If you're in the neighborhood...

Danger Muffin and I just stumbled into the Drawing Room in Glasgow, across from the Kelvingrove which is lit beautifully in the nighttime hours, and had a ridiculously lovely dinner. She highly recommends the sticky toffee pudding. I recommend the chicken fillet with wild mushrooms. We both recommend the live music that sprung up next to our commandeered couch.

As I'm writing this, there a middle-aged man with a wicked guitar and a cabbie hat turned backwards on his head growling out a version of Lay Lady Lay while kids in skinny jeans and plaid shirts skitter in and out the door, moving between vices, outside for cigarettes and inside for half-price pints of fosters.

Earlier a pair of youngsters who look younger than I can ever remember being strummed out some inventive and original works, one on the guitar and the other on a wee, one octave argos-alumni keyboard. Pretty much adorable. I think one of their opening lines ran something like "Woke up with a headache, afraid to consult my phone." Hahahaha, oh dear. Just lovely.

I wish for all the world that I'd remembered to grab my trusty little camera out of my day purse and relocate it to the laptop bag. I guess you'll just have to take my word on this one, this place is worth the visit.

And the wireless which has enabled this posting is FREE! :)

Right, bullet time!

Okay, so I'm sorry, I'm a shit blogger and have been remiss in my updating. SO MUCH TO TYPE! Ergo, the wonder of spot editing!

• I'm living with a wonderful, delightful woman named Danger Muffin-- D-Muff for short-- and she's fantastic. She moved here from MI and, despite a failure to communicate for 6 years, has clicked back into my life like she never left it. We originally met through the MSF and have a mutual unhealthy relationship with Shakespeare and Arts Organizations in general. As it is, we're living at approximately the same speed. Which is the speed of light and sound. Together. Amplified.
• My student loans still haven't come through. This makes me a sad panda.
• I'm working too many different jobs. I can't keep them straight. And I haven't been in my office in ages. I'm sure I'm supposed to be doing something for the Ph.D., but for the life of me I don't know what. Good sign?
• I haven't heard from DS in ages. Again, sad panda.
• I've been cast in a production of Miller's Crucible at the University. And which character is little Miss Melville portray? The "death-haunted, embittered 45 year old woman" of course. Type casting? Please say no, I only look 35.
• My crossword addiction has hit record levels. The careers office is enabling me by saving all their old copies of the Herald and the Guardian. I still buy the Times on a daily basis and hit up the Washington Post online. Sick, sick puppy.
• I've rediscovered my love of white russians. They're delicious and way kinder to my tummy-lining. For a change up, I will order a vodka and cranberry, but only because I believe in the fight against UTI. I also drink gin and tonic because malaria is a bastard. Ergo, all my cocktails serve very strategic purposes.
• I think that Scotland is currently underutilizing my generous and nurturing side. I'll expound more on this at a later date if I get the time.
• Damn facebook. Yes, I use it and I love it and it's the only way people who know me in real time can reach me on a consistent basis, but it keeps telling me all sorts of disconcerting things. What things, you ask? Apparently everyone I used to know is either getting married or spawning. No joke. Entire photo albums of engagement rings, ultrasound pictures or tiny humans fresh out of their wrappers-- they're everywhere. I used to think my being perpetually between boyfriends wasn't that unusual, but apparently I'm a piraha. Still, better than being perpetually between husbands, right? Right?!?
• I really miss playing the tuba. Unfortunately, there appear to be very few of them in Scotland, and even fewer that belong to me. That number being zero.
• The roses down near the beach ballroom are still blooming.
• I still love Scotland.
• It no longer strikes me as strange that I'm here. What does seem strange is that I was never not here. Is that odd?

Enough for now. I'll finish writing and then backdate the rest of the Wedding entry, it's just too much for my less than nimble little fingers at the moment.

While You Were Out...

Big changes upon which I will expound in due time (read: not now). Best to bust out the bullet points for this one, methinks!

• Got a new job on campus, that basically means I'm on campus every day, breathing the academic atmosphere and shifting my focus back away from shift work to intellectual work, despite the fact that I basically do office work. Regardless, it pays and it's fewer and better timed hours. Baby gets her evenings back! *woot woot*
• Quit the wine shop, which was good fun and good viniculture education, but not so related to my life as I want to be living it post-phd. That, and the basement where all the wine is stored had a ceiling so low that even I couldn't stand up straight. This is shocking if you know how tall I actually am in flat shoes. That, and hauling the cases of wine about was doing my back in on a repetitive basis.
• Came to the sad realization that I have an abusive landlord. This requires a whole backstory that I really don't have time to write at the moment, so I'll just leave it at this.
• Found a new flat! I'll be letting it from the parents of a friend, and it's b-e-a-utiful! The rent is a £100 more than I'm paying now per bedroom, and it's just a two bedroom place. This is a good thing because...
• A very dear friend of mine, let's call her Jen, is moving here from the US! YAY! She's basically fleeing the country, for many reasons I'm sure. But I've just secured a two bedroom apartment for us, and she arrives towards the end of October! And since it'll just be the two of us, no more sharing a bathroom among six people!! Exclaimation points for everyone!
• On the short list for providing a new home for a lovely pup-- Bonnie. She's a bonnie wee lass, an older Scottish Terrier who really needs a new family to love and adore her, but I need to double-check that the new landlords would be cool with having a fully-trained smallish dog in their flat. I really, really, really hope they are, as I've been wanting a dog for a while now.
• Booked my train tickets down to Bristol for this woman's wedding. I've not been that far south on this lovely island yet, so seeing the countryside from the train should be nice. However, it's going to take ELEVEN HOURS to get there. No joke. Even for me, that's a lot of countryside. Here's to hoping the train has wireless-- some of them do, so stop laughing.
• On the way back from the aforementioned wedding, I'm stopping in London. There are some bride's maids committments that I've got to fulfill on Saturday morning, and that means that I can't leave Bristol early enough to get back to the 'Deen the same day. So, it'll be Miss Melville in London: One Night Only! I'll be spending Saturday night in the fully capable care of Aplha, who's living down there nowadays, and crashing on her floor if there's any crashing to be had. I have a sneeking suspicion that we'll just stay out until she pours me back onto the train at Kings Cross and then I'll have 8 hours to sober up before changing in the Burgh of Edin. I'm anticipating carnage and shinanigans.
• My welcome and orientation meeting the the Ph.D. of DOOM is slated for the 25th. Holy shit.
• I get my own office. Or, at least a desk in a cupboard somewhere. They were a little hazy with the details. Regardless, I'm putting my name on the door, even if I have to whittle it there myself, Old Red-style.

