The computer guy at HPS helped me set up my laptop so it could connect to the department's network (yes, I've been here 2 years now, I thought it was time to be able to use the department's printers...). He was super nice and it felt like going for a physical - he asked me how my computer was doing, if it had any problems, how I was backing up data, if I'd heard of The Best Ways to back up data using the Cam servers, etc. He tsked when I told him my computer's not under warranty anymore, and warned me that the power cords always break first, that mine was sure to go any day now (and it's covered in dinosaur stickers, which he kindly didn't mention but I'm sure are hastening the poor cord towards early death). I was thanking him and heading for the door, network-connected, when he said, oh wait, I've got an extra cord here. And it's got a British plug - take it. I felt a sudden panic as he dangled the little three-pronged plug that's half the size of my current U.S. plug plus U.K. adapter, and I said something like won't I need it when I go back to the U.S? And he looked at me like I was crazy and said, you can have both.
You can have both. Can you? Can I? Am I ready to make that kind of decision?
Maybe this is an overreaction to a computer cord, but it was yet another striking moment of choice. Do I use "z" or "s" in "realized" for the paper I'm submitting this weekend? Is it "oestrogen" and "orthopaedic", or not? Do I use my dino-stickered U.S. cord with a giant U.K. add-on, or is it a regular old U.K. plug like everybody else in my office has?
Eesh. Can I really still be settling in after 2 years?
Friday, 22 October 2010
Thursday, 14 October 2010
Re-entry
Standing in the customs line at Heathrow this morning, I was surrounded by signs listing all the things international students would need to show when they reached the custom officer - a million official letters, forms, stamped this and thats, proof of existence, etc. Ugh. I've shown documentation of my life and character the past two Octobers now, for each of my UK student visa entries. But this time was different - I'm not entering, I'm re-entering. I'm approved. I'm one of them (almost, though I still have to stand in the long foreigners' line). I strolled into the UK with my freshly stamped passport, no special screening needed. What a privilege.
A scenic bus ride took me right to within walking distance of my new home, no taxi! Awesome. I'm really enjoying unpacking things in my new little garret in a hilarious house on Mill Road, the most happenin' and most international street in Cambridge. My landlord's husband said you can dine from 20 countries on Mill Road AND there's a sushi place that delivers. ?! I'm so thrilled to be in civilization again, out of west Cambridge where the nearest food (or anything) for sale is a 15-minute walk away and closes at 6PM. Moving into this hip neighborhood and this hip house is kind of like playing Tetris - fitting yourself into tight spaces and crooked houses and bizarre angles. I love it. My landlord and her family and even the two cats are total characters - the husband let me in the door with my suitcases and then explained that the house next door is home to either squatters or crack dealers, he's not sure which, so I should be sure to lock up my bike. Then he said the cat runs away from people sometimes because he trained her to, using a hot poker. His wife assured me that he was joking about the cat, but she totally backed him up about the crack dealers. Then we discussed the new pretzel-filled M&Ms, only available in the U.S. This is so much more fun than living with a bunch of international students!!
I went to my department, got my mail and caught up with a few people who were around. Nothing had changed, for better or for worse. Then I walked to Clare Hall to pick up my mail and my bike, to check in with the cooks who are so kind to me and SO funny (one greeted me with an an enthusiastic and full-on cockney version of "hey stranger!", which was more like "hey strah-nja!"), to eat Thursday Free Dinner and to meet the new crowd of students. On the way I realized that I wasn't looking around, that the gargoyles and cobbled streets and even the river were so familiar that I was barely glancing at them. So maybe it's a good time to move to a new neighborhood? The Arabic signs and crowded little sidewalks of Mill Road are new and fascinating to me, while the Old Cambridge that I loved my first year has become just another medieval alley. !! I never thought that could happen.
Though I wasn't paying much attention to the scenery, I did spot people I knew (this town is SO SMALL), including an awkward past date, and a friend who works on the Darwin Correspondence Project, which digitizes Darwin's letters, and she said they'd just received 75 new letters to Darwin from his son, the biggest cache of unknown letters since the project started. (In the letters, Francis was telling his dad about his research on bugs, and also thanking him for paying the bills while Francis was studying at Cambridge!)
