Last Post July 5, 2009
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This is officially the final post in this bloggy-thingy
Last day in Paris can be summarized thusly:
There was some stuff I thought I might mail home, but I was too lazy to do that, so I stuffed everything into the bags:
The trash bags, obviously, are trash; the Ikea bag is stuff I took to the MICEFA office for their magic basement full of things for studentses to use.
The final incarnation of the showerhead:
Which was, of course, properly removed and cleaned up. Not a trace of adhesive left on the wall:
Aren’t I conscientious?
Well, the person doing the outgoing state-of-the-room assessment didn’t think so. I spent about 1.5 hours, all told, scrubbing away with a sponge and the Mister Propre wipes. No-go. I’m being billed €44 for cleaning, taken out of my room deposit. No, I didn’t get it spotless, but come on, people! What do you expect, I should go buy an industrial-strength mop and cleanser just to clean my floor this one time? Not that that would have satisfied them; the lovely lady filling out the form shook her head and muttered “Sale!” at the stains on my bathroom floor that have been there all semester and resisted several concerted efforts at their removal.
The plane rides from Charles de Gaulle to Heathrow and Heathrow to JFK were uneventful. I learned that it is much easier to go through airport security in the winter, when one has a coat and pockets to put stuff it. I also watched the movie of Watchmen, which was rather simplified from the book (which I’d read, way back, on my way to Paris), but pretty good. Though it did switch around one of my favorite lines, near the end, giving it a somewhat different meaning. Probably because they wanted the movie to have something sort of resembling a hopeful ending. Also watched The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, mostly to counteract the effects of the absolutely abysmal Robert Ludlum novel, The Prometheus Deception, that I’d picked up at CDG; I just wanted to remind myself that spy thrillers need not be absolutely idiotic, since Ludlum’s prose in The Prometheus Deception makes a compelling argument for scrapping the entire genre.
Anyway…
My room upon arriving and unloading all my bags:
It had been all nicely tidied up for me before arriving, too. Yeah. 5 months’ worth of stuff can rapidly un-tidy a place.
Unpacking garment bag. I didn’t have to wear anything in this bag (dress shirts, suit, ties) for the whole duration of my stay, but it was good to know the stuff was there, just in case, getting spectacularly wrinkled in the back of my closet.
So now I’m back. I’ve had fun riding the MTA subways again (I hadn’t noticed, while in Paris, that many French subways aren’t air-conditioned), walking around without danger of getting lost, and eating non-French food, and all those things that are hard to do in Paris. I haven’t taken any pictures of that. I have, however, taken a picture of my computer gloriously plugged in, directly, no funky adapter-thingy:
Innit grand?
That’s all, folks. Nothing exciting going on anymore.
The Depths of France!!! July 2, 2009
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I meant to update over the weekend, but there was no real internet. I’m actually back in New York and everything, but I’ve still got a backlog of stuff to put up, so I’ll, you know, put it up.
Last week, I took a trip into La France Profonde — The Deepest Darkest Depths of France. A full 2 hours from Paris by train.
Here’s a train station on the way there:
This is only notable because it is the town of Vierzon, which I kept thinking was Verizon.
I took the train to Bourges:
Which is a perfectly charming little town.
I proceeded thence on to La Borne, an incredibly charming little village full of potters. There’s a pottery museum there and all, though I didn’t get a chance to see it.
Me. In La Borne.
A building. Also in La Borne.
Totem pole. This is what you get when you cross a sock monkey, an Easter egg, and Godzilla.
Another building, all castle-y like.
Building that in the middle ages had pigeons and stuff. Still does, kinda. Also, people. With whom I was staying.
Snail!
Approach to the Feu de St Jean in a nearby town. This translates literally as “St John’s Fire,” no relation to St Elmo’s Fire. St John’s Fire has to do with the day of Saint John the Baptist, and involves that timeless expression of rural celebration and latent pyromania, the bonfire.
This celebration, on Friday night, was rather subdued compared to what was to come; there was a great big stack hay and whatnot, but that wouldn’t be lit till Saturday night. There were musicians, first a duo of an accordion and an electric hurdy-gurdy. I took video of them playing, and the locals engaging in some sort of traditional dance or other, but the files have somehow vanished in between the taking and the uploading to my computer.
About half an hour into this, I noticed a flickering red glow in my peripheral vision, and turned to see flames licking up from behind a rise on the other side of the stage. My thought process was as follows:
1: Hey, there’s the bonfire!
2: Wait, the bonfire’s in another place, and it’s not supposed to happen till tomorrow.
3: So maybe that fire’s not supposed to be happening– but if it was an accident, someone would have noticed, right?
4: Okay, I should be prepared in case it is an emergency. How do you say, “I assumed the fire was intentional?” in French?
Of course, the fire turned out to be just a smaller bonfire they were lighting on Friday. Perfectly contained and so on. The musical duo was replaced by a French Cajun band, which was nice.
And that was the Deepest Depths of France. Perfectly thrilling, no?
Stuff I meant to post last week June 28, 2009
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So I meant to post this on Wednesday but then I didn’t. Since then I’ve gone and done stuff, in the past few days, which I’ll get around to posting eventually. Like, tomorrow. Probably.
In the meantime, pictures.
From my last visit to the St Denis campus:
Mural thingy:
The stairs and escalators, without barricades!
This still was all blocked, though:
Hey, guess what happened to the showerhead?
A while ago, the fluorescent lamp in the kitchenette stopped working. So to thaw the meat to make fajitas, I had to use the bathroom one:
Speaking of those fajitas:
A bit blurry to see, but Francophones are instructed to pronounce fajitas as “fa-ri-tas.” This, I suppose, because French doesn’t have much of an [h] sound, so the more r-type sound in the Spanish j (which, incidentally, is represented as [x] in Spanish IPA) stands out more to French-speaking ears. Why, yes, I find this fascinating. Don’t you think about these things when you read the back of fajita-kit boxes? …you do read the back of the boxes, right?
Oh, and from the Porte de Clignancourt metro station:
See the little design just under the right end of the flag design? (by the by, in vexillological technical-speak, that’s the fly end, as opposed to the hoist end) That was originally penned over the face of Marianne Faithfull on a poster advertising some concert that she did a month or two back. It’s been entertaining to watch how the graffiti ends up placed over new posters. I think it works nicely on this one, with both the stark primary colors of the flag and the dynamic yet muted photographic background.
Why yes, I did write the above paragraph just to see how over-analytical I could get.
Next post will probably have stuff about the wonders of Deep Southern France (a full 2 hours from Paris!), complete with a quaint traditional celebration that combined electric hurdy-gurdy music and pyromania.
Change and other stuff June 22, 2009
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I thought it was probably worth noting that my stay in Paris has involved a lot of change. I don’t mean that kind of change, the stuff-becoming-different-from-how-it-was-before kind of change, which obviously has happened but really happens everywhere all the time and therefore isn’t particularly worth noticing in itself. I mean, you know, change. Pocket change. Coins. Euros come in €1 and €2 coins, smallest bills seem to be €5, so you use a lot of change. And then there’s the stuff you don’t use:
The taller cup is all the 1- , 2- , and 5-centimes pieces I’ve amassed over my months here. They’re just really not worth carrying around, you know? The smaller cup is the 10- and 20-centimes pieces, which I use to pay the laundry machine. I suppose I’ll pay for the last load or two with the smaller-denomination coins, just to use them up. That’ll be fun if there’s anybody in line behind me (it also reminds me of a lesson I learned when preparing to leave for France: when withdrawing money to buy a few thousand euros is travelers’ checks, don’t just automatically ask for it in twenties. Firstly, the poor guy at American Express will have to count it all; secondly, the nice lady at the bank will probably assume that you’re buying drugs or paying off a hitman or whatever else people do with large wads of unmarked lower-denomination bills).
