English Public Transport

One of my friends from London came up to Leicester earlier this week, and I joined her on the trip back to London to see another friend in Oxford a few days later, and then travel up to Leicester again - and I realised that I haven't written yet about the How To of English Public Transport (though I suppose it is generally applicable to Wales, Scotland and NI also). So here goes.

Trains

Like all public transport, the trains have been privatised, meaning that there are separate companies on different bits of the English rail network. Like, when I travel to London, I travel by East Midlands, while to Stansted (and from Oxford to Birmingham and Birmingham to Leicester) I travel by CrossCountry. This means that it could get confusing to look up train times beforehand.

Thankfully, there is the National Rail website, where you can easily just do an enquiry and from there also be redirected to the company websites to book tickets. Tickets can generally be sent to any UK address (for a fee, of course), though often there is also the option of collecting them from the ticket machines at the station, which work by sticking in the card you used to book your tickets with, then typing in the booking reference; the third option, which is not widely available (CrossCountry does it, East Midlands does not), is to book an e-ticket, which simply works by emailing you your ticket, which you then of course have to print and carry with you.

Mind, trains are relatively expensive, but they are comfortable, often having the option of buying 'light refreshments' (tea, coffee, crisps) and nice seats with decent tables. Also, they often go multiple times in an hour, at least to the places you'd actually want to visit.

If you plan to travel often, it may be worthwhile to buy a 16-25 Railcard. They currently cost £30, used to be £28. You can get one by taking a passport photograph, filling out the flyer (obtainable at any railway station) and taking your passport or driver's licence to the ticket desk at a station and requesting one. What they do is give you 1/3 off on any rail ticket, and they are valid for a year. However, there's also the option of getting one for 3 years (£70), for which you can apply until the last day before you turn 24, so it'll also be valid when you're actually 26. In my case, an Off-Peak Return ticket to London can cost £56, but now I pay about £35 - so it took me three trips to London to save more than I spent on the Railcard. However, if you live in London, of course, it's not of much use unless you intend to travel to the country a lot (or are planning a rail trip that on its own already costs over £90 - like when you suddenly decide to make the 8 or so hour journey up to Scotland).

Coaches

If you're willing to spend a little more time travelling in order to spend a little less money, you may instead opt to travel by coach - long-distance bus. There's a lot going from London Victoria. You can easily book tickets via National Express, although again, these can only be delivered to UK addresses. You can often also buy tickets from the driver or at a desk at the coach station. They're good value for money.

Buses

Local transport is always a bit of a matter of getting used to, because it's somehow always different everywhere even if it isn't.

A bus can be taken by simply stating your destination to the driver and handing him the appropriate amount of cash. They don't take cards and they're not happy with you if you hand them £20 if your fee is £2.40. As  there are buses where the next stop isn't announced (like, Dutch Connexxion buses go, "next stop: Renesse Transferium" - the buses I've been on in England so far don't do this), you will have to keep in mind where to stop, or miss your stop and have to walk back a bit.

But don't worry, there's a stop every few hundred metres and on a weekday, popular lines have a frequency of up to six times per hour, so if you miss your stop, you won't have to walk much further and if you miss your bus, you won't have to wait long.

Do keep in mind that the last bus usually goes around 11-ish in summer, earlier in winter.

Taxis

I love taxis, they make me feel so decadent even if they're perfectly normal at night when the buses no longer run. They'll charge night fees after midnight, but if you can share one your share won't be more than a few pounds. In any case, cheaper and better than in the Netherlands - if you catch a random taxi, do make sure it's a licensed one because they have to adhere to all sorts of standards. Black cab style taxis are usually good.

The Tube

The Tube of course is a phenomenon, and I'm far from being an expert on it as I don't live in London and my experiences on the Rotterdam subway are not comparable.

So if you intend to live in London, ask someone else about advice for the Tube.

If you intend to visit semi-regularly, you can follow my advice.

First the basics (though you should know this already anyway):
Mind the Gap.
Keep to the right on the escalators.
Use every bit of available space when it's crowded.
Don't talk to strangers.
Don't be loud.

Right, so that should make you not be too visitorly awkward. The good thing about the Tube it that every train on every line has an incredibly high frequency - however, tube trains don't run really late at night/really early in the morning, so don't miss the last tube.

You can buy tickets from the machines (just follow the instructions, they're relatively simple for us Internet-savvy people) or from the ticket desks. The machines also dispense Day Tickets, which are about £8 or so for Zones 1 and 2 (if you're visiting, you won't travel outside of these zones anyway as even Greenwich is still Zone 2) and which are valid for the entire day. If you're staying longer, it is wiser to get a multiple day Oyster card from the ticket desk - I think it's 7 days. That one works just like the ordinary OV Chipkaart, but it's, as implied, only valid for 7 days.

If you're staying even longer, contemplate getting a proper Oyster and sticking on some money, it might be cheaper. And also then, get advice from someone actually living in London.

If I think of other transport-related things, I'll modify this post. This will also be posted some time in the future on the Tips page.

Home Is Where the Heart Is

Yesterday, I returned home after a week-long trip... home. 

I spent the week rushing hither and thither, attending interviews, parties and meetings, seeing people I haven't seen in almost a year and generally forging new and renewing connections. It's been a busy week.

It's very peculiar, the things you come to appreciate when you're away for a bit - and some are very small things, too, linked across countries. 

I've come to notice that there really is a difference between the amounts of please and thank you people say in shops, and that there really is a difference in whether or not to queue, and whether to close the curtains.

But not all differences are substantial. I had chats with multiple people in which the fact came up that I'd managed to bring my bicycle across the sea, and the main question was - can you even cycle there?

Well, yes. Leicester's magnificently bicycle-friendly. We've bike lanes and most motorists are very courteous - more courteous than Dutch motorists, in fact - although most seem to have some trouble anticipating velocity. I can park it just about anywhere, in the centre we've lots of dedicated bicycle spots. In that sense, it is not much different from any moderately large Dutch city, except for the fact that my bike stands out a bit because it has a luggage carrier and is clearly very old according to non-Dutch standards - if I calculate correctly, I must've had it for, oh, eleven years now. The biggest difference, however, is that Leicester's not flat. 

I used to yearn for stroopwafels and paprika crisps, but I've found replacements - flamed grilled steak crisps taste similar enough, and there are so many other biscuits to try. Besides, I don't eat those on a regular basis anyway. 

I do still miss bread, because English supermarket bread is generally fairly dense and heavy, and some of the brown breads lean towards tasting like rye bread, which I've never liked. But I've found that the cheapest white bread more or less takes on the flavour of whatever I put in my sandwich and isn't nearly as sweet as white bread in the Netherlands, so I'm satisfied there too. 

And there are things that are so much better here. I love the cleanliness and comfort of the Greater Anglia and CrossCountry trains to respectively London and Stansted, and that you can reserve a seat when pre-booking a ticket. Pre-packaged sandwiches (with bacon!). The fact that real bookshops (still) exist here on a relatively large scale (related is the fact that they're all English-language books - I generally dislike Dutch literature, it's generally pretentious pseudo-existentialist nonsense). Queueing. Please and thank you. The way some elderly ladies and gentlemen dress. The fact that left-handed side roads feel strangely calming to my left-handed brain (or that might just be me, any other lefties willing to weigh in on that?). The fact that British English has cutesy words like 'lorry' and 'wheely bin' for things that are generally loud and/or filthy. For that matter, British English and its many, many accents. The BBC. The fact that if you have to go to some institution of national importance, it's bound to be in London instead of all over the place (Netherlands, not so much - could be in Rotterdam, The Hague, Amsterdam, Utrecht - or, in the stupid case of DUO, Groningen). For that matter, London. The fact that paper money still has people on it (and cool people, too - Charles Darwin and, in a bit, Winston Churchill). The fact that pound coins are shaped funny. Doctor Who, Harry Potter, Sherlock (Holmes), Narnia, His Dark Materials, Lord of the Rings, Shakespeare. The Beatles (and generally most of the stuff done by Paul McCartney), The Rolling Stones, The Who. 

I often like to complain about things, such as that I don't think Leicester is very pretty (as it isn't), and that the weather's foul (as it is), etc.. But it's not all bad. In fact, if I'd get the chance to stay, I would, without a doubt, stay. 

There's a place where a lot of my friends live. And there's my room in Leicester. And having been away for a week, after having lived here for eight months, they're both home. Funny, that. 

