Spanish tend to drink tinto de verano instead, which is red wine mixed with the European version of lemonade, lemon-flavoured carbonated water. (Europeans are confused when they see real lemonade in films/television! It's too yellow and pulpy to them)

-The fast food of choice appeared to be Burger King. Huh.
-A cafeteria chain seemed to be called Okay. Huh.

-Tapas! Seriously, I cannot tell you how amazing it was to be surrounded by tapas bars, and all the ones I tried were good. Tapas are small portions of food, the size of your palm maybe, with the idea that a group orders a few and split them by having a few bites of each. General characteristics of the tapas I saw included: ones that were fried, seafood, sausages, cheeses, tortillas that looked more like quiche. Not many required eating utensils. The best part was how inexpensive calamari (generally found as calamares fritas) was!
Tapas are also an inexpensive way to eat, usually under 2 Euro per tapa.
For that matter, Spain was pretty inexpensive.

-Pensiones, in singular pensio'n (pen-see-OWN), are kind of like a step up from a hostel and a step down from a B&B. You get your own room, you share a bath, and you get breakfast in the morning. Most non-hotel accommodation seemed to be a pension, the same way that everything in Britain is a B&B.

-Breakfast in Spain seems to be exclusively toast with butter or marmelade and coffee. No where varied.

-Though less true in touristy areas, the Spanish siesta is definitely in full force for most of the society, with shops shut between about 1-4 every afternoon. Even some museums followed this rule!

-One of the coolest experiences was riding the bus from La Linea to Malaga, for a whole hour the bus driver was tuned into a station that appeared to play music exclusively in English. Classic rock/Oldies, Beatles, Eagles, Elton John, that sort of stuff.

Along those lines, I realised how much concentration it took to be surrounded by Spanish. When in Gibraltar I suddenly found it easier to notice my surroundings, because I wasn't using that extra step to translate signs and conversations. When the language isn't instinctual it's harder to notice smaller details, even if not actively conversing.

Check out my Spain/Gibraltar photos!

Nuff said. Link to the right, there's 57 of em. Two blog entries on Spain below, if you haven't seen them already.

Gibraltar

Before I went to Gibraltar, I was warned that it was extremely expensive and not to spend more than a day there. That advice was pretty sound.

Gibraltar is part of the UK, and as such uses the pound as its currency. But, cool!, a lot of places accepted Euros, and a few cafes/restaurants were even willing to accept US Dollars. Which was a little weird, why Gibraltar of all places.

The Rock is located on the western-ish side of the peninsula, and the main city is nestled onto the eastern side between the coast and the Rock. At the northern border with Spain lies the Spanish city of La Linea (de la Concepcion, a less expensive place, and very un-touristy, mostly I felt like the only English speaker in the entire city). The border was easy to cross, just hold your passport at your side. Seemed to be that as long as you have a passport, they'll let you through. A lot of people seem to come to La Linea to buy groceries and carry them across to Gibraltar.

Immediately after Customs is the Gibraltar Airport, which looks more like the bus station of a small city. The airport's airstrip lies east-west, and must be crossed on foot, then the city begins. It was amazing to suddenly see so many signs in English after seeing almost exclusively Spanish. Unfortunately, Gibraltar was also an extremely touristy place, the main commercial centre was half high-end stores, half cheap souvenier shops. But a lot of old things were there preserved among the new, including more churches per capita than I may have seen in my life, at least one for every major denomination (one synagogue, two mosques, at least three Catholic churches, one Anglican cathedral, one Church of Scotland, one Methodist... etc) it seemed, as well as an old convent, the original Gibraltar Chronicle newspaper printers, etc. The Gibraltar Museum included a basement section in which the ruins of 14th century Moorish baths could be explored. The Trafalgar Cemetery holds graves of sailors who fought in that battle and others of the late 18th century/early 19th.

