Wandering Waiguoren

Women and China

2013-08-12T00:34:00.000+01:00

From history and political science classes we've all (probably) taken at some point in our lives, there are a series of names that come to mind when one thinks about US-China movers and shakers. I'm talking about people like Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Joseph Stilwell, John Fairbank, James Lilley, Thomas Gates, Leonard Woodcock, Zbigniew Brzezinski, etc. The list of China hands in our country is pretty hefty.

These individuals, their predecessors and successors, have done tremendous things for the US-China relationship. Their actions and the policy that has sprung forth from a spectrum of historical encounters with the Chinese government should not be understated or overlooked.

However, that said, where are all the women?

Recently here in DC I had the opportunity to attend a dinner of 70+ people that have academic or professional interests connected to China in one way or another. Linked by our shared subscription to one of the best China-focused syndicated news emails around (Sinocism), we took over a Chinese restaurant on the north side of town for DC-Peking duck and conversation. I arrived about five minutes early and had my choice of tables. In true Chinese style, there were eight round tables with ten seats each. As only one table had started to fill up, I claimed a seat and sat down opposite the Sinocism founder/author, squished in between two hedge fund managers. The room gradually filled up, active China discussions took over, and everyone enjoyed digging into semi-Americanized versions of our favorite Chinese dishes.

It wasn't until I stood up to pay my bill that I made two very important observations:

(1) I was the only female at my table of ten. Yes, there were other people at my table that spoke legitimately good Chinese, but they were all upwards of 40-45yrs and male.

(2) Of the roughly 70 people in attendance that night, there were not even 20 women in the entire room.

So, back to my question -- why such a seeming shortage of women specializing in China? Is it cultural? Are men just more likely to succeed in interactions with the Chinese? Is it the challenge of learning such a difficult language that puts women off?

To some degree, there may be cultural undertones. Being a bubbly, inquisitive individual, I've never had too much difficulty in making things happen in China. Yes, there are processes different from our own in the US, but I've never felt disadvantaged by gender. That said, however, there is a blatantly obvious contradiction in the PRC's approach to promote the roles of women in the Chinese society. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the government has actively committed to achieving equality between men and women. But advances for equality can only go so far when checked by the resistance of a traditionally Confucian society of male superiority. Modern China has come a long way from the Confucian patriarchal society and its restrictions upon women young and old (i.e., foot binding; arranged marriages). Women can marry relatively freely, they can attend school, and they can work. But the traditional Confucian mindset is still there, whether the Chinese may admit to it or not, and as such continues to impact gender relations.

As for the difficulty of learning a new language and culture, gender is a non-issue. If women are thought to be better in the liberal arts/humanities anyways, then why didn't more choose to study Chinese? There are entire schools of thought in international relations that would break down the contributions women could bring to the US-China policy discourse just because we're women. Perhaps it is our different temperament, or the more motherly values we exude. Either way, there's definitely an opportunity for women to expand their role in China studies.

Coming back to my dinner, I left feeling as though reverse discrimination could work in my favor next time I'm hunting for a job. If the field of China specialists is mostly old and male, then I'm the opposite. An outlier. Someone organizations would like to hire just to balance statistics out a bit better. Beyond that, though, I am fresh blood. I worry that older generations may be confined by their own eras of thinking. What we need now, more than ever in our engagement with China, is a fresh policy approach rather than an outdated or re-purposed paradigm.

Capital view

2013-07-28T21:35:00.000+01:00

While I've only been in DC for just shy of one month (!), I learned very quickly how easy it is to be swept up into all things political. It is exciting to feel so plugged in to the latest happenings in our country. Reading about the debate on current issues from immigration to entitlements and learning the who's who of politicians in our federal government is exciting. And, equally exciting, the fact that my daily commute goes right by the White House. In short, one month in and I've realized that this is a totally different ball game.

Interoffice softball league: Team New World Order

In my first month-ish of work, I've had something new/different to do every day. Of course there were lots of training seminars to go through, but I've finished all those off this past week with a trip up to our national office in New York City. Beyond the training, I've been just immersed (and happily so) in all the roles/responsibilities of my new job. Each day is fruitful simply because there is so much learning and personal growth that takes place!

But beyond the full days at the office, I'm gradually starting to navigate life in the District. My parents visited last weekend and further helped to get me settled in my new apartment - installing internet and picking up some essentials at Bed Bath & Beyond in Chinatown. It is a very gradual process, as I'm still working on finding a dining table, a floor lamp and a few other odds and ends. Truth be told, I'm happy enough with my living conditions as it is that these other pieces of furniture will happen in their own good time.

With Mom @ White House

I've also enjoyed my initial exploratory endeavors, everything from Georgetown to Capitol Hill and lots of areas in between. Because DC is mostly flat, it is quite easy to walk and walk all day long and not really notice just how far one has walked. Take yesterday, for instance. What began in town by the White House, then became a walk downtown, a walk along the length of the Mall to the Lincoln Memorial, and then down and around to the FDR Memorial and Jefferson Memorial en route home. But, these long walks (marches? expeditions?) are not without big benefits -- today was the first day since arriving that I remember not using Google Maps to help guide me to my destination. Leaps and bounds of progress, I say :)

As I continue to settle in and learn about my new home, I'll definitely be posting more frequent updates of adventures. I'm digging in to some great texts for work and will have some China-related thoughts to bounce off of any/all readers in the months ahead, too.

Georgetown canals - always a great walk!

Quick Colorado trip

2013-07-01T01:54:00.001+01:00

Greetings! A very exciting week here as I'm in my final few days in Illinois/Missouri before relocating to DC on Saturday. I always try to avoid using "goodbye" because it feels a bit too permanent, but the "see you soons" I've already had with family friends and neighbors have been surprisingly bittersweet. The Midwest will always be home, but these next steps are the start of a totally different adventure. In times past, I've packed my suitcases knowing that I'll be back in a year (or two or three). This time, however, it is hard to know exactly when I'll next come back to my hometown.

I took a trip to Colorado this week to spend a few days with my brother and other extended family members. It turned out to be a fantastic decision - I left my phone at home during the day, took off my watch, and really just went with the flow for the better part of 4 days. I think it had a good effect, too, as one friend that I spoke with just shortly after returning said that I'm relaxed and glowing. Just the way I should be before I start an exciting new job :)

In recent years, I have only flown through Denver airport, so it was nice to venture beyond the airport and re-explore a state that I spent plenty of time in as a child. The weather was unusually hot (upper-90s) but dry (and low humidity!) for the duration of my visit. But the sun was wonderful, a gentle breeze came over the mountains most days, and everything cooled off very quickly at nighttime (mid-60s).

My first full day in town I spent in Boulder, visiting an extended family member in her mountaintop home (yes, really) and exploring the central part of town. Boulder is so much like Eugene that I felt right at home. In fact, I'm pretty certain that I would have gone to UC Boulder had I not attended UO! Same eco-friendly, relaxed, but academic vibes. Lots of local eats, coffee shops, and stores...a very vibrant community to say the least. Oh, and the same large amount of medical marijuana dispensaries were seen in Colorado as in Oregon. The only difference was that dispensaries in Colorado are able to play up the "Rocky Mountain High" theme in their sales pitches to the public!

CSprings dispensary

Aside from Boulder, I accompanied my brother into work one morning and spent time in downtown Denver. They have a fantastic art museum -- the feature exhibit over the summer is these "sound suits" created by artist Nick Cave. (For those that haven't heard of Cave or his creations, point your cursor here.) He makes these "sound suits" out of anything he can find in LA, everything ranging from buttons and sequins to sock monkeys and pot holders. Downtown Denver has a wealth of other museums that I visited as a kid, but this time I just chose to stick to the art museum before wandering back along the 16th Street Mall and surrounding streets. At one point, I definitely recall feeling a bit worn out by all the (homeless?) hawkers on street corners asking me if I was either interested in selling or purchasing "medical marijuana." I am starting to think that Colorado and other states that choose to legalize marijuana, be it for medical and/or recreational purposes, are definitely going to have some pretty hefty social issues to deal with linked to the use of and market for medical marijuana.

Bro/Sis photo at Garden of the Gods

But I digress! Kevin was able to take Friday off, so we headed out early to explore Colorado Springs. Like other cities in Colorado, we first wandered the historic downtown. Once called "Colorado City," the downtown was considered part of Kansas at one point before becoming the first capital of the state of Colorado. We then opted to hike around at the Garden of the Gods, a free and must-see park just outside of C. Springs. Again, we had both visited the Garden as children, but it was fun to explore as grown-ups :) Kevin and I found a trail around what was once a hefty reservoir, likely to have supplied water to those living within C. Springs. We walked for a couple of hours in the heat, just until the afternoon storm clouds started to loom overhead and we knew - at 7000+ feet above sea level - it was time to clear the area.