Ain't No Party Like A Roosevelt (Grad) Party

So, I suppose I'm now back to writing a diary-like entry. That's okay, I prefer things a bit mixed in real life too, I suppose my blog should be a reflection of that - poetry, diary-like and some very serious opinions.

It was wonderful to be back in Middelburg again.

I was back for a reason - the University College Roosevelt class of 2013 graduated, and I could not not go over and congratulate them. I consider at least three of the graduates to be very good friends, but then I sat there and realised that of the 130-something graduates, I knew at least a good third, and recognized another third as people I'd been in courses with or did committee things with 'back in my day'. A further ten or twenty percent were people whose names or faces (or both) I recognized.

Imagine that - they're not students who were in my year, and very many of them weren't even in my department, and yet I recognized about 3/4 of them.

It's not only easy to imagine that a university college of 600 is close-knit, it's even more strikingly easy to see that this is, in fact, the case - not only did I recognize them, a good amount recognized me in turn!

There's always a good reason to return to Middelburg - it's very pretty, and especially on days like yesterday it's good to spend the day out in the Zeeuwse sun and wind, to remove just about every trace of winter. And there's no better way to spend some good time in the sun with lemon-flavoured ice cream from Domani and a book while sat on the Helm square.

The ceremony was lovely as always - the grads in their black caps and gowns, the professors and lecturers in their fancy coloured robes, and all family and friends dressed up. As per usual, professor Oomen was wonderful, the commencement speaker was interesting ("Be the hero of your own story!") and the alumni gift to UCR - a mascot, a Teddy bear with a horned Viking helmet! - was awesome.

The reception afterwards, on the Abbey square, provided ample opportunity to flit around congratulating everyone wearing a black gown and have a good chat with lecturers. I got to tell one of my former Economics lecturers that I'm still using the Economic Naturalist concepts he taught me in Economics 160 to interpret Rational theories in Criminology. I got to have a chat with my former Rhetoric professor about my PhD applications. I got to talk to another lecturer about living in the UK - and also about this blog, actually (if you're reading this, Dr Lahey - hi!). I got to realise that without RA/UCR I would be such a different person now.

I got to ask so many wonderful graduates about their plans for next year, and hear so amazingly many cool replies. There's people going to Oxford and Cambridge to study things like Latin and English; there's people going to London to study things like Economics and International Relations; there's people staying in the Netherlands to do Law. There's people having obtained enviable internships with fascinating institutions and companies, and there's people planning trips to faraway destinations.

So UCR class of 2013: Congratulations. Your results are brilliant, and your plans are inspiring. I wish you so much good luck and prosperity in all your endeavours. And cheers for letting me celebrate your achievements with you.

So let's end this post with this Ode to Zeeland, the unofficial anthem (at least, it was back in my day) of UCR parties: Blof's Hier Aan de Kust.

Freedom of Speech

One of my the commenters on my last blog post brought up the point '[i]f someone wants to comment on someone else's body, who am I, or anyone else, or the State, to stop them [...]?'. Fair point. Good point, too.

It's indeed something that needs to be brought up when we're discussing gender equality or any other thing, because oppressing people's speech is just as bad, or perhaps even worse, than any form of discrimination and unfairness. Or at least I think so.

Freedom of speech is a great good - without it, we can't challenge existing paradigms, can't make a change, and can't progress. Without freedom of speech we can't ensure justice, for injustice cannot be challenged when freedom of speech is taken away. There's a reason sites like Twitter are blocked in a number of countries.

Who can decide what can and can't be said? I agree with my commenter, and I don't think my agreement makes me a hypocrite for simultaneously thinking we should challenge sexists and misogynists (misandrists too, btw, it's just as prejudiced a set of ideas as misogyny and just as harmful).

This is a confusion of meaning I see in lots of arguments - I'm also guilty of them. It's confusing the meaning of freedom from prosecution and freedom from consequence.

Freedom from prosecution means that you should not be punished for having one opinion or the other. This includes imprisonment, fines, corporal punishment, but also being socially outcast.

Freedom from consequence means that no one is allowed to challenge your opinion.

And by conflating consequence and prosecution, one essentially limits another's freedom of speech.

I should be able to say that I think monarchy is an outdated concept and that both the Netherlands and the UK should stop having a royal in charge. Should I be allowed to say this? Very much so - if either the Netherlands or the UK should decide to prosecute me for it, they'd be in the wrong.

Should my friends, some of whom are very much in favour of monarchies, be able to say that my opinion is wrong, that monarchy isn't outdated at all and that having a royal family is a great benefit to either nation? Also very much so.

And that was my intention with my Gender Equality post. I don't think sexists, misogynists and misandrists should be locked up or socially outcast, despite me thinking that their opinions are wrong and actually sort of evil. What I do think, however, is that their opinions should not go unchallenged - we (I was also called out on my use of 'we', I intended an inclusive we, i.e. those who agree with my line of reasoning versus those who don't, who are 'they') should instead call them out on their opinions, telling them "well, I think you're wrong to think like that, and here's why".

If there's no one to challenge an opinion, if everyone surrounds themselves only with people who agree with them (and I know many people do prefer doing that, including myself), you'll get those sort of amplification cycles where an opinion just gets more and more extreme.

I reiterate, freedom of speech is a great good; it may actually be our greatest good.
Lon Fuller writes, "If I were asked, then, to discern one central indisputable principle of what may be called substantive natural law - Natural Law with capital letters - I should find it in the injunction: Open up, maintain, and preserve the integrity of the channels of communication by which men [sic*] convey to one another what they perceive, feel, and desire." (The Morality of Law, 1969, p. 186 - one of my absolute favourite non-fiction books).

*It was the 1960s, I suppose I must forgive him for it.

In other words, we must communicate - and if we are going to communicate, we'd better make sure we can do it as well as possible by putting up as few barriers as possible. Freedom of speech is the ultimate way of taking away most, if not all, barriers. But we would do well to remember that not everything which is said and done, is right, and if it isn't, we must be able to challenge it.

In short: sexists should be able to express sexist thoughts. But we should also be able to call them out on it, and actually do call them out on it, and they should, in turn, be able to poke holes in our arguments, et cetera, until we reach a consensus. It's a bit like trying to reach an economic equilibrium.

Baruch de Spinoza (also a fan of Freedom of Speech) thought that revolution wasn't right, as it was an emotional thing; instead, he advocated social evolution by educating the public, which is a very rational approach (according to my SSC151 Introduction to Political Theory course notes).
I tend to agree - I too am a fan of education and I too think a rational approach is better. For this rational approach, freedom of speech is needed - it is the only way to reach a logically solid consensus.

Freedom of speech can be compared to a pressure vessel. Contain the pressure (i.e. disallow people from expressing their opinions), and the vessel will explode. Release the pressure, and the vessel will remain intact. Without freedom of speech, we might end up with a revolution. With freedom of speech, we can reach a consensual state of overall fairness without having to resort to more drastic, more destructive, means.

But freedom of speech does not just mean that everyone has the right to shout sexually explicit things to others in the street. It also means that those who are shouted at have the right to have their experiences of feeling intimidated be heard, too, and it also means that these victims have the right to ask the people doing the shouting to consider not doing it.
Can those advocating gender inequality be prosecuted for their views? No, and we shouldn't want to. But can they be asked to consider the consequences of their views, should their views be challenged? Very much so.

Gender Roles and stereotyping

I promised to write about the search for the missing brothers Julian and Ruben, but then my dissertation prep caught up with me and I stopped having time to stop and write. And now it's more or less dropped from Dutch news, so I don't think I'm going to bother any more; I missed the moment. Let me just conclude my thoughts on it by use of the following statement: I know it was an emotional affair. It was a horrible thing, and my thoughts go out to their Mum.
But the hysterical reporting reminded me an awful lot of the massive outrage over stranded whale Johannes last year.

There are, however, plenty of other serious topics to write about. This is one I care deeply about.

***

Recently I've been getting worked up over a lot of things, including rape culture, the perpetuation of the patriarchy, people who argue against gay marriage and against blasphemy, and democracy. I've become a regular visitor of Everyday Sexism, which exists to point out that despite some people arguing the opposite, sexism is (unfortunately) very much alive - and surprisingly ingrained.

And quite simply, all issues I get worked up over all come back to one basic concept: people should be treated as individuals of equal worth. My main issue today is gender roles; the ideas that men are supposed to be men, who are into women, and women are supposed to be women and there for the enjoyment of men (because, as is an unfortunately still prevalent belief, "women don't like sex" - which is an obviously ridiculous idea). 