Because, as like the rest of the southern Iberian Peninsula, Gibraltar has had a long history of several conquests. Way back they know that Neanderthals lived on Gibraltar, thanks to a skull found that is actually featured on the back of the Gibraltar pound coin!. They believe that the Rock of Gibraltar was one of the two Pillars of Hercules, and that the caves on the Rock may have been inspiration for myths about the descent into Hades--but then, honestly, what caves weren't? The area was Spanish until 711, then came under Moorish control until about 1462? when it became Spanish again. The peninsula was claimed by Britain in 1707 (I think) and has been British ever since.

At the southern end of the peninsula, where there are neighborhoods and very few traces of tourism, lie the Shrine of Our Lady of Europe, which I found absolutely beautiful; a large mosque, isolated and open; and the Europa Point lighthouse, built in 1843 and closed off to visitors. Kind of a shame, that. Europa Point was recommended as a place to visit but out there wasn't much to see. Not of the lighthouse, anyway; the (south)eastern coast of Spain was easy to see, and Africa was visible and would have been easier to see on a clearer day, I am sure.

The Rock itself was so cool. Now, I wasn't able to climb up to the top as I planned, mostly because everything seemed to be private property and I couldn't find the road that went up to the top. But, the national park area has a lot of cool little sites. On the north face are the Moorish Castle, built several times over up to 1333 and completely accessible to the public, and the Great Siege Tunnels from 1779-83. This Great Siege was the point of Gibraltar History everyone seemed proud of, but I couldn't tell you what exactly happened, or why, only that the British held their ground and almost all starved to death. Also there were the World War II Tunnels, where Eisenhower apparently planned invasion of North Africa, but this was privately run. Also there was a really bad two-room Military Heritage Centre and outdoor City Under Siege exhibition---in this latter, I learned about how the Gibraltar-ians starved. It was brill.

Along the walk to the south is the Apes' Den, where a large concentration of macaque (monkeys) can be found, though really they seemed to be everywhere on the rock. A Cable Car passed from the edge of the city centre, up to the Apes' Den at the middle station, and to the top of the rock at the Upper Station. More South was St. Michael's Cave, which as I said before, may have been inspiration to the myths of Hades, but who knows. The caves were by far the most tourist-ful of the Rock displays.

All along the rock were remains of military structures: batteries, magazines, a lime kiln, watchtowers. Gibraltar has no natural source of water, and little arable land, but has been prized as a military outpost since forever it seems, and the first mention I heard was when the Moors used it as an entry way for their conquest of the Iberian Peninsula.

I'm sorry for using the term "Moor" so much, but that's what all the information has and I don't know who these people were really, so unfortunately you're stuck with it.

-A lot of shops, especially, had stickers reading "Keep Gibraltar British!" At least we know their feeling on the subject
-Had an Irish Town, which was really about three blocks by one block and not particularly Irish?
-I had no idea they were allowed to mint their own money!
-There was a lot of mention about of the Gibraltar military forces, as well as the RAF. I mean it, everywhere.
-The price of petrol was surprisingly low, about 65p/litre. It's about 1 pound here in Scotland
-A lot of places advertised genuine "English Fish&Chips!" And there seemed to be few signs of Spanish heritage. By design? The shopkeepers were much more comfortable speaking English, as well, but my impression is that many of the residents may have preferred Spanish.
-They had four bus routes, an extensive amount for so small a peninsula, I felt.
-A lot of plaques about that commemorated the visit in 1954 of HM Queen Elizabeth II and HRH Duke of Edinburgh, which was kind of weird, I guess the Queen doesn't go to Gibraltar all that much.
-On the western side there seems to be only one main road, and just beaches, not much in the way of development.

Málaga

Last week I took off to Spain the day after an exam. What a great way to destress! I first spent two or three days in Málaga, which is located on the SW coast, along what is known as La Costa Del Sol (The Coast of the Sun). And I found that description quite true, there was nothing but warm, dry weather and sunny-blue skies.

Malaga has seen a long history, from something like the 7th century, to the capital? of the Moorish kingdom in Spain, to now. The original city stood behind a defensive wall, and though the wall isn't there anymore I still feel like a clear demarkation was evident between the old city and the new. Outside the wall's boundaries the streets were wider and straighter, the buildings taller and more spaced. Within, many of the streets were so small that they were forced to be pedestrian-only, which incidentally makes things really nice for tourists.

