Hamstrung

Lindsay won a ham. He is not sure how it happened (the win that is); the actual arrival of the ham was itself quite clear and abrupt, as Lindsay, on his way out the door was foisted a ham by the office manager. “Happy Christmas, Cheerio!” It was so heavy that he had to put it down.

A huge, repellant ham. I am convinced that it should not be eaten as is.

Yesterday afternoon I went to the butchers in the slightly upscale neighborhood of Parap. “My boyfriend won a ham. It looks like that” – pointing at another insipid, shrink-wrapped monstrosity, milky ham-liquid collecting in the vein-like folds of plastic – “what do I do with it?”

The butchers turned around from their bench, father and son perhaps. The look was distain. I am in a country where pubs raffle off trays of meat, rolled out supine on movers’ dollies. I do not belong.

The ham is taking up an entire shelf of the refrigerator. Nat and Gary wont take it. Nor will Mal and Amanda. Richard and Ainslee have already left. I fear the shelf will crack.

Pictures of hams – I am Googling “smoked leg bone in ham” instead of writing my Masters thesis – look as tanned and glossy as burled walnut. Mine is an Englishman’s thigh.

The Internet complicates the issue by suggesting that what I am missing is a “ham bag.” The Internet then suggests that if I don’t have a “ham bag” I should use a pillowcase; should I use the sweetly stripped one that my mother sent me off with? Does this have to do with hobos? In Parap, I see a store selling a ham bag (no stick). It was too heavy to be carried that way anyhow.

I call Claire. Heidi answered. “Yes, you can tell her that Kate called about The Ham.”

Claire has not called back.

I call Jess. “Why don’t you cut it up like a mango so that people can pull off little cubed pieces.” She makes a disgusting reference to erasers. I cannot reach mom.

I am running out of time.

Tomorrow we eat the ham. I have no ham bag. I have no ham plate, or ham sauce, or ham plan. All I know is that when we are arrive at the party, when the hostess meets me at the door, I will – bending at the knees, not the waist – hoist it towards her, saying in perfect synchrony: “Happy Christmas, Cheerio!”

My day in five photos:

1. Riding out! The ducks are always there.

2. As it is paper time, treated myself to coffee and a breakfast bagel at G&Ds.

3. Off to the college for more work and then lunch.

4. Leaving the Social Science Library. Not one of Oxford's treasures.

5. Biking home to do it all again tomorrow...

Around Bristol

Bristol Temple Meads station and St. Andrews Park.

Halloween!

Another Halloween with Heather in Bristol. Out for trick-or-treat with her nephews; drinking tea in the kitchen; shiatsu in the morning. A wonderful dose of home-life while here in England.

I went to a "bop" - the Oxford term for a college party - on Friday. My costume? Black and white striped dress + paper signs = a humped zebra crossing. I think that only non-Brits really appreciated it.

Pic: Some of our favorite lanterns.

Scopimera inflata

One of my favorite things about walking on the beach in Darwin: the abstract creations of Sand Bubbler Crabs. Taken this September on my way out of Dili.

They're back!

I just had the first arrival at my window bird feeder here at Oxford. It is Friday, it has been a tough week, and it sent such a thrill through me. It is a feeling I can't get from finding money in a pocket, or new music, or a free snack - its the unmooring intensity, the tunnel-vision of watching.

My new apartment is up high and flanked by one of Oxford's many canals to both the north and east. I see regularly ducks and the usual moorhens, but also a grey heron. I am pleased by such a radically different ecology amongst the towers, sandstone and otherwise. It is a packed, medieval city - unusual to find this heretical breathing room.

Relief

I just received the photos from the conference, and they look great. I especially appreciate the ones from the closing remarks - I think you can see my joy and relief!

A Letter from the Proctor

I just received this in my inbox. Only at Oxford would could I imagine being warned about slipping on a mix of champagne and eggs. Below, the letter (with some paring down):

Dear Candidates,

In our “normal” lives, the Proctors are Tutors. In this capacity we should like to wish you very good luck with your exams this summer.

In particular, there is no tradition of the abuse of food in “trashing”. The very idea is a recent invention and one which is particularly offensive in a city where there are many homeless and hungry. In previous years some members of the public have been injured by slipping on flour wet from champagne and eggs.

We should therefore like your help in keeping people safe, and stamping out the abuse of all foodstuffs. No flour, no eggs, no beans, ketchup, let alone rotting food or worse. In addition, pubs may not admit students covered in foodstuffs.