Before I bounce off into a rant about everything that's wrong in this world, let me spell out my privileges. After all, you can't properly criticise existing power relations without acknowledging your own position within them.

I think I classify as middle class. I attended a solidly middle class elementary school, in any case, and grew up in a solidly middle class town. I've been brought up as a white, Dutch, agnostic protestant in the white-majority, protestant, prosperous Netherlands, and have received a good education. I have never been discriminated against based on race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, education, political preference or religion. I have been and am immensely privileged.

There should be no external hurdles for me to do anything I want to do - except for being the leader of a strict hierarchy, because, as my father has now declared in two discussions, "women don't do hierarchy well" (Don't get me wrong, I really do love my Dad, we just tend to have different views on different things - doing discussions is pretty much our family sport).

I suppose I understand my father's point of view - his was a time in which males went into the army at 18 and females stayed home to take care of the family. I don't think he ever expected to have to defend his views of whether females are generally particularly unsuited for certain types of work to his daughter.

But this is not what makes me angry, though it does get me worked up.

What makes me angry are the comment sections of online news articles I have been reading lately, where people broadcast their opinion that somehow females who dress in short skirts ask to be raped and that somehow males are losing their masculinity for allowing females to "feminise" society.

But neither are particularly worrisome issues. Sure, these opinions are tremendously grating, but they can be opposed. They can be discussed, because they have been vocalized.

What is, however, a worrisome issue is the underlying corrosive attitude towards gender and gender-roles.

Gender still so often forms part of our identity. Many people before me have gone on to state how there is a difference between sex and gender - sex is what gives male homo sapiens their XY chromosomes, and what gives female homo sapiens their XX chromosomes. It's basic biology.

What isn't biology, however, is gender - gender is a social construct. When I say 'male' and 'female' in this post, I mean biological sex - when I say 'man' or 'woman' (or the plural) I mean gender.

Gender is what makes people expect females to like pink and glitter and flowers and ponies and stuff, what what makes people expect males to like beer and sportscars and steak and boobs and stuff.

Gender is, regrettably, also the thing that make people say truthfully idiotic things such as "women should not be in charge of a ship because women don't do hierarchy", or "men should not be nurses because they aren't caring".

Gender stereotyping is what makes me lament to one of my friends "sometimes I wish I were a guy, things would be so much easier - I could just wear a three-piece suit if I'd like to" and what makes manufacturers like McCoy's proclaim that their crisps are man crisps - so I can't possibly enjoy them?

It's what made McDonalds release a commercial in the Netherlands in 2006, in which they promoted "man-burgers"...

Translated transcript:

Woman: Oh, I'll have a man-burger.

(McDonalds falls quiet)

Voice-Over: Okay, if you girls want to act like men, we'll act like women!

(Man trying on wellies)

Man: It's exactly what I'm not looking for. It's the wrong colour, the heel's ugly...

(Different shop)

Man: Well, they feel right.

Woman: Yeah, I think they're...

Man: But they're really ugly.

(Different shop)

Man: Colour's exactly right. But those ridges, I really don't like ridges...

Woman: Ridges?

Man: Yeah, they're ugly, those ridges.

(Different shop, woman offers a pair of wellies, man only sniggers)

(Different shop again)

Man: It's so difficult. I think I like those in the first shop best. Yep. We could drop by tomorrow.

V.O.: The Big Tasty with Bacon. A man-burger. For men. And women, if they still feel like one now...

I'm fully aware that commercial was to be taken as a joke. It's not like I lack a sense of humour - I giggled tremendously when I first saw it.

Except the whole fact that I feel the need to defend myself by asserting that I do have a sense of humour is already a result of ingrained gender roles and the perpetuation thereof, because the whole notion of a female finding fault with commercial products that perpetuate gender stereotyping, no matter whether ironically or unironically, is far too often neutralized by the simple remark that the female who finds fault with the commercial simply lacks a sense of humour. Such neutralization is of course tremendously useful, because if you can neutralize something without having to actively consider it, you save yourself the trouble of questioning the underlying assumptions.

More simply said: accusing people who take offence with female-driver jokes, female-kitchen jokes and female-sandwich jokes (worse still, rape jokes) of having no sense of humour whatsoever allows people to go about their business as usual, without having to wonder whether females are often marginalized and then - gasp - actually having to do something about it. But actually, making a joke about females (and reducing their experiences of sexual abuse to a joke) is just as bad as racist jokes. No one wants to be known as a racist, so why is being sexist still okay? Why is it so much easier to call out someone on saying something racist than it is to call them out on a sexist joke?

I fully support seeing gender - like sexuality - as being on a continuum. Sex is generally dichotomous (though, as always, there are exceptions), but gender is far more fluid.

Gender stereotyping is a dreadfully narrow thing.
I am female and generally identify as a woman, but display many characteristics considered unfeminine or masculine; I loved to play with my brother's Lego bricks as a child, prefer technical and scientific documentaries over soap operas and talent shows, loathe chick flicks and chick lit and want my crime films to be as gruesome as possible, and generally enjoy taking charge of my own affairs.
Women are, however, generally expected to not like or even be capable of science and technology (consider the awful EU campaign about science for girls, see below - even if women do science, it can, apparently, only be so when science is pink and can only have to do with make-up and other "girly" things), generally expected to love chick flicks and despise action films (consider so.awfully.many internet how-tos for a woman to get a male friend to join her to see a romantic film, and so.awfully.many action film reviews that have at least one point of why women would love that film too, not generally having to do with enjoying the action but with the looks of a male star), and generally are expected to have their male companions pay for them and sort out their affairs (consider the majority of Everyday Sexism anecdotes).

I am no different from most women, or most people for that matter, in enjoying the things I enjoy. Should the things we ought to enjoy really be dictated by our sex, or can we just accept that people have different interests, which have nothing to do with their sex or gender?

Do be aware, most people are in one way or another guilty of gender-based assumptions and stereotyping. Just the other day I found myself accusing someone of "acting like a woman" for holding a grudge.

Similarly, men are expected to behave irrationally when it comes to sexually attractive females - should we really believe that men are so terribly weak that they cannot control themselves when they see a flash of skin? Funny then how there are still places in this world where females can walk around with uncovered breasts and the local males don't go into horny fits. Isn't assuming that men are sexually weak creatures not also gender-stereotyping? Placing men within the beer-drinking sports-watching category, in which men turn into drooling stupid-boxes whenever a somewhat-sexually attractive female passes by.
Most importantly, should men somehow really be denied their active role in sexual crimes, as so often rapists are assumed to be male because women are not considered to actively seek out sex? Generally, according to infuriatingly large sections of The Internet, females are apparently somehow asking to be harassed, because apparently to these sections it is a man's right to consider females public property, to be touched and used at their own discretion. If a female goes out wearing a short skirt and she gets raped, how is it that her fault? She did not request to be raped, the rapist decided to do the raping and went ahead with that. There are so many men out there who do respect females as people, and who show no signs of acting irrationally whenever they see an attractive person - is it then really irrational to ask all people to at least respect others regardless of dress and behaviour? 

Gee.

If you identify as a woman and you're somehow less than feminine, you're criticised for being un-feminine. If you're attractive, you're 'asking' to at least be harassed, as if access to 'pretty girls' is somehow an inalienable male right. If you're unattractive, you're supposedly not worth the attention, or only negative attention.

If you identify as a man and you're not so much into sports or anything, people are actively supporting the idea that you should have your man-card revoked, whatever that means. If you're a man and you like taking care of other people, same thing.

Awfully oppressive, isn't it, being denied the basic right of being respected and being considered worth equally to all others just for failing to fit these dreadfully narrow stereotypes.