Kwan's costume for "Scheherazade"

One of the lesser known facts about C. Springs is that it is home to the headquarters of the US Olympic Committee. Training at higher elevation is a much bigger stretch for the body, so not only do winter athletes train in town, but so do gymnasts and the occasional track and field athlete. For those of us with ice skating backgrounds, C. Springs is the capital of the figure skating world. Yes, Olympic Athletes train in one of the city's huge ice rinks nestled in the foothills, but equally important is that the city plays home to the headquarters for the US Figure Skating Association. When I was a little girl, I begged my parents to visit the ice rink and US Figure Skating Museum...but we never had enough time (or so they said). So I was really tickled when my brother suggested that we could go to the museum to avoid the afternoon mountain showers! At a bargain price of $2.50/person, we saw competition costumes of some prominent skaters (Sarah Hughes, Kristi Yamaguchi, Michelle Kwan) and more historical exhibitions, such as the evolution of the ice skate/blade. One of the workers even opened a medal case for us to hold Yamaguchi's gold medal from Albertville, Canada. Needless to say, I was a very happy camper :) And, of course, I happily honored my brother's subsequent request to spend the afternoon looking at rally cars and more 'manly' things that were appearing across town for the car race up Pikes Peak.

I definitely hadn't planned to squeeze in another trip anywhere before moving to DC, so the chance to see my brother for an extra few days was definitely a special treat. It was time well spent -- I'm happy, relaxed, and ready for the action of the days ahead!

Next steps!

2013-06-22T00:51:00.001+01:00

It occurred to me earlier this week that I have completely neglected blog updates for far too long! Returning to the US, as previous experiences proved, was not the easiest or smoothest experience. With an abundance of things requiring my energies and focus during my time in London, I struggled for several months slowing down. “Relaxing” was not something in my vocabulary for the London year – if not longer – and it took time to reacquire the ability to unwind (believe it or not).

Caught in action - Beijing street food!

That said, I’m happy that I had several adventures and opportunities keeping me busy during the past months. I was initially involved in a research project focusing on China. It was just like I was continuing on my education, as I spent my days reading and analyzing obstacles and opportunities vis-a-vis the highly-regulated Chinese state. That project culminated just before Christmas in a lengthy written report that was ultimately shared with the highest-ups in the company. It was an exciting and rewarding project for all involved, to say the least.

Just when I thought the research project was complete and I could move on to other full-time opportunities, the chance to continue supporting the project by planning a trip to China for several colleagues appeared on my radar. And…me being me, I couldn't say no J So I spent another few months serving as a trip coordinator and cultural adviser. I sorted out the logistics of the trip – a fun, but important lesson in why I don’t want to be a travel agent – and then got to accompany my colleagues in their travels. We spent a fast and furious few weeks traveling China, but it was very productive (for them) and very challenging (for me). I loved the fast-pace of constantly translating, of pointing out cultural “quirks” only seen in China, and sharing with my colleagues the China that I've seen grow over the past seven years.

Great Wall at Mutianyu (April 2013)

Just prior to leaving the US for this trip, I applied to a job with the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. The application process, interviews and all that jazz happened while I was overseas – it was such a smooth process that it was clear to me that these are my next steps. Thus, I’m very happy to share that I’ll be starting in early July with CFR as a US Foreign Policy Research Associate. I know I will learn a lot, which is incredibly important for any career path, but I’m also excited that I’ll have ample opportunity to build upon my background and keen interest in US-China relations.

As I embark upon these next steps, I've often found myself looking back in gratitude for the people and experiences that have been so monumental in shaping the person that I am today. And the good will just keep unfolding as these new adventures begin J

P.S. -- I'll keep blogging, too, with a focus on D.C. adventures and insights.

Last London post (honest!)

2013-01-08T01:53:00.001+00:00

Happy 2013! At long last - in fact, this post was written last year - a few comments to wrap up the London experience. I'm now back in the US from China and will hopefully shoot out more updates soon of travels and other news.

Drum roll, please...

I have postponed writing a final London-related post largely because I haven’t been ready. There has been this nagging sensation in my mind that writing the final chapter of memories and experiences from London is an end to that chapter in my life. But, to quote an English celebrity, I think I have finally come to terms with the fact that “turning the page” is natural and needed – what I on the next page of my life is just as good, if not better, than all of these last pages in London!

Last dinner in London with some seriously amazing friends

That said, what better way to kick off this final London-related post than to share extremely satisfactory dissertation results. My dissertation on Mainland China-Taiwan relations received a “distinction” in marks – and “high merit” for my degree overall! While the grades are all quite fantastic, it was never about those. I learned so incredibly much, met so many amazing people, and saw many things that I would not have otherwise experienced. And really, those are the kind of experiences and encounters that matter far more than the grades. For all of those that supported me during the year – proofreading, listening to crazy international relations-related ideas, feeding me, providing entertainment and non-academic adventures – I am so incredibly grateful. Your support has meant, and will continue to mean, the world to me!

Now that I am a Master of Arts (sounds rather nifty, doesn’t it?!), the next steps are still a work in progress. I have been doing some really fun, China-related consulting over the past few months as I await some other offers to pan fully out. And now I’m in China with my parents for the holiday season – soon to be joined by my younger brother. Life is quite fantastic as far as things go. I am also (secretly) plotting a London return for the end of July to attend graduation, so hopefully those readers in the UK won’t plan too many summer getaways just yet!

So, the best of the London best at last. In no particular order, I am most grateful for the following adventures and experiences (in no particular order!):

The people, goodness me – wonderfully talented, hilarious, patient, kind, spontaneous individuals that I shared this year and all challenges therein with
Inspiring, stimulating, deep conversations had with all the people referenced above as well as random encounters on the streets of London or in the corridors at SOAS
Finding a fantastic Turkish coffee spot at Piccadilly -- and making it a weekly tradition with coursemates
A post-exam party on a boat (well, on a boat that was 10ft above any water), staying out all night and watching the sun come up over the River Thames the next day
Cambridge Day Trip with three inspiring women
Kids Day Out with Southgate Rotary Club
Catching the Olympic torch relay and bits of the Paralympics
Long, long walks throughout town to explore every nook and cranny possible. The fact that London is such a walkable city makes me love it all the more
Finding favorite places, making loads of memories, and having hundreds - if not thousands - of reasons to plan to return!

As silly as it may sound, one of the highlights of a recent December day exploring Shanghai was popping into M&S to pick up mince pie ingredients. Who would have thought that one would have to come all the way to Shanghai just to get something familiar from the UK! But at M&S, I bumped into a very pleasant man from Birmingham. It was one of those “holy smokes the world is so small moment,” when I learned that he was related to one of my course conveners at SOAS. So really, yesterday was proof that the SOAS and London experience can only keep continuing. And I am truly excited for all that comes next – and all the opportunities that will allow me to build upon and deepen the academic opportunities and adventures of the past year!

Merry Christmas merriment

2012-12-25T13:43:00.002+00:00

Hello dear family and friends!

I do hope all of you are having a warm holiday season, surrounded by those you love as you look back on the blessings of this past year. Good news, too, as there is more in store for all of us in 2013!

Seeing as how it is a very special time of the year, I want to throw a few comments up in between travels. It has taken me an incredibly long time to write a final update on what happened in the last few weeks of my London year. It was not only emotionally difficult, but I just simply felt unready to wrap up that chapter of my experience.

As I have already begun to see just how much the London year is beginning to impact every other aspect of my life, I feel that I can finally write the final words of the chapter. That blog post is now sitting on my desktop, awaiting a more stable internet connection, and a few pictures.

Dissertation results - as well as confirmation of the overall degree - were released just earlier this month. I am extremely pleased with how everything turned out, receiving a "distinction" on my dissertation and a "merit" on the degree. Neither would have happened without the support of Rotary and encouragement from family and fellow coursemates. I'm almost beginning to countdown the days to graduation in the summer of 2013 :)

For the past few weeks, I've simply been enjoying time with my family in China. I've been doing a really fun part-time, China-related consulting job to keep me busy; and reading academic things as though I never really finished my postgrad degree. We've been hanging around "home" in Suzhou but will head out for warmer temperatures in Macau and Hong Kong on Boxing Day. No Chinese Christmas for us - rather, an Italian dinner one night and home-made roast the next day to keep both the maternal and paternal family traditions alive. Whether home or abroad, the best part of the holiday season is always being with my family. With so much to be grateful for this year, it truly is a special Christmas for us!

Family at the top of the Shanghai World Financial Center

Paralympics

2012-11-18T23:28:00.000+00:00

Entering the Olympic Park!

Continuing where I left off, one of the more memorable activities from early September was going to the Paralympics with two of my coursemates. The Paralympics were just as successful as the Olympics – most (if not all) of the events were sold out. Prices were much more reasonable, so getting a day pass or event-specific tickets was much more feasible to those of us operating on a student budget.