Some pretty pics of the dorms — this is a nice walkway that is quite picturesque now that there’s actual green stuff on the trees and whatnot (pictures taken around dusk, so, you know, dark):
Some building in this dorm-y school-y complex:
Dorms, from walkway:
On that same stroll, I saw all three of the cats that hang around here sort of hanging around together. Well, not together, because they’re cats and they like to be semiantisocial, but on the same patch of lawn, eyeing one another warily. I took two pictures, one without night-shot and one with, neither particularly clear:
Finally, a movie poster that has been amusing me:
The title and the little subtitle are both in English. Which is puzzling. If it was originally titled The Hangover, why re-title it but still keep it in English? If it was originally titled Very Bad Trip, why subtitle it in English? Which one of these is supposed to be more intelligible to a non-anglophone audience? Is this, in fact, an imported anglophone movie, or do the French have nobody to blame for this but themselves? These are mysterious things.
Franglais and other fun June 19, 2009
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Still no luck in getting the paper with my grammar grades for the MICEFA. I went to St-Denis today, around 10:45, remembering that the FLE office closes early on Fridays. I discovered that “open 9:30-12:00″ actually means “open 9:30-12:00, unless it’s after the end of classes for the semester, in which case we don’t bother coming in on Friday at all.” So whoohoo. I get to try again next week!
And now a fun half-translated sign in Montmartre:
It’s air conditioné! But is it also climatized?
Posted by the elevator:
Apparently their English-language spell-check is brocken.
And from Montmarte again, some artsy stuff:
This one from somewhere in the 18th:
I’m not sure if this sign has been modified officially, or whether it’s the work of some rogue vigilante duct-tapers:
And another pretty shot of Montmarte looking all summery:
In other news, I discovered earlier this week that apparently Leonard Bernstein wrote an operetta based on Voltaire’s Candide, which was the first book I read in Survey of French Lit II at Hunter. The operetta is all sorts of fun, with amusing songs about the syphilis and the Spanish Inquisition (sometimes, depending on the version, these songs are charmingly combined).
Also, I read an interesting little article in the Times about innovative cost-cutting measures at American universities. My reaction was something like this:
New York Times: “Colleges are cutting back on little things: eliminating free laundry for students–”
Me: “Wait, did you say free?”
New York Times: “–limiting students to $60 worth of free printing per semester–”
Me: “That’s 600 pages at Hunter prices!”
New York Times: “–and discontinuing free ESPN and HBO service in dorm rooms.”
Me: “Free cable in your room? You people are kidding, right?”
All of this makes me worry that Hunter might try cutting back on services at Brookdale. They’d probably have to start by eliminating luxuries like electricity, running water, and walls. Really, if you take away the walls, the place becomes much easier to manage. All the floors just kind of collapse into one, and then you only need a couple RAs, though floor meetings would be a bit hectic. This could be solved by eliminating floors as well, and turning the dorm into a large hole that goes straight through the Earth. Students could jump in, and fall all the way through to Australia, and you could count it as Study Abroad. Except, of course, they wouldn’t actually come out in Australia, but somewhere to the southwest of it:
(Incidentally, the Earth Sandwich tool thingy used to make the above graphic is quite an amusing way to pass the time, and to dash small children’s hopes of digging to China. Well, I suppose they could dig to China, but they’d need to brush up on their geometry first).
And I think I’ll stop before I go even more thoroughly off-topic.
The Kitchenette Files: Adventures in Dorm-Room Cooking June 17, 2009
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Last week, I decided to ignore my room’s lack of microwave. This was a principled act of protest against a dorm administration that, clearly, wants to limit my access to cheap, fast, unhealthy foods. I bought a few frozen dinners at Franprix, and heated them in the frying pan. Naturally, I felt a need to document this with photographic evidence:
In case you’ve ever wondered what a slowly thawing block of spaghetti looks like, here you go.
I’ve discovered some interesting thing about the way my stove works. For instance, when one leaves a Nutella-and-marzipan sandwich in a frying pan, then goes to browse YouTube and forgets about the sandwich, the stove does not likewise forget about the sandwich, but instead neatly blackens one side:
(Incidentally, I highly recommend the Nutella-and-marzipan sandwich, a true culinary marvel. Properly prepared as illustrated below:
…And yes, it does work best with pink marzipan. Or green. Anything but the generic off-white color, which is far too austere and will give the sandwich crippling self-esteem issues as it fries)
I’ve also learned some fun things about plastic and heat. It seemed like a smart idea at the beginning of the semester to invest in only disposable cups and flatware, since I could just throw it out instead of cramming it into my luggage to go back. And everything went smoothly, at least after I learned not to stir boiling soup with a plastic spoon. And then yesterday I learned that it’s probably a good idea to keep track of where the plastic cups are when one is handling hot frying pans. I poured myself a nice cup of tea, and then stared at it wondering why brown liquid was spontaneously appearing on the countertop, and fridge, and floor. Then I noticed the neat little gash burnt halfway up the cup:
In other news, the front gate to the dorms has been malfunctioning, and 50% of the time doesn’t recognize the RFID badges. The high-tech, high-security solution was to prop the gate open with a bit of wood:
At least for a day. Now they just have us buzz the front desk if the gate won’t open. Which works great when the front-desk person is actually there (in fairness, they almost always are. It’s just that, you know, there’s only one of them at any given time, so there’s still the possibility that you’ll have to stand there buzzing for a while till they come back from the bathroom or whatever).
Next up, I think we have some odd Franglais and such.
Big wall of graffiti June 15, 2009
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I’m pretty sure I haven’t posted pictures of this previously. I kept meaning to take photos of this wall, which stretches out along one really long block near where the train lines head north from the Gare du Nord and all, not too far from the dorms.
Starting at the west end of it:
And then I got distracted by the little train…
…anyway…
“Rap is worthless.”
And here’s some pictures of the train tracks, which are pretty. Well, maybe not pretty. But kinda cool-looking.
Thataways lies the hinterlands of non-Parisian France, including (more or less in this direction) Paris VIII.
Buildings!!!
Bridge over tracks.
An American in China June 13, 2009
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I said that I will try to post everyday, and I intend to keep that promise. I just haven’t been online because there was no Internet in our hotel room in Yangshuo. Can you believe that, NO INTERNET! No ethernet jack on the wall, nor was there even a wireless signal floating around. But other than that, Yangshuo was really nice. There were many shops in the area, and they are apparently famous for their GuiHua Cha (Osmanthus Tea) and their silver. I walked around with Alex and bought one souvenior. The next day (yesterday), we drove back towards Guilin, and visited the Reed Flute Cave. It was just pretty much any other cave, but with lights and a light show in the big part of the cave. Enjoyable, and nice and cool compared to outside. Then we visited the South China Pearl Museum, which as opposed to the other pearl place in Beijing, sells Ocean Pearls, which are apparently rounder, but more bred than natural. After saying bye to two of our group of eight, we were left with six and went to a Chinese Art Museum to learn about landscape painting, and I got my name carved on a stamp. Pricey at 180RMB, but at least it was done somewhat professionally. After that, we went to Yao Mountain, but because the cable car ride to the top of the mountain was 130RMB, I stayed behind with Alex to explore on our own. We ended up going to a random graveyard near the base of the mountain, and narrowly escaped from the insect filled site. The damage? About 6 mosquito bites, and I accidently knocked over a bottle of chinese wine on a grave, and apologized profusely in Mandarin. I blame Alex if I get haunted. After a quick stop at “the best rice noodle place in Guilin,” as our tour guide Jennifer called it, we were on our way to the airport. We checked in when the plane began boarding… so I guess we should consider ourselves lucky that we caught our plane back to Nanjing. And that was why I did not blog yesterday either – we got back to our hotel around 10 PM-ish, and I tried to do some homework before I went to sleep.