And respect really isn't that difficult a thing. It is nothing more than considering others individuals with basic inalienable human rights such as, well, set out in the declaration of human rights. It is a social glue, keeping society together, lifting destructive conflicts (conflicting with others for who they are - like Hitler's attempt at annihilating just about everyone who didn't adhere to his Aryan ideal, and on a much more individual level, the rather silly fallacy of the Ad Hominem) to the level of a constructive conflict (conflicting with others for what they do).
And it's not at all difficult to implement, either. When I was in Cairo, of all places, a few years ago (pre-revolution), with my father and brother, our male tour guide took my questions about Egyptian politics, economics and the Islamic faith just as seriously as he took my brother's and father's on the same topics, and actually asked my permission to put his hand on my shoulder when we took a photo with him. Of course asking me and not my brother or father this is still recognizing a gender difference, but far more along the lines of recognizing that some women (should've been people) might be uncomfortable with others touching them without permission. At the time, I was surprised and actually found it a bit silly, as I have been lucky enough to not have had to endure much groping and catcalling in my life, but as I keep reading articles about females feeling sexually harassed my appreciation for this gesture has increased exponentially. The reverse has happened with the man in Luxor the year before who, although probably in jest, offered my Dad a good lot of camels in exchange for me - at the time I felt incredibly flattered that 1) I was apparently worth a good lot of camels, even if it was a bit of a joke and 2) my Dad was offered more camels for me than he was for my Mum 20 years earlier in Tunisia. But I've come to realise that not only is it very, very wrong to treat women as pieces of meat, to be traded against camels, as a joke it's in as poor a taste as "sandwich" jokes are.

What if we just let people like what they like, do what they do, regardless of their biological sex, wouldn't that at least stop a whole lot of nonsense about people somehow being worth less for who they are rather than for what they do? 

Was Ernest Hemingway a marvellous writer because he was male or because he wrote things like For Whom the Bell Tolls? Sure, he's a "manly" man writing about "manly" things, but does that make him any better or worse as a writer?
Was Jane Austen a wonderful writer because she was female or because she wrote the wonderful Pride and Prejudice, among other things? Sure, she was a woman writing novels that seem currently most often read by women, but does that make her less of a writer than Hemingway?
Furthermore, I simply love Oscar Wilde's writings; would one even remotely think it reasonable to consider him a better or worse writer than Austen for the sole reasons of Wilde being male? Surely not. Would one even remotely think it reasonable to consider him a better or worse writer than Hemingway for the sole reason of Wilde being gay? Surely not.

Surely, are all three completely different writers who should be judged for their own merit.

On the very clever Oscar Wilde-segue, let's discuss sexuality.

With rigid gender attitudes comes a rigid attitude of heteronormativity. It seems that a lot of (straight) males are more or less homophobic, perhaps because in homosocial (a social situation of men amongst men) situations, being bi or gay is supposedly less manly (i.e. the idea that a lot of men are scared to be even be for a second thought bi or gay because they think their male buddies might think less of them for it - the reverse is a man being able to pick up numerous very sexually attractive girls who are in their mid-teens to mid-twenties).
Most (straight) females are much more socially free to 'experiment' with other females, presumably because of pornography in which "girl-on-girl" is a trope - or the pornography trope is reflective of the general male arousal as a result of "girl-on-girl", in any case, it seems much more accepted, perhaps because a majority of heterosexual men appear to find it attractive - not judging it too harshly serves general (straight) male interests. But in the end, women are still expected to settle down and have children.

I don't understand why some people are against homosexuality. Seriously. If a person against it on religious grounds, fine, they should go ahead and deny themselves every same-sex sexual urge they might ever have and be miserable about it. But why try and forbid others from doing what they please? 

I suppose what I don't get is the "threat" of homosexuality. How is it threatening? Some people seem to be afraid that people of their own gender might crush on them. But then I still don't get the threat. What is different for a straight-man-identifying male between a woman crushing on him and a man crushing on him? 

Perhaps it's indeed the homosocial status thing but then I still don't get it. Shouldn't one feel flattered that someone fancies them? (on that note, being flattered because someone fancies you is very, very, very different from being sexually harassed - fancying implies a respect for the person behind the looks, considering them actually people rather than pieces of meat or public property).

And why do people protest so vehemently against gay marriage? Surely marriage is a personal thing, a personal contract between two people (and sometimes their god) - surely such a personal bond cannot be made worth less or more based on whoever else decides to use a similar template to formalize their personal bond?

If one truly feels it's a sin, shouldn't they leave it up to their god, à la Matthew 7:1, "Judge not others; then God will not judge you. 2 For God will judge you in the same manner as you judge others, and God shall judge you according to the measure with which you judge others." (apologies, translation from my Dutch bible, but the message remains the same).

If gender is on a continuum, then sexuality must be so too. If you particularly fancy people with certain characteristics, should it then still matter as what they identify?

I personally often find myself socially attracted to funny people, who've read books that I like too and like to discuss things like politics and films and ethics. Though I so far have only been sexually attracted to males; if I were to feel sexually attracted to a female, would that make me a different me? Would that change who I am? Surely not.

Shouldn't we then agree that people should be judged according to what they do and how well they do it, rather than according to whether they identify as man, woman or anything in between and rather than according to the type of people they generally feel attracted to. Let's try and be as my Cairene tour guide and treat people as people, whose opinions and beliefs are important regardless of gender or sexual preference and whose bodies are their own, not public property. 

Because people are just people, and they have every human right to be happy with themselves just the way they are. 

Poem: Luxor

Apart from being a criminologist I also like to consider myself a writer, and poetry is of course very suited for a blog because the narratives I write are both too long and still require too much work to post here without me feeling anxious about them.

This is a poem I wrote two years ago.

Luxor

As though the Gods alone could create
That which bears such historical weight
Sphinx and ram bordering the lane
Guardians of faith and priests' long-held reign
Bronze are the sands pouring into the Nile
Biblical river offering soil so worthwhile
Red spotted heights topping off the King's Valley
Approached through the desert's lonely alley
And at the end of the stairs that amazing sight
Looking over the city from royal height
Site of the temples of Gods long past
Oh, how they perceive time flying fast
Wonderous city of one-and-thousand dreams
How far and yet near our last meeting now seems

It was mainly inspired by those great fourteen lines by John Burgon, part of his 1845 poem about the desert city of Petra in Jordan. I can only wish to write so beautifully as he does, but I'll keep practising and though this blog is meant for serious criminological and sociological pieces, every once in a while instead I'll try and post a poem.

Petra

It seems no work of Man's creative hand,
by labour wrought as wavering fancy planned;
But from the rock as if by magic grown,
eternal, silent, beautiful, alone!
Not virgin-white like that old Doric shrine,
where erst Athena held her rites divine;
Not saintly-grey, like many a minster fane,
that crowns the hill and consecrates the plain;
But rose-red as if the blush of dawn,
that first beheld them were not yet withdrawn;
The hues of youth upon a brow of woe,
which Man deemed old two thousand years ago,
match me such marvel save in Eastern clime,
a rose-red city half as old as time.

Naturally I should've copied that wonderfully rhythmic "eternal, silent, beautiful, alone!", that's just marvelous, as marvelous as the comparisons with Greece and nearer churches and cathedrals - I should've compared stuff too.

And though I've never been to Petra and so can't judge whether Burgon's poem is in any case truthful, I dare say that he is right in claiming that things of that level of beauty seem to be particular to the Middle East and parts of North Africa.

So, poetry. Because criminology can get really depressing sometimes.
I promise something more serious later this week, about the media coverage of the Dutch case of two missing (now found dead) boys whose father was found two weeks ago having committed suicide.

Committing Criminology

This blog was never intended to play out as a sort of online diary. There are other ways to keep my parents informed, such as Skype.

This blog was initially intended to outline the academic stuff I do. Sometimes I did - I wrote a tips page for current (Dutch) undergraduates thinking of studying in the UK, and every once in a while I tried to give my opinion about politics, but I keep returning to diary-like posts.

And yet, for the last week I've been trying to write a post on gender equality, which should be serious enough. I ended up analysing the Boston Marathon Bombing-reporting in my Crime and Media paper, while instead I could've written about it here.

I suppose a blog name as 'Adventures' does not actually encourage many serious ideas either, which in turn easily leads me to turn to writing semi-diary posts. As some of you might know, I've been trying to find a new blog name for a while now, and I finally have found one.

The other day I attended one of the Scarman Lectures here, which was this time done by Dr Barbara Perry from the Uni of Ontario Institute of Technology, about islamophobia in Canada. Her lecture consisted mainly of anecdotes by victims of islamophobic violence. From these anecdotes it seemed apparent that much of that type of violence is justified by the offenders to themselves through a sort of Othering-mechanism (e.g. comments to go back to countries of origin), which upset me.

In my view, the things that upset me - gender inequality, Othering, ignorant politicians - all relate to one thing - the existent power structures. Crime and especially crime reporting relate to this too - calling a mugging criminal and banking fraud culture are very much in line still with Sutherland's crimes of the powerful and those of the powerless. Calling one set of behaviours criminal and immoral and the other not simply maintains existing power structures, and of course media representation of crime feeds especially into this by making criminals seem monstrous, non-human.