The Paralympic experience was an absolute blast from start to finish. My friend and I grabbed a morning coffee (iced – it was still mid-70s!) and hopped the tube for Stafford. The thing about getting to the Olympics was we knew we had to first roast on the dreaded Central line during rush hour. All things considered, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been – or was at other times during the year – and we arrived not too hot and sticky.

Anyone arriving at Stafford has a choice to make: massive Westfield shopping town or Olympic Park? Our Westfield adventures were saved for the end of the day, when we simply wanted somewhere cool with a lot of food options for dinner :)Lining the circuitous path to the Olympic Park entrance were the Olympic/Paralympic Gamesmakers. They were absolutely wonderful! These guys were hanging about all day, with foam fingers and high levels of enthusiasm to direct crowds. At one point in the day, one of the games makers were having to tell people to “keep left.” Rather than just repeating the same ol’ phrase, it became a chorus of, “Keep left, stay left, look left, walk left, move left, push your neighbor left, go left!” They just did an absolutely brilliant job and their work clearly helped the games run so smoothly.

Orbit - sculpture, observation tower

After clearing security, we had at last entered the Olympic Park! The TV footage hardly did the park justice – it was gigantic, and required a lot of walking. As far as food options, there were carts offering more “ethnic” foods, but the two McDonalds located in the park were the most popular (and reasonably priced) options. Turns out they were the most efficient McDonalds I think I have ever been too! Then there was the official Olympic Merchandise store. One could purchase various clothing articles and souvenirs not available at other Olympic retailers. There were two problems to this, however: (a) an incredible amount of people in this HUGE store and (b) a lack of medium-sized clothing items for the medium-sized (normal?) person! We fought the crowds, found souvenirs, and emerged happy. Not to mention ready to make our way to our first event of the day.

Start of the football game

My coursemates and I had obtained tickets for one specific event (5-a-side football/soccer), but ended up with a day pass meaning that we could wander into any venue with events that day except for the Olympic Stadium (track and field events). So we started at the football pitch…and sat in the direct English sunlight. But oh how wonderful the sun was! If there was ever a time when the gray and rain wore me down, it was all worth it for spending the entire afternoon in the warm English sunshine. As for the football game itself, it was a bit comparable to watching a high school or college soccer game. The players were all incredibly talented – particularly amidst some tough physical conditions – and the only real differences were in the size of the pitch and the number of players.

Wheelchair Rugby - go team USA!

From the football field, we wandered alongside the Olympic Park river (does it have a name?!), alongside the BMX venue and velodrome, into the Basketball stadium. Now what is, in my opinion, the coolest thing about the basketball venue is that the Organizing Committee had planned to have it deconstructed and sent to Rio for the next Summer Olympics in 2016. Proof of the Committee’s plan for sustainability!We ended up in the basketball arena – and its fantastic central air conditioning – not for basketball but for wheelchair rugby. I remember just the day before hearing BBC Radio broadcasters talk about how intense of a sport it is…and they were not lying! It has all the physical contact and speed of rugby/American football, but the players are all in wheelchairs. The metal chairs hitting one another was a sort of bumper cars on steroids; in some cases, the players would be knocked over and a crew would come onto the court to lift the chair/player back up again. Oh, and the best part of wheelchair rugby was the chance to support Team USA as they played (and beat!) France. Bad news is that they went on to the final and lost to our northern Canadian neighbors.

As wheelchair racing came to a close, it finally dawned upon my coursemates and I just how exhausted we were. Between an early start, a lot of time in the sun, walking the big park, and rooting for various teams, it was an extremely full Paralympic experience. Just as we were dragging our feet towards the exit, the sun was setting over the stadium – a perfect end to our Paralympic experience.

Long walk out -- what an amazing day!

London – Wrapping up!

2012-11-04T22:16:00.000+00:00

Still stateside...and still catching up, slowly!

After these recent trips to China, I’ve really started to appreciate flying. It is the one time where all of us are forced to turn off technology (no phones, no wifi – mostly!) and really take time with our thoughts. Time may continue passing, but it is really one of those experiences where the journey matters just as much as the destination. One year and a few days away from home and this is an optimal chance for me to reflect on the year in London. It is hard to believe that time has flown by so quickly!

I would be horribly dishonest with myself if I was to say that I’m excited about going home. Sure, I’m excited for the next steps, but I feel like my roots are in London now. That’s where “home” has become – the “home” alongside Rotarians, coursemates and other acquaintances. More simply, it was the home where I slept every night for the past twelve months. And it absolutely tore me to bits inside to have to say “arrivederci/zai jian/until next time” over the past week. But it is what it is; and I would suggest that I milked my London year for every possible experience and opportunity. It was quite possibly one of the best years of my life, one of the most challenging years of my life, but one that I will carry with me wherever I may go next in the world.

Tower of London

As soon as my dissertation was finished, I did some much needed sightseeing, exploring, and – in my mother’s words – pampering. I had been here all year and thoroughly wandered the key sights and attractions with one exception: the Tower of London. I booked a ticket online in advance and showed up on the day of just after opening; the crown jewel exhibit had very few people and it felt as though I had the property to explore on my own. It was a lovely crisp morning…the kind that invited a walk over to Borough market for a Monmouth Coffee and muffin when it was all said and done.

Kew Gardens

Other sightseeing excursions took me to the Kew Royal Botanical Gardens, Buckingham Palace, the Paralympics, Saatchi Gallery (modern art) and Spitalfields Market/Brick Lane. Kew is definitely a must see for anyone visiting London in the future and keen to go on a long walk. One of my coursemates mentioned that it may be worth the extra few pounds to buy a shuttle bus ticket for within the gardens; it didn’t look that big on the map (after all, I’ve been walking 5mi every Sunday!) and I decided to walk as much as possible at Kew. I would say that it paid off; I shook the jet lag early on, saw almost all of the gardens, and really enjoyed my day of quiet. It seemed to be the one place where there were less tourists and far more local families out to enjoy the weekend. The only downside was the proximity of the gardens to Heathrow airport. I have this habit of looking up whenever a plane flies overhead to figure out its make/airlines; and at Kew…it’s a bit tough to do as the planes are literally passing by every 2-3 minutes!

Buckingham Palace - front facade

Our visit to Buckingham Palace had been planned since the end of exams. It was really smart that we bought tickets online and so far in advance as they sell out quickly; however, we bought two more than needed as other friends’ travel plans fell into place. I asked if the tickets could be refunded and the answer was a very firm “no.” Upon inquiring as to what I should do with the tickets, the attendant told me that it was “up to me” but that they “could not know about it.” Was she telling me to sell them at the door to random passerby?! I am not cut out for anything semi-scalping in nature. My heart was racing and I got all hot and sweaty as my friends and I scoped out the crowds to see who we could find that looked dejected and in need of tickets for admission to the Palace in 10 minutes’ times. Eventually, we found a couple from Delhi that were interested in buying the tickets from me; I gave them quite a deal on the tickets – partially because a friend had already reimbursed me for one, but also in large part because I was paranoid that a couple in their 50s would not be allowed admission in on a ticket clearly marked “student.” (!!) Good news, however, as we all made it into the Palace and had a very enjoyable tour. The state rooms are all extremely ornate; the few crown jewels that had been borrowed from the Tower of London were also on display for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. It was fantastic to walk the corridors that had been used only a month earlier for the Queen’s Olympic cinematic debut with James Bond!

Stay tuned for [belated] stories and photos of the Paralympics :)

Indonesia (August)

2012-10-14T03:01:00.002+01:00

Hello all! I am Stateside (for now) and catching up on life as the next steps pan out. Look for blog updates spanning the past 1-2 months to trickle in over coming weeks.
Happy autumn in the meantime!

After returning from Indonesia, I spent just under a week continuing to work on my dissertation from my neighborhood Costa, particularly cutting down words and tightening up content. The paper was like a child this summer – I always thought about it, and would even wake up in the middle of the night worrying about it. Perhaps my week of “vacation” (from vacation?!) in Indonesia was a much needed break; I took a paper copy of the latest draft and only worked on the planes to/from Jakarta.

Indonesia was something else. I’m not sure really where to begin as I didn’t have any expectations besides that it would be brutally hot and humid. My coursemate, Anisa, took impeccably good care of me, making sure that I got the best experience possible in Jakarta and amidst the Ramadan/Eid festivities. As I had expected, she made sure that I ate really well and got to sample all the local fare. Indonesian food was very much a blend of Indian and Malaysian foods with hints of Chinese here and there. There would be some spicy dishes, but an equal number of dishes flavored to be sweeter with coconut milk and the like.

