Room-hunting in Leeds

Today was a bit of a scary day. I went up to Leeds to "survey" the city and find a place to live for next year.

I was plagued by all the possible what-ifs: What if I can't find a nice place? What if I don't like the city? What if I don't like the uni? What if - what if - what if.

Nevertheless, I insisted on beginning positively, to let confirmation bias do its work so I would like everything.

And I did.

So I got on the train at Leicester and found someone had taken my reserved seat - one of my pet peeves. Great start. But the Derby to Leeds train was good, so that helped. The train arrived at Leeds station and I disembarked.

It may sound silly, but I find the impressions stations make on me very important. If I don't like the city's station, I will view the city in a somewhat negative light. It's the reason I like Rotterdam so much - I mean, Rotterdam's a nice city to begin with, but I'm in awe of its new central station. But the station was good - big, multi-track (not Leicester's rather sad 4 tracks), plenty of shops. It's got a pub. So, good one there.

I had given myself 2 hours to wander about a bit, discover the centre, before my Unipol appointment, so I decided to explore Starbucks. Pretty building, good iced caramel macchiato.

The centre has plenty of chain shops, the big ones, and also a few small shops, nice arcades and parades. And relatively few closed sites, so I take it the local economy is - well, in a fairly healthy shape. More plus points. Negative point was that I only discovered a WH Smith's, I do prefer Waterstones.

With half an hour left to kill, I looked at my map to see whether there were other places I could walk to that may be worth exploring. So I popped into the Art Gallery. And this more or less sealed the deal on the city for me.

I'm not a fan of modern art, not at all, so the first few rooms, with fairly non-sensical modern art sculptures were a bit disappointing. But there's one room there with proper art. And it happens to hold two paintings I've always liked.

Tissot's The Bridesmaid

and Leighton's The Return of Persephone, which was either in my Latin or Ancient Cultures text book in secondary school and is always in my mind whenever someone mentions Persephone or pomegranate seeds.

So I was already sold on the city before having seen any houses. I attended my 3pm meeting, and Charlotte from Unipol took me to see four properties. The first one was one I'd already seen on the website and was very eager to see - indeed, this was my first choice. It was really good too, nice location, nice greenery, loads of space, good rent - but slightly old kitchen and bathrooms. The second had only one room left, and was in another nice location, less greenery but closer to shops and the uni (marginally), good rent, and really new kitchen and bathroom (2012!), but slightly less well-placed bedroom. Lots of storage space, though. And loads of sockets. 

Third and fourth were both really close to the uni and shops, good rent still, but the space and fittings weren't as great as on the other two. Also, they didn't offer as great a space to store my bicycle - it may be old and rickety, but she's too good still to just leave in the street. 

So I was taken back to the Unipol office and left to myself to make a decision. And it was a tough one. Eventually, however, I settled on the second one. It's got a lounge anyway, so if I get fed up with my room I can come out and be social; but kitchen and bathrooms are really important to me; I'm always moaning about the state of either. I'm also always moaning about distance to shops (and am very gleeful when I'm close), so although the bedroom didn't fulfil all my desires, the rest of the house makes up for this in a major way. Plus, it's got a BBQ spot. 

So, I signed the contract (after a thorough read, of course!) and paid my deposit, and now I can pick up the key next week and move in. Pretty scary but also very very exciting.

I spent the remaining 2 hours before my trains would leave wandering about the uni campus, just to see whether I could like it. And by God, did I like it!

This is the building you see most often when Google Image-searching 'University of Leeds'. It's very impressive. Like the bell tower. Also, there's a Blackwell's nearby. I'm pleased. 

Just a general impression. Properly redbrick ;) So that's cool. And I like the style of it, it's pretty. And greenery! I love greenery. 

So, in general I quite liked the campus. There are also some modern buildings that don't really do it for me, but I'll just try and stick to the pretty side ;)  I'm very much looking forward to starting. 

On my way back to the station I passed City Hall:

Also very impressive, and quite indicative of the sort of fancy architecture that marks Leeds city centre. And guess what! I found a Waterstones. 

So all in all, I'm happy. I like the city, I like the uni, and I've come back home clutching a contract for a proper room in Leeds. Can't wait to move! :D

Monopolies

Note: I had planned to post this yesterday, but unfortunately couldn't due to WiFi issues. So I'm posting it now.

***

The good thing about travelling is that it leaves you plenty of time to think – if you're at least travelling by slow methods such as a train or a coach, as we are. This is also what puts me in favour of what I suppose I should call a new Grand Tour, although that's a topic for another time.

I spent four hours on a coach yesterday travelling from Prague to Vienna on a bit of a bumpy road, winding between hills and mountains and lakes trillions of trees. Certainly this would inspire anyone to good thoughts – Kristy and I had a very clever conversation over dinner yesterday about the global economic crisis.

