home (usa)

i have been back in bellingham for three days now. my room is starting to take shape and the apartment is lovely. joel, i must say, has done a fabulous job with the little place. we have a great view of south bellingham and the bay. the weather has been classic pacific northwest with rain and clouds today. i can hear the train down by the bay that is so familiar to town.

it is difficult to construct a summary of my experiences in england so i should probably not even attempt to. rather i can just say that, beyond the shadow of a doubt, i learned more there than i have in the last four years here. a little laundry list:
-i learned what type of people i want to surround myself with
-i learned that you can communicate with people and not speak the same language
-i learned the card game trumps
-i learned that the bigger the dinners the better
-i learned that staying up until 5am every night weeks before departing severely reduces jet lag
-i learned the underground to the best of my abilities
-i learned how to cope with travel hiccups, both small and large.

major discoveries:
-i discovered that truly amazing hospitality comes not with money but hugs and family
-i discovered i could live in london
-i discovered who i truly love (and i would not have been able to had i not gone)
-i discovered that nothing is permanent (doubly true with the unfortunate news regarding siggy)

it has stopped raining outside. the clouds are starting to burn off, i think.


lovely mrs. banerjee


la familia

-e

[edit] for those of you overseas here are some fotos of my new room:









pics n' things!

helmsley castle

my medieval yorkshire class visited helmsley castle in, surprise, helmsley today. it was almost a two hour drive on a massive coach via windy and sadistic little country roads. wonderful countryside - from what i could see, anyways. it was a great deal foggy limiting vision to no more than a hundred feet or so for the entire day we were out. fotos:


spooky ass mist & south curtain wall.


main guardhouse.


south wall of main keep. the gentleman on the soapbox is dr. john walker, one of the best professors i've ever had. he makes tea for us in the middle of our seminars.


cairns, or the remaining bit from the auxiliary chapel.


helmsley.

-e pics n' things!

loves it

i'm in my room, upstairs from the main living area in our flat. i'm quietly minding my own business and reading about mesoamerican commerical relationships in the chaco canyon, as you do, when, blaring from the downstairs hi fi comes the baywatch theme. beto, flat as always, sings along while cooking something. i know he's cooking because i can smell curry. it's always curry. good curry, though. not the shitty stuff.

baywatch and curry. 

thank you, mexico.

-e

pics n' things!

banks

the banks in england, for now, seem stable. my holder, HSBC, appears to have a solid foothold in the quickly crumbling mountainside that is the financial world. the other two major banks in england, and greater europe, Lloyd's TSB and Barclay's, also look to be in the relative clear. the latter bank, Barclay's, sponsors the UK's Premier League so their insurance policy is, in a way, the millions of fanatics who religiously attend matches with easy preference over such things as weddings, funerals and job interviews. (fun fact: Hull's F.C. just made it into the Premier League this year as a total dark horse competitor. go Hull City!)

but i digress.

HSBC has been a decent bank so far. none of the large banks in the UK charge ATM fees, i.e. there are no withdrawl fees on a Lloyd's TSB atm if you are withdrawing from a Barclay's account. each major bank has a wide ranging fleet of branches and teller machines across not just the west half of the country (think about it, wells fargo) but across the whole of europe. their staff is helpful and HSBC offers a solid checking/savings for students with their Passport program (the only drawback being a £6 monthly fee for the first 12 months). and with the oversight of the Bank of England, inflation is kept low due to preset interest rates. these are all good things.

but. a bummer occurs. i deposited my US loan checks to, you know, pay for school and live and stuff, only to discover that it takes HSBC up to ten weeks to pay them into a checking account. this means that i will have my monies over half way through my stay. hmm. something doesn't add up. so i went into the local branch this morning to talk with a representative, the same nice woman who helped me set up my checking account in the first place. she informed me that there are actually two ways that banks can cash these foreign checks: negotiation and another that i can't remember. the short of the yarn is that the teller who i initially deposited the checks to assumed that i would rather wait for ten weeks as oppossed to wait about two days for the negotiation method. i wasn't even informed about the option. the only difference between the two methods is that with negotiation your account is credited the amount and once the check clears (usually within three to five days), the money is yours. with the other method the check actually gets sent to your home bank for confirmation, to pakistan for target practice and then finally buried in soft peet for three months and recycled as firelighters (R.I.P.) before getting deposited in your account. so, if you're at least 10% sure you have the money in your account, it's worth the negotiation route.