As far as sights and places of interest in/around Jakarta, I was absolutely blown away by how many malls there are in Jakarta. Anisa mentioned something like 40+ malls in the city – and you could find every store under the sun, UK and US brands alike! She took me to a few different malls to do souvenir shopping; I always particularly liked the stores of local designers and locally made products. While food was cheap, clothing was definitely much more on par with US/UK standards. The downside to all the malls and consumerism, as became clear quite quickly, was the lack of an Indonesian “identity” or “consciousness” in Jakarta. The younger generations were so open to all things non-Indonesian that they were forgetting the roots of their own society/culture. But Anisa tried to make sure that I was seeing the sights and appreciating the local history.

On one of my earlier days in Jakarta we went to Taman Mini Indonesia Park. It was essentially a cultural park, where you could walk around and see the different building styles of the different ethnic groups scattered across the Indonesian territory. The buildings housed all sorts of artifacts – from clothing and jewelry, to boats and hunting tools. As to be expected, I really enjoyed seeing the different traditional garments (a lot of batiks) with their embroidery and embellishments.

So something well worth mentioning about Indonesia: like the UK (and Australia, Japan etc.)…they drive on the opposite side of the road! Anisa was my chauffer for the week, an absolute pro at driving in the crazy Jakarta traffic. It was so oddly familiar to be back on the left side (as passenger) that it was definitely the only thing I was really used to for the week :) On another one of our day-long excursions, we went into the old part of town to explore the area once colonized by the Dutch. Anisa had never been to that side of town, oddly enough. But as soon as I we drove through town to the former colonial turf, it was very clear why. There was a clear divide in the quality of life (and hygiene/cleanliness to go with) and definitely not much to do besides wandering around the market on the square. It was nevertheless neat to see the train station, to see the various vendors and food carts sell their fares. The rides for children, rather than being powered by generators, were all much smaller but powered by pedal. So the vendor could operate his business all day, and then bike home with the mini-carousel/ferris wheel at the end of the day. Quite clever if you ask me!

Perhaps the highlight of my Indonesia trip was two full days we spent at a small island in the Thousand Island Chain to the north of Jakarta. Amidst the dissertation and after a very full year in London, my friends teased that I couldn’t pull back and “do nothing” for a few days. This was my chance to prove them wrong! Anisa and I booked the island, a speedboat out, cottage, and all meals for just over $100/pp, a definite bang-for-the-buck if anyone anticipates heading to Indonesia soon and wants an alternative to Bali.

On our departure morning, we left bright and early to catch the tide going in the right direction. The farther out from Jakarta we got, the clearer (cleaner) the water. We sped by island after island, some privately-owned whilst others were bought by various resorts or travel companies. After a 45min boat ride, we slowed down and approached a long, skinny island for our final destination.

It turned out to be a stay unlike anything I’ve ever done. Family vacations have, for instance, largely been to cooler climates where we don’t have to sit around on beaches. My family just doesn’t do well having to sit and do nothing! I would much rather explore, wander side-streets etc. So you can imagine my dilemma when confronted with this tiny island space for 2 days!

Obviously, being disconnected and having to relax turned out really well…as I returned to Jakarta, China and London raving about my time on the island and how nice of a “break” it was. Picture proof of me “doing nothing” was taken, enough to satisfy the worrying friends back in London. We sat in the sun, talked (as girls tend to do!), and read brainless (non-academic) books for two days. There was plenty of snorkeling, swimming, and sun-bathing too. Just below the equator, I learned an important lesson about reapplying sunscreen, even if it is SPF100!

If I have the chance to go back to Indonesia, I would definitely go back. There is a lot more culture and scenery to appreciate than what I had time for in a quick August week. Maybe future work related to the World Bank, ASEAN or the ICRC could take me back…but until then, I’ll just keep enjoying the pictures from the island and all the good memories in Jakarta :)

P.S. – No pictures in this post as all Indonesia pictures are on my Shutterfly account!

Xi'an

2012-09-16T01:03:00.001+01:00

After we survived the typhoon and en suite waterfall – which my parents have since informed me was (finally!) fixed – it was time to get out of Suzhou and any other potential typhoons. My dad’s work has him jumping up to Xi’an every other week, or thereabouts. I am sure it is tiring, and the hotel staff now know him by name, but it is one of my favorite cities in all of China…so no qualms from me in heading up to accompany him post-typhoon.

We arrived in Xi’an on August 10^th (my dad’s birthday) and had the afternoon to kill before the work day was finished and we could be reunited for dinner. Two of our younger hosts took us to Hanyang Ling/Hanyang tombs/Tomb of Emperor Jingdi and his consort, Empress Wang. The tomb itself looks much like the Native American mounds that we have in southern Illinois, but underneath it – the museum itself – was a completely different story! I’ve been to the Terra Cotta Soldiers twice now (I think) and am always impressed by the craftsmanship; the faces are all different and the detail is quite magnificent. But the artifacts at Hanyang were older, just as detailed, and greater in number. Granted a lot of the Terra Cotta Soldiers and other artifacts at that site remain to be discovered, but I really enjoyed scooting along the see-through glass floors in my shoe covers to see all the artifacts beneath. There were people, horses, carriages, pottery, whole animal skeletons – you name it, they had it!

That evening we joined my dad for dinner with some of his colleagues at a restaurant serving traditional Shaanxi/Xi’an cuisine. I absolutely love Xi’an food. I had to play translator that night – and in all other meals with the colleagues – so my ability to consume good eats was significantly hampered. But the golden crispy chicken, Xi’an hamburger sliders (think White Castle burgers, American friends), red date soup (too much is a bad thing!) will forever remain in my heart and stomach. SUCH GOOD FOOD. On a seemingly irrelevant tangent, two of my coursemates here in London went to a Taiwanese restaurant I introduced them to in Chinatown…without moi! They ultimately said that the food was not nearly as good as when we went and I ordered in Chinese. So the fact of the matter is that you have to know what to order and how to order it in order to do Chinese food justice. This was definitely true in Xi’an, so it was a good thing we had such generous hosts :)

What I thought was going to be a relatively low-key weekend began with good food and carried on to the colleague’s home with fruit, tea and lots more conversation. Talk about party animals! It really did matter that we were out late, however, as the plan the next day was to hit up to other must-sees within the province: the Huangdi Mausoleum and Hukou waterfalls. We had a lot of driving cut out for us, but as my dad often says, it was a day that was more about the journey than the destination.

After a big breakfast – to make up for what I didn’t eat at dinner, of course – we headed out the door somewhere in the 7am hour. Our route essentially took us across a swath of land stretching from Xi’an to Yan’an, where Mao was based as the Communist party gained momentum in its earlier years. Perhaps ninety minutes-ish after departure, we arrived at the Huangdi Mausoleum, aware that few foreigners tended to stray as far as we had due to the number of stares we were getting. The mausoleum would be just another mausoleum to anyone unfamiliar with the role of Huangdi in China’s history, so I must necessarily position the rest of this paragraph within a larger historical context JSometimes referred to as the “Yellow Emperor” in English, he ruled in the late Warring States (divided China; all sorts of feudal lords vying for power) and into the early Han dynasty (~2696-2598BCE). He is traditionally regarded as the initiator of Chinese civilization and is said to be the ancestor of all “huaxia” or Chinese people…hence a visit to his mausoleum carried all the implications of a Chinese pilgrimage.

View of the Mausoleum - hill in back is where the Emperor and relics are all buried (and remain to be excavated)

At the mausoleum, we wandered through a park area and temple, all in memory and homage to Huangdi. He is supposedly buried within the hill on the property, a hill that will likely remain untouched. The Chinese seem to be particularly superstitious when it comes to digging up people’s graves – even if for historical or archeological purposes – the Qin emperor’s tomb (the guy with the Terra Cotta Soldiers) is supporting proof as it, too, remains untouched.

Trek up to the Mausoleum

Like Suzhou, the heat in Xi’an was a key factor in our adventures. We were moving slowly, sweating like pigs, and consuming liters of water per day. The heat got the better of us and we wrapped up at the Mausoleum just after national lunch time (11:30am). Before the next few hours in the car, we had to find a place to eat. When in Shaanxi, always opt for noodles over rice. Our driver and host du jour picked a local noodle place off the main street. With sub-par (but still somewhat acceptable) hygiene standards, it is not a hole-in-the-wall place my parents would have typically picked…but something like I would easily have eaten at during my study abroad year. It was all about the “China experience” then. Now it is all about keeping my stomach in one piece. My favorite bit was its location next to the local pharmacy. The Chinese have this mindset that an IV-drip fixes any and all problems; they get drips for colds and apparently for the heat as well. True love is carrying your partners IV-bag out of the pharmacy and all throughout the walk home. Another one of those “only in China” moments, accompanied by a slight cringe.