I have before cited Lon Fuller's notion that the most basic of all human duties is the maintaining of channels of communication – certainly I am still very much taken with his ideas of the Morality of Duty vs the Morality of Aspiration. Today, I wish to elaborate a bit more on why I am so taken with the idea that the basic duty is communication.

I have also been reading Crime and Economics, which is a wildly fascinating book that explains that crime is indeed just behaviour that turns out to be criminal, and that there is long-term utility and short-term utility, and that what makes people decide which one to do is will-power. As with most economic terms, 'will-power' is slightly undefined – as is 'utility' – but it makes for a wonderfully useful concept to think with.

What I find interesting is the idea that government has the 'monopoly to violence', or is the only party that can legally, justifiably actively use violence – if certain conditions are met. We citizens are only justified in using violence in self-defence. So I've been running with that idea, too, taking it to an abstract level – if certain parties have certain rights and privileges that other parties do not, those parties have, to some extent, a monopoly*.

As, if I remember correctly, game theory, or at least industrial economics dictates, monopolies are inherently unstable – as the rights and benefits (profits) are usually appealing to other parties as well, these other parties will try to get a slice of that pie too, which leads to all sorts of strategies on the part of the monopolists until the monopoly collapses – in political terms, revolution. Unless, of course, the other parties consent to the monopoly, in which case they will not challenge it – I suppose this must then be part of the social contract.

This is where I believe communication comes in. And why arts and humanities are important. Governments have, as we know, been trying to cut funding to arts and humanities research, claiming it is not important as it does not lead to the betterment of humanity, like science does – of course, biomedical science cures cancer and engineering invents cleverer hoovers and chemistry creates better shampoos and astrophysics – well, astrophysics is just really, really cool.

And if people's only argument in favour of arts and humanities is that is makes life prettier, that's not very convincing.

Of course, life would be horribly bland if we all lived in utilitarian grey concrete flats and ate only pills that held all vitamins and minerals and drank only water and spent the ideal part of the day working and the rest resting in perfectly engineered beds and all lived healthily to be 165. Quite dystopian. So I suppose the aesthetic value of arts and humanities is not to be underestimated.

But there is also value in the communicative side of humanities. What use would perfectly engineered computers and mobile phones have if we did not use them to communicate?

And then what is the use of communication?

Negotiation. All of it.

Negotiating what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad, what is beautiful and what is dreadfully ugly – which is, in the first case, of course what law is for, but also fairy tales and Hollywood blockbusters and literature. See a Renaissance painting with sinners being punished in Hell? Negotiating what was wrong in that era – what was considered sinful. Dante writes that he came across classic authors in Hell's ante-chamber – they weren't evil people, according to him, but they were still wrong in not being Christians. J.K. Rowling makes Voldemort the villain – he is hateful, angry, delights in killing people and thinks all non-magic and non-pureblood-magic people are lesser people.

By extension, these are also our channels to communicate who has a right to what monopoly – or who has a right to what, anyway. How Twitter led to the Arab Spring is of course a very clear and explicit example of this negotiation, but other less explicit works negotiate the rights of powerful groups – such as governments – just as well.

Think of my favourite novel, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. People were outraged over it – of course they were, Dorian spends the majority of the time being a hedonist and delighting in all sorts of “immoral” pleasures, not in line with, to steal a line from Alfred Doolittle in My Fair Lady - “middle class morality” (which is precisely why it's my favourite). But yet Dorian still dies at the end.

And arts and humanities research is important in uncovering these negotiations. Sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. Which is why I have taken such a liking to Linguistics and Stylistics, I suppose, because it helps uncover what texts say.

But I'm afraid that this could just as well be a reason to cut funding for humanities, as funding is usually done by the wealthier and thus more powerful parties, who'd I'm sure gladly stay in charge, as it is a reason to increase funding, as in the end I do believe it would lead to fairer distributions of just about every commodity, as it would destabilize most monopolies. Short-term utility vs long-term utility.

In the end, I think this is the more philosophical reason why I like my dissertation topic. Why I like corporate, white-collar and organised crime. These are Sutherland's Crimes of the Powerful, and by researching how these are constructed textually, such monopolies can be discovered and perhaps eventually be re-negotiated. But that's the idealist in me, my long-term utility – my other reason is that it's just really very exciting, and that's very short-term indeed.

In any case, I suppose I should read more philosophy, I'm sure there's plenty of ideas there already that say what I've just said, or that can introduce to me a new angle to think about. For now, however, I'll stick to researching whether Starbucks not paying UK corporation tax is bad or really really very evil.




*In strict economic terms, a monopoly is when one company or one party has an almost absolute control over the supply of a certain good or service. My use of the word 'monopoly' is slightly wider, to indicate a majority control over a certain commodity or privilege, not just by one party but by a certain group – a cartel, if you will.