I think that's about all for now. Needs must run to the mobile store to try to get someone explain to me why the new phone I bought is doing a fantastic impression of a rock.

Nairn Highland Games, 2008

... otherwise known as a highlight of my life!

Honestly, one of the best. weekends. ever. Not only was the weather on Saturday absolutely brilliant, but the company was smashing, the drinking delightful and the locale unmatched. But to tell the story...

Alpha and I drove up with Pandy on Friday afternoon as soon as I got out of work. After loading two crates of tennents (the local brew of paupers' choice) and the tent into the boot, we hit the road. A rather severe thunderstorm threatened to slow us down, but we would not be deterred. Friday night saw the construction of the tent village, some lovely homemade lasagna by our host, let's call him the Dear Scotsman (DS), and a lovely sunset over the Northern Highlands.

Saturday morning brought further arrivals as all prepped for the Games. Our little tented village, see below, added a few more neighbors and general conversation sprung up between the old friends and first-timers as we munched on various cereals and began tossing about the tins of brew. It was really quite refreshing to once again be amongst those hardy souls who do not smirk at the notion of the breakfast beer.

Due to our location, we had a lovely walk up along the shoreline, and arrived just in time to see the combined pipe and drum band march along the perimeter. Thus the games began! (To be fair, I spent a fair amount of time talking to DS's other guests in a beer garden directly adjacent to the games field, but I caught the major events.)

The atmosphere was far from lacking. While there were the requisite carnival rides and attendant riffraff, along with the requisite jokes and movie quotes pertaining to such folk, there were also stands selling highland tablet (how to describe?... if fudge and maple sugar candies had a love child? I think that's about right) and hand-knit sweaters, kids and dogs running about on leashes and free, completely unintelligible announcing, and this guy:


I know it may be hard to see, but there's an additional neck on that there guitar, and it kinda sounded like a ukulele. Translation: awesome.

There were several events that I'd never really seen before, and while I'm sure they're all part of a proud and useful tradition (as is everything in Scotland) I couldn't really tell the precise use of this giant game of tug-'o-war.



For me, the highlight of the Games themselves had to be the Caber Toss. I'd been looking forward to actually witnessing this for so incredibly long, I was giddy as a schoolgirl the entire time.

A caber mid-flight!

The action was intense, I can totally understand why DS felt the need to look away! Additionally, he looked quite dashing in his full kit, well done!

The rest of the weekend was spent drinking and laughing so hard my sides hurt, eating grilled burgers and toasting bits of bread over an open flame. Apparently there were bugs about, but they decided to pass on biting my flesh-- perhaps the gin and tonic therapy I've adopted has really and truly put them off! To be fair, I wasn't the one swilling the gin, I left that up to Clarkie. I did, however, sample several glasses of this:


The conversation ran a little something like this:
Alpha: What's that?
Miss Melville: Looks like sangria to me!
Queen of the Brew: I don't know if I'd go that far... let's call it punch and leave it at that.
Miss Melville: (takes a deep pull from her mug) Either way, works for me!

To be absolutely fair, the entire weekend came off without a hitch due mostly to the efforts of one man: our Dear Scotsman. Always moving about, seeing to things, popping in and out of conversations, finding flashlights, leading the way to the pub and back again, taking care of all the organizational pitfalls that plague large gatherings like this one-- he did it all with aplomb and skill. Hats off to you, kilted grillmaster! Please note the tankard: again, well done!



I was the last one standing come the end of Saturday Night into Sunday morning, and beyond seeing the last of the drunks to bed and tidying up a little bit, I gazed at one of the most memorable and spectacular sunrises of my young life:






We drove back to the 'Deen, slightly sunburned and very happy, later in the morning on Sunday. Le sigh. Back to the everyday worries of rent and submission deadlines, but I lived the dream for one full weekend, and that's pretty good by me. If you ever, EVER, EVER get the chance to go to the Highland Games, any of them, don't think twice. Don't even blink. Just go! And if they're in Nairn, look for me-- now that I know that they're there, I will be doing everything in my power to get back. :)

New Years in Stockholm!

When sitting around, twiddling my thumbs sometime in November, my friend (let's call her... Alpha) said, "Let's go somewhere for New Years?" and I responded, "Okay!"

And, somehow, we wound up in Sweden.

We let RyanAir pick where we went by means of setting a budget, and so we booked flights from Glasgow-Prestwick to Stockholm-Svaska for the holiday. From there on out, it was decided. For those of you who haven't had the luck to fly from Glasgow, the motto for the airport, as plastered in huge letters across the front of the building, is "Pure Dead Brilliant!" I understand it's a bit of a regional phrase, but I'm not really okay with the word 'dead' in the slogan for my choice of transportation, sorry. Regardless, we got out just fine, and arrived in the land of the Swedes unharmed. After a bus ride of 80 minutes, as the Stockholm airport we flew into isn't actually anywhere near Stockholm, we legged it to our hostel, Langholmen.


Now, when I say hostel, what comes to your mind? I was thinking something along the lines of what I'd encountered in Montreal-- rooms with lots of bunks, maybe a partially furnished kitchen, institutional bathrooms and cold showers. This one? Nothing like that. It's actually a converted prison, and it's the poshest place I've ever stayed as a young adult. The "cells" had two bunk beds apiece, televisions, a desk and wardrobe, and a private tiled bathroom with a nicer shower than I've ever encountered. No joke. It was beautiful.

