My 100th post is coming up, so it's time for an overhaul - that's why from now on you'll find my blog under a different url, committingcriminology.blogspot.com - this is also because it's no longer Leicester Uni Adventures as I'm no longer a student at Leicester. Expect further changes in the next couple of weeks.
I now live in Leeds, or in Headingley to be exact, in a house with five other students - third years, fascinating from an anthropological point of view - and have not been up to much lately other than attend Leeds Uni's Crime Fiction conference, and taking the train to Manchester to see Kristy, who's moved to Oxford this week (somehow Manchester ended up the easiest place for us to meet, long story). I like Headingley, it's a nice place, half a mile from shops (ten minute walk, which is great because I've had something like Fresher's Flu the last few days and I'm quite capable of starving myself if I don't feel like going to the shops - half a mile is just the right distance for me to not have an excuse to go out) and with a great public transport connection to Leeds city centre (and the Uni, of course). My housemates seem friendly enough, so that's cool too.
It's been a bit sunny too, yesterday and today, and Kristy gave me a lovely photo book of our trip this summer, so all in all I was reminded of Heidelberg - and with memories of Heidelberg come memories of Flammkuchen. It's not a difficult thing to make, so I decided to give it a shot today. The traditional version first, I'll make the veggie one next weekend (I do think I prefer the veggie version, to be honest - the traditional one is a little heavy. You'll see why). As coincidence has it, today the Dutch newspaper I regularly read online has a fairly big thing on the German elections. I suppose it's a bit of a German day today then.
You'll need the following equipment:
A measuring cup
Baking paper
Baking tray
Optional:
Mixing bowl
Mixer
Rolling pin
Ingredients:
Dough:
200 grams (7 ounces) plain four
110 millilitres water (tap water is fine)
1 teaspoon salt
1.5 teaspoon olive oil
Traditional toppings:
200 grams crème fraiche (Sainsbury's has some decent ones, also 50% less fat ones but I was being unhealthy with it anyway so went for the full-fat one)
100 grams diced bacon (I diced two rashers of thick-cut smoked back bacon, but it depends on your own tastes. I suppose smoked bacon is better than unsmoked in this case though, despite being bacon even smoked has enough difficulty to hold its own in this dish)
Half a diced onion (or however much you want - I like onion, but don't need it to overwhelm me. Also these are big, big onions I'm using. Just make sure it properly covers your dough)
Vegetarian toppings:
200 grams crème fraiche
Cherry tomatoes
Rocket
Pesto
Onion optional (I don't recommend it, this combination has more delicate flavours than the above sturdy one, but to each his or her own)
Pine nuts (they make everything better)
Preheat the oven to 230 - 250 Celsius (depending on how long you want it to take and whether you mind checking up every minute if you do it really hot)
So, you start by making a dough - in a mixing bowl with a mixer, or on the counter top with your hands if you like it messy. Hands and surface must be clean. You simply slowly (a bit at a time) add water to the flour, which makes for a dense and sticky ball of dough. Add the salt and oil, which makes it extremely sticky and a bit stringy too. Don't get dough on your shirt, and if you do, keep your shirt on until you're done because you don't want to make more than one dirty. If you're making a messy dough (like I did), you'd be better off wearing an apron.
Stretch the dough on the paper on the baking tray - with your fingers if you don't have a rolling pin (or perhaps with your fingers even if you do, because this is really sticky dough and will most likely stick to the pin rather than your paper). Get it nice and thin without any holes.
Spread the crème fraiche on the dough. You'll get a fairly thick layer, but that's how it's supposed to be. Sprinkle on the onions and bacon, or your other toppings (you can stick your bacon and onions in a frying pan first for a bit if you so prefer). It's supposed to look a bit like this:
Stick the tray in the oven and bake for about 15 minutes (do check often because it's fairly easy to cook this thing to a crisp, which is such a waste of a good dish). Once it's done it looks like this:
Eat. Recommended for drinks is a lager (personal recommendation is a nice, clear Heidelberger 1603 but if I did that here I'd probably end up the same as whenever I get my mum to bring me a bottle of a nice French wine I used to drink during holidays in France - it never tastes as good as it did there) or a dry white wine that holds its own. If going for non-alcoholic (I may be living in the UK now but even for me 2 in the afternoon of a regular Sunday is a bit early), keep it simple with a (sparkling) mineral water.