……….
So, I started this post before at 8:30 PM China time, and I saw fireworks outside my window and grabbed my camera, my wallet, and my watch and ran out of the room before I could finish this post. It wasn’t until I made it to the West Lake across from the hotel until I realized that I had taken the batteries out of my camera earlier in the day to charge. So no pictures or videos =[. After that, my roommate, got back from dinner and I, along with several other people in the program, went arcading on the Restaurant Street. 32RMB down the drain. And this is in addition to the 300RMB I spent earlier today at Walmart. AT WALMART!! On my way there, I did something American. I put my headphones on and listened to music during the train ride. Ah, reminders of NY.
Either it’s just me or this trip is getting expensive. You really need to be able to control your spending or you won’t last in China. I’ve already been flushed down the toilet and have hit my head on every bend of the pipe down to the sewer. I would have to say that the highlight for today was seeing the fireworks. It was rather odd because everyone else knew when it was over; two minutes after the last firework, the hundred-ish people standing near the gate to the West Lake, all jumped up in unison, clapped once, and disbanded. It was rather odd. I wonder if there is some sort of event going on today? Afterwards, I walked around the lake and watched some carnival games the locals were playing, like archery and throw a sack at some stuffed dogs. The prizes weren’t that great though, but the people all seemed like they were enjoying themselves. Especially the kids.
Side noted advice that I learned: Don’t pack your clothes away when they are still wet. It doesn’t smell as nice as it should afterwards. =\ Who knew!?
NYT slideshow June 13, 2009
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This is my shortest post to date, I think. Just felt I should make mention of an interesting little slideshow featured in today’s NYT headlines, regarding urban-planning concepts for Paris. Nothing strikingly unusual — every urban-design project these days is about building higher and/or greener, really — but short and worth a look.
Audio Slide Show: Paris Is Building
(apparently the Times doesn’t let one embed its videos, so you’ll have to go through the trouble of clicking the linky-thingy)
Random pics and pointless analysis of stuffs June 12, 2009
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First, some utterly random, non-Parisian trivia that has been amusing me recently:
You know the song “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”? Catchy little tune put together by some bandleader type guy in the Union army, about how everybody in [generic 19th-century town] gets all happy when their darling little boy comes back from war (Sample verse: “The old church bell will peal with joy, Hurrah! Hurrah! / To welcome home our darling boy, Hurrah! Hurrah! / The village lads and lassies say with roses they will strew the way, / And we’ll all feel gay when Johnny comes marching home” ).
Funny thing is, in the early 1800s, the same tune was used for an Irish antiwar protest song, about men coming back from fighting in Ceylon (that would be Sri Lanka nowadays) for the British East India Company (Sample verse: “Where are the legs what let you run? Huroo! Huroo! / Where are the legs what let you run? Huroo! Huroo! / Where are the legs what let you run when you ran off for to carry a gun? / Indeed, your dancing days are done! Oh Johnny, I hardly knew ye”).
So essentially you’ve got two songs, same tune, same basic premise, same generic-soldier-boy name, entirely different meaning. Which means it’s really hard to tell when the tune’s being used ironically, or seriously, or ambiguously, or what. Also, in case anybody was wondering, that does seem to be the source of the phrase “Johnny, I hardly knew ye,” via the title of some book about JFK. And this has now mutated into “[insert name here], we hardly knew ye,” which has replaced the old meaning of the word knew as “recognized” (e.g. “I hardly recognized you, what with all the missing limbs”) with the more current meaning of “learned stuff about you” (e.g. “I hardly got to know him before he asked me to lend him money”). Fascinating stuff, innit?
And now back to our regularly scheduled Paris-focused excitement. With Pictures!
Stuff from my latest trip to see if my grammar professor had dropped off my grade forms (she hadn’t):
Yes, i photograph this courtyard a lot. Mostly because it’s in the building where I had all my classes, and where the Foreign Language office is. But this was just a nice arrangement of colors, so I had to take the shot.
Stairwell w/ drawings!
I may be crazy, but I think that every time I’ve passed this emergency callbox type thingy (not entire ly sure what it does, it’s located in the above stairwell), there have been soda cans perched on top of it.
Pretty purple cage! Seriously, if you were going to be locked out of, or into, some part of a school campus, wouldn’t you want them to at least paint the cage lavender?
Irreverent graffiti on restroom paper-towel dispenser (empty, by the way; right next to the broken air-dryer, which is above the sink that doesn’t work). The French reads, more or less: “We didn’t ask him to!”
The St Denis Métro station. That’s a pretty sturdy windowpane, quite thoroughly cracked but still hanging in there.
The French lotto logo. Isn’t this just clever? It manages to incorporate 3 out of 4 card suits. Hearts, of course, in the clover petals; the big red diamond; and the clover itself (the suit of clubs is called trefles, or “clovers,” in French), with the requisite four leaves to suggest that, hey, you might get lucky.
Oh, and here’s what happens when I decide that maybe I don’t need to keep all my receipts:
They’re in the middle of being sorted right there. I just had a big bag full of them, and decided that perhaps when I was advised to “keep your receipts” for the Opportunities Fund documentation, they hadn’t meant “keep all receipts, including every time you bought groceries, ate out, or restocked on paper towels.”
France: where hamburgers have identity crises June 10, 2009
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Huh. Last time I remember checking, it had been 2-3 days since I’d last updated. Somehow, someone snuck in and stuffed a lot of extra days between me and the last post. The good news is that I now have something to write about that isn’t a rant about the French educational system (and really, those were becoming a bit forced, don’t you think? I’ve kind of been rehashing the same stuff over and over. Which is silly, since I’m done with the semester. Now I just have to make sure all my grades get to the MICEFA on time…)
where was I?
Oh yeah. It’s been a while (again) since I last posted, and now I’ve got stuff to post about. Which I blame on the latitude. Yes, I blame both my not posting, and the subject of this post, on the fact that I am approximately 8 degrees farther north than I’m accustomed to being (Paris is 48° 51′ 44″ N, vs. NYC’s 40° 47′). This means, you see, that the summer days are noticeably longer over here. The sun sets sometime around 10:30 pm (and in the winter, when I first got here, sunrise was around 8:00 AM). So I’ve been staying up pretty late, even without studying to procrastinate do, even without caffeine. It’s just kind of like “Surprise! 1:30 AM!” And no school to get me up early to make me tired, either. So the whole “day” thing sometimes gets a bit abstract, and next thing you know, hey, haven’t updated the blog in a while. I spent the first half of today thinking it was yesterday, and even almost forgot to check out my daily webcomics. So it goes.