Alpha and I met up with a friend of hers from her undergraduate days, Face, and Face's sister, Page. Introductions were made, and then we hit the streets in search of dinner... at 11:00 pm. After a vain search for a pub that still had the kitchen open and wandering all over the city center, we finally buckled and at at... I can hardly bring myself to say it... McDonalds. *shudders* It was wretched, but we were also starving. Even with that, I couldn't bring myself to finish the chicken sandwich that I'd ordered, and they'd drowned in a uniform inch-thick layer of yellow mayo. Deeply unfortunate. However, post-dinner we did a bit of pub-crawling and chatted, the girls catching up and myself occasionally learning a bit of lingo. The pick-up of the night was definitely 'to pash'-- it's equivalent to 'snogging' or 'making out' or 'eating face', but comes from the root 'passionately kissing' so it seems perhaps a bit less carnal, and I always thought that snogging sounded like something you did when you went fishing, I don't know why.

Day 2 was New Years Eve itself, and we visited Gamla Stan, the Old Town, and walked perhaps hundreds of impossibly narrow cobbled streets laid out like a spiderweb over the island.

When we started out, the street were totally deserted, but then we turned a corner and it was literally wall-to-wall people. Oh! and I almost forgot-- upon waking up that morning, Alpha and I stumbled upon the Sweden-Russia hockey game, but I only got to watch the second period. And just so you know, 'power play' is the same in any language. It was good times. Anyways, we saw the changing of the guard at the Royal Palace, which was complete with a marching band which played the appropriate sounding yet unfamiliar marches, a lovely rendition of their national anthem which the guards sang in incredible harmony, then an ABBA medley. Yes, ABBA... but, well-- when in Sweden...?

We lunched at a lovely little underground cafe, CafeArt, which lived entirely in a medieval cellar but sold sandwiches, foiccacia, wraps and really horrible hot chocolate which was more like tepid chocolate. However, my food was good and the ambiance amazing...

The old city of Stockholm, perhaps learning from incidents in Paris and London, outlawed construction with wood, and so the whole city was built of stone and brick. The massive cellars still exist and are havens for these little shops and restaurants. It was a tad chilly, but enjoyable. We wandered on, eventually leaving the island of Gamla Stan (all of Stockholm is a series of different islands all huddled together along the shore) and made for the shopping district. Down by the waterfront we stumbled on an open-air photo gallery which I'm sure would have made a lot more sense if we could read the textual bits, but they were all in Swedish. There was also a chronic shortage of handsome Swedish interpreters at our disposal, but we muddled through. The images seemed a tad random, but some were really beautiful and you knew they wer epoingant but you couldn't have said why... I was actually trying to take a picture of the waterfront, but the giant picture of the Governor of California snuck into the frame all the same. He was one of the random, not-so-poignant ones.

"Ah-nold endorses the city of Stockholm"

Eventually, after running out of other options for dining reservation-free on NYE, we got a table at a Pizza Hut. American-owned food that I ate in Sweden that I wouldn't have had in its native land: count 2. Regardless, it served the purpose and we high-tailed it back to the hostel to get suited and booted for the evening of clubbing and general debauchery.

We'd pre-booked tickets to a place called Le Roi. Somebody, I think it might have been Face, said that occasionally the young Swedish nobles had been spotted there... yeah, okay. We got there, got in after being eyed coldly in the que by a fleet of bouncers, and managed to get in at 11:45. Alpha bought the first round of drinks as Face checked our coats and then, "five, four, three, two, ONE!"

And so the New Year dawned.

The rest of the night was a tad downhill from there, to be honest. On the plus side, depending on your standpoint, it was easily 5 men to every girl in the club, and each of us, for various reasons and with various judgement, ended up pashing someone at sone point. Face, Page and myself all got picked up by Italians, who seemed to make up the majority of the crowd, and Face certainly won that race-- 'Davide' was apparently an architect/model, and had the business cards and chiseled looks to back it up. He also spoke very, very little english. But, as Face put it, "He didn't need to, we were speaking the language of lurve!" Alpha got a bit bent out of shape, as is her wont, when the American she pashed drifted away from her before she drifted away from him, and there was a small bout of tears. I attempted to remedy this by buying shots. Shots make me feel better, why wouldn't this work?? Eventually she did buck up and we wound up dancing with two germans who were either from Frankfurt or Hamburg, none of us can remember save for that it was one of the german cities that sounds like a food. Yeah, we're citizens of the world. It was at this point where Face handed Alpha a can of Carlsberg, and as soon as she cracked it, a female bouncer came up, grabbed me by the wrist, and threw both of us out of the club, screaming about how we'd not bought that can from the bar and where were out tickets (which they took at the door) and so on. Alpha puffed up her chest and said something, I don't know what, and then a GIANT man-bouncer stepped up and she stepped down. "But we don't have our coats!" I tried to reason, "Our friend, who is still in there, has the tickets in her purse." The lady-bouncer grabbed Alpha again by the wrist and escorted her back into the club to find Face and grab the coats, leaving me on the street, were I quickly made friends with an exceptionally tall, dark-haired Parisian who said I looked cold and decided the best way to remedy this was a posh... okay. Alpha came back with the coats, all of them, and in a high temper. Tall-dark-Parisian and his friend tried to reason with her, but she was of like a bolt for the underground, and I attempted to follow. One lass kiss and a well-meaning wish for a nice life, I left him and tried to follow Alpha, carrying Face's vintage fur coat in my arms and tottering along in the black heels where were previously pictured on here.

Now, the adventure really began.

I just missed the train she caught, so I sat down on the bench to await the next one. And was immediately joined by a man in a turban and full beard who kept telling me how much of a shame it was for him to be alone in his hotel room on New Years. He inched closer and closer until I couldn't laugh it off anymore, pretended to see someone in the crown, and bolted to the other side of the platform. I got on the very next arriving train, heading along the right track but in the opposite direction of the hostle. Oops. Once seated, I was found by a man who said he was from Ghana and kept touching my knees... Apparently the look on my face read in any language, and at the next stop a group of Greek youths pretended to know me and swept me away into a different part of the train. Unfortunately, my newfound friends weren't a whole lot better-- the one was apparently an auto mechanic and wanted to know if he'd be able to find work and how hard was it to get a visa? What is Boston like? Is New York a good place to live? Does it get cold in Miami or is it more like Greece? Another one kept stroking Face's coat and asking me how much I wanted for it. A third kept trying to run his fingers through my hair: not a good scene. Eventually I was able to tear myself away and bound off the train... and found myself back at Ostermalmgatan, where's I'd gotten on to escape creepy turban-man. Oh well, just await the next train, right? I flopped down and realized I was still a bit more than a bit tipsy.