Today I read an article in De Volkskrant (well, its online version) that I thought so good that I felt it needed to be translated. It's an incredible example of how sexism is still pervasive and why sexism is just STUPID AS HELL. The original article (http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/13166/Joyce-Brekelmans/article/detail/3502529/2013/09/02/Wat-is-het-toch-met-borsten-dat-mensen-er-zo-raar-van-gaan-doen.dhtml) is by Joyce Brekelmans and was published on www.volkskrant.nl on 2 September 2013. 'What is it about boobs that makes people act like idiots?' It isn't the case that Joyce Brekelmans would like to become a member of the SGP [Dutch Fundamentalist Christian Party] or the Woudrichem Fishing Club, but sometimes someone just needs to say out loud that it is pure bullshit to not be allowed to do something just because you're a girl.
It never occurred to me to want to become a member of the fishing club of Woudrichem, but it's incredibly lame that I'm not allowed to do so in any case because I'm a girl.
I don't think having a meat-rod is a necessity to sit on a fold-up stool on the waterside whilst looking into the distance, donning a stupid cap. You also don't need a third leg to play football, but when she was a child, my sister still wasn't allowed to play with the local football club. She could play with the boys a bit futher away - good for them, because she was awesome at it - but when she started puberty it was all over. Breasts as the ultimate off-side [translator's note: don't think "off-side" offers the same connotations as "buitenspel" (which also means being put outside the game in Dutch) but I decided for a literal translation here].
What is it about boobs that makes people act like idiots? When last week, Bits of Freedom activist Ancilla Tillia tried to awaken the Netherlands to privacy issues, she was told that as an ex-Playmate she had no right to complain. As if the Google-ranking of her nipples has anything to do with the policies of Ivo Opstelten [Dutch minister of Justice and Safety], about which she was expressing her concerns. Maybe I didn't pay enough attention in Biology class, but as far as I am aware, taking off your jumper does not equal a frontal lobotomy.
My own naked everything isn't available for publicity, but if I would ever want to draw attention to these two important issues, I would hope to be able to continue doing my work after that. Whatever the Gordons [Dutch telly persona] of this world think of that.
In 2013 there are still people who are so incredibly scared of the magical effect a pair of women's breasts have that they keep trying to forbid girls participating in things. Even in the Netherlands, where we, in comparison to a majority of women, men and children all over the world have an incredibly privileged situation. Isn't it somewhat bizarre that I was forced to do gymnastics in PE whilst the boys got to play football? That I wasn't allowed a job in the Tour de France-crew because "women would mess up the social atmosphere"? That, as a student, I was not allowed to work as a barmaid because working the bar was guys' work and girls had to do the waitressing? That a guy friend of a girl friend now joins his father-in-law to the Freemasons because his daughter, who would love to accompany her father, isn't allowed in?
And then we still are in a privileged situation, as for instance the Afghani Malala would gladly change places. It would just have been nicer to have known beforehand that those pleasant boobs - which I once desperately wished for - could be such party poopers. It isn't that the membership of the Dutch Fundamentalist Christian Party, the Woudrichem fishing club or the group of people that Gordon thinks have a right to speak out against privacy invasion is very appealing, but sometimes someone just has to say out loud that it is pure bullshit that you are not allowed to do something just because you're a girl.
I handed in two hard copies of my dissertation last Friday. I still have to hand in a digital copy on Blackboard, but I haven't the courage. I keep wondering - what if it's not good enough? What if my conclusion is too weak, what if my argumentation is not solid, what if my literature review is flawed, what if my methodology is unsound? The only thing that I do not worry about is whether my sample size is large enough - 488 articles is definitely large. This is the capstone of my Master's degree - an MSc, that is, no matter how often it is called an MA - and I just want to finish it properly. I am hoping for a Merit, as that would put me at a Merit degree, but at this point I would even be happy with a Pass, just so I can pass my degree. It is dreadfully scary to hand in a body of work consisting of 20,000 words which will determine whether you will receive a Postgraduate Diploma or that actual Master of Science-degree in January. But I suppose I must. I very much enjoyed doing the research. Stuck behind a desk for hours on end, reading about corporate crime and tax law and corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis? Yes please! Messing about with SPSS, trying to get results that make sense and then actually getting those? Hell yes! Reading articles, thinking "this looks quite objective, doesn't it?" and then, when looking beyond the surface, noticing that "oh hey, this isn't objective at all!". Noticing that news writing contributes to a vicious cycle of social stratification, finding out news is all economics and politics and dominant ideology. Realising that the language of news writing works to negotiate the social contract. Fascinating. But that's all very abstract, and hard to put into words - therefore hard to properly maintain when you're trying to cut down from 28,000 to 20,000 - and then the fear that you've lost depth, strength, solidity, soundness, and gained flaws. I hope to put that right in my PhD, win back my depth and solidity, but 100,000 words is still not very many when you're dealing with something so interesting as this, which is both so abstract and practical. But let us focus on the practical findings of my dissertation for now.