one check is still waiting for deposit via the long method and one check was deposited by negotiation this morning. this will actually be good, spreading the money out over a longer period of time with the bulk coming in the latter half of my term here, when i'll need it the most.

other than this little hang up i have had relatively few problems still. classes are humming along and i am rather enjoying two, War & Memory in 20th Century Australia and Medieval Yorkshire: from the Norman Conquest to the Wars of the Roses, while the third is a little tedious, America: from Colony to Republic. with the latter i was looking forward to getting an English account of colonial history after being imbibed with the US version for the last 22 years. so as luck would have it, and it usually does, my little plan backfired and i have a canadien who studied in the US as my professor. all classes will end with a final essay. i have encountered a great deal of interest among professors who find out what i was studying last spring as there doesn't seem to be a great deal of russian history available here (i.e. none).

i keep forgetting to mention that the director of the international office gave me his Hull University Faculty tie when i asked where i could purchase one. i thought that was neat.

on a somber note, not many people here have seen or know about the big lebowski. as a result they seem to miss the importance of a good white russian.

-e pics n' things!

first day

classes officially decided to start today. after two weeks of slouching about and generally making a poor example of myself it appeared that it was actually time to do something productive. here's my schedule:

monday.
War & Memory in 20th Century Australia. 2:15pm to 3:05pm.
America: From Colonies to Republic. 3:15 to 4:05.

tuesday.
America. 10:15 to 11:05.

thursday.
America. 9:15 to 10:05.
Medival Yorkshire: From the Norman Conquests to the Wars of the Roses. 1:15 to 3:05.
War & Memory. 3:15 to 4:05.

yeah, i know it looks slack but damn do i love having finished with my thesis work last spring. i'm taking a full load, despite the apparent thinness of the timetable, but just barely. i had all of these modules today and they all seem interesting with the only possible exception being Colonial History. it may be a rehash of a course i had taken at WWU but i'm still going to try and get credit for it. but it could be redeemed by a possibly fresh view on our colonial history - to hear a UK professor's take might be interesting.

two trips around england and europa planned so far:
-sigur ros in london during 19, 20 & 21 nov. (!!!!)
-three days in nantes and the normandy coast during 11, 12 & 13 nov. (no classes)


funny bad translation of the day! an italian to me, asking after bad words, "cunt! is not that the lady of the cock?" i'm sorry, i couldn't resist posting that.



-e
pics n' things!

interrupted lives

not only have i been maintaining homespunyarns to convey my life in england and abroad but i also intend on pointing out interesting bits of news that occur. being so close to some of the educational points of organizations like Western Men Against Violence this news seemed particularly important.

clubgoers in Hull drugged.

the sugar mill is a very popular night club in the hull city center - most of the returning students have suggested it to myself and other international students or freshers as a hell of a place to go with mates. hmm.

for the sake of cross-referencing:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/7646103.stm.

the local police here in Hull have been handing these interesting little pieces of self-protection out during all of International Students week and during all of Freshers Week. i'd love to see these getting handed out, or at least available at the WOC throughout the year, at Western Washington University.

-e
pics n' things!

the immediate area

my street, cottingham road. campus is farther on (west).


my alleyway off of cottingham, newland park ave.


main lawn, front entrance: east.


main lawn, front entrance: west.


main walk, north.

-e
pics n' things!