Inside the Mausoleum/site marker

Our drive to the Hukou waterfalls was quite memorable. The road was clearly new – big, empty, and super smooth. Sometimes an authoritarian government is terribly efficient at getting things built, not a bad deal at all. Our driver started to get tired and switched the music on; we shuffled through instrumental pieces and remakes of classical hits to Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys. It was such an odd juxtaposition to be racing through the Shaanxi countryside, in a US-made van, listening to pop hits from ten years ago. Again, another “only in China” moment. We finally got to the waterfalls on the border with Shanxi province. It was this silty brown color – apparently golden in the right light – and raced by in front of us. There was life-saving equipment in case someone fell in (unlikely to help, I may add…) and men equipped with whistles for when people strayed too close to the edge.

Life-saving equipment at Hukou

My favorite part of the Hukou waterfalls excursion was this absolutely precious little girl that came up to talk to me. Like something straight from a movie, she grabbed the hem of my shorts and told me (first in the regional dialect) that she had something to tell me. Upon my asking, she then informed me that she could speak my language too. My heart melted. This little girl had guts that full-grown, well-educated Chinese people often lacked – the guts to speak English. She very confidently said, “My name is [xxxx]” to me and a crowd of eager onlookers. The best part was the look of pure jubilation that spread onto her face after she successfully spoke to the foreigner. Her father said that they were from one of the nearby villages; she was probably going to be the only kid in school this fall that spoke to or saw a foreigner over the summer holidays! In departing the waterfalls, we had to cross into Shanxi province for gasoline – whoohoo a new province for this kid! – and trekked all the way back to Xi’an by 7pm.

At Hukou Waterfalls with Dad

Cold Xi'an flour noodles

Our last day in Xi’an was obviously cut a bit shorter by our later afternoon/early evening flight back to Shanghai. But that did not impact our schedule too badly and we still tried to fit in a few more sights and activities. After a solid breakfast and very good conversation with some of our hosts, we were picked up by the driver’s son. My dad joked that it was about the journey rather than the destination and I do not disagree. The driver’s son was extremely keen to meet foreigners – especially a Chinese-speaking one just about his age it seemed – and he was very talkative and hospitable throughout the day. For those not used to Chinese hospitality, it would have easily seemed like too much. We went to the Muslim Quarter (favorite part of town!!!!!!!) and the driver’s son was literally asking every five feet if we wanted to try this or eat that. At one point I think one of us slipped up and said yes; before we knew it, the good had been paid for by the driver’s son and we had a whole bag of dates or whatever the item of the moment was. We indulged in all of my favorites – or at least I indulged in all my favorites – the sweets made from big dates and filled with flavored pastes, the noodles, the breads. I get my stomach all worked up just thinking about it! If I ever have the chance to live in Xi’an, I can guarantee that I will frequent the Muslim Quarter as it remains a fabulous spot for people-watching and for eating.

Veggie/meat cakes in the Muslim Quarter

From the Muslim Quarter, the driver’s son whisked us to Famen temple on the outskirts of town. Famen temple is one of the “must sees” of Xi’an and well worth the hour’s drive. What is interesting to note is the fact that there are two sections of the temple facility. When you arrive and enter the venue, you are immediately overwhelmed by these gargantuan Buddhist sculptures – not just Buddhas, but the lucky knots, big lotuses, elephants etc. At the end of a half-mile or so stretch of road-sized pedestrian pathway lies some other temple-looking building. But be ye not fooled as these are the newer government built facilities; they are temple-looking and maybe even temple-like in their purpose, but the real temple is hidden off to the side. Had we not followed the tourist groups, we may have overlooked the original temple completely!

Government-built temple facilities

Marked by a big pagoda, Famen Temple is important as it holds the thumb(s) of Buddha. If you’re looking at the thumb, they say the joints on display are the lower-half of the thumb. They are encased and watched closely by monks, but you are still allowed to get quite close and examine or pray in front of the thumb. Whichever Buddha’s thumbs they were…he sure had hefty sized hands! There was also a museum of other religious relics on site, but we were quickly running out of time as our departure time drew steadily nearer. Alas, the museum will either wait for my next trip or one of you can go on my behalf and tell me all about it!

Famen Temple - relic in bottom of pagoda!

The weekend in Xi’an went by all too quickly, but as with any other excursion to the city, I loved absolutely every moment of it. It was nice to be with my parents for a weekend away, particularly to see my dad take some time to relax beyond work and all his meetings. It was nice to re-celebrate birthdays in non-typhoon conditions in China’s “Midwest.” :)

Suzhou: Family time and typhoons

2012-08-28T21:22:00.005+01:00

I am so happy that my dissertation writing and summer schedule allowed for time with my parents in Suzhou. Costa Coffee became one of my hang-outs as the writing process continued, but of course there was time for fun and good food too :)My dad always teases that I can eat my way through China – minus the occasional rumblings from sub-par hygiene standards, I really do think that he is right!

Dunkin Donuts: Banana and Dried Pork + Seaweed flavors

Perhaps I will just begin with a bit on food then. When I first came to Mainland China in 2008, western food options were limited to anything at the foreign-name hotels as well as franchises of McDonalds, Starbucks and Pizza Hut (the latter sit-down fine dining in the PRC, too!). Due largely in part to the expatriate community in which my parents live, but also as a result of just how much China has “opened up,” almost any food item or cuisine can be readily found in the bigger coastal cities. Other franchises include Dominos, Papa Johns, Subway, Baskin Robbins, Dunkin Donuts, Carls Jr., Dairy Queen, Coldstone Creamery etc. There isn’t nearly as much diversity as in London per se, but the fact that I can have bagels for breakfast warms my American heart. In reality, however, I tend to steer clear of Western foods for the local fare – real Chinese food is hardly anything like Chinatown!

Aside from eating my way through Suzhou – and my parents’ kitchen cupboards, or so they say – we did take breaks from my dissertation and my dad’s busy schedule to bum around town. Sometimes the best way to spend time with loved ones is simply talking over a coffee, or relaxing at home (in the AC!) together. The heat and humidity of Suzhou cannot and should not be understated; most days were in the low 30s (Celsius)/mid-90s (Fahrenheit) with insane humidity. It’s the kind of humidity where one walks outside and instantly starts to perspire as it feels as though you are walking through gelatin rather than air.

Streets of Dongshan village

One weekend we went to Dongshan (East Mountain) in Tai Hu (Lake Tai). Tai Hu has a reputation for being one of the most polluted lakes in the PRC – they’ve undertaken a huge clean-up effort, as only two summers ago the entire lake was green (really!). A lot of algae remains, but progress to date was clear. Dongshan is an island in the lake, but also a populated community. You can walk through the village and stop into different homes (museums) or into temples. It is by no means a small island; driving from the first community to the en site temple/nunnery, for instance, did still need our car and driver! I really enjoyed our excursion to Tai Hu as it felt like we had entered some sort of parallel Chinese universe. Rather than being as busy and loud as where my parents are living, it was quiet and full of that ‘rural’ feel…similar to home in the states, oddly enough.


Traditional garden - lilies in bloom - at Dongshan

In Suzhou, like in London, there were some serious weather issues. I’m not sure if I unintentionally brought the miserable weather with me or what, but Suzhou was hit with no less than three typhoons during my month-long stay. One of the more exciting typhoons happened to make landfall on my birthday – what a present! Typhoons tend to hit Shanghai and then sweep inland, but this particular typhoon had cut across from the southeast, so it was still quite strong when it finally reached Suzhou. It poured the entire day (that’s putting it a bit lightly too…) and winds whistled outside our apartment on the 12^th floor. As I was starting to get a bit stir-crazy between having to stay at home and only working on my dissertation, our driver came back to save the day and take me and my mom to the mall. From our windows we apparently did not have a full view of just how serious a typhoon it was – our poor driver probably thought we were crazy for having him take us shopping amidst downed trees, upturned bus-signs, and continued rain! Alas, we made it to the mall in on piece and did some clothes shopping for a change of pace :)

8/8 Typhoon

Even more exciting than driving in the typhoon was the leak that happened that same night around 10:30pm. My dad walks into our office and says “kids, we have a problem” – never a good phrase from him! As my mom and I rush to his side, we see water streaming out from around the light fixtures onto the office table (where a laptop had been moments before). Recovering from the initial shock of a leak from above on the 12^th floor (of 19 floors), we all raced to move furniture, get buckets, and call the management. Until the management came to look at the leak, we had to keep switching mixing bowls as there was really a lot of water, coming from around not one but two lights. By midnight, we have a hole in our ceiling – big enough for a Chinese person to poke his head up and attempt to find the leak – and a huge garbage bin on our soaked carpet to continue to collect the typhoon rainwater.