This recent sense of time-dislocation is also responsible for today’s post. The causal chain is as follows:
1: “Hey, I should have lunch, or dinner, or whatever…”
2: “Huh. When was the last time I went shopping?”
3: “Plan B: Sandwich from one of the places on the corner” [there are 3-4 bakeries/sandwicheries within two blocks of the dorms]
4: “Wait, it’s 6:30? And they all close around 5:0…”
5: “Time for another foray into the exciting world of Parisian McDonalds’s!”
(as a side note, I’ve made it a bit of a habit to eventually visit, at least once, almost every McDonald’s or Quick that I come across. There have been 8 of the former, 2 of the latter in the neighborhoods I frequent. It’s just fun to compare the differences in atmosphere and clientele and the various decorative choices and layouts and so on)
Anyway, I got a 280. Not sure what it’s called in the US, if they have it over there. Apparently it’s something about “280 variations” on some basic burgerish theme. Personally, I think it’s just the French fixation with numbering things. I mean, if you’re going to give your neighborhoods numbers, why not your burgers? And so as I was reading the box (one must always read fast-food packaging materials, very interesting), I found the following assurance of cultural integrity:
Maybe a bit hard to read (I can only touch it up so much in iPhoto), but it says:
ON PEUT ÊTRE FRENCH ET BURGER À LA FOIS (one can be French and burger at the same time)
I’m not sure what amuses me more– the fact that this “don’t worry, your culture is not under attack” sentiment is something ad-copy people think of when putting together fast-food packaging, or the fact that the word French is written in English, which neatly subverts the message.
Of course, I might be reading too much into this. But hey, it’s fun to read too much into things. It keeps one’s mind creative.
In other news, a few days ago I bought some heavy-duty-ish tape, got out the scissors, and set about to take care of that annoying showerhead:
Work in progress, most of the old tape removed…
…Ta-Da!
That’s all, folks. Next post will probably have some random pictures from school, possibly some graffiti that I don’t think I’ve posted yet, and perhaps an analysis of the French lottery logo.
Landing in Guilin June 10, 2009
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Okay, so I know I’ve been delinquint with my blogging, and I have tons of pictures that I have not yet uploaded, but from here on out, I’m gonna try my best to blog about something everyday day of the week for the rest of the trip. Even if it means that I have to sacrifice valuable homework time to do so. =] So like the title says, I’ve landed in Guilin, been here since 8 PM, but we didn’t get to the hotel until about 11:30 PM. We had to wait at the airport for an hour waiting for our group members that went to the Hong Kong/Shenzhen side trip. But alls good, we played an hour of pool at the airport – yes, pool. Crappy pool, but still pool. I’m actually not rooming with who I wanted to in the first place, but let’s see if I can switch when we get to Yangshuo tomorrow. It’s going to be a really short side trip, but hopefully we get to take in a lot of the place. From Yangshuo, we will bus back to Guilin the day after next and will board a plane back to Nanjing that evening. So, pictures will be posted, I guarantee, but it will have to wait until I get back to Nanjing.
So far, I have a decent impression of Guilin, it’s supposed to be a beautiful place here when it’s light out and I can actually see stuff. And everyone here is very ecofriendly given the natural environment that they live in. The hotels have low pressure showers and faucets, and their air conditioner is actually not that cold. Guilin is apparently famous for their massages, and that’s seen in the hotels too, with foot massage slippers, and a foot massage mat in the shower. Since it’s pretty late right now, I’m gonna try to get some work done, and then head of to sleep. I have to wake up tomorrow at 6:30 to prepare for check out and start our adventures in paradise.
P.S. It’s raining here, thus making it slightly cooler than usual. So it rains in China, and I love rain in China because it just really cools the place down, unlike the warm summer showers in New York City.
Our Home in Nanjing June 7, 2009
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Date: Sunday, June 7, 2009
Time: 9:30 AM 4:15 PM
I was planning on posts this morning, but I could not establish connection to the blog. For a while, I thought China blocked this site too, but apparently not. They have blocked a lot of sites though – I have no access to YouTube, Flickr, or Myspace… not that I use the last two anyway. If not for Facebook, I would die – DIE! =] So here’s my post from this morning::
——————————————–
So where have I been in the last few days? Mostly crashing in my bed after going out for dinner. I know it’s really bad, but I can’t help it. Take yesterday for example, I was lying down trying to decipher mandarin television with my roommate, and the next thing I know, it’s morning. We started classes here in Nanjing on Wednesday June 4th, 3 hours a day, 6 days a week. Not really that bad when you think about it.
So far, Nanjing has been such an amazing place, with such great history. Nanjing used to be a capital of China (“-jing” or “-king” meaning capital) for different periods of time in history. In 1937, the Japanese had swept through the area and destroyed parts of the original city, killed the people, and raped the women. During our time here, a visit to the Nanjing Massacre Museum will definitely happen. Today, the area around which we are staying has many access points to places like the “34th Street, Herald Square” area of New York City. A short walk can bring us to a large shopping stocked with fobby asian clothes (I’m tempted just to buy some before I come back to New York), and there is a street of restaurants up Hunan Road, where we can find a variety of food, from Korean Cuisine, Chinese Cuisine, and Indian Cuisine to places like McDonalds (we checked the menu already, it’s not that different from the McDonalds in New York, other than the fact that they sell corn. Sorry to burst your bubbles, but no fried rice on the menu).
Nanjing has many small alleyways, where many shady local food vendors have set up shop. Though the shops look rather suspicious, the experience of some of our group has been pretty well at those places. Though I haven’t been to a food vendor yet, I did go out with some of the guys to a pretty local restaurant yesterday. You can imagine how interesting it was for four non-mandarin speakers, who can’t read Chinese, to figure out what to get for dinner at a restaurant with an all-Chinese menu. Phrase books to the aid!
There have also been many interesting differences between Nanjing and New York. Some are listed below:
- They have counters on their streetlights that tell you how long it will be until the light changes.
- Cars don’t know the meaning of “Pedestrians First,” and will run you over if you get in their way. That’s what makes crossing the streets here fun.
- Bicycles are definitely more widely used as a mode of transportation here than in the U.S., so are motorbikes.
- Dogs run around here without leashes. They know to follow their owners and never seem to stray off on their own.
- Food here really is pretty cheap.
Pictures, rant about prof, metaphors, etc etc June 4, 2009
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Still quiet here. You probably guessed that, didn’t you? Here’s some pics I took going to the “Contreoverses” exhibit:
This is on a street next to the library, I forget which street, it intersects the Rue de Richelieu.
The library itself, from within the courtyard. Pretty, innit? Not to complain about my Analyse de Textes prof again, but she got on my nerves again when she said, “Which National Library is the exhibition at? The real one.” Of course, part of that is my irrational attachment to the Mitterand site, since I spent half a semester researching it, but it also cements my opinion of her as someone who really, truly has an apparent knee-jerk reaction against anything new. She’d already gone on a rather cliché rant about cell phones and email, which was of course entirely apropos the text we were analyzing, but the problem is I got the feeling she actually agreed with it. Which wouldn’t be a problem, except that this class was supposed to be about analyzing texts, not endorsing or criticizing particular opinions. If you’re going to teach analysis, teach analysis, and if you really believe in what a given text says, and can’t keep your opinions to yourself, either throw in other texts that you disagree with, or don’t teach that text.