Heiligenberg (or: In Praise of My Walking Shoes)

I got up early this morning to climb the Heiligenberg - that is, I dragged myself out of bed at 7:45, put on my walking shoes and went up and down to the baker around the corner to pick up two croissants.

I dropped one off at the hotel and ate the other whilst crossing the Market to get to the Alte Brücke. You see, many people wrongly assume I don't like sports - but I do, I like walking, swimming, horseback riding, dancing... but those are, unfortunately, all sports for which equipment and/or other participants and/or environment are expensive or hard to find. But I really enjoy walking, have always done so, and I couldn't bear to leave Heidelberg without a shield for my old hiking stick (I've grown out of it in the meanwhile as I last used it when - 12, I think, but it's a nice thing anyway), which meant walking. I've done my research, and the Heiligenberg was supposed to be the one with the abandoned monasteries on top. I like monasteries too, so that's a nice two-birds-one-stone situation.

 Alte Brücke

So I set off to the Alte Brücke at 8:05 and briskly tried pacing up the Schlangenweg. I ran out of breath halfway through. But then finding your ideal speed is always tricky, so I slowed down and admired the lovely views over Heidelberg from the Philosophenweg. Halfway through the Philosophenweg, just beyond (from Schlangenweg) Liselotteplatz, there's a small path that leads to stairs which lead to another path up the mountain. And so I followed that, always with the sun above me so I kept to the Heidelberger side of the mountain. I zigzagged up the hill, making the 400-or so metre ascent into a walk of a few kilometres.

View over Heidelberg from Bismarckturm

Halfway up there's a tower, the Bismarckturm, from which there's a quite nice view over the city. That's also the point where my calves started aching slightly, though my feet felt surprisingly well. Of course, the trick is to keep going - over my whole walk, I suppose I took only a handful of minute-breaks and two 10-minute breaks. I didn't particularly like the Bismarckturm, as it seemed to have been used by people for barbeques and drinking. It was a bit of a mess, so I walked on.

Finally on top of the hill (09:22), I had the loveliest view of the Heidelberger Altstadt - I arrived at the remains of the Sankt Stephans Kloster, or the Saint Stephen's Monastery. It wasn't very big, but it had a nice little tower. Quite sweet, actually.

St Stephen's Monastery Chapel

This lady and her daughter started blabbing at me in German, but as I don't get much further than - "Durfen wir bitte bezahlen?" I couldn't make much sense of them, nor could they of me as neither spoke English or Dutch. Pity really.

Amphitheatre

I then passed a parking space to get to the Nazi amphitheatre. I'd been told it was up there, but I wasn't prepared for how big it actually was. I felt slightly - angry, actually, that those stupid people defiled this pretty mountain by building this stupidly big thing. It was suppose to hold about 8000 people, and it had this very 1930s design to it. Fascinating but quite unsettling.

St Michael's Monastery - Roman temple outline

What I did like, however, was the Sankt Michaels Kloster, or the Saint Michael's Monastery. It's an old location, as it's built on the site of an old Roman temple - of which the outline is still visible in the middle of the monastery chapel - and this castle, of which the outlines are no longer visible but which did contribute to the rather odd shape of the monastery. It had two towers and it was really big - and I was there all on my own.

Imagine this - it's 10 in the morning, around you there's only tall trees, bees and spiders and ants and grasshoppers and birds, the sun's already beating down and you're all by yourself in the vast ruins of this late Dark Ages monastery.

Western Crypt - illuminated by the flash

When I entered the Western Crypt, for a moment there I was convinced it was haunted, even if I don't believe in such things.

St Michael's Monastery

But I got to investigate that whole monastery all by myself for about half an hour, always narrowly avoiding spider webs and going deaf from the buzzing and chirping of the bees and the crickets, before other people showed up. I then sat down for another rest before beginning my descent and picked up some bits of orange rock that I first took for pottery - but then I figured, they're orange, they're curved, they're consistent, and I was sitting next to the ruined walls of a Dark Ages monastery. They were probably roof tile shards. But that was cool anyway.

I then began my descent, and as I wanted to go a different way from the way I came up, and as I didn't have a map nor a compass, I figured I'd try to walk following the sun.

Now, I was in the Scouts for a few years as a child and I know enough of the sun's trajectory to make an educated guess as to what time it is, but I never properly walked following the sun before, and in any case not during Summer Time.

But I managed to more or less safely get down. Descending is quite frustrating, especially when you've got winding paths and you're anxious to get down and take off your shoes and you see the next bit of path about ten metres below. I did once make the mistake of thinking that the bit of hill in between was level enough for me to get down safely - I then promptly slid for about four metres, me meanwhile making up my obituary and hoping people would say nice things about me - before I came to a standstill and then managed to safely get the remaining bit down to the next path. So, advice - paths are there for a reason and Little Red Riding Hood was advised not to leave the path for a good reason too.