I retell this typhoon drama only because it is a classic example of how things (don’t) work in China. In the next few days, we had group after group – of architects, plumbers, painters, management – coming through to try and figure out exactly the cause and who is responsible for the leak (if anyone). The morning after, it was clear that the hillbillies in the apartment up above us had left a window open; upon investigation, they had indeed left for vacation in the southwest and their maid had not closed the window. Whoops? They have since been replacing their central air conditioning system and remain tight-lipped about the leak. My favorite group of visitors included the property management – it was a group of five or six of them, one guy on a ladder who would climb up it, look around in the hole, climb down the ladder, and then move to a different spot to re-examine based upon the demands of the management team. It reminded me of the pictures on the internet of DPRK leaders “pointing at things.” The management also decided that they would go onto the balcony to see if perhaps the outside drain pipe was clogged…on their way back in, the sliding door wouldn’t closed, so one of them used force and ultimately broke the door. Always smart, right?! While three small holes in the building were ultimately found, I for one do not think they are sufficient in accounting for the large amount of water our apartment took on that night. The upstairs tenants remain prime suspects, but as with many things, to admit to making a mistake would be a loss of face…as well as a big repairs bill!

Post-waterfall, the hole in the ceiling

Oftentimes, as in this case, progress requires a bit (a lot) of coercive diplomacy. When I left for London, we had a patched ceiling, but without carpeting the office space was still off-limits. So long as no one is willing to pay and our landlord continues to dig his heels in the ground, it is very likely that the battle will continue.

More on my month back in China soon!

London 2012

2012-08-15T04:07:00.001+01:00

With the Olympics now officially over, it is probably about time that I post an update with my own Olympic experiences. My usual delays in posting can be likened to NBC's tape-delayed coverage of everything that happened in London. A poor business decision, in my opinion, when the time difference to the UK was negligible!

Technically, I was only in London for the first few (three) days of the Olympics before coming to London. But the charged atmosphere and bits of various Olympic festivities were enough for me to experience how starkly different London was from my experiences in Beijing four years ago. I'll begin with the torch relay. In the week leading up to the opening ceremonies, the torch covered all corners of London. It came to Angel/Islington early one morning, so a friend and I left our flat early and hiked up the hill - only to stop for coffee - to wait alongside the main road for the torch. In China the torch went down the main streets of the city, but the biggest difference was that fences lined the street and the roads running perpendicular to the torch relay route were closed off for at least the length of one block or two. Essentially, in Beijing, only state-endorsed cheerleaders were allowed to see the torch relay up close and personal. As my pictures from this year's relay show, however, the only thing keeping me from the torch was the arm of a Met police officer!

From what I have heard and read online, there has been a lot of mixed reactions to both the opening and closing ceremonies. While I did not see the closing ceremonies - middle of the night in China - the opening ceremonies were, in my opinion, exquisitely done and quite representative of everything that has become so endearing to me as 'quintessentially British.' I would commend all those involved for pulling off this year's best-kept secret, and for using the ceremonies as a chance to showcase the strengths of the country...as well as current political issues (the NHS bit, for those of you back home). And really, who didn't laugh at the 007 skit or Mr. Bean's shenanigans? I watched that night from a sports cafe in central London, just off of the streets filled with flags for all the countries participating. It was a hopping place to witness that night's events -- and quite a sight to behold as the filled venue cheered on Team GB at the end of the parade of nations.

For me Beijing and the bits of London were two completely different experiences, such that they are unworthy of being compared to one another. It was fun to be in London as the games got started -- and I'm looking forward to returning to see some Paralympic football in the Olympic Park at the start of September :)

All is well in the Middle Kingdom as work on my dissertation continues. I have finally brought the text below the word limit and I can leave for a vacation in Indonesia tomorrow feeling content in all the progress made...and knowing much time still remains before I submit!

June/July loose ends

2012-08-03T01:35:00.002+01:00

The summer months have flown by and I’m now trying to catch up on blog posts from…China! Back when I bought my tickets in the spring, everyone that was anyone seemed to be predicting the Olympics as wreaking havoc upon the city. Millions of extra travelers were anticipated per day on the tube/bus system; Russell Square near to SOAS was anticipated to host 5000 media folk en route to various Olympic venues. I will touch upon the Olympic festivities in time, but it is worth saying here and now that nothing was nearly as busy as everyone made it seem it would be! I think London/Londoners were preparing for the worst (some apocalyptic form of the Olympics) and it really didn’t start off all that badly.

Olympic Park - before the action commenced

Neasden Temple

So, besides the usual dissertation excitement, the past few months have seen a growth in my social life and continued explorations of London’s boroughs and backstreets. With a close Indian friend, a group of the three of us took an excursion to Neasden to visit Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, aka Mandir or the Neasden Temple. As the largest Hindu temple outside of India, it was an absolutely fascinating experience to go in, see people worshiping, and have the opportunity to admire the fantastic architecture. If my memory serves me correctly, the marble is all from Bulgaria but it was shipped back to India, carved, and then shipped back to north London to be pieced together in the 1990s. I was floored by the magnificence of the architecture – amidst these neighborhoods is a massive, luminescent white temple complete with pinnacles, pillars, and quite the staircase! It was even better to have a tour guide on the inside, as we got the explanation and full stories for all the gods inside the temple. For those of you that haven’t been to India/inside a Hindu temple, you do have to take your shoes off and leave them at the entrance, wandering the [cold] marble floors in bare feet. My dad was joking that in his own travels in India, he only wore cheap shoes when he knew he would visit a temple as shoes can disappear quite easily – fortunately, that was not the case in London! From the temple, we went to a nearby Indian grocery and sweets shop; my coursemate picked out some of her favorites and we relocated to a nearby McDonalds to sample them. Some of them were extremely sweet, soaking in all sorts of different high fructose corn syrups…but delicious nonetheless J

Ready for lobster!

Shortly thereafter, my small group of friends gathered at a Chelsea restaurant (the Big Easy – American food!) to celebrate the 4^thof July and simultaneously see off one of our peers before her return to Indonesia. It was a bit of an indulgence for me; having not been back to the US for 10 months and counting, I saw lobster on the menu (15gbp!) and red velvet cake… need I say more? It was excellent and highly recommended to anyone looking for sea critters imported from New England, all you can eat ribs and other ‘merican fare.

The Prime Meridian

The next weekend – after another 5 days spent living in various London libraries and dodging raindrops – I took a full day off (!!) to explore first Greenwich and then the river near to the London City airport. I realize how random of a location the latter may sound, but a good Hong Kongese friend was participating in traditional dragonboat races that same day and I wanted to go along, watch, and cheer his boat to victory (or something close to it!). I arrived to Greenwich and essentially just meandered around town and through the market as the area was relatively quiet. It was still in the morning, the perfect excuse to sit down with a cup of coffee and wait for things to come to life a bit more. Shortly thereafter, I hiked up the hills of Greenwich Park to the observatory to see the one and only GMT line. A large chunk of the park was closed off as it will host the equestrian events for the Olympics…but, at that point (with 20ish days to go) there was a lot of work still to go. Based on events televised as I was leaving London, however, it would seem that everything got finished on time!

View across Greenwich Park

Dragoboat races at City Airport

As it is summer and there is a lot going on around the city, there have been plenty of opportunities for all sorts of cultural and musical activities. Perhaps one of the more well-known is the BBC Proms classical music festival. Having been essentially raised on classical music (and oldies) by my parents (dad), it was hard to turn down 5GBP tickets to sit on the floor or stand on the balcony of the Royal Albert Hall to see big names playing well-known classical pieces. While “prom” is short for promenade concert – implying one could stroll around outdoors while the orchestra played – in the context of the Royal Albert Hall, it refers to the standing areas with lower prices. Some “promenaders” were clear die-hards as they had colonized territory along the balcony or on the ground floor, complete with picnics and their own bottles of wine. My friend I and were much more low-key; as we were able to secure space along the upper balcony, we stood and listened just until after the main act played the Rachmaninoff piece we had been so eager to hear!

Coursemates and the birthday boy

The final event with coursemates for the month was a birthday dinner at an Argentinian steak house near to Tower Bridge and the Mayor’s office. It was timed so well that we were able to see some of the journalists that had recently arrived in town filming their clips for the nightly news in their home countries with the bridge as the backdrop. By the time that we emerged from the restaurant, the lights had turned off and the Olympic rings had been lifted; creating a canvas upon which an Olympic light show started.

Tower Bridge a la Olympic spirit

Rotary - Kids Day Out

2012-07-22T21:10:00.002+01:00

Hello, friends!
Despite seemingly disappearing off the grid, I am still very much alive and well in London. A lot of rain has been replaced today by abundant sunshine and warmer temperatures; it promises to stick around for the start of the Olympics, too.