Which is also why I am writing my dissertation on how UK newspapers reported on the notion that multinationals companies that make large profits in the UK - Amazon, Google, Facebook, eBay, Starbucks, etc. - avoided paying taxes through accounting tricks. Technically, this is legal. Technically, this is not criminal. The newspapers, however, seem to think otherwise - though it is not strictly called criminal, it has by at least one paper explicitly been called immoral, while a number called for boycotting these companies. And several drew criminal justice process-analogies by terming Starbucks's decision to pay 20m in taxes over some years as pleading guilty. Which is a fascinating turn of events; a sort of pre-legislative criminalisation of corporate behaviour, which seems quite rare judging by the general apathy towards legislating against corporate misbehaviour that over and over again is apparent in corporate crime-literature.

I suppose it all, in the end, relates to my belief in true democracy, a more or less Aristotelian constitution - in which everyone is a citizen, i.e. with equal rights and the duty to consider what is in the advantage of society. In such a society, everyone would be seen as of equally human, whether rich or poor, sick or healthy, or in any other way advantaged or disadvantages, and everyone would have the duty to contribute to the best of their abilities. Indeed, if everyone did what they enjoyed best and what they are best at, there comes into existence a true free market, exchange of goods and services, and one would expect general utility to continue going up. I might come back to this at some point in the future, for I do have more to say on it.

Which is why any type of power structure that deprives any human, whether through stigma, through bad education (or none), through general violence, is immoral to me. Industrial organisation teaches that eventually, theoretically, monopolies should disappear because the continuing invasion of other companies trying to get into the market should force them to keep prices low, and those sorts of mechanisms. The same should work for incumbent power structures - if the powerless continue to invade the spheres of the powerful, at one point the power structures must change. Except that industrial economics don't always seem to take political (lack of) power and societal apathy into account.

This. This is the stuff I want to be writing about. I want to explore morality and equality and crime reporting, I want to go into adventures in the land of criminology. I want to continue. I want to discover what makes people violent and what can be done against harmful acts, whether criminal or legal, whether corporate or individual. I want to understand society.

Dr Perry referred to a statement by the Canadian PM, who took a dig at sociologists by saying that it was "not a time to commit sociology". But it is, of all the moments in all the centuries in all the past, this is it, and I want to commit criminology in my time.

So from now on this blog will called 'Committing Criminology', and I will be writing about serious things. Mostly.

Tan

So it's been a while.

I've polished and finished my essays, and I've started on collecting news articles on corporate tax evasion by multinationals in the UK as reported over fall 2012 and spring 2013 for my dissertation.

To finish the essays we sort of formed a small library gang, hanging out there everyday from about 10 to 7, just to help each other do this and finish. And it worked tremendously well, as well as just being fun - especially now that the weather's turned warm and sunny (it's 20C right now!) and we got to spend hours in the park.

I'm still waiting for news from Leicester and London about the PhDs, but that will probably still be a good number of weeks.

So now I'm more or less stuck waiting for my grades (hand in was today, so it'll be another three weeks) and doing dissertation.

But today will be a park day, celebrating hand-in, and tomorrow I'll attend stuff for course rep and other interesting things. Oh, and do a proper spring clean this time around, since now it's warm enough to actually drag stuff outside while I clean my room.

I will be posting updates about my dissertation etc in the future, as well as perhaps excerpts from my essays, because some of the stuff I wrote was pretty okay I suppose.

But let's first try and work on my tan.

What I learned from doing my essays

So, now my essays are done and I can relax for a few days before polishing the essays and going all out on my dissertation.

Some of the things I learned from doing these essays:

• The Netherlands are really very much over-regulated, so much so that any amount of information available on things for which the government is responsible is completely overwhelming - but not necessarily very helpful. I think they're trying to create opacity through transparency. That said, really crucial information still needs to be WOBbed (Wet Openbaarheid van Bestuur, or the Law on Transparent Governance) and won't be released easily.
• I really don't like the system of amendments to British laws. It's incredibly opaque. 
• The different legal approaches of the Netherlands and Britain make for legal constructions that are surprisingly similar despite being based on completely different legal ideologies.
• Britain is safety before privacy, the Netherlands vice versa - for now.
• I really enjoy doing comparative legal research.
• The Media are evil.
• People don't care about what's real, only about what fits with their own idea of reality. 
• The Media pander.
• The Media have always been evil. There has never been such a thing as "oh my, the media sure weren't that bad-news-oriented when I was a kid" - they were, it's just the same state of mind as the one that goes "today's youth sure weren't as badly behaved in my time!" that makes you think differently.
• I really enjoy doing media-sociological research.
• Effective policing is really difficult. 
• Transnational crime hinges on market forces, not on transnational policing efforts.
• Europol has a really annoying website.
• Europol's annual OCTA reports are very clear, but not very helpful.
• Europol's publications reflect the country that Europol is located in - the Netherlands.
• Europol's publications are mainly pro-Europol propaganda.
• Europol is really pessimistic with regards to the future of transnational crime in Europe.
• I should never toss out old papers, and also not any of the paragraphs I take out of papers to diminish the word count.
• In order to actually effectively approach transnational crime, law enforcement in Europe needs to be harmonized to a degree that would make even the most pro-European party cry about loss of sovereignty. 

So that's some of the stuff I learned from doing these essays. Fascinating stuff, really. 

The Netherlands are idiotic

It's 5 am and I'm still awake and I can't stop thinking.

I love Britain, and the Netherlands are an idiotic country.

In the Netherlands...

...Politicians debate whether the titles of academic and professional degrees should be made the same - that is, people who would've previously gotten a B Eng or a B Ec or something of the sort will suddenly all get a BSc or a BA in the future, supposedly because B 'Something not Sc/A'-degrees are not recognized abroad (nevermind that there are plenty of foreign educational institutions that offer precisely such degrees), while ignoring the fact that this will tremendously devalue all current BSc/BA-degrees;

...Politicians debate whether to (finally) abandon the Law against Blasphemy - yes, that was an actual law that existed in the Netherlands until 2013, and yet even in 2013 there were parties trying to keep it. I have no problems with religion but people's faith should not be imposed on other people's lives just like that;

...Politicians accuse each other of "nibbling space cake";

...For the inauguration of King Willem-Alexander, the composer of some of the Netherlands's most successful and simultaneously worst songs (the Dutch should be famous for their tremendous lack of any taste in music) is employed to write a song, which predictably ends up bad - when everyone is suitably outraged, he withdraws it, and then despite there being fairly okay-ish alternatives, the Inauguration Committee says "screw the public, we're going with the bad song anyway" because that's just how Dutch committees roll;

...The release of and criticisms on said bad song actually received about the same amount of coverage as the Boston Marathon Bombings;

...The Rijksmuseum is finally open after ten years of refurbishment and restoration - it took about three times longer than planned and went about four times or so over budget because the Stadsdeelraad of the part of Amsterdam in which the Rijksmuseum is located was actually making an expensive fuss over a stupid bike passage;

...State secretaries who make a mess of their responsibilities don't actually get kicked out of office;

...UPDATE: Political parties (though the same as the one that was making a fuss over Blasphemy) are now trying to move to forbid adverts for the website SecondLove, because the site encourages adultery. Seriously, regardless of what I *personally* think about adultery, who gives a toss about what other people do in their spare time, as long as it's not illegal?

Despite all this, I've lived in that stupid country for 22 years. It's my stupid country.

Despite all the idiotic over-regulation, there are things I miss about it.

I miss how the Dutch are open to the point of rudeness. I find it tremendously difficult here to gauge what people think of me (if they even do so), while of Dutchies I'd generally know fairly quickly whether they like or dislike me. I think I'd rather have a "sod off" than a blank stare.

I miss how Dutch supermarkets have a proper selection of vegetables. I'm getting really annoyed of alternating between cauliflower, sweetcorn and green beans. Though I did see that the greengrocer on Queens Road has rhubarb, so I'll have to drop by that place.

I miss how the Dutch don't look at you funny when you try to make small talk while queuing in the shop and actually respond.

I also kind of miss not having a strange accent.

Funny how it's the little things that make me feel somewhat homesick after 7 months in the UK.

Tuesday Drinks

As the weather outside is getting warmer again, I am reminded of going out in Middelburg. Do mind that this post concerns memories that might be slightly rosy-tinted.