My research question was how UK newspapers portrayed the tax avoidance of Facebook, Starbucks, eBay, and such companies - multinational companies - and the backlash. This is extremely recent stuff, as the story broke in October 2012 and has still not finished, and it struck me as odd for it was not actually a proper news story. It was big, true, but the general readerships could hardly be expected to *care* about multinational companies working within the bounds of international commercial regulations. A corporation's main goal is profit, and it will do everything it is allowed to do to get that profit. So there is no novelty in this, and no novelty should equal no news. Besides, even when corporations do break the rules of international commerce, the backlash is hardly as large as it was now. Cartels? An article in the finance sections of broadsheets, perhaps a follow-up, that's it. Child labour? Myeah, that'll generate some outrage, some people will turn to companies that aren't known for using child labour, and some politicians might say "shouldn't do that!", nothing big though. Environmental crimes? Difficult - Shell's crimes in Nigeria hardly make the papers at all, but the BP oil spill generated quite some fuss. But, you know, that was dead fish and the Gulf of Mexico and stuff. Proximate drama. But taxes?
Taxes?
(Sorry, been wanting to use this meme for a while now)
No one gives a shit about taxes. If anything is written about taxes, it's about how you can save on your tax payments by minding this this and that category. And as no one knows how corporation tax works, other than that corporations have to pay a certain percentage of their profits, few people usually care. After all, some of these companies haven't been paying taxes for literally years and only now it generated outrage.
So that's all interesting, but that's all context. My question was, how did they portray it? Did the newspapers make a big fuss? Did they side with the outrage or with the papers? Judging from the fact that the OECD was considering changing regulations and that people kept being outraged, I hypothesised that yeah, these newspapers will be stirring up a fuss. But their reporting initially seemed quite balanced. Objective. As newspapers are supposed to report things.
So I did a corpus analysis of all articles and took 7 articles for a critical discourse analysis. I'll not go into the specifics here, email me for a PDF copy if you want one, but what I found was that yeah, these newspapers were kicking up as much as a fuss as the politicians calling Google 'evil' and those protesters calling for boycotts of Starbucks. In fact, they seemed to be the instigator of some of the outrage, by for instance only presenting those opinions which said that these "multinational corporations should pay their fair share of UK corporation tax" (this is a composite sentence of the main lexical items the corpus program showed me. Absolutely fascinating).
The next question, of course, is why. But I just spent 20,000 words detailing how UK newspapers to an extent criminalise the otherwise legal behaviour of not paying your taxes where you are not obliged to pay your taxes. The moral question of whether a company should be obliged to pay taxes in territories where they make billions of pounds of revenue, but where they do not technically, according to the OECD regulations of the taxation of multinational corporations, have to pay taxes, has been answered, by these papers, with a "Yes". But why? Why now?
This will have to do with the economic crisis, I hypothesise. So the next research question will be how the portrayal of corporate fraud (or crime, but that's perhaps too broad for 100,000 words) in the UK has developed over the course of the global economic crisis. But that's for my PhD. And something I can't wait to get started on.
*This is taken from a Starbucks-related pun in The Mirror. I loved it, and it has become the title of my dissertation. Tabloid puns are the best.
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
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.
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?
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.
My brother recently described one of my characteristics as follows: "whenever there's something you find interesting, you try and find out everything about it, immediately".
Or, in different words, I'm somewhat obsession-prone. This blog is also largely self-indulgent and a bit rambling. But that's okay, it's really a procrastination post anyway.