White Harte

To elaborate.

i am experiencing a not so strange sense of displacement, like water pushed out of a puddle by a large rock. i don't feel as though i would be any drops taking part in the violent splash but rather more like a ripple across the surface that touches the other bank and soaks into the dirt, blending peacefully back into its surroundings. the drops in the violent splash are friends i've known to jump head first into a country without knowing much of its language. they didn't travel to study through a school but instead to study through their own means, to perform their own cultural surgery. sometimes they were thrown out of their puddle and landed with both feet on the ground and sometimes the sutures from the surgery were never healed right and the trip came off quite wrong. i am not a drop, but a ripple. smooth and gliding across the surface waiting to come in contact with something solid so as to gain a foothold. i am waiting, in a sense, for the feeling that i belong to this community - waiting to blend into the surroundings.

i am, also, violently aware that these feeling are completely natural.

additionally, i can't find a cup of coffee to save my life. shops are more than happy to brew me an americano (leading to many cups of undesired and just-quite-exactly-not-satisfying bean squeezings). but finding a cup of damned drip coffee is impossible. i feel like moses, here. the difference being that i haven't found a cup of coffee worth waiting 40 years for. that's the only difference. between me and moses. in this circumstance. right. lots of similarities.

but i digress.

keeping in mind that i wish to feel more connected to this community, yesterday danielle and i went downtown to the city center. after grabbing bangers & mash for lunch at an awfully modern sidewalk cafe we decided to pay another visit to the white harte. dissapointed in my first trip to the pub, i felt a return to glean more first hand history would be prudent (and by "dissapointed" i mean "it was so great i wanted to go back"). the waitress recognized me and poured me another deuchars without my saying so. beautiful, i think. the taps are perfect - they're real taps. two massive, firm, smooth pulls are required to fill the pints and when the foam settles the nozzle is put just below the head and a small top-off pull is taken. it sounds silly but you can tell attention has been paid. the young woman asked if we were new to the area. i said that yes i was, a student at the Uni, actually. a history major, even. she inquires if we have had the tour of the building and, like the fucking idiot that i am i say no, but i did a report on this bar before coming (i neglected to elaborate making me look like a 10th grader). but that would be rather fantastic.

after two pints we were approached by an older gentleman, perhaps in his 50s, in a nice suit and tie wearing a wool topcoat. would you like to have a poke about the place? so this wonderful man shows us around and explains that events set in motion in the White Harte began the english civil war. he goes on to show the room that the parlimentarians were in when the decision was made to raise the gates of the town and not let the king in. it turns out the man lived at the bar for a year and works for Hull City Council. wow. i got some community right here for you, my brain sez to itself, how you like them fucking apples, sherburne?

so we drink. and chat. and drink. and chat. and smoke cheap castella cigars. 8 hours later i find that his name is patrick o'malley and, on top of his duties for the City Council, manages the Harte. his friends buy shots and before i know it danielle and i are surrounded by james, tony, craig, alan and others, raucous jolly friends of patrick's buying rounds and discussing world affairs. patrick and i get into a protracted discussion about world war ii and he was very interested in my 499 thesis from last spring regarding wartime Soviet propaganda.

at midnight danielle and i get a cab back to our respective flats and so ends one of the most beautiful evenings i have had in as long as i can remember. a cool, clammy evening in the smallest, most lush beer garden that is crammed across the smallest alley i've seen from one of the most historically important venues in north england. smoke floating up, though the tree branches, mixing and playing with the dense fog setting in. ahh. england.

i feel like my ripple is absorbing into the damp banks. (take that out of context and you have yourself some kind of strange ass sentence.)

also, what kind of "prepare'd" traveller wanders and stumbles across an ocean and forgets his usb cable? damn you apes!

-e

patrick o'malley's four steps to perfect beer:
1. cellar temp of 50℉
2. clean lines from the keg or cask
3. the pour - leave the glass to settle happily after two or two.5 pulls and put the tip just in and top off the beer.
4. a good brew - not in your hands
pics n' things!

funny stuff.

i was wrong. england is, indeed, a third world country. i am finally connected to the internets in my flat. but. it's dial-up. these are flats owned by the university as a part of their international and grad student housing offerings.

dude. dial-up. seriously. my flickr is absolutely hating life. i haven't heard a dial-tone since 1932. that, for the record, is before the modern computer was put into use.