The point, after all, is to analyze how an author says something, what methods they use. Not to evaluate their opinion. Not to argue for or against. A little opinion, a little snide remark every now and then, is entertaining. Too much is really, really irritating. If anything, you should present as wide a variety of viewpoints as possible, because people with completely opposing ideas on a given topic will be making completely different assumptions and implicit logical leaps; thus, you can make sure the students learn to analyze, instead of getting lucky because they happen to make the same assumptions as the author.
All of which reminds me of some random research I’d gotten to doing online — I don’t really remember why — about how people with Asperger’s Syndrome tend to have trouble grasping metaphors and figurative language. What struck me, reading explanations of this, was that everybody seems to treat metaphor and simile as some kind of code, a semi-random cypher. A is to B as x is to y and all that, where you just plug in things that “feel” the same and presto! insta-metaphor. Nobody gives any thought to all the assumptions that go into figurative language, and that’s a shame. It ends up being that people “get it” if they make the same assumptions as whoever coins the metaphor, and don’t get it if they don’t. I think there was an interesting discussion that sort of touched on this in Douglas Hofstadter’s Goödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. I think his example was the expression, “The Vice President is the spare tire of the government.” That one, of course, is pretty straightforward, because there’s only one real way in which those two things are alike. But when you get to stuff like “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” the analogy is so imperfect that it’s just begging to be taken apart and studied. And I get the feeling lots of people just sort of sit there and go “Oh, how pretty, roses, ooh shiny!” And language and logic just lie there, their potential unused, understanding bypassed just because someone couldn’t stop to think.
Right, where was I? That rant kinda got very tangential to itself. Whatever. More pictures:
This was security at the library. Real tough, huh?
Rue de Richelieu.
Somewhere nearby, pretty building. The 9th, I think.
My ingeniously duct-taped showerhead has been coming loose lately and threatening to fall off. Eventually it did, at about 6:00 AM yesterday morning, waking me up:
And today, I woke up about 6:00 or 7:00, I forget, don’t know what woke me up, but I checked the showerhead and found it thus:
So clearly I have to do something about it. I already tried adding double-stick tape underneath the duct tape, and around the edges, but the duct-tape adhesive is just about shot, so the double-stick stays on the wall and the duct tape comes off anyway.
About 9:30 this morning, the fire alarm woke me up. So yay. I got some clothes on and got downstairs, and literally just as I was walking out into the ground-floor hallway the alarm stopped. On the bright side, it got me up bright and early to do my laundry. And now I shall go to the American Express office, to cash some travelers’ checks to pay my last month’s rent. Whoohoo. But first, one last random pic:
Inside the Mysteries of the French Public Toilets! Oooooooohhhh……
Still nothing fascinating going on June 2, 2009
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I was logged on here to delete the latest spam comments and I figured I might as well post, since it’s been almost a week since the last one. Life has just been completely devoid of things worth writing. Even the laundry room has been in perfect working order. Nothing to complain about. Nothing new, really. I’ve taken approximately zero interesting pictures lately.
On Friday, I did go to a museum exhibit that my Analysis of Texts professor had recommended on the last day of class, since I had nothing better to do. It was titled “Controversies,” and I’d actually seen ads for it around the train station and such, but it didn’t look that interesting. Turns out it was, well, probably worth the €5,00 student admission, but not the most exciting thing in the world. About 100 pictures, I think, maybe less. A lot of the “controversy” was just copyright disputes, which is interesting to think about — especially the early bits when photography was emerging as an art form in the late 1800s — but gets repetitive after a while. There were too many variations on the “possibly sexually suggestive images of minors” thing, which is basically the same story every time; a lot of “was this photograph staged?” ones from various conflicts, and some interesting cases of censorship (Is there a guy in this photograph with Stalin whom Stalin doesn’t like anymore? Erase him! –and– Is that a French cop standing by while those Nazis go around doing their thing? Get rid of his cap, nobody will know he’s a cop!). Other than that, the usual stuff — a Robert Mapplethorpe, a picture from Abu Ghraib, the last picture taken by paparazzi of Princess Diana, that one with the starving kid and the vulture — all with their own attendant Issues To Consider but nothing terribly original. Some interesting stuff about the different standards used to judge things in different countries. And one picture from 9/11 of a dismembered hand lying on the sidewalk amid rubble and a melted Hershey bar. Apparently the Daily News published it shortly after the fact. Hey, they do that, not exactly a classy paper. A few years removed, of course, and it doesn’t really have that visceral impact anymore. Probably because it is so shockingly surreal. At this point, the emotional impact of 9/11 is mostly about triggering memories of the event, and not too many people actually saw a dismembered hand on the sidewalk, so I can’t see it would have the same impact as actual images of the towers and so on.
At any rate, suffice to say that the exhibition was interesting, but mainly from an academic/historical standpoint. I’d sort of expected to be somewhat more moved. But then the professor who recommended it is a bit of an odd one (aren’t they all?). The last few texts we analyzed, she kept on telling us to “Feel it! Don’t think, feel!” Which is very nice if you want to make-believe you’re being taught by Yoda or whatever, but of absolutely no value when you’re analyzing a text in a foreign language. As she’d even stated on the first or second day of class, connotations and allusions and all that can be very culturally specific. In order to “feel” a text, you first need to make sure you’re working with the same basic vocabulary. And anyway she went back and forth between telling us to “feel” the excerpt from Rimbaud, and berating us for not grasping the precise difference between dawn and aurora (apparently one of them’s white light, the other is red). So yeah.
Leaving Xi’an June 1, 2009
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Date: June 2, 2009
Time: 9:19 AM
Location: Xi’an
So we arrived in Xi’an yesterday after an 11 hour train ride from Beijing. It was sad to have to say goodbye to Beijing, but the trip must go on. Before we left on Sunday May 31st, we had stopped to see the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube, where the Olympics took place. Then we stopped in an Chinese Herbal place, where we learned about Herbal Tea, and get a diagnosis from professional doctors. I was told that I had too much heat in my blood and that I should buy some herbal pills to take before sinus problems develop in the future. Needless to say, I didn’t buy it (480 Yuan… I don’t think so). But I did get some cheaper tea leaves to drink when we get to Nanjing. The train ride was an interesting experience. Groups one, two, and three were in a separate car than the rest of the group, but we made it work. Two hour shifts for the guys to stand guard over our stuff. But Barbara from Hunter and I didn’t really sleep on the train, so we helped the shifts out for the entire ride. But I’m determined to sleep tonight when we board our train to Nanjing. 13 Hours!! *sigh*
So yesterday, we stopped in our hotel for about an hour or so, showered and ate a buffet breakfast. [[On a side note, I have to say, food here has been really good so far. Sure, it got kind of repetitive after a while in Beijing with our basic dishes (rice, some pork dish, some beef dish, some soup, some unidentified green vegetable [not choy], some chicken dish, broccoli, and soda), but the buffet food we have in Xi’an is getting better. After today, food will be on ourselves, so instant noodle in Nanjing? Maybe… and maybe not…]] Then we went to a Jade Factory to learn about telling real jade and fake jade, and the different qualities that Jade comes in. After the Jade Factory, we were bussed over to the see the Terracotta soldiers. It’s interesting to see them in real life as opposed to a picture. There were people still excavating parts of the pits where the soldiers were found. It seems like really intricate work, because it must be hard to distinguish between what was a part of the soldier, and what is just hard dirt. But the interesting fact that I did learn about the soldiers was that it was discovered by a farmer that was digging a well for his family. After having been vandalized by rebel forces way back when and lost to the world for so long, it must have been amazing to find such history under the land on which you and your family has been living and working on for so long. At the Terracotta Soldier Museum, we also sat down in a teahouse, where we learned how to properly brew herbal tea, and about what teas are good for what health purposes.