Closed champagne bottles, flowers and balloons and biodegradable confetti are all fine! But please – NO FOOD ITEMS or GLITTER or SILLY STRING. Rotting food, vomit, broken glass and other items causing litter are simply not what any of us wants to see. They are a disgrace and potentially dangerous.

Good luck with your exams and enjoy finishing and celebrating in College.


Senior Proctor
&
Junior Proctor

Trinity Term 2010

Ahhh!

The conference went swimmingly, and I feel so pleased.

Rather than doing schoolwork, I spent much of Monday afternoon on a funny gig poling around a couple of visitors from Connecticut, of all places, on a punt.

Punting: wonderfully scenic, surprisingly difficult. The 20 foot pole used to push the skiff - actually a section of pipe - is heavy, but oddly buoyant. You have to force it down, find a bit of bottom, then push off, using the trailing pole (properly known as a quant) as the rudder.

They asked questions about whether or not there were beavers in England (no) and if I would like the contents of their catered picnic basket (yes!). All around a good day.

Soapy

Some clear signs that I have the conference on the brain?

This morning I tried to wash my face with a palmful of conditioner, and last night I started to squeeze my face soap out onto my toothbrush. It's really a good thing I don't drive, perform surgeries or tend to small children.

My disappearing neighbors:

Click to enlarge.

The Simpsons take on grad school:

With thanks to my friend Will.

Could it be...

...that I now have only two four more exams left in my adult life?

Light at the end of the tunnel!

And eat it too.

I must confess the prospect of making a wedding cake is much more intriguing, enticing, than the potentiality of encountering the Slutsky Equation on Tuesday's exam. The evidence: my marginalia, above.

At Bo's wedding this winter, one of the highlights was AJ's sister's recounting of her wedding cake odyssey. She sang, muse, of the twists and turns of the food blogs, the Scylla and Charybdis of sweetness and crumb, the false allure of red velvet cake. Driven time and again off course. In the end, the recipe came through Bowman's mother, via a friend who was also standing in the room - a touching affirmation of home-sweet-home and mother-knows-best.

Perhaps this petit wedding cake quest of my own is just procrastination (martial video tutorials on cake frosting are, indeed, strangely soothing, see below). And so, in that case, I may be more like Penelope: inventing and reinventing this cake to pass the time, a project to keep the Mundell-Flemming Model and its breatheren at bay for as very long as possible.

Spring

Ah, spring. The season created so that we all forget about winter.

Bare legs. Reading in the park. No need for bike lights at 4 PM.

It is absolutely gorgeous here. Everything is in bloom. A friend from Brown visited the other day and we went to the Evensong service at Christ Church and then walked through the meadows and back up the cobbled streets into town. Much of the city and colleges are walled, but magnolias and cherry trees reached over the edges, hinting at the gardens within.

I am in the midst of conference chaos and studying for my qualifying exams, but, hey, the sun is out. Imperial history goes down more smoothly on a park bench.




Pic: My college is particularly gorgeous.

Route

Mountain Man

Heracleia, shores of Lake Bafa, Turkey.

Assos

We made it out of Istanbul this morning. Away from the cobble streets and minarets of Sultanahmet. Out west past the chilling soviet-style high rises of Esenyurt. Across the famed Dardanelles of Gallipoli, then south - sun-ward, ho! - through the pines to Assos.

It is gorgeous here. We walked back up the hill from the seaside where we are staying, and I ended up sitting on the side of a little pasture next to an olive grove watching birds (subalpine warbler, sombre tit, cirl bunting...) cruise over the Aegean.

I'm soaking up the sun, beating back the British pallor.


Above: Ferry crossing - Eceabat to Kepez. We thought we were going to end up in Canakkale, as did an Irishman on board, so we drove him into town. He called us "lads," talked rugby and was very appreciative.


Above: The road to Assos. Lesbos is the island in the background!


Above: The route.

Istanbul

What a cool place.

We are staying in the old section, the Sultanahmet, just down from the hippodrome and Blue Mosque in a little hotel with a roof deck. This morning we drank cappuccino up there in sun and watched the supertankers chug through the Bospherus.

Aya Sophia didn't disappoint. The space verges on vertiginous, and despite the best efforts of the Iconoclasts - who, apparently were anti-icon - there remain mosaics of worried looking biblical and political figures, including the pink-cheeked Empresses Irene and Zoe.

In the afternoon, on the recommendation of an Oxford friend, we took a tram to Taksim, which barely gets a mention in the guidebook. Its the height of New Turkey, with big buildings, fashionable shops and cafes, and a constant flow of hip young people. It was a good reminder of the size of this city of 12 million people, and how little we'll actually visit.