we went for a walk around downtown hull today but, being a horrible tourist, i was caught off guard before the tour and neglected to bring my camera! but, being a great tourist, as we were walking about with our student-leaders i was keeping my eye out for decent shopping. there are a lot of clothing stores here in hull. this isn't any different than the US (we even have an H&M in our town centre [eeeee!]) but it feels especially strange when you can walk from Burton Suit and Men's Fashion labels to the King's Ale House (more on this to come shortly) to the Holy Trinity Church, england's largest catholic church. the latter is a beautiful building with as many flying buttresses and spires as one would expect from a chapel built in the 1200s. but, back to the matter at hand, for as many superficially appealing clothing retailers, they all have product that is somewhere between American Eagle, H&M and Urban Outfitters. i.e. the denim is soulcrushingly pre-distressed and sold in horrid light washes. the shoes, sweaters, scarfs and selected t-shirts are pretty cool, however. that's alright, though, i hold hope for cool stuff in York.

i finally ticked off a big "to-do-before-i-die" today, though. after the 30 minute tour we were all unleashed to go our seperate ways. i made my way to Hull Old Towne and enjoyed a couple pints of Deuchars IPA (3.8%) at www.yeoldewhiteharte.co.uk/">Ye Olde White Harte, a pub i've had my eye on for quite some time. it's rumoured to be one of the oldest in the UK, therefore probably one of the oldest in the world. it is a great little place, dark, low and sans pretense. accessed through an unassuming alley shoehorned in between a giant HSBC and other more modern businesses. it's a wonderfully quiet place with a lovely little beer garden and old ass stained glass windows.

following this i enjoyed lunch at the King's Ale House across from the Trinity Church. as recommended by tradition, my brother Tim and a strangely insatiable appetite for the terminally unhealthy, ordered the pub's fish and chips. for 4.95 i ended up receiving a plate that resembled a hub cap (in sheer size) piled high with homemade chips, hot mashed peas, lettuce & cucumber and, i am shitting you not!, a whole deep fried fish.

...

ah, i think to myself, there must be some mistake. the cook must take things very literal or something. when they saw "fish and chips" it had not occurred that fish might be plural and not, indeed, an entire fish. but no, my cod had been pulled fresh from the fryer and placed on my large smooth, white, porcelain hub cap for my enjoyment. enjoy, indeed.

also. i have a sink the size of a large watermelon in my room. and a little mirror above it. it's way cuter than it sounds.

you'll think i'm an ass and a lier. but guinness is best from english taps.

-e

ps. my dial-up just hung up on me because "The Other Side is not Responding." after several failed attempts a notice came up with the helpful note that "Authentication Failed". i've had the internet in my room, officially, for about 40 minutes. fuck England.

pps. i didn't mean that last bit.

ppps. here’s a funny ass picture morgan sent to me. i will not bother with the image’s background as I am plenty sleepy but instead i leave it to you to interpret the many levels of composition along with the play of the light and shadow on the emotions of the protagonist’s anguished look that underlies the greater message of suffering in any given place in the world. in short, take a look at what bigfoot must look like when we’re not filming him (crude alert. follow link in photo for "large" one. har!):

pics n' things!

airport stop #1

though they are presented as friendly hubs of commerce and travel, airports are liars.

they are intended for the terminally wishful.
they are, alternatively, mainly utilized by the type of person who stands on the wrong side of the moving sidewalk.

hopeless, in other words.
amuzing, in yet other other words.

i'm in seattle and waiting for my 12:50 flight to amsterdam.

-e


pics n' things!

sickness

no, really, thanks god. i wanted strep before hopping on a 12 hr flight abroad.

what up, penicillin?

-e
pics n' things!

Bicycle

last week i invested in a new road bike through discover bicycles, my shop in hood river, oregon. the 2009 Giant TCR Alliance is half-carbon, half-aluminum, half-inexpensive and all fast. with a longer top tube than any other road bike i've owned or ridden it stretches the shoulders way out over the front. it makes even the slowest rider, me, feel like the most aggressive.



i'm taking this bike to england next monday and, hopefully, i'll have some decent riding tales to post. also, assuming england isn't a third world country with shit wi-fi, i'll be posting more consistently.

here's to leaving in 6 days.

-e
pics n' things!

it is done.

-e pics n' things!