Going out in Middelburg was completely different from the way we go out here in Leicester. It did often include a pub - Seventy Seven, De Mug, or, before it was demolished, Barrel - but usually ended in a Koestraat common room or Bagijnhof living room..

Actually, on warm spring and autumn evenings, going out in Middelburg would often be punctuated by lying down on the Market Square, gazing up at the stars, and discussing life, the universe and everything. Actually, every place in Middelburg attended by RA/UCR students was a place to discuss life, the universe and everything.

One of my favourite traditions of the time was Tuesday Drinks, a fairly random and small collection of people, and we would gather on Tuesdays (but not every Tuesday) around 9, 10-ish, as Wednesday was our traditional day off (though over my six semesters at RA, I've only had three in which I didn't actually have class on Wednesdays). There would inevitably be six-packs of whatever brand of beer was cheap that week - 'but not the really cheap stuff because that's like flavoured water' - crisps, chocolate, a stack of plastic cups and a deck of cards. We'd start out discussing the latest gossip - inevitable in a university college of 600 - but quickly moved on to discuss politics. I vividly remember having a discussion on whether Mubarak's reign in Egypt around the end of my first year - mind, this was way before the Arab spring - was democratically valid, and whether he'd last much longer. Politics often led to philosophy and theology, while the deck of cards and the plastic cups led to games of King's Cup and, once bored of it, Never Have I Ever.

What strikes me in retrospect is the ease with which we switched from topic to topic, and the respect we had for each other's points. We had markedly different political views, and of course our discussions turned quite heavy and a bit shouty every once in a while, but it was all done in good fun. Some of the discussions touched on topics that might have solicited very different reactions from different people - for instance, though our little collection was half female, half male, there was no rudeness from anyone with regards to sexuality, whether we discussed pornography (it was easily taken for fact that yes, women like porn too), experiences (no slut-shaming) or anything else of the sort. Everything was up for debate, whether we should put the fake goldfish floating in a half-empty Bagijnhof fish bowl into the King's Cup which at that moment held a particularly awful mixture of beer and Bailey's, or whether Plato or Aristotle's model of the perfect government would be better suited to deal with the global economic crisis.

We even put forward Quidditch practice once as something to try out - which we did, even trying to set up a team, before our efforts fizzled as graduation approached.

Going out in Leicester's good fun, and I'm sure that everything is still up for debate and I'm sure that my fellow Criminologists would approach such topics with the same kind of respect and sensitivity. Actually, I know they will, as similar things have been discussed here, both at parties and, for instance, in the library.
But in Tuesday Drinks we had a forum, and if there is one desire I have for the next room or flat I rent, it's that it needs to have enough space to invite people over for dinner parties and drinks.

To Tuesday Drinks.

Things that are Cool

Now they've gone and done it.

Alright, they went and done it back in 1965, but still.

I think they've now covered just about everything I find supremely cool in Doctor Who. They've done Egyptians (Nefertiti in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship), Napoleon (Reign of Terror), Vampires (sort of, in Vampires of Venice), Shakespeare (more than just one episode), Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe (well, they mentioned them in A Christmas Carol). And I'm watching The Chase now, and not only is Ian's dancing and his remark to Barbara to "get with it" slightly embarrassing ergo hilarious, they've featured The Beatles. On telly, but still.

I also find Vicki's remarks regarding The Beatles surprisingly apt. Mind, this was 1965. They were big, they were massively big back then, but they still had 5 years to go, to get even bigger.

Mind you that nowadays, Abbey Road is still crowded on cold Thursday mornings with people trying to take pictures of themselves on the crossing. That's almost 50 years later. Would the BBC have known, back in 1965, how big The Beatles would still be years and years later? How it would endure? Mind you that nowadays no one expects - whatever Deity you choose to believe in, please help us if I'm wrong and they do endure - Justin Bieber or One Direction or Nicki Minaj or whatever's the most popular thing going on right now to still be THAT popular in 50 years. Okay, sure, Vicki's from 400 years into the future and perhaps The Beatles will have faded in 400 years, but they haven't as of yet.

Also I love her classification of them as 'classical music'. I suppose they are, though. Classical pop.

Pigeons

So, turns out my trip to London had completely wrong timing - not only is the weather much better this week, but they also shot stuff for Doctor Who today. My dear friend Danou saw them though, on Trafalgar Square. I'm only slightly jealous ;)

Coincidences continue with this clip: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p017gl8h, mainly because Strax says 'flying predators called pigeons' - it's coincidental because though most people really hate pigeons, me included, my Dad and I had a thing going all week about pigeons secretly being aliens out to destroy all of humankind - my Dad had this hilarious thing going on when we walked back from Buckingham Palace to Green Park station about pigeons hiding teeth in their beaks and how one pigeon marching back and forth among a small group was a general inspecting the troops and how a pigeon on the path was out to attack me. He also pointed one out to me telling me how that was the evil one and that you should never trust a pigeon.

It's a good thing though my Dad and I are certifiably not mad. I think.

Yet Another London Adventure

If you're a regular reader, you might've noticed my week-long absence. Or at any rate, you might've noticed I wasn't as active on Facebook last week as I normally am.

That's because my Dad was over, and seeing as Leicester's not thrilling enough for a week's holiday, he flew west and I took the train south and we spent an almost-week traipsing around London.

It's been years since my Dad was last in London (a truly vintage city map that's now in my possession dates back to 1990, which may not seem like much until you remember that that's 23 years ago), so we did all the touristy stuff while trying a bit too hard not to seem too much of a tourist - " 'tourist (noun):  loud with polyester coats and bum bags and tennis shoes" - which was fun.

Many of my photos - I didn't take many though, I'm not really the photograph-clicking kind, plus my Dad took a picture every three steps so I'll just rely on his collection - are basically just of things I find tremendously cool just now and/or that would work nicely as a Facebook profile pic. So here's my stuff.

The first Leaky Cauldron. Because once a Potter fan, always a Potter fan. Also photographed now because I couldn't find it last time I was in Leadenhall Market - turns out, I'd walked right past it. Well. So much for my ability to observe stuff. 

The global zero centre coordinate point that I wrote about in the post about Time. Photographed on a massive map in Greenwich. 

Me at the Greenwich meridian. Loved being here. Loved seeing this. It's such a weird thing to be real, to think that this is where the Earth supposedly starts and ends. I've been close to another important map-line before, the Tropic of Cancer, back when I was in Abu Simbel, but then I still was a bit away from that particular latitude, so now I've truly stood on an important place for coordinates.

Also I've travelled in time by jumping back and forth on the line. 

Of course we visited Madame Tussauds, so here's me with the magnificent Humphrey Bogart.

I do love Casablanca. 

So many people walked right past him, not recognizing him. People these days have no regard for classic films. For shame. But at least I didn't have to work my elbows to take a pic with this particular wax statue - I think I had to battle an entire army of middle-aged mums to take a photo with the statue of George Clooney.

Ah, there's a vacancy in the Bates Motel. Yes, let's stay there.

Further epicness (and lack of elbowing - truly people, for shame!) was ensured by the wax statue of Oscar Wilde. I just about kept myself from throwing a teenaged-girly fit over the awesomeness.

But our visit wasn't just limited to stuff for teenage girls on a trip with their middle-aged mums, or slightly weird students - my Dad battled a battalion of greying and grey dads to get a pic with Paul, Ringo, John and George. I think he was also the one holding back a teenaged-girly fit over awesomeness when I took him to see Abbey Road and the studios on Thursday morning.

On Wednesday we went to Oxford, because I wanted to show my Dad the Bodleian and some other pretty buildings, plus I needed to pick up some things - also I was slightly desperate to visit Blackwell's, and it's now almost been a year since I had a chat in Oxford with two academics, one from Utrecht and one from Glasgow, over a very fancy dinner, where one of them told me that you don't need to be clever to do a PhD, just be really passionate about something, and where I most or less made the definitive decision to give Academia a serious shot.

As I sat in front of the Criminology section in Blackwell's, I held three books in my hands. I wanted all three, but I reasoned with myself that buying all three would be senseless. I most desperately wanted the one that - of course - also happened to be the most expensive one.

I still bought it, of course.

Crime and Economics. C'mon. I'm a Law and Economics (well, Social Sciences but those were my main tracks) BA. I've been contemplating going back to RA/UCR in, say, a decade and forcing them to expand Crime and Law Enforcement into a full track, and because of my background I've considered a course that draws on both criminology and economics.
I couldn't just walk away and leave it there. It would be a betrayal of all my interests.