On the beach side of the city, the main street (La Alameda Principal) was divided in the middle by the Parque (park), about 10 or 15 yards wide and several blocks long. Inside the weaving Paseo De Espana (Walk of Spain) the tall palms and mediterranean flowers blocked out most views of the cars passing by. It was quite amazing.

El Teatro Romano: The Roman Theatre. This was right along the edge of the big hill in the center of the old city, and only found in 1950 or so when some plaza was being constructed. I was shocked at how small it was, nothing like the huge theatre I was expecting. But it was neat, people were allowed to sit on the original benches.

Alcazaba de Malaga An Alcazaba is a Moorish fort in Spain, Moorish being the local word for the Muslim rulers who were there around 11-14th centuries or so. According to my brochure I picked up, this Alcazaba was rebuilt many times, containing some three concentric walls until the Palace in the center, which had about eight small rooms off of two plaza/inner courtyard type things. The architecture was extremely Moorish here, very geometric in design and style.

Castillo Gibralfaro, the Gibralfaro Castle, was higher up on the same hill. Strangely, it seemed to be less well maintained, but it was still possible to walk all the way around the outside walls. The inside had just a little cafe/snack bar and some gardens, no palace or anything here. Apparently it once held a large Magazine and quarters for soldiers and that.

Picasso: was born in Málaga! Now that's pretty cool. The Museo Picasso Malaga, right by the Catedral (which is also very pretty, but that's about all I know about it), held entirely works by Picasso, with the exception of the Temporary Exhibit, which was 1920's and 30's photography... so still pertinent. Underneath the art exhibitions was an open archaeological dig, showing original Roman walls, Phoenician wells, paved 14th century streets, all together and overlaid in this tiny basement. It was absolutely amazing.

Other things I saw:
-Plaza de Toros de la Malagueta - The bullfighting ring of Malagueta, which I think still hosts bullfights, though maybe they no longer kill the bulls, or treat them quite as badly as they still do in more rural areas? I managed to sneak in, and watched a Spanish man practice twirling movements with his red cape in the centre of the ring.
-Ayuntamiento, the local/regional government. As a building, I think it means the City Hall. I have a picture somewhere. Along the Alameda Principal, three buildings stand out from the rest. One is the Ayuntamiento, one is Palacio de la Aduana (Palace of the Border), and the third is the Rectorado Universidad de Málaga (University Rectorate). Shows how important and influential the Church has been throughout Spanish history.

Chug! Chug! Chug!

Chugging. It's not downing your beverage quickly. Well, that too. It's also short for "charity mugging". The people, usually attractive young kids fresh out of uni or college, who approach innocent passers-by, present a sad story about [homeless people, veterans, abused animals, so on] and then ask for a donation: they are chugging.

Turns out [many? most? some?] people get paid to chug.

Creche. Daycare centers. In commercial centres, it seems. I heard an advertisement on the radio today that a new shopping mall has a large creche. This weekend, a few parents were chugging outside the local swimming pool (located on my block) with signs saying "Save Our Creche".


For those of you keeping track at home, today in Edinburgh the sun rose at 05:38 AM and set at 8:45 PM. That's over 15 hours of sunlight! And it's only the end of April. No wonder I can't sleep in the mornings.

Compare, for DC: 6:15 AM sunrise, 7:58 PM sunset. 13.5 hours of sunlight.

The temperature was in the mid-60's, very sunny with a slight breeze. And at the beginning of exam time, so people studied outside in shorts and tanks.
That seems a little extreme to me.

Physics on TV

A couple of days ago a friend (Physics major) introduced me to the sitcom, "The Big Bang Theory", which is about a few socially inept physicists.

How often can you find physicist main characters?

It's a new show this year, and it's amazing, but at times very true to life.



You know the British cooking show "Two Fat Ladies"?
Well, it's not anymore because one of the Fat Ladies died, I think.
Anyway.
Sometimes I ride a bus route in Edinburgh that takes me by a cafe.
"Two Thin Laddies."