Little stream

But I got safely back down by 11:24 (I checked) and only a small bit off - I'd wanted to emerge by the Alte Brücke again, but instead emerged by the dam a few dozen of metres upstream. For the last bit I'd followed a small stream down, figuring that all water needs to go down anyway and as I was on the Neckarside, it'd probably flow to the Neckar (it did). So, that was fun.

And here's where the praise of my walking shoes comes in - I'd been walking for about 3.5 hours. Uphill and downhill. I'd been wandering about monasteries. And then I got a text from Kristy to meet her for lunch. I thought of my feet. They didn't hurt. Unheard of. But, they didn't. So we met for lunch and though I didn't feel like moving much, my feet were fine. We actually managed to still visit the Karzer (student prison) and the Uni Museum and a bookshop before going back to our hotel.

Karzer

It wasn't until I took off those shoes that I felt my feet ache. And they're fine again now. So, those shoes - best money I've ever spent.

And the Heiligenberg - I climbed it. And I bought myself a shield for my walking stick as a reward. Surely it must've done a lot of good in doing away with the PALA social calories?

(PALA) Conference Social Events

It's 2:30am (GMT +1) and I'm thoroughly awake, probably annoying the heck out of Kristy who actually can sleep - I can't, we just had a fabulous conference dinner and dance and I'm in a sort of My Fair Lady 'I Could've Danced All Night'-mood without the Professor Henry Higgins-crush (sub)text (because that would just be a bit creepy, actually).

PALA conferences are awesomely cool (not temperature-wise, unfortunately), as the big names at PALA are actually also some of the easiest to talk to because they seem to transform every bit of casual conversation into something of a joke - mind that these are quite serious people though, they're the big names for a reason of course.

There's a lot that can be said about conferences and most of it is probably not that interesting to you anyway, so I suppose I'll skip that. After all, I could go into the physics of changing sessions, but as that's pretty much a get-up-and-move affair, it'd be quite superfluous and thus I suppose would be me flouting one of the Gricean maxims (as it is, despite me not being a Linguist/Stylistician, I know the basics). 

There seem to be some misconceptions about conferences - or, in any case, my parents do not completely understand them - my Dad seems to go for the purely academic, with him asking whether I'd be graded on my paper - thankfully, no, I will not, because conferences are not that type of academic activity. My Mum, on the other hand, sometimes seems to think it's all about the social side, that it's something of a holiday, which is not true either. 

Of course, the social side is important. This is how you meet new people and forge deals, right? 

That's where the social events come in. See, I just don't have the guts to just go up and talk to people I don't actually know. Heck, as we're dealing with academics here, there must be a significant portion that's the same sort of shy as I am. 

So, for our sort of people, they invented social events. Like conference dinners that have dances at the end (the one thing I'm not actually too shy for - I love dancing). 

By that way, I must also mention something of a PALA tradition when it comes to dinners - we didn't get to experience it in Malta last year, but apparently sketches and singing and all sorts of bits of entertainment are normal to PALAns*. And it's quite something to see the big names act all silly. It's also quite something to see professors/lecturers from past studies (or, just, any professor/lecturer) on a dance floor. 

So, social events - good things. 

But, PALAns, beware. I'm making a confession here, in the sense that I'll tell you now that I'm actually trying to write a novel. I haven't gotten very far yet - about half way through the third chapter, but they're long chapters, I'm at about 10,000 words now. And, considering the adage that I should write what [I] know, it's shaping up to be something like a campus novel, but, being a fantasy and Egyptian mythology fan, elements from that too. So if you've done/are doing something memorable, I may actually include you. Without any identifying features, of course, because I don't want to be sued for slander/libel (not that I'd write about bad stuff, of course, but still). But I'm an ambitious person (sometimes), so I'd like to make it properly multimodal (Polymodal was also coined in a plenary - that would be a fair description of what I'm aiming at). With lots and lots of stylistic and rhetorical elements. And PALAns would then have something of an advantage there, in that they'd then be able to ask me directly why I wrote this up in an awesome alliteration, or why I wrote that in a first person-perspective with second person-pronouns. 

A bit quid pro quo. 

So, tomorrow is the wine tasting, for which we'll have to get up at 8. It's now 3am, so I suppose I should show mercy to Kristy and stop typing. 

Let us therefore end on the following words;

PALA and PALAns, I love your conferences. University of Heidelberg, Professor Busse, conference helpers - I loved this conference. 

And whatever we do, whether we're going wine tasting tomorrow or not, we'll see each other in Maribor next year. 

And thanks for all the fish. 



*The floor is now open for a discussion on whether PALA-normal overlaps in anyway with real-life-normal.