So, Thursday was Abbey Road. It was also our day of walking around, from the London Eye to Westminster Abbey to Trafalgar Square to Piccadilly Circus. Of course that was also the day we were hit by snow and bitter cold, so I quickly turned quite cranky - sorry about that, Dad.

We had an absolutely lovely afternoon tea at Fenwick's, which was quite fun because we were sat next to two very posh ladies, who were absolutely delightful.

Friday we met up with Danou and indulged in a day of amateur Egyptology - wandering 'round the British and Petrie Museums, pointing out deities to one another and, while in the Petrie Museum, finding stuff that has been featured on the Joann Fletcher documentary-set that's been on the BBC.

I said goodbye to my Dad on Friday night, as he had to catch a very early flight out again, while I stayed another night to travel back to Leicester on Saturday.

As I transferred from the Central to the Hammersmith & City Line, I suddenly walked past something that I hadn't expected to see at all this week. Surely I'd been looking at maps of Central London to figure out where it could possibly located, as I'd been watching a documentary on it the other day, but I never intended to go and see it for real. But I did.

You see, as you transfer lines there, you have to walk from White City station to Wood Lane station, and as you do so, you walk right past the BBC Television Centre. Quite extraordinary.

But now I'm safely back home in Leicester, and I'll probably unpack in a bit, then eat something and then watch the newest Who.

Thanks again, Dad, for the trip.

PS Okay, so the new Who is quite cool. Bit deus ex screwdriver, as is to be expected, and I felt slightly worried about that system because after the parasite collapsed, what was that system's main point of gravity? Other than that, nice ep. Looking forward to next week - submarines!

Doctor Who s7e6 sort-of-review

So yesterday I watched the new Doctor Who-episode (Who-pisode?).

I was quite excited for it, also because it had been promoted as being somewhat James Bond/Jason Bourne-like. It wasn't like that at all, though.
Seriously, the Doctor can't be like James Bond - the only character in the episodes I have watched so far that can make claims to being somewhat Bond-like would be Ian, the 30-something science teacher in a suit (but willing to dress in funkier outfits) and JFK-haircut who, together with Barbara and Susan, was one of the first companions back in the 1960s (I do have a bit of a weak spot for the Ian character).

But I quite liked the episode, apart from a few things I am all too willing to overlook. Except for Clara. I don't like this version of her. I liked her as soufflé-girl, and I liked her as Victorian Clara, but current-day Clara is just odd. She seemed to be trying too hard to be feisty but missing the actual spark to be feisty. A bit too-cute-to-be-true, in a sense (also, didn't she call him 'Doctor' before he'd properly introduced himself as such? Might have to re-watch).
Monsters in the WiFi, heck yes. Nicely done, too, with the Spoonheads and a creepy CEO-type lady.
Motorbike - why? He's got a bloody TARDIS. Seems a bit contrived and just a plot-thing to have the Doctor drive up the side of the Shard, which seemed slightly off. I watched it going "WHAT." in my best Tennant-imitation. Slightly deus ex machina - "You can't enter" "Well I can because this motor bike that I've been driving around because somehow I thought it wise to leave my TARDIS on the South Bank and that no one has ever seen before can suddenly defy gravity". Yeah No.
Seriously, that could've been done much more easily with the TARDIS, without having to stick in a deus ex motorbike - "Say Clara, let's have breakfast" "Did you just park the TARDIS on the pavement in the middle of London?" "Yes I did" "Awesome" - breakfast - "Oh No, I have to be in the Shard!" - TARDIS - "Hello creepy CEO lady".
But in general I liked the episode. Nice pacing (which is what has me screaming at my laptop about the early episodes - mainly going "seriously Ian, DO SOMETHING!"), nice baddies, nice TARDIS interior, nice purple coat (purple is cool).
I watched the episode expecting it to be part of a bigger whole, which is why I am willing to overlook things - if they bring back the motorbike for something that can't be done with the TARDIS later on in the series, I'll drop all my complaints about it.
The only thing I felt was truly missing was something of a transition between the Christmas special and this episode. I know the prequel is there, but it's not sufficient. Hope they'll come back to that later in the series also.
In general, therefore, nice opening for a new (half) series but only if the writers are willing to wrap up a big number of loose ends.

Very much looking forward to next episode, if only because 'Akhaten' reminds me of the name of pharaoh Akhenaten, which is cool because Akhenaten was not only the heretic king but also the father of Tutankhamun (who really isn't important but his treasures are still cool) and the spouse of Nefertiti - which is cool because we already saw Nefertiti in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship.
Besides, Akhaten seems to translate to something having to do with the solar-deity Aten (whom Akhenaten made the focus of his monotheistic religion) and pharaonic effectivenes, or something of the sort.
The summary on the BBC website says "The Doctor takes Clara to the Festival of Offerings, but the Old God is waking and demands sacrifice!". I've seen the preview and trailer, and there's definitely a fiery planet or even star in there, so that works too. Of course it's in space - but who's to say Akhenaten's religion didn't travel?
So, definitely something with Gods, and Festival of Offerings sounds quite like something that fits with the religions of the Egyptian and classical world. Cool. Fingers crossed that they're actually putting in allusions to Ancient Egypt, for that would forever solidify my fanship of Doctor Who. They've already done vampires and Napoleon, after all.

Time

Seeing as tonight sees the broadcast of a whole new Doctor Who episode, this might be the right moment to write about one of my greatest problems with the show: Time. And time travel. Especially the Earth-centricness.

I don't have any problems with space travel, mainly because space travel is just covering distance and whether covering a certain distance in little to no time passing at all might well be possible when technology improves. Sure, if one travels by coordinates - as the Doctor seems to be doing - one needs to be extremely specific in order not to land halfway in the ground somewhere, or stuck in a ceiling - one would need to know the exact location of every atom in the general area of where one would want to land (which, so I've been told, is one of Physics's major practical problems in making teleportation possible). But I'm sure the TARDIS is perfectly equipped for this, and there appears to be a Galactic Zero Centre (http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Galactic_centre), like our global coordinates are at 0 where the equator crosses the Greenwich meridian, just off the coast of Africa. Such a zero point is an agreed-upon point and so not an absolute, but can still be used to measure against and so base travel upon. There need to be no extremes known - you don't need to know the "end", just keep on counting. It does not even need to be a Galaxy-widely held convention, even if only the TARDIS would use such a zero point, it can be used for travel, as long as elevation or at least a third dimension is taken into account.

But Time. Time does not truly exist, does it, other than as a purely abstract idea to mark the duration of a sequence of events. Time, as a concept, is a human invention - the basic notion is the rotation of the Earth and the orbiting of the Earth around the Sun, nothing more. A day is the duration for one point - or line, the Greenwich meridian - to move from a specific location relative to the Earth's axis to that same location relative to the Earth's axis, or from Midnight to Midnight. But that's a modern invention, as for instance in the Ancient world, if I remember correctly, a full day lasted from sun up to sun up and so the duration of a day varied. But an agreed duration for a day is good, so humans could divide it by 24, and then by 60, and then by 60 again, and so forth, to find out hours and minutes and seconds and miliseconds. There wasn't even a unified time per country until railways demanded it, and then it still took a while for everyone - it took especially the French very long - to agree that time is to be derived from the Greenwich meridian.
A year is just the same, the number of days it takes to orbit around the Sun - 365.24... something, so we need a leap year every four years except some. To us, that is, because to the Ancient Egyptians a year was 360 days (12 months, 30 days per months, 3 weeks per month, 10 days per week) plus a festival of five days for the Gods, which fell outside the year.
And what is our zero for years? Some Pope decided that the birth of Christ was supposed to be zero, so he calculated zero, and still got it wrong, so that our calendar begins at a completely random point in time. Fair enough though if we can all agreed that that random point is zero, but then the Jewish are currently in the year 5773. And we can't even agree on the point when the year should begin - Midnight at the start of the 1st of January? Or later, in late January/early February, like the Chinese New Year? Roman New Year did not start until March, while Ancient Egyptian New Year was some time over summer.
Fine, so let's say the TARDIS travels by Gallifreyan time - one could presume that at least the Gallifreyans would agree on one time, some of them being Time Lords, after all.
Travelling forward in time should perhaps not be too difficult, if one can teleport or travel really really fast - something with time running slower than elsewhere, something Einstein, something relativity.
But travelling back in time should only be possible if each event, or each sequence of events, is stored in some dimension, and that time passing is just - I'm going fairly metaphysical here - our consciousness passing through those dimensions. A bit like our consciousnesses are watching a stop-motion film, but then they are part of that stop-motion film. I guess this could be possible with parallel universes etc., quantum physics and what not. Schroedinger's Cat and that.
Besides, time travel should only be possible if one can map time against something - but against what?