That's brilliant.

Notes on Ireland: 2

-the police are called the Gardai (with an accented i: i', I forget the keyboard shortcut for this). Maps show the Gardai station, newspapers say "The Gardai have two suspects in custody..", etc.

-The first day I was in the Doolin area, I walked down to the Cliffs of Moher. My photos for this are pretty easy to find, they're pretty much the first ones in the album. The Cliffs were absolutely beautiful! The Visitors' Center (not Centre here!) was halfway. To the left were the Cliffs, but you could only see them by walking up the steps to the right. Also on the right was O'Brien's Tower, built in 1890 or so to impress female visitors. It was pretty, but closed, so I wasn't able to go inside.

That whole area was very nice, unfortunately the walk was all along roads. The Burren Way going south from Doolin used to go along the coast, and go right to the Cliffs, but it also cut through farmholds. So, the roads.

-Also along the Burren Way, coming down south from the trailhead at Ballyvaughan, was a small tower called the Newtown Castle. The buildings around it hold the College of Art. The Castle can be entered free of charge, and all five or so circular floors have completely open access, as does the roof terrace. Each floor seemed to be a studio for a different student/instructor, I'm not sure which because no one was there when I visited.

-Shannon Airport, coming home: of fifteen gates, eight were devoted to US travel, and had a large US Customs area to go through before the gates. (The international gates all seemed to be served by RyanAir, the budget/no-frills airline that connects European cities.) It was pretty small, but jammed full of people. I would estimate that about 2/3 of them were wearing fatigues. My first thought was "I didn't know the Irish Army was so extensive", then I realised that the camoflage patterns and accents were American. Shannon Airport is a stopping point for the US military, at least the US Air Force and the Marines. Who knew.

Notes on Ireland

-the local grocery chain is called SPAR

-the stereotype of the friendly/jolly Irish farmer seemed to be pretty true. When I was out walking, you could tell the natives from the tourists: the tourists scowled and were silent. The Irish smiled and waved hello

-"How are you?" was the standard greeting

-When in Scotland, people want to know if DC is close to New York.
In Ireland they wanted to know if it's close to Boston.

-When eating dinner in Inis Oirr (I really didn't have enough food to be stranded on this island!) the TV had on a Celtic vs. Rangers football match. (They are both Glasgow teams: the Celtics have mostly Catholic fans, and the Rangers mostly Protestant fans.) Everyone in the pub, all seven of them, were rooting heavily for Celtic.

-There was an interesting mix of Americanisms and Britishisms. They sold sweaters and not jumpers, and we were to form a line not a queue, but I still boiled my water in an electric kettle, followed the ferry timetable, and 'couldn't be bothered' to do things, except maybe if they were 'well good'.

-I had some truly delicious Irish stew. And soda bread, that was pretty popular as well.

-Everyone drank Guinness. Seriously. Everyone. (Okay,maybe except for some older couples who seemed to all drink red wine.) And it was no better coming out of the Irish taps than any other Guinness, that myth is such a lie.

Aran Islands

The Aran Islands are just off the shore of County Clare, there in the middle of the West Coast of Ireland. The nearest one is Inis Oirr in Gaelic, or 'Inishere', and is the smallest in size and in population (about 1,000). Inis Mor, roughly the same in both languages, is the biggest and most commercial, with a population of about 8,000. The last, whose name I forget, has about 2,000. The Aran Islands can only be reached by ferry from either Doolin, to the east, or Galway, to the north.

The Arans were apparently settled way back in the Bronze Age. That's pretty cool.

-The tourist season in Ireland is pretty much May-September, but only truly exists July and August, and so when I was on Inishere the only place serving dinner was the hotel bar. Well worth the visit, even though nothing was open.
-I think the Gaelic-speaking population lies mostly in the northernish parts of the west coast, but also includes the Arans.

As you can see in my photos of Inishere, there were a lot of cool ruins on this small island. Most people lived along the northern coast, but a few lived in farmhouses in the central part, and the land was divided out by stone fences as in the Burren area I walked though. The ruins were also mostly on the northern side, including two churches, one of which was located in the center of a hill but 'underground', and surrounded by a graveyard. There was a stone circle, a small castle, and a rusted-through shipwreck. I never got a story of how the Plassy ended up on the Inishere beach, but maybe I should do some research.