At night, I took a walk around the neighborhood with the rest of Group 3 and checked out some stores in the area. Stopped in a supermarket for amenities for our stay in Nanjing. I only bought it here and not in Nanjing because then I could use them on the first day of arrival. I also need to figure out how this laundry thing is going to work. Walking through the street vendors here in Xi’an was crazy. It was super hectic and crowded. But even though I felt as if I would be robbed every other second, it was still a fun experience to see, smell, and taste a little of the food there. Good news is, that there is no poison in my stomach yet. =] I’m going to wait till I get to Nanjing to upload more pictures from the trip. I’m already up to about 600-ish. Yikes… But I don’t think I’m taking any videos this trip because I decided not to bring my video camcorder with me, but I guess if the camera quality isn’t that bad, then there might be videos to come. I’m looking forward to finally settling down a little when we get to Nanjing. I’ll see you guys then! Peace out…
last day May 31, 2009
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i’m leaving tomorrow so i figured i’d post the most important thing i’ve learned from each of my roomates:
from sohail, that it is possible to drink a handle of jack every morning before school and still lead a somewhat normal life.
from danny, that you can wash whites and colors together and the earth will continue to spin.
thank you and goodnight
remember to tip your waitresses
Day 3: Leaving Beijing Tonight and Day One Pics May 30, 2009
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Hey Everyone! It’s about 7 AM here in Beijing, and we are checking out soon, having breakfast, then off to Tianenmen Square, Palace Museum, the Forbidden City, and our Peking Duck Dinner. I fell asleep yesterday after coming back to the hotel, so I didn’t really say much about what happened yesterday.
in summary, we scaled the Great Wall for about 1.5 hours. It is definitely much more tiring then it looks because the steps vary in size and there were some that must have been one foot high at a time. I didn’t make it all the way to the top =[, but I did get as far as three or four of the towers on the way up. I stopped when I got to a gift shop... that and I felt like passing out, so opted not to go any further. I don't know how those top of the wall souvenir vendors do it every day. Afterwards, we went to the Cloisonne Factory, which was awesome. Cloisonne is basically the making of copper items, like those "porcelain" vases that we see all the time in Chinatown or wherever. The copper is sculpted into a shape, and continually fixed and designed before it is handpainted and I guess, fired. We toured the making of it, and it's definitely a process that requires a lot of focus and patience. After the Cloisonne Factory, we headed over to the Summer Palace, where in ancient times, the Emperors and Empresses would spend their summer, getting away from the intense heat of the inner cities. It was beautiful there, but in terms of tourism - massively crowded and many winding paths. The last stop we made was to the Pearl Factory, where we saw one of the workers open a live pearl and show us the pearls inside. That took about 20 minutes, and the rest was left for shopping. Though they are real pearls, still way too much money to spend at a time. At dinner, we separated as a group. Some went to see a Kung Fu Show for $30 USD, while the rest of us came back to the hotel, and explored the city in groups. We went to the so-called "Times Square of Beijing," and marveled at the lights and stores. Two of our group ended up on a bunging amusement park ride we stumbled across on the streets and skyrocketed high into the air fearing for their lives, lol.
So, pictures to come of that, but first - pictures from Day One below:
After 20 Million Hours, I’m finally here May 29, 2009
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I am so dead tired!!! Thus, I will just recap everything in one short paragraph and go sleep. So, got on a plane at JFK as planned. Took 14 hours to fly from New York to Shanghai, then waited for 4.5 hours to transfer to our flight to Beijing. After delays and unbearable turbulence, we finally arrived at the hotel around 2:00PM China time. That adds up for a total of approximately 24 hours before we arrived where we were supposed to be, and also 24 hours between when I got to shower again and brush my teeth! =[ (OMG, you have to see what this room looks like! I wish I could live here…) But after we got here, it was just one nonstop fascination about the city after another. As a group we went out for a dinner at a restaurant within The Rainbow Hotel, and then went to see a Peking Opera at the Liyuan Theatre. Overall, it was a fun experience, but a lot to handle in one day. Everyone looked like zombies at the end of the day. And what really gives it away that you have done a lot in one day is when you start thinking that you’ve been around the same group of people for days or even weeks already, and of course when someone says “Russians” and your first thought is “Martians.” I can’t believe we just arrived! I have some pictures to post… but later on. First of our Beijing treks tomorrow (see the Intinerary Page above for further details). Right now, off to bed before my brain melts, resolidifies, and then implodes upon itself only to become food for the many many hungry bugs here. =|
Prepare for Liftoff May 27, 2009
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3:30 PM: Packed and ready to go (I’m bringing one duffel bag inside a bigger suitcase, one small carry-on, and a bookbag. Too much?)
6:30 PM: Shower and Eat Dinner
8:30 PM: Leave for the Airport
10:00 PM: Group Meeting
1:45 AM: Fly Time
I still don’t quite understand why we have to be at the airport 3 hours prior to departure, but that’s what we were told to do, and we do as we’re told – especially when it comes to international flights in the midst of the Swine Flu global panic. This should definitely prove to be one interesting flight and arrival. China’s airports are already doing more extensive checking to make sure that all passengers entering the country are fever-free. Otherwise, Quarantine! My worry-some parents have already made me pack extra precautionary supplies, i.e. a prescription of Tamiflu and masks. I guess better safe than sorry, regardless of how paranoid of life that sounds to be carrying everything you ever need to ward off a cold. I just feel like the more I worry about catching cold only makes me more susceptible to actually getting one. You’re just going to start developing cold symptoms that are not really there because you’re mind is telling you that you’re going to get sick.
Regardless of what’s happening, I’m still so excited to know that in less than 12 hours, I will be on a plane to Shanghai, and in less 48 hours, I will be in Beijing. This has got to be my first international flight since I was five years old. I know… what a time to start, what will hopefully become, traveling adventures over the course of a lifetime.
I guess that’s it for now. I just wanted to hop on the blog and bid you all farewell before I fly and I will talk to you all in China, and see you when I come back! All this talk about China and Beijing reminds me of a Chinese song I was listening to during the summer olympics titled “Welcome to Beijing.” Many, many well known Chinese artists and actors/actresses participated in the making of this song and the music video. Although it’s only in Mandarin, the youtube video has English translations (I can’t vouch for the validity of the translations though).
Beijing Welcomes You – Olympic Song
Really Not Much To Report May 27, 2009
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Paris continues to be, as somewhat predicted, a bit dull, what with school being almost over. I suppose I really should go visit and touristify and so on. My last class of the semester is tomorrow afternoon. Honestly, the most exciting thing to happen recently is a fire on my stove last night, and that’s not even as exciting as it sounds. I was taking my frying pan off the burner when a bit of melted butter sloshed off and hit the burner and ignited. I put the pan back on to smother the flames, but obviously I couldn’t put it upside-down — which would probably have been better for smothering, all other things being equal — since it still had butter in it. I was going to toss some water on it, then I realized I wasn’t sure if water does the same thing to butter fires as to oil fires. Seemed likely enough that I didn’t want to risk it, so I went into the bathroom, soaked my towel, rung it out so it wouldn’t drip, and went back to the kitchenette only to discover that the flames had burnt out. So all I got out of the ordeal was a not-quite-dried towel the next morning. Oh, and yesterday morning the hot water was off, for some reason, while today a note in the elevator informed us that the people who pick up the garbage are on strike, or something like that. Whoohoo.