I did it between 11 and 15 with CSI. Obsessed to the point of actually reading up on forensic investigation techniques, improvising forensics kits using make-up brushes and the finest flour I could find in the shops (didn't work very well) - and then using these kits to, with a friend, make a complete mess of a room in her house while doing a "forensic investigation". Obsessed to the point of writing tons of fanfics (which are not worth a read nowadays except for a handful of flashfics). Obsessed to the point of writing a screenplay for an episode and actually emailing it to one of the producers - who then promptly turned me down saying he could not possibly read it as it would cause copyright troubles. Obsessed to the point of then writing another screenplay and attempting to film it with a group of friends, which then of course fell apart because 14-year-olds cannot make a film together without there being leadership struggles and schedule clashes, except for when it's a school assignment. Obsessed to the point of actually proclaiming Chemistry my favourite subject, at least for some weeks.
Also did it with Harry Potter, for a longer period and more intensely. Obsessed to the point of reading every of the first five books about 20 times (literally), being thus able to, for a short while, hear any sentence being quoted from the books and being able to place it not just within the book, but even within the general page range. Obsessed to the point of demanding my parents take me to the premiere-showings of the films for my birthday party - which worked well up to Goblet of Fire, but not so much after that. My amazing parents also taking me to the midnight launch of Order of the Phoenix - the novel, that is, so I traipsed around Rotterdam Central station at night in full wizarding get-up (and getting my hat blown onto the tracks, which resulted in me jumping after them since it was well before the steam engine was scheduled to arrive and I wanted my hat back. I was then promptly and rightfully scolded by one of the National Railways-employees). Wanting to get shoes just like the ones Hermione wears in the first film - and being really very sad that I couldn't find anything like it. Having a deck of Harry Potter playing cards, which I carried with my to school, daily. Being inconsolable when I lost that deck. Attempting to sew robes whenever I could get my hands on a decent sized bit of cloth. Carving branches (and narrowly missing my fingers) to make wands. Going to midnight premieres in full get-up, even at age 20. Learning runes (which then came in handy to exchange notes with my friend in Maths class because our teacher, brilliant as I suppose he was (though he did not like teaching us non-mathematical people) naturally couldn't read runes) because Hermione studied Ancient Runes. Also reading up on Numerology (another Hermione subject). Attempting to read Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces because one of the non-authorised "encyclopaedias" said the story followed the monomyth and I was desperate to see whether it was true (of course I didn't manage to fully read Campbell until I was 21).
And I recognise it's happening again now. Watching Doctor Who. First I watched the new series, because heck, that's four series of David Tennant and there's nothing wrong with four - no, three series and a year of specials - of David Tennant. Matt Smith and Christopher Eccleston were nice bonuses at that point. Then getting started on the old series because My word I addooooorrred the new series and I had to see more - at that moment, series 7.2 was just being broadcast on BBC, so I got to - well, I've already written about the Matt Smith episodes I watched this year on telly.
So I liked the First Doctor and his companions (specifically Ian). Frankly adored the Second Doctor (and he and Jamie had such remarkable chemistry!), he's my favourite I should think. Found out Patrick Troughton also had a guest role on Inspector Morse once, which was two-for-one really cos it means I got to go back and re-watch a Morse episode.
Rapidly watched Three and Four (yes, all of it) - upon stumbling upon bags of jelly babies in Morrisons, I promptly bought some and spent the next few days mumbling "would you like a jelly baby?" whenever eating one. Watched the Fifth Doctor, found him - well, not boring, but beige.
Of course, me being me, I read up on the actors on Wikipedia (yes, I know, shame on me - all my past teachers are welcome to shame me for using Wikipedia) and found out that of course Peter Davison also was Tristan Farnon in All Creatures Great and Small and I hadn't ever properly watched that but I do know the series as my Mum and stepdad used to be quite fond of it so I watched that too and came to the conclusion that the WE'RE GOING TO CRASH-LAND BUT I'M DAMN WELL PILOTING THIS CRAFT!-scene at the end of Caves of Androzani (see below) - which is my favourite scene of all the Fifth Doctor's because he seems quite obsessively mad with crash-piloting that craft - is very Tristan-y and then I suggested to a friend that all of the Fifth Doctor should've been Tristan-y but I suppose a smoking, drinking and womanizing Doctor wasn't ever much of a good plan (Tristan Farnon may actually be well on his way to become one of my favourite television characters).