There were only three of us staying in the hostel, and as far as I know, only one other mainlander was staying there that night. Definitely the off-season---during the summer months all the accommodation fills up.

Coming back the seas were so rough that they weren't going to the Inis Mor pier. I thought I was going to be sick on the way back to Doolin. I don't get seasick, so it was interesting.

The ferry back was called the Happy Hooker.

County Clare; Doolin; music

County Clare is located in the middle of the west coast of Ireland. Mostly it seems to be farmland (and this mostly seems to be cows and sheep, not crops so much) in the fertile areas. An important distinction, because the northern part of County Clare, where I spent my week, is also home to the Burren. My research before I departed for Ireland frequently described this as a 'lunar landscape', which I'm not sure is completely accurate but ah well.

Mostly my impression of the Burren was a hilly region full of large rocks. A lot of places the rocks had been cleared out of the fields to make a grazing ground for animals, and these rocks were piled into short walls dividing out the land.

In my pictures you can see a lot of ruined houses, castles, churches, and so on. These were everywhere, after a while I learned to stop photographing them because there were too many. All the ruins I saw were stone structures, usually a small two-room building with the roof caved in; the castles were more like towers situated on the tops of hills, and always very striking against the green fields.

Up until maybe thirty years ago, County Clare was extremely poor. It still is, but tourism has been improving the local economy ever since the area was discovered as a haven of traditional music. People started coming to Clare for the music, and slowly other tourist activities developed, but there's still not much "to do" there, and the majority of people seem to own small farms.

Of all the places in Clare, the village of Doolin is one of the most famous; apparently it was the first to have its music 'discovered'. Nearby villages I visited were Visdoonvarna, home to a long Matchmaking Festival in September, and Ballyvaughan/Ballyvaghan--both spellings were used even on adjacent signs, no one seems able to agree. I have no guess on the population of Doolin, I don't know what the boundaries are, but a few hundred people living there permanently? And yet the village has three traditional pubs, all of which have music nightly, in-season and off. The more touristy area of the village is Fisherstreet, almost a separate village from Roadford.

Fisherstreet has a few shops, including the expensive& poorly-stocked grocery, and is a kilometer away from the pier. My hostel was in this area. Roadford is inland a little more, a little quieter, a little less touristy---the two pubs in the Roadford end of the village are more popular with locals. Most of the nights I was in Doolin I spent listening to music, and it was always very different.

First night: two accordians (one the large kind you're thinking of, the other is more palm-sized), one guitar, and a percussionist who played flutes, whistles, and wooden spoons.
Second night: fiddle, drum, guitar
Third night: small accordian (what are these called?), banjo, drum. The drummer here used a wide variety of things to strike the drum, and had an amazing solo that must have lasted several minutes
Fourth: two guitars and a set of pipes, like bagpipes.

It was, really, a wide variety in the music. I wish I could have recorded those evenings, the experience was absolutely phenomenal.

Ireland Photos Up!

Once, when I was about twelve maybe? we took a long weekend trip to Kitty Hawk, NC. Actually to Kill Devil Hills, but that is actually not an important part of the story.

We rented an apartment-style accomodation for the time there, and this place happened to have a sofa. The first night I was sitting on the couch and noticed something poking out between the cushions.

A small Swiss Army knife, about an inch long and quarter-inch thick, pretty small, but one of the three tools on it was a miniature pair of scissors. This is pretty darn useful to have, especially when one is travelling around with embroidery projects (as I am keen on doing). I kept it clipped on my key ring for the past few years, you never know when you'll need a small blade for opening packages, etc.

This knife, I had for eight? years maybe. It has passed through I don't know how many metal detectors. Once I visited the UN in NYC and they took my knife from me, and I collected it out of a gigantic manilla envelope. It went in and out of US security and customs without a problem. In and out of Edinburgh at least three times, through Nurnberg, the list goes on.