A beautiful moonlit ride home through the drizzle, with wet multicolored leaves everywhere, on my beloved and totally functional bike (with two flat tires... who knew they could go flat in only 2 months? Don't tell my dad, he'll be disgusted. :) ), brought back all my many memories of Cambridge autumn, both the magic and the mundane. As I start my third October here (omg), I'm so lucky to have magic become my mundane. Hopefully that makes it all the more amazing to live in a place like this.
A scenic bus ride took me right to within walking distance of my new home, no taxi! Awesome. I'm really enjoying unpacking things in my new little garret in a hilarious house on Mill Road, the most happenin' and most international street in Cambridge. My landlord's husband said you can dine from 20 countries on Mill Road AND there's a sushi place that delivers. ?! I'm so thrilled to be in civilization again, out of west Cambridge where the nearest food (or anything) for sale is a 15-minute walk away and closes at 6PM. Moving into this hip neighborhood and this hip house is kind of like playing Tetris - fitting yourself into tight spaces and crooked houses and bizarre angles. I love it. My landlord and her family and even the two cats are total characters - the husband let me in the door with my suitcases and then explained that the house next door is home to either squatters or crack dealers, he's not sure which, so I should be sure to lock up my bike. Then he said the cat runs away from people sometimes because he trained her to, using a hot poker. His wife assured me that he was joking about the cat, but she totally backed him up about the crack dealers. Then we discussed the new pretzel-filled M&Ms, only available in the U.S. This is so much more fun than living with a bunch of international students!!
I went to my department, got my mail and caught up with a few people who were around. Nothing had changed, for better or for worse. Then I walked to Clare Hall to pick up my mail and my bike, to check in with the cooks who are so kind to me and SO funny (one greeted me with an an enthusiastic and full-on cockney version of "hey stranger!", which was more like "hey strah-nja!"), to eat Thursday Free Dinner and to meet the new crowd of students. On the way I realized that I wasn't looking around, that the gargoyles and cobbled streets and even the river were so familiar that I was barely glancing at them. So maybe it's a good time to move to a new neighborhood? The Arabic signs and crowded little sidewalks of Mill Road are new and fascinating to me, while the Old Cambridge that I loved my first year has become just another medieval alley. !! I never thought that could happen.
Though I wasn't paying much attention to the scenery, I did spot people I knew (this town is SO SMALL), including an awkward past date, and a friend who works on the Darwin Correspondence Project, which digitizes Darwin's letters, and she said they'd just received 75 new letters to Darwin from his son, the biggest cache of unknown letters since the project started. (In the letters, Francis was telling his dad about his research on bugs, and also thanking him for paying the bills while Francis was studying at Cambridge!)
A beautiful moonlit ride home through the drizzle, with wet multicolored leaves everywhere, on my beloved and totally functional bike (with two flat tires... who knew they could go flat in only 2 months? Don't tell my dad, he'll be disgusted. :) ), brought back all my many memories of Cambridge autumn, both the magic and the mundane. As I start my third October here (omg), I'm so lucky to have magic become my mundane. Hopefully that makes it all the more amazing to live in a place like this.
Monday, 4 October 2010
A foreign culture?
Did you know there's a huge shopping mall right next door to the Pentagon?!
I went there today, to stock up on cheap clothes and avoid a currency conversion charge. It was HUGE, like 7 stories, with crisscrossing escalators and more stores than in all of England. (Well, maybe not that many...). So I tried stuff on, struggled to remember my American jeans size, and let my small-town-Cambridge-adjusted eyes bug out at every window display. Then I got ice cream and hung out, watching the teenagers run around the mall like a playground and the Mall Walkers stroll around the mall like, well, a playground.
Ah, America.
I went there today, to stock up on cheap clothes and avoid a currency conversion charge. It was HUGE, like 7 stories, with crisscrossing escalators and more stores than in all of England. (Well, maybe not that many...). So I tried stuff on, struggled to remember my American jeans size, and let my small-town-Cambridge-adjusted eyes bug out at every window display. Then I got ice cream and hung out, watching the teenagers run around the mall like a playground and the Mall Walkers stroll around the mall like, well, a playground.
Ah, America.
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