I took a picture of the subway grafitti... those are caricatures of Einstein and Sartre in black spray paint on the walls of the underground... I love it.

I also realized that the sign was telling me that the next train would be through at 6:06, and it was only 4:05... I'd just gotten off the last train of the night. Damn... but maybe I could just stay on the bench, sober up, wait for the train to take me home... no, security was through two minutes later, telling me to get a bus or a cab, they didn't care, I just had to leave. I eventually made it up to the street and hailed a cab, but, you see my dear reader, Swedish is not my native tongue. I know I butchered the pronounciation the entire trip. But this particular episode, I went one better. The train station where I would have gotten off to walk the rest of the way to the hostel was called Hornstull. The hostel was Langholmen. When asking the cabbie for a ride, I said I needed to get to Langstull, and they looked at me like I was out of my mind. Apparently it doesn't exist, and they pulled up to the next group and took their money instead. On about the fourth try, I just said, "I need to get back to a hostle, it used to be a prison?" and the cabbie told me to get in. As my luck would have it, my cabbie was a displaced Iraqi refugee and called me out on my American accent immediately. He, for one, was in favor of getting rid of Saddam, and peppered me with questions about US Foreign Policy and the conflict in the Middle East and we sped along darkened streets and I felt the streetlights swim past in the river. He then told me the fare would be 500 kronars. For those of you playing the homegame, that is (according to current exchange rates) $77. I told him that I only had 220 kronars on me and that was all I had the possibility of getting, but if he would just take me as far as the money got me and then point me in the direction I should head, I'd appreciate it. Funny enough, he took the money but never dropped the hammer on the tab. I kept complimenting him on his driving and his english, which really wasn't all that broken, and he took a shine to me. Yes, I stroked the cabbie's ego and he actually took me to the right island. The problem came when he dropped me off at an unfamiliar bridge and I jumped out, thinking I knew where I was. After he pulled away, I wandered around a little bit, suddenly realizing that I had NO IDEA where I was, I had NO MONEY, no working cell phone, no pepper spray, no map, and no companion. I whimpered a bit and spun around in circles, trying to think of a plan when a friendly group of natives wandered down the sidewalk. After frantically explaining where I wanted to go, they pointed down the road to the left and told me to take that road to the end and I should recognize where I was. I told them I could have kissed them in my gratitude and ran down the street. Five minutes later, I was on familiar ground with tears of relief in my eyes. I walked up to the rooms, knocked on Face and Page's door and told Face I had her coat. She threw open the door and pulled me inside. Apparently, the two german boys Alpha and I had been dancing with at the very end had accompanied Face and Page back to their room, then proceeded to get sick, and so the girls had removed them down to the lounge, were they were currently wretching into the potted plants. I guess they'd turned up in Stockholm with nowhere to stay and had expected to hop into some girl's bed along the way. Not quite how it turned out. I related the tale of my quest to get back to the room, and they were both appalled that Alpha had bailed, but none of us were particularly surprised-- it's what she does. It seems like I'm destined to have friends to, when drunk, bail. And I guess I'm just supposed to be the sober chaser. I collapsed on my bunk, sans shoes but still in the dress, at 6:00 and passed out to Alpha's snores.

New Years Day I spent in bed. I didn't think my feet would ever be the same. The other girls were leaving that day, and had to check out by 11:00, so they came over and we all chatted about the night and compared notes and in general were hungover. The two took off, Alpha and I took turns hauling ourselves into the shower, and eventually went out to find food... eventually settling on another pizza place, but his one was at least family owned, and Alpha got a banana, curry and leek pizza... she said it was good and I did have a pleasant bite, but I stuck with cheese and onion. After a stretch of the legs and some fresh air, we walked back to the hostle and, despite our intentions of finishing off the copious amounts of yagermeister that we had left, we both fell asleep to a Billy Crystal/Robert DeNiro movie neither of us could remember the title of... yeah, we were uncommonly lame.

The last day we were there, the 2nd, Alpha and I checked out and decided that we needed at least a little bit of culture while we were there, so we trucked off to the nationalmuseum. Yes, all one word: nationalmuseum. There were a number of really interesting exhibits, but all the information and tags were in Swedish, so we saw a lot of really cool stuff but have no idea what it was. There was a huge wing devoted to really super-ornate urns and other decorative pottery. Someone had donated an absurd number of medieval russian holy icons to the museum recently, so those were all on display. There was a pop-art-esque exhibit which looked like they'd just pulled things out of the local Ikea. There was a large conglomerate sculpture-type-thing suspended from the ceiling and made mostly of lamps, and upon closer inspection several of the small lamps still had their Ikea price tags on them. I wasn't so much a fan, but the nationalmuseum more than made up for it with these:

Portrait of an Old Man and Portrait of an Old Woman by Rembrandt.

By Rembrandt. F-ing REMBRANDT. I sat down in the available chair and just gazed at them. I've always loved portraits of non-traditionally beautiful people. Pictures of the elderly, the poor, the dirty, the un-Roslin, if you will. And I've always been fond of Rembrandt in particular-- his use of dark light, of shadow in the wrinkles on the faces of his subjects, the dark backgrounds, the expressions in their eyes... I got a little choked up, just sitting there and looking at them.

I was actually quite surprised at how many of the piece in the museum I had been made to memorize for my HU 251 exams... and then to see them in person, to see the flow of the granite, the brush strokes... my education was totally inadequate. One of the portraits really did take me by surprise, and I said out loud: "George Washington? What are you doing in Sweden?"