And the food: I can eat meatballs. All. Day. Yes!

Hotu Ona

I'm done for the term, and a headline from The Onion says it all: Area Dad Suffers Massive Nothing To Worry About

Perhaps its time to make a to do list?

Almost there!

This term has been a monster - hence the lack of posts. But, man, I'm almost there!

Macroeconomics exam on Wednesday, paper due on Friday, plane to Istanbul Monday.

Pic: Essay writing, Kate-style. Cut it up. Put it back together again. Only better.

Hilary Term

I've been back in Oxford for a few weeks now, and the work is already ramping up. Apparently this is the biggest term work-wise, and it has been good for me to remember that, at this point, this is all pedagogic, with the purpose of me learning, engaging, and chasing questions left over from my Timor days. To wit, my favorite paper has been a short piece on rice price fluctuations.

I have had a funny banjo-plucking Brit move onto my floor, and the other night he made the mistake of playing me in high-stakes scrabble (I won a toaster! No, really, I did). It has livened up the place considerably and the kitchen, despite still being a catastrophic mess, has become a place for evening tea and non-internet-based procrastination. A welcome change. There is also noticeably more light, and the buds on the trees suggest that spring is rushing our way.


And while I'm logged on, I need to put the final word on the 2010 Wild Goose Chase. In the end, we saw 122 species (five or so more that I didn't count), an impressive tally for a place that has around 300 regulars and 500 total species (counting once-in-30-year vagrants). Wales for me was the highlight - gorgeous country, down-earth-guide, and one great afternoon sitting against a seawall with the county's finest twitchers looking for loons.

Not to mention the Red Kites! The population in Wales was restored from a handful at the turn of the century to now over 200 breeding pairs (continental birds were introduced to other parts of the UK). Feeding continues, and with the snow, there were over 500 kites. These photos are by Janet Baxter, a friend of Elfyn's; in amongst the jumble was a Black Kite - a real rarity for this area.

In Wales

This morning the guys clearing the car park were using 'shovels' made of plywood rectangles screwed onto handles, pieces of molding, etc., defending their square of black asphalt against the white tide that continues to blanket hedgerows and cooling towers across Great Britain. (Great pic from The Times).

But its lovely in the snow. We took the train to Wales today - it was our Plan B: The people in Scotland thought we were quite mad, and said that there was too much snow to chase Black Grouse and Crested Tits in the woods - and, outside the train windows, the fields of sheep glowed blue then violet as the sun slipped low. Tonight we're staying in a old carriage house hotel in Machynlleth (pron: Mah-khun-khleth, go figure), and the place feels full of people in good spirits, making excuses to prolong their evening's stay by the hearth. They're talking about car batteries failing, the frozen pitch for tonight's game. Surreal-ly as imagined on TV.

Tomorrow we go out with Elfyn (pron: Elfin! Tee hee) to hopefully pick up some of the last of Britain's winter birds that would be new for Mandy. Fingers crossed.

Snapshots

Retreat from the sea. Too much wind for even the Shags.

Sunshine - Stuart scans for Hawfinch.

Success! Bean and Greater White-Fronted Geese spotted during a brief reprieve in the blizzard.

It'szzzz zzsoso cooold!

Freak cold snap in the UK and it is painfully, miserably, snot-freezing frigid on the shore. Fittingly, Blue Tits greatly outnumbered the Greats.

Forget winter specialties: put me on a plane to anywhere south.

(Note: Not one, but two jackets)

Day One

Yellowhammers in Titchwell, Great Tits in Flitcham.

Who could ask for anything more?

(Full disclosure: this is not my picture. It was taken from a webcam in Szentgotthard, Hungary. The story can be found here.)

Transit & Arrival

We arrived in Norwich in the dark, a light dusting of snow on the train platform. It had been a long and unexpectedly complicated trip - airport pick-up (plane two hours late), mini-bus, subway (one change), bus, train - particularly as I had forgotten the difficulties of lugging luggage and banging Mandy's large mauve wheelie bag on and off trains, up and down stairs.

Impressions: Norwich is dark (that's because its nighttime and winter), but I wont hold that against it. I am sure I'll have more to say on this frigid little blot of British brick and bog in the morning.

The goal is to see some ducks that look different from the ducks I usually see. And to stand in the cold and point my scope at some small blotches in the marsh, ignoring the tearing of my wind stung eye.

O vacation!