Also feeling bland about the Sixth Doctor, liking the Seventh, agreeing that the Eighth is very underrated - and now I'm done, which is leaving something of a gap.
So what *have* I been up to lately, obsession-wise?
Getting tickets for the 50th Anniversary event in ExCel London, which entailed me getting up really early to sit in front of my computer for about five hours, refreshing the page over and over until I managed to be so damned lucky as to snatch up some normal tickets for the Saturday - judging by the anecdotes on some of the fora, doing so in the General Sale was actually practically impossible as they sold out in about four minutes and most tickets had already been snatched up in the pre-sale to which I unfortunately had no access. That Saturday, of course, the 23rd, is the day of the Anniversary itself and the only day for which so far Four instead of three Doctor-actors have been scheduled - Matt Smith, Sylvester McCoy, Colin Baker and the marvellous Tom Baker.
Designing an outfit for said event. I'm not yet revealing what it's supposed to end up looking like, but I will give the hint that it's going to involve me getting my Mum to teach me to knit.
Doodling Daleks in my notebook (also a T-Rex, with the Dalek saying "*YOU'RE* complaining?" which I would've posted on here if my T-Rex didn't look like a frightened lizard).
Reading up on time travel (again).
Getting very worked up over the BBC not releasing their 50th Anniversary Trailer to the general public BECAUSE THERE'S A GAP IN MY EXPERIENCING THE DAY WHERE THERE USED TO BE SOME DOCTOR WHO THING I HADN'T YET SEEN TO WATCH AND NOW THE BBC RELEASED THIS TRAILER TO THE COMICCON PEOPLE AND SO THERE IS SOMETHING NEW AND I CAN'T WATCH IT AND IT'S REALLY VERY FRUSTRATING - I suppose it may be somewhat similar to what addicts go through when they're going through withdrawal and their indulgence of choice is *JUST* outside of their reach.
Watching All Creatures to deal with said gap (and some dissertation panic - nothing like All Creatures to take away dissertation panic) and it would seem now that if I watched any Fifth Doctor stuff now I'd perhaps expect him to stick his arm up a space-cow's rear*. Also, I've this annoying switch-thing with Harry Potter, in the sense that if I'd watch any Harry Potter now I'd expect the Minister for Magic to have the abuse of magical creatures as an interest, which of course he doesn't as he's quite willing to have Buckbeak slaughtered, whilst when watching All Creatures I'm sometimes almost expecting Siegfried to start about Ministerial stuff - which of course he won't as that's all bureaucracy anyways and Siegfried and paperwork are not very good friends.
Being sorely tempted to buy some Doctor Who novels but I mustn't, I really mustn't because that would mean lugging about even more books at the end of the summer.
Being tempted by a friend to stick a Dalek reference in my dissertation, which so far I have not managed...
...
Oh, obsessions. I suppose that's one reason why I'd like to be an academic. After all, plenty of opportunity to get obsessed with lots of interesting things.
Now then. The Caves of Androzani-clip. Because it's quite fantastic, and despite me thinking the Fifth Doctor is a bit beige (maybe it's the coat? Love the trousers though), Caves of Androzani is really among the more memorable episodes (well, episode-arcs) and frankly perhaps one of my favourites (together with - oh actually, another Fifth Doctor episode, Arc of Infinity, but that's because it's set in Amsterdam I suppose. And City of Death (Fourth), Tomb of the Cybermen (Second), School Reunion (Tenth), The Empty Child (Ninth), The War Games (Second)... oeh! Pyramids of Mars, of course, because of the Egyptian stuff (Fourth). But not Blink (Tenth). Love the Weeping Angels, just don't quite like the episode. Actually - I'll stop now. Just watch this clip for a bit, okay?).
*May I assume - please - that the Doctor is also a qualified vet? Pretty please? Seeing as he's supposedly got degrees in everything - quite impressive actually for someone who didn't pass his Time Lord Academy exams until the second time and then still only scraped a 51%.
So, due to Mary Gee closing over the summer, I've recently had to move all my stuff over the massive distance...
of 1 mile.