Among the legions of amazing, beautiful paintings we saw, there was one that stood out for another reason... ridiculously inappropriate facial expressions on the subjects. It's called The Lamentation, I don't remember the name of the artist. Regardless, it's a fairly standard topic for a painting-- Christ has just been pulled down off the cross and is obviously dead with the look of agony still on his face. Supposedly his body is laid into the arms of his grieving followers, but look at their faces:

MAYBE youcould make a case for the floating face all the way to the right being passable, but the rest of them?? What the hell? The one in the dark clothing three in from the left looks like she's doing her best Billy Idol impression! It's insane!

And then there's this one, from the free exhibit on illustrations from Ovid... this one is of Perecles (or is it Percius?) turning his enemies to stone with the severed head of Medusa:

His facial expression clearly says, "Heeeeeeey, guys, duuuuuuhhhh, look what I got!" I like it. :) I'm also an ass. I don't think we were allowed to take pictures of any of these things, but I chanced it. I had to have something of those Rembrandt paintings, and I nabbed a handful of others, getting a bit bolder as I went. It was worth it.

After the museum we walked a bit more, got a hot chocolate, and headed back to the luggage room of the hostle to grab our bags. We arrived at the T-Centralen just a breath too late to catch the 7:00 bus back out to Svaska. There was quite the que of us, the fellow behind us a mix of Scot and Kiwi. The 7:20 bus arrived and filled, but there were still easily 30 people who were still in line. "We're sending for more buses," they said. Okay. But no buses showed up. I was getting a little anxious, seeing as I still had to check in at the airport (RyanAir won't let you check in online if you have a US Passport... EU Passports are fine, but not mine, oh no) and we had the last flight out of the night. As it was, the bus company hired a bunch of taxis, and we threw our bags into the first one to pull up in front of us, que be damned. As it was, we got to the airport in time, everything worked out, and despite a delay in takeoff for deicing, we were back tha through customs by 12:30... unfortunately, we still had to catch the shuttle to the carpark and drive back from Glasgow, but Alpha was a CHAMP. We got back at 4 am in the pouring freezing rain, and in the time it took me to walk from the car to my building I was soaked through. I looked up and muttered, "Thanks, Aberdeen, I missed you, too."

The end.

Too Long

So very, very much has happened. Now when I sit down to think about it, it's hard to remember all the little bits that I wanted to recall here... where did I leave off? Where's my cast of characters? What the hell has been happening to me?!?

Well, let's start off with the basic dramatis personae: the girls with whom I live. There are seven of us now, all beds are occupied and you couldn't fit another stick of celery in the fridge if you tried. Our latest resident, Naimee, arrived from Nigeria two weeks ago now, and she seems quite sweet. She always speaks in a husky sort of whisper, but always comes by my door and waits for me to acknowledge her greeting before moving on. Being from Nigeria, she's basically surrounded by her fellow countrymen-- I really don't think there's anybody left in Nigeria, they're all in Aberdeen. Most seem to be studying things having to do with oil and gas, and the rest of the girls aren't so much a fan. But we'll get to that later. Okay, so, there's Naimee, Josephine (from Uganda? I think), Loretta (from Ghana), Elena (half Nigerian, half English), Nicolina (from Oslo, Norway) and Christine (also from Norway). Josephine and Loretta are both in law of some kind, and Loretta looks like she just stepped out of a premiere London firm-- she's always immaculately dressed, hair perfect, face pristine. I have no idea how she does it, and her english is amazing. Elena is married with two small children, and she misses them dearly. She reminds me a bit of my mother when she was younger. Nicolina is probably the friendliest out of all of us, as she bounces from room to room, visiting, complaining with good humor and generally commiserating. She's so pleasantly plump with amazingly clear skin and very dark hair. Christine is in the room immediately next to mine, and she's perhaps my favorite. She's this tiny little slip of a girl, blonde hair and blue eyes like the quintessential Norwegian, but when she was young lived for a year in Teaside, so she honest to god sounds like she's from Newcastle-- it's about the most bizarre thing possible, watching the native English try to grasp the fact that she's actually Norwegian.

Apart from the girls who live with me, there's Arrlah, Dawn, Raj and Sabrina. Arrlah is on the same course as Christine, also from Norway, and also amazing. Here english isn't quite as good, but she's so funny that it doesn't matter. She's incredibly tall and thin and gorgeously Norwegian anyways, but a lightweight. Dawn is from the Lake District, has a car (!) and lives with Arrlah. She's a bit more abrasive than the rest of us, but a good pub chum nonetheless-- she's also in Geology and keeps sweeping us along on her department's post-grad pub crawls, which makes for a good time. Raj is this tiny little Indian girl on the course with Christine and Arrlah, originally from London but went to Uni in Liverpool. Sabrina is from Berlin, she's 27 with white-blonde hair and the softest voice ever. We all went out clubbing exactly ONCE and i think we scandalized the hell out of poor Sabrina. Now, Raj is dating Jerry, who is from Ireland (Cork, to be precise) who seems like a genuinely nice guy. Both he and Nicolina are studying International Relations, but he doesn't come out with us much as he is inevitably the only guy. Poor thing.

Kids in my class: there are only FOUR OF US. In the entire program. Nowhere did the University of Aberdeen admit to the MLitt being so small. I mean, there are about 30 people in total, if you combine the MLitt in Scottish and Irish Studies, MLitt in the Novel, MLitt in English Literature, Masters in Visual Culture, and we few MLitt in Comparative Literature and Philosophy. Of there four, there's Warren, who is the only boy. He went here for his undergrad as well, but took Hispanic Studies, so he's a little rough on the philosophy. Siobhan also went here for her undergrad, but she was in English and French. Lena makes four, and she's from Germany. I'm not exactly sure of the details, but she told me that she's not actually finished with her undergraduate degree back in Germany, but that she'll take the last year when she heads home after completing this program. *scratches head* But then how did she get in? Who knows.