It was Shannon Airport, a tiny tiny airport, that finally caught my little pocketknife. RIP.


In more important news, Ireland photos are now up!
I pared the original 161 down to 59 for y'all at home, count yourselves lucky.

Back from Ireland!

Yeah... so I'll bet most of you didn't even know I had an Irish trip planned, but I didn't want to put such info online for security reasons.. anyway, I was there a week and am back in Edinburgh! Which means over the next day(s?) I'll put up some notes about my travels, and more importantly, my photos.

So watch this space!

Notes on Home

Since being home I've had to adjust to a few things of course, but most of it came back. Driving, for example. DC drivers still manage to get under my skin but it's okay, hopefully I'll escape before all the bad driving habits come back, and I managed to not get in an accident (yet? knock on wood). I remembered you're allowed to turn right on red. I remembered the plus-five rule on speed limits. Just like riding a bicycle.

The weather is extremely warm right now, but when I first got home the end of March it was a wee bit chilly, but I was a confused girl because I know how to dress for Edinburgh temperatures---which I only know in Celsius. I can convert them to Fahrenheit, sure, but the Celsius drove into my brain to become instinctual. I think the temperatures here were more or less the same, into the 30's and 40's, but I completely forgot how to dress for weather that was cold-ish but not windy. In Scotland the game is to cover as much skin as possible without bundling up too much; especially for the two-mile walk to KB. At home? I couldn't really remember how to dress for a 42F evening stroll with the dogs. But that kind of knowledge comes back too.
Of course now it's hotter than Scotland will see for months, and I'm trying not to get used to that.

More phrases I remembered.

Other words I may or may not have mentioned.

Bursting. When you really, really have to pee.
"Is this the queue to the loo? I'm absolutely bursting!"

Thanking you. When someone does something for you that's more of a small favor than a big favor. It's not a deep, heartful thank-you but you want to acknowledge what they did. A step up from 'cheers', which seems to register common courtesies like holding he door open, this is more like "Hey, do you mind folding that jumper for me? ... Thanking you!"

That's me! You're leaving somewhere you've been for awhile. The ladies at the Shop use it at the end of their shift, as they're getting on their coats. A friend once said it to me to let me know she was leaving the hairdressers and that she was coming home. "Well, that's me! See you tomorrow!"

You can also say that to someone else, more like "It's half-four, so that'll be you, eh?" ("It's four-thirty, so time for you to go, eh?")

More on foods.

Today I had a revelation.
Potato chips ('crisps' to the British) and fries ('chips') are made exactly the same way, one's just cut thinner than the other.


A lot of things taste different across the ocean.
Take Coke as an example. I decided that maybe the perceived difference in taste was due to being unused to drinking it. Or maybe the smaller can size.
Coke is not imported in Britain, they have bottling centers within the country. And you know what they don't have in Britain? States full of cornfields.
The more I looked, the less I saw 'corn syrup' included in ingredient lists. The only reason we use it is because it's cheap. I'm sure the British use some other sweetener strictly because that's cheaper.

I think you can learn a lot about a country from its food. Food products, ingredients, labelling, marketing.


In the local grocery store, one can purchase Walkers shortbread. I have yet to buy shortbread here but I wonder if the recipe is the same, or if it's an imported product, or if maybe it tastes better. I wonder, too, are these available in Charlottesville? Probably not, except for maybe a 'Foods of All Nations', though for some reason Scotland may not be what they have in mind.
Next time I'm bringing back shortbread of a better brand.

Story from December

I can't remember if I've told this story yet, but my parents didn't seem to recognise it, so I'll tell it again just in case.

The first friend I visited over my Christmas holiday lived outside of Glasgow. One of the first days I was there, my friend was at work and so it might have just been myself and her mother home (I'll call her Mum to make things simpler), and I went into the kitchen to make myself a grilled cheese sandwich.

I ran into a few problems.

First, I told Mum I was going to make myself a grilled cheese. They call them "toasties".

Second, I asked Mum if she had a skillet. "A what?" A small frying pan? "A what?" I rummaged through her pans until I found what I wanted. Mum makes toasties on a sheet in the oven, not on a pan on the stove.