Jumping back to June, I figure it is worth carrying along with this game of catch-up in my blog. Mainly because most recently I've just been enjoying time with friends, the occasional eventful outing, but otherwise spending a majority of my time in the library reading/researching/writing my dissertation.

After working up an appetite jumping around

So, Rotary's Kids Day out! Almost immediately after I returned from Geneva, I headed to the north part of town to connect with the (then) club President and help out at a day of service. I was really looking forward to Kids Day out as it is an initiative specific to Rotary UK -- and I was definitely not disappointed. The concept of Kids Day Out is easy enough, Rotarians take disadvantaged or disabled schoolchildren out for the day somewhere. Our adventure had us going to Paradise Park, a wildlife center filled with playground equipment. We had a group of 12 or so schoolkids and I kind of just followed along through the park with them, looking at the penguins and monkeys (the most popular) and cringing at the smell of the farm animals exhibit. They were a high energy bunch of kids, but what made me most happy was seeing them happy. I think it is absolutely fantastic that Rotary clubs in the UK are able to set aside a bit of their budget each year for a service project that gives kids an opportunity to go somewhere new and exciting. Their enthusiasm was contagious and I left after lunch for London full of so much joy and gratitude for the day.

Packing (and picking) lunches

For me it was a learning opportunity as well. I got to hear from the teachers about some of the challenges within their district (in terms of accommodating disadvantaged/disabled students). The truth is, however, that the challenges of education systems in the UK don't differ all that much from those in the US or elsewhere. Beyond the time at Paradise Park, the then-Club President took me along to see one of the housing complexes he designed as an architect. They were still working on brickwork - a bit hard in all the rain! - but I was very impressed by the quality of the homes. Lots of natural light, open spaces, but very practically-sized and reasonably-priced.

The whole group: Rotarians, schoolchildren and teachers

The one definite "downer," both at about the time of Kids Day Out and throughout the summer so far has been saying goodbye to coursemates. Whether they are moving back home or chasing professional aspirations elsewhere in the world, saying goodbye is always bittersweet. I try really hard to replace "goodbye" with "see you soon" or something less permanent sounding! It is definitely reassuring to know that the amazing connections and friendships made this year will not be readily lost!

More to come soon...

Geneva

2012-06-23T21:06:00.002+01:00

It took a skype call with my Mom to realize that I have once again neglected blog updates. I am in good company, however, as her blog from China is still covering Chinese New Year. Unlike my mother, however, I cannot blame infrequent updates on slow internet speeds in developing countries! C'est la vie.

Paris stopover -- outside Gare du Lyon

So - where were we? I do believe I had just returned from Iceland (at the very end of May) and everything was gearing up for our course trip to Geneva. The final few days were hectic; I was itching to work on dissertation research, but there were lots of logistical things that had to get out of the way for the trip. But as soon as I hopped on the Eurostar early one Sunday for Paris, all the prep work was (finally) replaced with excitement. It was not my first time to Switzerland (nor to Paris) but it was my first time to Geneva -- and after what seemed to have been weeks of grey and rain in London, we could have hardly chosen a better time to leave!

To put things in context, I left London the same day as the river pageant for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. So while everyone here that camped out along the Thames was battling miserable cold, strong winds, and - oh yes - rain, I was enjoying the relative warmth of both Paris and Geneva. The good weather was a reoccurring theme of the Geneva trip, just fyi :)

The view on leaving the UN...

Quite an intimidating building!

So very much happened in such a quick six days on the ground in Geneva that I am at a loss where exactly I should begin. As much as I would love to focus on all the exciting sites we explored in our two afternoons and evenings off, it is perhaps appropriate that I begin with the more academic stuff...since, after all, it was a trip for my MA in International Studies & Diplomacy! We had security passes for the UN and were essentially allowed to come and go as we pleased -- exploring the nooks and crannies of the huge facilities, peering in on committee meetings/hearings etc. They were visitor passes so its not like we were completely off the radar! Our meetings were based primarily in the UN library, where representatives from the UN Research Institute for Social Development, WTO, World Intellectual Property Organization, UN Conference on Trade and Development, UN Peacekeeping Operations and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights came to us with presentations. Oftentimes they presented very "romanticized" pictures of either the UN or their occupation; the Q&A tended to be the most insightful as we were really able to prod the representatives to present the reality of their jobs or opinions on key contemporary issues. Some of the sessions were not located at the library - fortunately meaning a change of scenery! - and we ventured to other international organizations nearby, like the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, WHO, and ICRC (Red Cross). At the end of our trip, a few of us also spent the final morning at the UK Permanent Mission to the United Nations. Whilst we didn't get to see exactly how they operate on the ground, we heard from several of their top employees (e.g., the Deputy Head himself!) how they work -- and how similar the workings of the UK mission are similar to other great powers, namely the US and other European countries. All things said and done, it was a very insightful week. There was a lot of networking, a lot of opportunities to "press flesh" and get our names out there. But for me it was a really good chance to hear about potential career paths and to get a better understanding of what I would (or would not) like to spend my life doing after things at SOAS wrap up.

View from the top of the UN towards town, Lake Geneva

Aside from all the sessions, what made the trip all the more enjoyable was spending so much time alongside a chunk of my coursemates. The trip is offered twice each year to CISD students - once in the depths of Geneva's winter (February) and once at the end of the year (June). The group that goes in February tends to be bigger; so our smaller size of 20ish students meant that we not only stayed in slightly better, more centrally located accommodations, but that we also got to know one another really, really well. It was a bit scary just how easily we figured some of our peers out -- in close quarters and spending every waking moment together can do that! But it was a really positive, fun experience...especially when we were not in the sessions at the UN and had the time to explore Geneva and soak up the sunshine :)

Boats on the lake -- such nice weather, n'est pas?!

Post-Lebanese food...before the baklava came!

Geneva is a very family-oriented city. And aside from the UN and other international organizations, finance is the next biggest industry. There were familiar banks lining the streets of downtown, as there were also some very obscure investment banks from (largely) the Middle East. Occasionally I would complain about the high costs of living in London; but it has got nothing on Geneva. Geneva prices are London +40% (or thereabouts). So while the exchange rate (USD to Swiss Franc) is just shy of 1 to 1, the exchange rate did not work in my favor. Again, such as life!

Geneva is pretty clearly divided between "old town" and "new town." The old part sprawls across the hillside; and in the center lies the St Pierre Cathedral. On our first afternoon off, we walked up the hills to the cathedral...and then walked all the stairs to climb both the North and South towers. The panoramic view was most definitely worth it :)

St Pierre Cathedral towers

View from the top of St Pierre Cathedral

Between our two afternoons off, we walked a large chunk of the lakefront within the city limits. Geneva has got this huge fountain ("Jet d'eau" -- so clever) and we walked through the fountain in an attempt to beat the heat one day as well. It really is a very pretty city, made even prettier by the sunny, warm, non-London weather!

With my coursemate/roommate, Paeng, in front of jet d'eau

I have most certainly left details about Geneva out; so do feel free to drop me a line and ask more questions. The plan is to get Geneva photos up on my Shutterfly account soon, but for now, the ones posted herein will have to suffice. And after I get back to the States and am lacking other things to do, a selection of photos will ultimately end up on Facebook as well :)

More to come sooner rather than later -- I hope! For those of you in 90F and sun this weekend, enjoy it. Let's just say that I am still wearing a jacket in London.......

Iceland: Days 4 & 5

2012-06-10T07:35:00.002+01:00

My final full day in Iceland and I planned for an excursion to the so-called “Golden Circle” sights. It is apparently the best of the best as it is a triangular route that allows one to see the finest features of the Icelandic landscape. The weather was not exactly cooperative, however, and by the time I returned to Reykjavik around 6pm I was soaked completely to the bone and having to dive under blankets to warm back up again before dinner.

Caldera

The first stop on my Golden Circle route was a caldera, thecaldera apparently. It reminded me a bit of Crater Lake in Oregon (although a crater and a caldera are not the same! see here), but was significantly smaller in size.

Baby Gulfoss

From the caldera, I moved on to Gulfoss by route of baby Gulfoss. Anything ending in “foss” in Icelandic is a waterfall. The smaller waterfalls featured a bridge for the salmon to jump up when heading to smaller streams to hatch; Gulfoss itself a result of the separation of the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates gradually moving apart. Gulfoss was just as impressive as Niagra Falls – apparently on a clear day the sun glints of the silt-filled waters and the waterfall becomes more golden in appearance. I asked a German to help me take a picture (proof that I was there, too!) and he joked that I looked like I walked through the waterfall from all the rain. You can be the judge of his comment.

Survival at its finest -- soaked but content

How cute -- a baby geyser :)

The second to last stop on the Golden Circle (triangle!) was a geyser, the geyser that gave the name to all other geysers. This is really only because the Icelandic geysertranslates well. I must admit that it was a bit anti-climatic after having seen geysers etc. at Yellowstone, but still very much worth the visit. And the constant downpour didn’t exactly make hiking around any more enjoyable.