I'm enrolled in three courses currently, two of them being combined with all the other MLitts and the lone Visual Culture guy. Two of them are basically worthless and alternate Wednesdays-- Research Methods and Scholarly Writing and Presentation. For the past few classes in Research Methods we've been learning all about citation-- medieval manuscripts, the short title catalogue, calendar of state papers, database of national biography, the whole nine yards. Now, I know that citation is crucially important, but two hours of it is mind-numbing. And it's so ridiculously nit picky that I can't bring myself to feel confident in it. Our very first graded assessment was over just this bullshit, and lord only knows what they'll deduct points for, as the directions were a tad less than clear. Regardless, it's done. Unfortunately, Scholarly Writing isn't much better-- last week we spent two hours in a computer lab learning how to use PowerPoint. Yes, that's right. PowerPoint. I was slightly less than enthused. I mean, if you don't know how to put together a few slides, you probably shouldn't be in grad school. And there's a tutorial built in to the program! The single saving grace of this entire class would have to be the lecturer, let's call him the Academic Aussie (A2 for further reference). He's brand-new to the UK and the University this Fall, and he got the class dumped in his lap when the faculty who was supposed to teach it withdrew for unknown reasons. He didn't write the syllabus, he didn't pick the grading criteria, and he has the common decency to accept that most of us could skate backwards blindfolded through it. His field of specialization is medieval Icelandic and viking poetry, which I think is awesome. He's just young and awkward enough to be endearing. We have to submit a PowerPoint of 10 slides to him, along with a 5-minute presentation next week on the scholarly topic of our choice. I e-mailed him, asking if he wanted us to submit our topics to him "so as to avoid subjecting you to 30 presentations on the existential tendencies of Emily Dickinson's poetry," to which he responded, "Ahhh, the existential tendencies of Emily Dickinson! I can hardly wait! If you're worried about it, feel free to ask me or come by my office. You could come by the office even if you're not worried." And THEN, during that interminable course on PowerPoint, he kept pulling ED as the example topic, and I'd grin compulsively each time. After offering up that frequently it's easier to read white text on a black background in low lighting, he announced that his "esteemed colleague in the back corner..." and then told them exactly what I'd told him. *blushes furiously* He then quasi-walked me to my next class, and I say quasi- because I didn't realize where he was bound for, but then saw him walking back precisely the way we'd come after opening the door for me. I think he's probably just a genuinely nice guy. I'll drop by his office hours on Tuesday and ask if there's ever going to be an opportunity for him to talk to the class about how to locate and submit to reputable journals, how to tell that they're reputable, and how to find the good conferences, considering that's what I was hoping the class would be about anyway.
My third and by FAR the best class I've got is called "Encounters: Literature and Modern Thought," and despite the hokey title, I love it. We started out reading a new defence of the Humanities which I think every administrator and professor back at LakeState should read like gospel. What made it even better is that the man who wrote it, Dr. Chris Fynsk, was the one leading the class! There's just the four of us in the class, and so discussion is more like conversation, and the whole setting is just to intimate, I love it. Dr. Fynsk is the Head of the School of English, and also the leading authority on Maurice Blanchot, who was next up on the reading list. I'm coming to realize that I have a natural affinity to post-war French philosophy. I was the only one of the four to have read Hegel, who was heavily quoted in the text we read, Blanchot's essay, Literature & the Right to Death, and I felt a little special. Next we moved on to a new reading and a new lecturer: Jonathan Israel's Radical Enlightenment and Dr. Nesbitt. I like Dr. Nesbitt, he has the same vocal quality as Dr. Gadzinski back at LSSU-- all whispery and slightly hoarse. He's also fresh off the boat from the University of Miami-Ohio, and he called me out on my accent almost immediately. His concentration has mostly been on the Haitian Revolution, and he just sent his manuscript off to the publishers after 5 years of work. Needless to say, he's been in a good mood since then. They also just asked him to edit some new translations of the key figure in the Haitian Revolution (proves how closely I was listening, I don't remember the guy's name-- Toussant L'Ouverture, perhaps? I don't remember) and he's been floating since then. Anyways, we just finished up with Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise, and I was left questioning how we never read him in any of Dr. Swedene's philosophy classes? He's a RADICAL thinker, and basically dismantles Cartesian dualism, Hobbes, Locke and all of the Bible in a coherent system which is still impossible to completely refute. He postulates necessary mutation ages before Darwin boarded the Beagle, claims God OR Nature in his argument before Nietzsche announced the death of God, presented a singular essence of substance and postulated that motion is inherent in matter, in direct opposition to Newton, and we never even read an excerpt! I don't get it. And next week we're on to Diderot. I'm looking forward to it. What a sensation-- I can't remember the last time I was actually stimulated by what I needed to read for class.
On other fronts, we've made friends with the gentlemen who live in the flat directly next to ours. I guess this is going to require a little more naming... There are only 5 in their flat, all studying law, I'm told: Allistair is an older guy, I'd put him at just over 40, maybe? Grey hair, he was in the royal military for years and years, and he's got some crazy stories. His wife is holding down the fort in Glasgow, and he frequently slips away for the weekends down to visit. Peter is from Warsaw and vaguely fish-faced, his english is rather brutal, and he loves the Pixies. What an odd mix. Then there's Jack, who is not JUST French, he's Parisian. Lord, he's so, so Parisian. He's in real estate law and kept on about how he's really a citizen of the world-- yeah, okay. Alessandro or Alex, he's from Athens and is working on the first year of his Ph.D., but he received both his undergraduate and his masters here as well. For the sake of reference and continuity in most parts of my life, let's refer to him as The Greek. I have yet to actually meet the other guy, Allistair says he's from Egypt or perhaps Saudi Arabia, he doesn't really know. What makes all of this quite fun is that their kitchen window forms a 90-degree angle to my bedroom window, and while they can only really see the corner of my room and the side of my wardrobe, I can always hear when they're about. I keep my window open because I like to keep my room nice and cool, but the shower is also right on the other side of the wall, and there's a faint smell of moisture and mildew when the room is shut up tight. Occasionally I'll actually sit beside the window as there is a chair there (as it was when I moved in) and it gets nice afternoon sunlight. Yes, CB, there is sunlight in Scotland, it's our best-kept secret. But when I do sit there, I look almost straight into their kitchen. Just the other day, Allistair leaned out the window and, seeing my light on, called to me. We then had a very pleasant chat whilst leaning out our respective windows. It's a little strange and occasionally a little invasive, but I like it.