Third, the only bread they had was unsliced. I am not very good at cutting bread evenly. In fact, I'd never really tried until Scotland. Also the bread-cutting knife was not what I expected. The end result: two wedge-shaped chunks of bread with dangly bits where the knife caught the bread at angles.

Fourth, no American cheese. Not that I can blame them, American cheese is not the best, but for grilled cheese. I think I might have used cheddar, and was similarly horrible at slicing even, thin slices.

When it came time to the actual grilling of my sandwich, that was kind of a disaster. The thinner part of the wedgy-bread got burnt while the cheese underneath the thicker part hardly melted. It didn't help that I didn't understand Mum's electric stove. And the margarine was somehow not what I expected it to be, so it didn't quite cook as anticipated.

It was a pretty decent sandwich I suppose, just took a lot more work to make.

Home!

It turns out that those "lounges" they have in train stations close at about 10 PM. Drafty train stations are not pleasant when you have over 100 pounds of luggage and can't be bothered to dig out warmer clothes to put on and have an hour to wait until your next train.

Also the benches are metal, so cold and uncomfortable. I don't recommend them.

It was interesting to be in at York between 1-2 AM because a lot of trains slowly rolled through carrying some kind of cargo, my first thought was coal but I really doubt that's the case.

It was not interesting to be at Manchester Airport two hours before the airline check-in counters were open.

Both my bags weighed 23 kilos each, that's just over 50 pounds.
I think the US Customs officer thought I was lying to him. I dislike US Customs.
Maybe next time I should make less eye contact?


I'm home for the next wee while, but I doubt I'll post much unless I remember more interesting things to write about Scotland.. we'll see.

Random notes

There are a lot of things I've been meaning to write about Edinburgh, but of course I forget most of them.

There's been a recent advertising campaign with the tagline "KERB YOUR ENTHUSIASM". They want people to not make as many parking violations. Weird.

On Tuesday night I might a girl studying at Edinburgh who lives near me; on Wednesday I met a mother and daughter who lived in the area twelve years ago. Before those three, I've only met one before I think. Small world.

A week or so ago my Particle Physics lecturer showed us a video about the Higgs Boson, so if you've ever wanted to know more about this critter, I suggest you check it out.

Nurnberg 2; and photos!

Just added about 30 photos from Nurnberg, so check 'em out. More will be up later/soon, whenever Rashmi emails hers to me.


I forgot until I exited the Underground in Nurnberg---yes, they call it by the English word 'Underground'---that most places in continental Europe drive on the right-hand side of the road. That's nice, I suppose, but not when you've watched drivers use the left for the past seven months. That, and the fact our hotel was situated at a strange intersection of about six-and-a-half roads plus two sets of trolley tracks, made me confused every single time I had to cross a street. Which way to look? When I started to figure it out, I'd come across a one-way street with cars approaching the direction opposite from what I expected, and I had to start back at square one.

Everything was less expensive in Germany, though, because the pound is stronger than the Euro. Still expensive for the US Dollar, but I was converting every price into pounds, so it didn't bother me too terribly.

The airports were interesting. The Edinburgh airport is tiny for a city of its size, with only about 15-20 gates. Possibly because the Glasgow airport is huge and only about an hour away by car. The Nurnberg airport is also pretty small, of a similar size, but even less busy when I flew in and out. It was one of those airports where the planes can't actually taxi directly to the gates. Instead we queued to get onto one of those bus things, which drove out to the plane, and we queued in the wind and cold to climb up the stairs.

It was pretty cool to climb down the stairs, though, I'd only seen that done on movies and in newspaper pictures of famous people like the president, when they go to visit foreign countries and are greeted out on the runway. The pictures always show the Famoso looking worried as he descends the stairs. Yeah, I felt like that, and was glad to not be surrounded by papparazzi.
Still, I don't understand, can't they arrange for Air Force One to disembark directly into the airport, or with a slide into a limosine, or whathaveyou?