Some pictures I hadn’t uploaded yet:
A sign outside a bookstore. A reading tiger of sorts, if I recall. I kind of got it at a bad angle.
Last week for Discovery of Paris we went back to Bercy, as I’d said, and the pool thingy was full of water. Lovely, innit? Which reminds me, back then I also ended up musing on the joys of translating one grading system to another. The professor filled out MICEFA grade forms, just wrote in my grades and gave them to me, apparently not concerned that I might cheat if she didn’t send them directly to the MICEFA office. Didn’t even seal the envelopes and sign her name across the flap. At any rate, she has her own system of converting French to US grades: 0-10 = F, 10-12 = D, 13-14 = C, 15-16 = B, 17-18 = A, 19-20 = A+. I got a 16 for language, a 19 for research and so forth. Thing is, the class is officially listed as two classes, because it takes up two class periods. So I need to have one grade for each listed class, so I get B for one class, A+ for the other. Of course, if you average that out as most American schools would, that means a B+ average for those two classes, because A+’s count for as much as A’s. But if the language and research grades had been averaged, and that average given for each class, it would be 17.5 for each, so it would be an A average. Which it probably will be, once I get back to Hunter, since this was one class and Hunter, unlike Paris 8, doesn’t care if you have a class that’s twice as long as the others. Still, I am amused at how the same work, evaluated the same way, by the same person, using the same criteria, can give two completely different results depending on how one works with a bit of bureaucracy designed to aid in time-management. Kind of highlights the pointlessness of the whole grades thing. Of course, the whole grades thing sort of is the point of the whole exercise, so… yeah. Best not to think about it to much, and just laugh. To oneself. Because other people might not appreciate the humor.
I was going to by Windex or equivalent to clean my room pre-move-out, but then I discovered Mr. Propre wipes. Seriously, how can you resist Mr. Propre? Not “M. Propre.” Which I find even more amusing. It somehow feels like it offers an insight into marketing and demographics and so on. At any rate, I bought it. Wonderful Franglais. Which reminds me of a new expression I learned from a Czech student: “On y go.” A combination of the French “on y va” and the English go.
The adventures of store-brand cereal! That yellow thing? A big lump of clotted-together cereal dust. Didn’t taste bad.
The park at Paris 8. All grassy now! With the cafeteria in the background. Those orange boxes up top, i learned this weekend, are dorms. So all those times I was in the cafeteria building and someone asked me where the dorms were, and I said they were somewhere else, this was just the cafeteria… my bad.
T MINUS 104 HOURS May 23, 2009
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In approximately 104 hours from today, I will be boarding a plane to China with the CUNY-BC in China Summer Program, hosted by none other than Brooklyn College. Exciting!!! With no more finals to take, as of yesterday May 22 at 3 PM, I have a good four days left to pack and get my travel affairs in order. As long as nothing goes wrong (knock on wood *knock* *knock*), I will be out of this house by 9 PM on the night of May 27th, and on a plane at 1:45 AM (YES, I’M NOT KIDDING! 1:45 AM!!!!!) to China on May 28th.
Over the course of 29 days, I along with 64 other students and faculty will be making stops in Beijing, Xi-an, Nanjing, Yellow Mountain, Hangzhou, and Shanghai, with optional side trips to Hong Kong/Shenzhen, Guilin/Yangshuo, and possibly Sanya. I myself have already paid to go to Guilin/Yangshuo because Google.com tells me that it should be beautiful there this time of the year =D. I’m not quite sure how internet is going to work in China yet, so I’m crossing my fingers for being able to keep this blog going while abroad. I’ve also been told by several people that I am your stereotypical tourist, so there will definitely tons and tons of pictures and possibly video to come later on. Given that I took about 800 or so pictures in my week and a half in New Orleans this past spring break, one can only think about what’s going to happen in three and a half weeks. (Yikes!)
That’s it for now. I have got to start packing and face off in the One Suitcase Challenge! Dun Dun Dun… Kudos to myself if I win. See below for links to learn more about Macaulay Service Experiences like Alternative Spring Break and the CUNY-BC in China Study Abroad program. Adios for now, or should I say 再 見! (”Zàijiàn” means goodbye, or see you next time). [On a sidenote, I've just finished a Chinese 1.1 course, so my knowledge of the Chinese language is limited beyond belief. Luckily for me, I have my Instant Chinese phrasebook (love the name, lol) for the trip. Haha... I am so dead...]
To learn more about Macaulay Service Learning Experiences such as Alternative Spring Break, you can visit the Macaulay Scholars in Service page on the Macaulay Honors College website.
To learn more about the CUNY-BC in China Program, you can visit the CUNY-BC in China Study Abroad website.
Artsy London Pics May 23, 2009
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Colorful underpass.
Was intrigued by these statues. Went down to the level of the canal thingy there and noticed lots of other artsiness:
More statues!
Goose!
Peek-through sculpture thingumy.
Another statue!
Them pig things again from another angle.
Kings Cross. Had work going on. I wandered about a bit before going to get my train at St. Pancras station, next door. There was work going on at platforms 9 and 10, and a helpful sign telling Harry Potter fans where to go to find the Platform 9 3/4 sculpture. I considered taking a picture. Of the sign, that is, not the sculpture. The sculpture would have been out of my way.
In other news, I’ve scheduled my checkout time for the dorm. It didn’t cross my mind that I would have to, until I got a letter to tat effect in my mailbox here. It seems that the dorms do not have sufficient staff to check out everyone on the day that their contracts expire, so they require students to make appointments for checkout, first come first serve. I suppose I should have seen that one coming, since the dorms are run essentially like a rather high-security apartment complex; there’s no RAs or anything, just the front-desk and cleaning staff. I was a bit annoyed, though. I knew they let people check out before the contracts expire; I didn’t know it would be required for some people. Logistics. Always fun, no?
London & Oxford Pics May 21, 2009
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I said I’d post pictures. I am now posting pictures. This demonstrates what a good and trustworthy individual I am, no?
Apparently France is stalking me:
Ooh hey, isn’t this an esthetically pleasing building, in a low-key kinda way?
This would be Oxford:
The Oxford Tube shuttle-bus thing is very convenient, plenty of easy-to-get-to stops in London. Very comfortable. Also a victim of a peculiar procedural idiocy: the drivers don’t open the doors by default when they stop; they only open if someone’s waiting, or if you ask them to. There is no stop-requesting button system. You’re not supposed to be up near the front while the bus is in motion. So this means you have to get up as soon as the bus stops and dash for the front so that the driver knows you’re actually getting off. Which is a lot of fun when you’re in a new town and there’s a bunch of buses in front of you and you’re not sure if the driver has actually stopped-stopped, or is about to move forward, or what. The London Tube, for the record, has the opposite problem. Stops are announced ahead of time, doors open automatically (unlike the Paris Métro), but the interior is not comfortable at all. All right, the seats are nice, but as with most subway systems you’re likely to end up standing. The aisle between seats is narrow, the doors are small, and the ceiling of the cars curves down rather sharply; while the middle is, I’d guess, between 6′4″ and 6′6″, the sides are easily under 6′. This means that I had the pleasure of getting crammed against a low, curved wall for most of my trips, often having to push my way through a dense crowd to get to the minuscule door on the other side. I don’t think there’s hope of enlarging the trains in the near future, since the tunnels seem to fit them pretty snugly, but at least they could fit them with bigger doors and smaller, bench-style seats so people can at least move around.