We first met them during a fire drill when some of the freshers in the flat below us decided that garlic bread would be AMAZING, but then proceeded to pass out without pulling it out of the oven... stupid drunk 18 year old boys. Anyways, Christine took the initiative and invited them over for drinks one Friday night, but they never showed! Well, at least not until we'd polished off all the wine and opened the door to head out to the clubs. Allistair then came over and begged forgiveness later the following week, explaining that Christine had talked to Peter, whose english isn't quite up to par, and he didn't tell them about the invite until an hour or so after she'd knocked. Well, no hard feelings, we'd try again. I decided to make some bruschetta and truffles, serve some hummus with celery and tomatoes and we'd all drink wine like proper adults. Allistair, Peter and the Greek all made it this time, and a lovely time SEVERAL bottles of wine were had. Somebody suggested heading out to the clubs, it was only 1 in the morning-- sure, why not? (Allistair later claimed that it was my idea, but I KNOW that it was not, Christine thinks it was the Greek, and I'm apt to agree.) We'd also picked up a girl named Bruna who is here doing her semester abroad from Brazil-- she's petite, charming and has an unusual lip piercing, in addition to being friendly with Jack. Well, the rest of the girls hung back because we'd made plans to head out to Braemar the next morning for a small weekender, but what the hell, I'd go. Then I found myself in a cab with people I'd known for about 3 hours-- Peter, Jack, Bruna and the Greek. We went out, danced, Jack and the Greek kept buying me drinks, all was well. Then the bars closed down and we headed home. The Greek slipped a small glass marble in my jacket pocket and left his arm around my waist-- Allistair had mentioned something about his having a girlfriend earlier in the evening when the Greek stepped out to answer a cell phone call, but I decided to ignore it. A nice thing to do? Certainly not, but it's what I did. We eventually caught a taxi and scavenged through their apartment and mine of cans of assorted beers and 1 1/2 bottles of white wine, and then headed out to the woods behind the housing so as not to disturb sleeping roommies. Jack brought his new Polaroid camera and took several pictures of trees in the dark, claiming he would put them in a frame and their juxtaposition would create beautiful meaning. Like I said, he's uber-Parisian. The rest of them gradually drifted away, and the long and short of this is that I wound up fooling around with the Greek while sitting on an old downed tree in the woods behind the residence. He's a talker, and just prior to kissing me told me that he and his girlfriend, Frederica, have been together for a year but he doesn't love her anymore, but it's so familiar and comfortable that he doesn't know how to leave her, and that it was she who had kept stalker-calling him earlier because she didn't want him in another girl's flat. With good reason, I suppose, in hindsight.
The thing is, the Greek reminds me a LOT of Luther. They have the same basic build and coloring, though Luther was a bit more pale. They shrug the same way. Their hands are startlingly similar... and I don't know what that means. I was also quite drunk, so try not to judge too harshly. He walked me to my door, kissed me goodnight, asked me to keep all this under my hat, and walked to his own door.
I woke up the next morning to go to Braemar, still drunk, leaves in my hair, and giggly as all hell. Christine took one look at me and squealed.
Braemar was beautiful. Dawn drove, and I must say that the Highlands are everything people say. I'm in love with this place. We walked around the village, saw highland cows, pronounced 'hey-lin coo', traversed shallow rivers, and basically had a smashing time.
Since then, life's been pretty quiet. My iPod, my baby, is sick-- she shivers and grinds and won't play, and I can't quite figure out how to remedy the situation. I finally got into town and found out the technical support number for Apple here in the UK because the website helped me not at all, so hopefully I can send the baby off and they'll fix her up right. My speakers also died, and I'm not so happy about that. I finally got my excess aid check, but it's going to take another 3 weeks to open a checking account so I can cash it. NOT HAPPY. *le sigh* It's just that it's taking so long. I also still don't have a cell phone, or a mobile as they call them here. Everyone is completely confounded by this-- how do I survive?? My loan officer called it "barbaric." I just shake my head-- it's not like I'm living on raw meat at the back of a cave, I just lack the ability to text-message. I think I'll finally break down and get one of the little pay as you go jobbies from T-Mobile, they seem to have the cheapest phones that will do everything I want. I have no desire to pay what will translate to $100 for a damn phone. Lord. I wince at paying $20 for groceries.
Speaking of groceries, I'm living on celery, cherry tomatoes and hummus. No joke. And I think that, in combination with all the walks up and down hills to school and back, is vastly helping my figure. I'm a fan of this. I also live on the third floor of my building, and that can't hurt.
I watched L'Auberg Espangole yesterday by myself, and both winced and laughed. I first saw it with Luther on his recommendation, and bought myself a copy a while later, but that was nearly 3 years ago. I hadn't seen it since then, and to watch it now, I realize that I'm living in my own spanish apartment. I don't know how it's going to turn out, but I'm okay with that,
Regarding my next bold move, I went to a wine and cheese reception with the College of Arts and Letters and had a very interesting exchange with Dr. Fynsk. He introduced me to the heads of the schools of Law and Business as one of the "excellent students" which I take to be quite the compliment. Dr. Fynsk is the one responsible for the creation of the Center of Modern Thought, which is on the cutting edge of interdisciplinary exchange here, and I think it's absolutely brilliant. There's no doing anything about the really big, important issues if you stay pigeon-holed in philosophy and refuse to talk to the earth science people, who in turn scoff at the economists, who discount the sociologists-- we've all got to talk together, and that's what the Center is all about. There's a big meeting on Energy here in the Spring, and I'm outrageously excited about it, but more on that in a different post. Anyways, Dr. Fynsk asked where I was from and I murmured something about it being a little, no name university in Michigan. He said, "What, like the University of...?" No, I didn't go to the University of Michigan. Bitch, please, they wouldn't let me in. He went on to say that I seemed most excellently prepared for the kind of discourse he wanted to foster and had I considered staying on for my Ph.D.? It seemed to him that someone like me could really flourish here at the University of Aberdeen.