But perhaps I'm taking time too much as a linear thing and instead it is "a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey... stuff".

Anyway. What I did realise is possible was what I realised yesterday as I was trying to fall asleep. Basically, we only see parts of the Doctor's adventures (most notably the Eleventh Doctor suddenly ages from 900-something to 1100-something over a series, and we don't really see what happens in the 200 years in between), so at any point in time, if the Doctor were real, we humans could meet just about every incarnation - a TARDIS could appear right here in the grad lounge and the First Doctor could come stepping out "hmm"-ing (or, more interestingly to me, the Tenth could step out brandishing the sonic screwdriver). Of course that would also mean (I haven't watched any episode yet in which the Doctor meets himself, so bear with me) that a Doctor with little to no hang-ups about crossing his own timeline could easily meet himself in an earlier (or even the same - but hang on, he did that more or less when Rose wanted to save her Dad) regeneration. I'd love for the First Doctor to meet the Eleventh and go all "hmm" and "my boy" and patronising and all that until the Eleventh points out that he is him but - hilariously - older.

What if time passed faster in the TARDIS (or any other other dimension) than it does in the outside world? It would explain why suddenly the Eleventh Doctor is 200 years older, for I doubt he'd travel without the Ponds for 200 years while the Ponds were still free. If one is used to a human pace, and time moves faster in another dimension, what would seem like a month could indeed easily be a year, or even two centuries.
It would also explain why some Doctors (especially the Tenth and Eleventh - I've yet to observe Two to Seven) seem a bit hyperactive compared to a human pace.
Sort of reversed relativity.
Perhaps it WOULD, in case of reversed relativity of time, be possible to travel back in time. Perhaps the pace of time inside the TARDIS can be altered so that travelling in time both ways is made possible. I don't know.
Hang on. Time goes faster on the inside than on the outside.
The TARDIS is Narnia.
That, or the Eleventh Doctor spent 200 years in Narnia.
Either one is cool.

Fascinating stuff, time. I just have difficulty grasping it - I do wish I hadn't dropped my science courses in secondary school. The upside of all this is that if time was a stop-motion film observed by our consciousnesses, I'd be totally right in believing there is no Truth and all there is, is our observed reality.

Physicists, do feel free to step in and answer my questions...

PS I love this: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970401c.html. I'm quite terrible at the whole sine/cosine/tangent bit of mathemathics (only mathematics test I failed back when I was still good at maths), but let's ignore that bit. This bit: "The Earth is doing a lot more than rotating, although that is certainly the motion we notice most, because day follows night as a result. We also orbit the Sun once a year. The circumference of the Earth's orbit is about 940 million kilometers, so if you divide that by the hours in a year you will get our orbital speed in kilometers per hour. We are also moving with the Sun around the center of our galaxy and moving with our galaxy as it drifts through intergalactic space!". Pure Epic. Basically, it tells me that there should be four basic units of time on Earth: a day (rotation), an Earth year (orbit), a Galatic year (moving around the centre of the Galaxy) and an Intergalactic period (a distance in drifting through Intergalatic Space). Yes, I *am* ignoring time derived from atom clocks etc.. So basically, the TARDIS would not only have to have a sort of internal library of the positions of every atom - impressive enough to start with - but also of every atom's movement through time - and surely this must include 'paths not taken', i.e. unrealised futures and disregarded pasts.
Whoa. Time Lord technology must be truly awesome. No wonder the sonic screwdriver can do lots of things that seem like deus ex machina plot-tricks to us mere humans...

Applications (part #whatever)

It was sunny when I woke up. At 7.

I woke up that early because I'd intended to complete some of the final bits of my PhD application for Leicester and seeing as MyFiles (the thing that allows Leicester students to access their documents on their uni accounts from pretty much everywhere - I LOVE IT) has been offline since about 3pm yesterday afternoon, I figured I'd go to the Library.

That is, until I remembered it's Good Friday, and though our Library rarely closes, I figured I should check.

Anndddd the Library is closed today.

So there I was, frustrated that I couldn't access my uni account, where I store digital copies of my important files, such as my transcripts and degree certificates etc. from home, and frustrated that there's no other way for me to access it either. 

I went back to sleep.

I woke up again at about 11, when it was bright grey outside, and figured I'd try again.

Nothing.

I did my usual round on the Internet - NRC, Volkskrant, Guardian, FML, DearBlankPleaseBlank, 9Gag, and had some facebook chats - and then suddenly I had a bright moment.

Maybe some scans were still stored in my email bin? I hardly ever empty that one anyway...

Lo and behold, I found my TOEFL scan. And, what's also important, I found out I still had .jpg scans of my undergraduate transcript and degree certificate hidden on my computer somewhere. I do prefer .pdf, but if it works it works. 

Those happen to be my key files. Anything else - Leicester transcript (they know my grades anyway, though), passport copy (I'm an EU citizen, don't need visa), etc. - is not thát important and can be sent tomorrow when I finish my formal research proposal (basically, dot my Is), when the Library is open again.

Fingers crossed now. I'm terrified. But happy. 

New Things

As I was cycling downhill to the city centre earlier today, I gazed upon the hills on the other side of the Soar valley. There was still residual snow there, and it looked positively alpine, also because the sun illuminated parts of it. It was pretty.

Furthermore got myself a new pair of Converse, as my old pink ones really aren't suitable for wearing out in public any more (which is why I haven't really worn them in ages) and I also do like Converse for walking around, as they're very comfortable - I'll have to do lots of walking around soon. I always get High-Tops because I have fairly weak ankles and these sort of support them.

And a new purse, since the last one I bought isn't holding up very well and I'm fed up with my little purses, which only hold my wallet and keys.

Here's a pic:

Boring (and I like it!)

(Warning: don't take stuff too seriously. Also don't confuse liking boring things with being a boring person)

So much for the melodrama - I feel much better now, thanks.

My congestion cleared up pretty much in sync with my cough, so I'm happily spared the dry cough. Nevertheless, I still asked my dad to bring over noscapine. Just in case.

I seem to have most of my hearing back, too, which is good.

Finally, I stopped feeling hopeless about my future. I'd hit a bit of a low point with my last post, I presume, but now I remember that there's always, somehow, a way. I probably just get a bit melodramatic over set-backs because I'm not actually used to them. In fact, the biggest set-backs I've experienced so far include a uni rejection, a job rejection ('a', as in a grand total of one), a funding rejection, and not always getting what I wanted when I wanted it - but, with regards to the last thing, I often did end up with a version of what I wanted later on, so those aren't truly set-backs. If that's the sum of all my set-backs, I should count myself lucky and I usually do, but it's so easy to forget sometimes.

That's also why I'm terrible at telling anecdotes - I don't really have any good stories in which everything goes wrong. I didn't even get seasick during the Cruise of Horror last year and "so yeah, I ended up fetching water for everyone and pouring it over their faces" doesn't do much in terms of heroism either. I'm really much better at telling fairy tales, which my dad will surely attest to.

I attended one of the lectures in the Scarman Lecture Series here in Leicester today, and it was on being a police researcher and, more importantly, about the ethics and authenticity of that type of ethnographic research. I love ethnographic research, it's got such a feeling of adventure to it, but that's not the point - during the Q&A at the end, it was mentioned that in lots of ethnographic research things, the more salient bits are pointed out while the boring bits are... 'left on the cutting room floor' (my interpretation plus editing reference). It got me thinking - what bits of my life should be left on the cutting room floor? As said, I don't have any good anecdotes, no grand extraordinary tales, no 'remember that time when's.

Oh, I have that one time that I thought I was locked in an alley in Oxford for about three minutes once.

And that's wildly comforting. I'm jumping the right hoops, I'm not deviating too much either way, and so while I may not have anything super-exciting to say, at least I won't also have to be scared of everything going wrong.

I like boring. I like the minutiae of corporate crime and tax evasion and all that. Boring is just really my thing.

Gee, I must've been such an easy child...