Anyway.
I don’t know what the naked rusting person is doing up here, but there you go:
Amusing faces:
Dorms, if I recall?
Interesting tower-thingy:
Well hey, if it isn’t all architecturally juxtapositional:
London has these signs all over. They either mean “No Left Turn” or “Boomerangs Prohibited.”
These markings are nice, but they really confused me:
First, of course, I’m used to places where people don’t drive on the wrong side of the road. Then I see “Look Right,” and my brain is going “no, US driving is on the right,” and anyway I’m used to NYC “One Way” signs and reflexively look the way the arrow isn’t pointing, and I see “Look Left” across the street and end up hopelessly, utterly confused, whipping my head back and forth a half-dozen times before I start crossing. Also, pedestrian traffic signals are somewhat rare in London, and crosswalks are badly marked (often just a couple dashed lines).
I had to go on Wikipedia to find out what “Franked Mail” is. The article was too boring, though, and seemed like it would require work to suss out the exact details of the difference as used in the UK. I include the link here for the sake of completion only.
Pay-by-phone parking! Innat clever?
Some park or other. Reminds me of the stuff by the Seine and Central Park.
Yes, they got so desperate for names that they started calling streets after building materials:
Doesn’t this just make you want to chain up a unicycle and a tricycle and then argue with them when they come to take them away?
Sadly, some UK phonebooths are just dull:
In the US, we don’t bother with signs like these. We just let the tourists stand up on the double-decker buses and see what happens.
Another rusty naked person!
You know what this reminds me of? The penultimate episode of the second series of the new Doctor Who, when the Cybermen’s transdimensional imprint thingies are just standing around waiting to materialize and invade. Maybe because seeing Star Trek had already put me in a knowingly-silly same-show-as-forty-years-ago-but-with-a-real-special-effects-budget sci-fi mood.
Okay, this is actually even grammatically correct in American English, but it still sounds silly. Who startled the poor scaffolding?
A lot of signage in the UK is much chattier in diction than in the US. They don’t have many “exits”:
And they don’t “yield” the road:
Their equivalent to “If You See Something, Say Something.” Rather minimalist, semi-abstract, Modernist quality to it:
A London public toilet. Apparently, restrooms in the UK are important enough to get coats of arms on them:
Contrast the French approach:
There will follow, at some point, lovely pictures of various artistic stuff seen around London.
No England Photos Yet (but 390 words on Star Trek) May 19, 2009
Posted by JNJ in Uncategorized.comments closed
And here I go again with the rationing of the photos. Really, I’ve got enough for 2-3 posts, of London and Oxford and all that. And they’re even uploading as I write this. Thing is, I know that tomorrow the Discovery of Paris class isn’t going anywhere new (we’re having an end-of-class picnic-type thingy, same place as we were just last week, Bercy). And the end of the semester is approaching, so I’m not going to have irritating French-teacher things to write about for much longer. And since “here’s pictures of somewhere new I went” and “here’s something I don’t like about the French educational system” are basically the two things I do most often here, you know, I feel I really should be watching my supply carefully. I will, of course, be going to all sorts of new and exciting places in my remaining month or so here. But I don’t know precisely where yet, so, you know, best to be on the safe side.
With that in mind, here’s some more pictures of Paris 8 en grève! This was the total blockage of last Thursday:
Hey look, they added cardboard boxes:
You know, if it were me doing the blocking, I’d leave the down escalator un-blocked, and keep it running (maybe heavy-duty epoxy over the little emergency shutoff switch control panel type thingies). Because that would be really kind of humiliating for anyone who wanted to go through, right? They couldn’t just slip through politely, they’d have to run. You’d be forcing them to make more effort, take a stand, not just ignore some people handing out pamphlets. And that’s just counting, of course, the people who are in good enough shape to outpace an escalator, which would be most but certainly not all of the people trying to get in. I think, psychologically, it would be interesting.
After last week, I’d assumed that they would move to block all side entrances as soon as possible; I only checked them out because I knew my Thursday-morning professor is a stickler for attendance. And behold:
Hey, sculpture!
Aforesaid prof leads class out car entrance:
Students have wised up, block other entrance (doesn’t take much, really, seeing as it’s already about 10′ of fence):
Okay, so I’ll put up a few photos of London, from my wandering about looking for my hotel. Here’s bits of Hyde Park and whatnot:
Congestion Pricing! I have fond memories of debating this in my last two Honors College seminars. If I recall correctly, I usually came out as either for or against.
Achilles, I believe. Or one of them types, at any rate.
They encourage green building practices.
Yes, they really do have these things. For real. All enclosed like that. You keep expecting Superman to pop out or something.
London street signs: combining the stark style of New York with the high-visibility placement of Paris! Okay, so they were actually for the most part pretty good, when there was nothing blocking line-of-sight (I could read them from half a block away, which is a pretty good distance). But still, nothing beats signposts on corners for ease of navigation.
There were variations on this sign All. Over. The. City. It’s creepy.
And I’ll stop there with London. Oh, I just realized that I never uploaded the crêpe pictures! I can make crêpes, see? From a real authentic French instant crêpe mix:
Didn’t have enough milk for a whole packet, so I eyeballed the measurements:
Okay, so geometrically it could use some work. But it tasted goodly.
In other news, I saw the new Star Trek movie with my friend at Oxford. It was quite entertaining. Of course whenever you get a reboot thing like that, people are all wondering about whether it will or won’t conform to series canon, whether the new actors will live up to yada yada yada. The plot amounts to: “Screw canon, we have time travel!” The movie takes every ridiculous thing about the franchise and just runs with it, giggling maniacally as it goes. It takes guts to have your characters basically lay out, on screen, why you have license to change anything you want (see above re: time travel). The plot, if taken seriously, would require Starfleet to be run by idiots. I don’t mean this in the way some people do when they get into the whole Enterprise vs Star Destroyer type of thing; comparing Starfleet and the Galactic Empire is absurd, since one is basically NASA with a few guns just in case, and the other is an ancient-conspiracy-backed militaristic authoritarian regime. Sorry, I had a valid point to make before succumbing to a geekiness… oh yeah. The plot has Starfleet command acting like a bunch of idiots, or it would if you were supposed to take it seriously, but the movie doesn’t ask you to. Instead, it just seems like everybody is in on the fact that the universe really does revolve around the main characters. The audience isn’t expected to believe that, say, alien species — even those not on the best of terms with humans — are going to let themselves be identified by names ripped from human mythology. Three guys parachute onto a planet: two Main Characters, one fellow in the unfortunate red tunic of the Engineering crew. Yeah. We all know who’s going to die. And the scriptwriters know that we know. So they make Mr. Redshirt an unlikeable, blindly gung-ho idiot who’d have a Darwin Award with his name on it no matter what. And I swear some of the lines were just written as “Insert technobabble here, preferably but not necessarily including a reference to the original series.” In short, I’m impressed with the net result. You just watch this and part of you goes “Wheee!” and the other part can’t help but stand back and admire the craft that went into it. It’s one of those few times when being acutely aware that what you’re watching isn’t real is a good thing.
Wow, did I just write almost 400 words on Star Trek? I’m not even a fan of the franchise. Nothing against it, you know, just never really watched it. Hm.