SAY WHAT.

I'm in the process of scheduling a suggested meeting with him to talk about precisely this. The thing is, I hadn't thought to stay here for another degree-- you're supposed to go to a bunch of different schools, maximizing the number of people you know in academia and therefore vreating as large a network as possible. However, as the Greek put it, if you're happy here and they've got the best department around, why would you leave and go to a lesser institution? Why, indeed. It would depend on funding, honestly, as I can't really afford to say here for another three years, but the idea has more and more appeal the longer I think about it.
Speaking of the Greek, he was supposed to come over for another round of drinks with his flatmates just this past Friday, but I guess they just found out about a huge presentation they all need to work on and so bailed out. Unfortunatley, none of them thought to tell us... like Allistair says, their concept of punctuality is fluid. Time is irrelevant. We're still experiencing some gaps in culture, but I'm getting more and more used to it. The Norwegians are getting more and more frustrated by it, though-- their classes are dominantly populated by Nigerians who don't so much adhere to western ideas of courtesy or respect. I don't know about any of this personally, as I'm not in class with any of them, but their stories are pretty wild.
I'm getting used to my united nations spanish apartment. Starting at about 5 in the evening, people open their doors, there's a rotation of people in the kitchen, talking about your day, asking about lectures, relaxed visiting... I like it. There are still some shocks to be had-- Naimee apparently brought several whole dried fish with her from Nigeria, and she made one up the other night. They're all wrapped in newspaper, but she dunked it in a tupperware bowl full of water and popped it in the microwave. The fish, eyes, guts and all, reinflated and then popped, at which point she knew it was done. The smell of fish in the apartment was overwhelming... and she casually picked the meat off the bones. I was a little startled, but to each their own. Christine attacked the kitchen with a can of air freshner as soon as Naimee was back in her room, and all I could do was laugh. Also, I still hate the smell of fish.
Ohh, there's so much more to tell-- a disasterous tapas dinner with Dawn and her friend, Bosh, my first encounter with chips and cheese, mysterious bagpipes and drums on a Saturday morning, my new brown shoes, a box from home that made me cry-- but this post is too long already, and when you live at the speed of light, by the time you slow down to talk about everything, it seems so long ago that it can't be interesting. It was all just last week, but I'm already a different person than I was then.

I'll try to update this more often, I think that will help.

Proper Football and a Sore Throat

I had my very first encounter with honest-to-god Scottish Football last night at the match against (some Ukranian team... we were all very hazy on who they were, but it didn't really matter) it I think I'm a better person for it. My three Norwegian friends and I walked down to the stadium, where we were supposed to meet up with Michael and his roommates. This was a bit of foolishness on our part, as none of us had any idea how big the stadium was or how many thousands of people were going to be there. Needless to say, we never found them. We did meet up with another group that Christine (the girl in the room directly next to mine) had met in her orientation, consisting of an English-born Indian girl, Raj, Raj's boyfriend Jerry, and a German law student, Sabrina.
After finding out seats, the fun truly began. Now, admittedly I'm a big fan of organized sports-- I like the enthusiasm and energy people exhibit for them, I like the loyalty of the fans for their team, I like the feeling of unity in the stands, and I love the instant morality of officiating-- everybody knows the rules and the minute somebody breaks them, there is a set and standard punishment. Perfect. So, anyway, we're settling into our seats, and I look around-- the stadium isn't really packed, but there are a huge number of people there. Lots of families with young kids, college students, grandparents-- the whole lot. And they're all cheering for one team, their team: Aberdeen.
They had songs and chants and unified jeers. It was amazing to find myself absolutely surrounded by a sea of red. And in all this, I realized the difference between Scottish Football and American Soccer; it's not the name, it's the fact that Soccer has too much money and not enough heart, while my steadfast companions in Aberdeen have perhaps too much heart. A man sitting diagonally from us yelled "That's my boy!" when one of the players did something near him, and the player turned and gave a thumbs-up when the actions moved away from him. People yelled all night long to players named Jackie and Jamie, and I kept grinning.
During the half, a bagpipe and drum corps marched around the pitch. I won't deny it-- I giggled.
The second half saw a wide variety of scoring opportunities for Aberdeen, but they just weren't able to convert. It was hard to see a lot of the action, as we were all the way at the other end of the field, but the most shocking thing I did view was the crowd reaction to a man down on the field. Now, I know that players are sometimes prone to falling over and miming serious injury to perhaps get better field placement for a play. However, this one fellow rolled about so much that the field medics came sprinting out for him twice. Did he have a cramp? Did he catch a boot to the face? Who knows. The crowd certainly didn't care-- even I learned some new terms for the devil from their jeers.
Honestly? I was shocked. In the States, everybody on the field takes a knee until the injured player is seen to by the medics, and if he or she gets up and walks off, everybody in the stands cheers. In Aberdeen? Not so much. Even the little old ladies behind us were shouting things at the opposing player as he lay on the edge of the field. And then the ref came over and gestured with both hands to scoot off the field. THE REF. The crowd laughed and then cheered when, as the downed player did not scoot, the ref gave him a yellow card! I'd never seen anything like it before.
I'm not sure what the final score was, maybe 0-1. Aberdeen never scored, I know that much. Regardless, after the game we all walked back to Raj's apartment, where we shared some drinks and some stories. All in all, remarkably good times! They all laughed and said I was the most open-minded and plain-spoken American they had ever met, but, then again, I do respond to the 'Where are you from?' question with the answer, "The US, and I'm sorry."
We walked home from the afterparty quite late, and I'll be the first to admit that I was rather toasted. However, I can't figure out why my throat is killing me this morning.it woke me up twice in the night. I'm drinking lemon and honey water in an effort to shake it, and I'll buy some lozenges later, but that doesn't solve the mystery. I just hope it's gone before the Whiskey and Castle tour tomorrow!