The Amsterdam airport, on the other hand, was HUGE. I may not have ever been in an airport so big, not to my knowledge anyway. They seemed to have arranged layovers in seperate concourses on purpose, so that the center of the airport was permanently marked with the most gigantic of gigantic security queues. Approaching it from one of the concourses was like finding a wolf spider on a trail out hiking. Or maybe Shelob.

After going through that mess the first time I realised the restaurant choices were better on the first side, but too late, I wasn't about to go through again twice. It was only in Amsterdam that I got my passport stamped, each way, then through the metal detectors again.

I suppose the Dutch are extremely concerned about security, when I first came into Nurnberg and Edinburgh airports the security guards looked bored and probably didn't even glance at my luggage going through the machine. Or at me, for that matter.
Leaving Amsterdam back to Edinburgh, we had to queue to use a metal detector special for our gate, then queue to get our tickets checked, then queue again to get into the plane, in no particular order.

I thought a lot about entropy while waiting through those queues onto the plane.
Also about filling quantum energy levels.

I also two entire books on my two days of travelling through airports. Two long books. And I knitted a hat. Not sure what that's meant to tell you.

Nuremberg 1

As hinted in my last post, I had a wee trip this weekend, to go visit Nurnberg (Nuremberg). I'll probably make a series of small posts about it as I remember things to write about. So, to begin.

Nurnberg is an old, old city. It has a center well-defined by the old city walls: within lies all the medieval architecture, including a castle known as the Berg and several old churches. Outside the wall looked to me like a fairly typical suburban-metro sprawl, though with some German-style architecture mixed in with all the glass office buildings and plain hotels. But within were houses painted white with brown shutters, Gothic churches, narrow covered footbridges, clocktowers, and extremely strange bronze statues. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera every time I passed by one of these statues, but when I post my pictures you;ll be able to see a few. Nurnberg was beautiful.

I wanted to see the courtroom of the famous Nuremberg Trials, but it is actually kind of far out of the city and the car was a manual, so we didn't make the journey to see it. I'm sure it's a boring place anyway, right? Just a courtroom!

It was really nice to stroll through the open-air market in the plaza of Lorenzkirche (kirche means church), which was open every day, although pretty empty when we first visited in the rain. Many of the stalls were exactly like the German Market I saw in Edinburgh around Christmas time, with the same roasted/sweetened nuts and heart-shaped biscuits, but the other stalls had different kinds of jewelry, or clothing, or cooking utensils, or whatever was being sold. Although most of the Germans we ran across seemed to have a good knowledge of English, the venders in the markets were more difficult to communicate with. We bought sausage sandwiches by pointing at what we wanted and holding up fingers; this procured us something called the Nurnberger Snack though we didn't know it at the time. Three small sausages on a hard roll, pretty tasty.

It was more difficult perhaps when we asked the fruit sellers what certain fruits were, or when we wanted a fruit in the center of the display. The stands were so huge it was pretty impossible to get close to a fruit if it wasn't placed in the front, but we made do and had some delicious grapes, strawberries, and dried apricots. At one stand there was dried ginger next to the dried apricots, but the vender spoke very little English. We asked what it was, still, because the label 'Ingwar' sounded like 'Ginger' but we weren't sure. He picked up a nearby ginger root, and then offered us to try a piece of the dried ginger. A lot of the venders let us sample what we were about to buy, except for things that were prepackaged, like the strawberries. The ginger was stronger than I expected, and he mimicked the 'whoa' sound I made with a laugh.

I have developed a strong appreciation for people who visit a country without knowing the language, it's difficult. Luckily the venders and waiters we came across had a good sense of humor about it and were very patient and helpful. Some seemed to enjoy the chance to practice their English with us, and for some others we found it easier to communicate in Spanish, although one waiter first switched to Italian when we obviously didn't understand German.

Other people were at least completely bilingual, and I'm sure this is a great asset to any employer. The hotel staff were fluent in both, as well as the every grocery store clerk we bought from, and the waiters at the higher-end restaurants. Nurnberg hosts a lot of fairs and conventions, so presumably they see a lot of English-speaking businessmen all year round.