The story of how I finally got to have summer accommodation is relatively long and basically consists of me worrying far too much about things that end up being fine anyway, so I'll skip that.
My main problem wasn't distance. It was time.
I had to check out of Mary Gee at 10am and wouldn't, according to the booking confirmation, be able to check in at Nixon Court until 2pm.
If I'd had a bit of overlap I could've, I dunno, have a taxi move me, or take a bus. Or walk, though, as you'll realise if you know me well enough, I brought way too many books (no such thing as too many books) over last year so walking would've killed me. But still.
So, I had two options:
1) Find someone with a car.
2) Book a car.
But cars need to be booked at least some while in advance, and I'd already lost the cheapest option (which was 48 hours in advance), and yet I hadn't found someone who could help me.
So I booked a car.
I think I gave my Dad something of a heart attack when I told him I'd be driving here. You see, my father's been driving for, oh, 43 years (45 if you count that he also had a moped between the ages of 16 and 18). He obtained every driving licence possible when doing his "service duty" (conscription) - this includes bus and lorry with trailers - except for motorcycle and tractor. But then he learned to ride a motorcycle when he was having his mid-life crisis and he drove tractors back when I was a child and we were minding my parents' friends' sheep, so basically he's qualified to drive everything. And he's driven the weirdest stuff in the weirdest places.
But never an English car on English roads.
So, basically, he is just too set in his driving-on-the-right-side ways to have confidence that he could drive safely on the left. And he's got all this experience, too.
I, on the other hand, did not obtain my driving licence until I was 19 and I've hardly driven since. It's not that I *can't* drive - when I get into a car, my hands and feet automatically do what they have to do. It's just that I haven't done it very often.
I wasn't scared, I was slightly nervous but excited.
Perhaps that was also one of the reasons I didn't look too hard for someone to help me out - I sort of really wanted to drive, and then drive on the other side!
So I ended up picking up this lovely burnt orange Opel Corsa (yes, I am aware that technically they're called 'Vauxhall' here, but I've been saying Opel Corsa all my life, it loses its proper rhythm when I say Vauxhall), and got in.
Couldn't get it started.
Well, that's brilliant. I felt like a right idiot.
They started it for me, and I drove off.
And you know what, it wasn't difficult or weird at all.
The pedals were still in their proper spots, as were the wipers and the blinkers. The gear box was on my other side, but the gears were in the proper order too.
So all I really had to do was remember that the mass of the car was on my left rather than on my right and that I needed to change gear towards me instead of away, and with my left hand rather than my right.
And stick to the left!
Thankfully, it was a clear, sunny and calm Saturday morning, so I had no trouble whatsoever getting out of Leicester city centre. I anticipated trouble going up the hill, because I hadn't done that for such a long time and what if I had to stop going up the hill? But when I had to, my feet did all my work for me. Then the roundabout, but I just went with the flow of traffic and ended up where I had to be - though I was far more conscientious in my use of the blinkers than the rest was (maybe it's not obligatory here to use your blinkers when leaving the roundabout? Dunno...). I arrived at Mary Gee 20 minutes after picking up the car, and that was a bit sad - I'd just gotten used to it, and moreover, I enjoyed it much more than driving on the right side!
I got to drive again on Sunday, of course, to move, but 1.5 miles wasn't enough, so later that night I went out to drive a bit more, before handing the car in on Monday.
It actually made me sad to hand in the car. I'd loved driving around here.
The other motorists were absolutely courteous, patiently waiting when I manage to stall it (only once, though, with good reason - regardless of the situation Dutch drivers would've beeped though), keeping to the speed limit, giving just about everyone right of way (Dutch drivers just take whatever opportunity they can get)...
And I *LOVE* the lights - it's so brilliant to know it'll be green in a bit when it's red/yellow. Like, it's green, then yellow, then red, then red/yellow and then green again - wonderful! Plus, there are lights also a bit further on, so you don't have to twist around the wheel to be able to actually see the lights when you're first in the queue.
So, if I do get to stay in the UK (still fingers crossed!) for a relatively long time, that's one more thing that won't be troubling me, driving here.
I suppose my Dad will disagree - I had to promise to call him every time I came back from driving a bit. Tsk. He's just too used to driving on the wrong side ;).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 arerather 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.
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