Minding the gap between tectonic plates

One final stop before returning to Reykjavik had me cross tectonic plates, from Eurasia to North America and back again. Stepping onto the North American plate was the closest I have been to home since I left last September! In between the plates – which move apart at a rate of 1 inch/year – was a lovely crystal clear blue water. If one throws a coin in, and can successfully watch it fall all the way to the bottom, then supposedly all one’s dreams will come true. I did not opt to try…but rather, speculated upon the brave few that don scuba gear to scoop out the vast amount of coins at the bottom!

I ended my day speaking with a local about just how bad things are in Iceland post-2008. Since the economic collapse and state of emergency, loans have increased at around 16% interest per year. Iceland’s debt is dispersed mostly between the UK, Denmark and Norway. The UK for one has frozen the island’s credit, but doing so required placing the country alongside countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. At least there is hope that Iceland will be able to repay the UK in the next 20 years or so. There were also still plenty of signs that the recession hit pretty hard, as homes/property on the outskirts of Reykjavik had been built up but hardly inhabited.

On my last day in Reykjavik – really my last morning in Reykjavik – I hauled my stuff to the bus terminal at 5am and proceeded to make my way to the airport. With a very grey morning, I didn’t mind having to leave to return to London. I think I had enough quiet and nature that the hustle and bustle of the city (plus research for my dissertation) were looked upon quite favorably. With the exception of a very curious Chinese man at Victoria’s Secret in the airport shopping area, it was an uneventful airport stay and a smooth trip back to London.

All in all, Iceland was a very interesting trip. I would argue that there is nowhere else quite like Iceland – and I’m glad I had the chance to visit!

Next set of posts: back in London; a week's study tour in Geneva!

Iceland: Day 3

2012-06-10T07:21:00.003+01:00

Thor or Christ?

My plans for the day had me beginning at the National Museum of Iceland, largely in part because – according to Wikitravel – admission is waived on Wednesdays. After 2008, things changed as tough times call for tougher measures. I walked to the museum and arrived unnecessarily early, taking a quick detour through the University of Iceland campus and along the coastline. With so few trees, the wind whipped across the coastline, far worse than the “Windy City” of Chicago near my own hometown. When I finally got into the museum, I ultimately spent a better part of the day inside as there was quite a lot to see and learn about. Iceland underwent a transformation from paganism to Christianity, courtesy of the Norwegian and later Danish kings. But the roots remain, as one of the prized artifacts can be interpreted as either Thor or Christ. I guess it is an inkblot test of sorts?

One of the exhibits that was particularly good focused on the building styles. As there aren’t exactly an abundance of options, traditional Icelandic homes were built into the ground with stone foundations, grass lining the walls/roof (insulation materials), and a bit of wood here or there for structure. Of course there were also lots of artifacts carved of whale bones, especially drinking horns. With winters as cold and as dark as they are, I can imagine that drinking becomes a popular hobby in certain months. There was also an exhibition focusing on the 1972 Cold War-era chess championship between US and Soviet players. Some of you as readers will well-remember the matches, but I was not yet around to watch such spectacles unfold. The museum owned one of the chessboards that was used, as well as various chess championship memorabilia. The US chess player later became an Icelandic citizen, dying in Reykjavik but leaving a chess legacy behind so to speak. One final exhibit focused on Icelandic fashion, from traditional embroidery to 20^th and 21^st century fashion everything was locally made. Perhaps all the higher costs in Iceland really just reflect the reality of things then.

Cold War-era (1972, I think!) Chess Championship memorabilia

Icelandic fashion exhibit -- 100% local

Knowing that I was going to a Rotary meeting in the evening, I took a quieter afternoon of window shopping and reading in a coffee shop. The walk to the Rotary meeting was relatively uneventful – unless you count literally being swept off my feet by the wind worth reporting. En route to Rotary I passed a house where Gorbachev and Reagan met for talks during the Cold War years. The meeting itself was held on the lower ground floor of an organic market, as apparently many Icelandic grocery stores also offer meeting spaces! The meeting was extremely low-key and relaxed with only four members in attendance; I was even off the hook when it came to speaking at great lengths as a Fulbright Scholar was also present that evening. Of the American expatriate members, one was the current head of the US mission… a good connection for me to make that evening!

Walking past Reykjavik's central lake (and mini-park)

I left the meeting to walk home with the Fulbrighter, as we were heading the same direction. Two people sticking together are less easily blown away than one after all :)I settled upon Icelandic fish and chips for dinner – far, far better than its English counterpart, in my opinion, as it not only did not include chips but it came with mango tartar sauce and a mango-based salad. The fish itself, of all the choices I had, was red ling. It was a delicious dinner and one very much recommended to any one that travels to Iceland in the future. I walked along the docklands area for a bit, exploring the various fishing boats and peeking in on those still bringing in the last of the day’s catch.

Iceland: Days 1 & 2

2012-06-09T07:21:00.002+01:00

I'm back from Geneva -- the traditional game of catching up resumes! Enjoy these next few posts on my Iceland trip..

Alright, folks, the game of catching up with blog posts begins. Jumping back to late May for my Iceland trip, I chose Iceland mainly because it has always been somewhere that I have wanted to visit and a trip that would let me get out and about in nature. It was a very uneventful flight to Reykjavik – up and over England and Scotland – and I was greeted with abundant sun, blue skies, and fast winds. The wind was a recurring theme as there aren’t exactly an abundance of forests to slow the winds down on the island. The initial landscape en route from the airport to town was the ocean on one side and snow-capped mountain peaks on the other side. In between was this odd Icelandic grassland: hardened lava flows (e.g., rocks) covered in moss. And the island felt absolutely empty compared to the hustle and bustle of London.

I arrived in Reykjavik from the airport (40min from town) and then had to figure my way out to my hotel. The first attempt failed as a bus driver gave me bum directions; I returned to where I started and asked the next person I found. Turns out the next person I asked was not only Chinese (from Guangzhou) but also a taxi cab driver. Instant friendship as we switched to Mandarin and he told me how exactly he followed his first love to Iceland, fell out of love, and then…yes, the rest went downhill from there I guess. With the exception of a few Chinese tourists at the airport, the cabbie was the only other Chinese person I had contact with for the duration of my stay. Even that was a much needed break! Rather than just pointing me in the right direction, he insisted that I hop in his cab and not pay the fare. As I was already tired, it was nearing dinnertime, I guess it is just an instance of paying the favor forward.

Whale burger

After settling quickly into the guesthouse, I set off in search of food. Eating out in Iceland is really expensive (not as bad as my June trip to Geneva, however!!) – some said that it is actually the true price of food as it accounts much more for logistical and production costs than the low-cost, mass-produced options we get at Tesco or Schnucks. I opted for a local burger, and upon recommendation from the staff, settled on a whale steak burger. It was essentially like chewing leather (or perhaps a shoe sole), but with a bit more flavor as there were toppings and some sort of lobster mayonnaise. Just another food I can add to the “tried-and-tested-but-never-again” list!

I walked from dinner along the bay, taking in the view and seeming abundance of fresh air and sun. It definitely seems as though all the grey and city-time had started to get to me! Perhaps what kept me outside wandering around for so long was just the fact that everything was absolutely quiet. 600,000 people on the island and only 1/3 living in Reykjavik; so while there were cars on the streets, it hardly seemed that the amount of people was anywhere near proportionate.

Waterfront sculpture - Viking boat, Reykjavik

The Blue Lagoon

As I went to bed the first night (11pm-ish) and woke up again at 3, 5 and finally 7am, the sun remained. Oh the joys of being extremely far North! I decided to spend my first day just relaxing. While leaving town early, I was heading to the Blue Lagoon and giving myself plenty of time to soak it all up :)The Blue Lagoon is the most visited tourist destination in all of Iceland – with 4000 or so tourists per annum – but, as with other places in Iceland, it still felt very empty! The hardest part of the Blue Lagoon was making the initial dash from the warm indoors in the 13C weather straight into the warm waters of the lagoon. The lagoon was shallow in parts, requiring a crabwalk of sorts, but deeper in others; I finally found a warm spot with lots of silica mud to slather all of myself (as apparently it is a natural body wash!). Aside from soaking in the sulfur-y hot spring waters, there was also the opportunity to relax in saunas and steam baths. All were good options…and a very relaxing way to start my trip!

Baby blue lagoons on the same premises

I ended my trip to the Blue Lagoon with a quick hike around the facilities, circumventing the mini-lagoons on the property and the geothermal energy plant, before grabbing a bus back into Reykjavik. In town, I wandered downtown for the rest of the afternoon. There was a church on a hilltop in the center of town with a great panoramic view of the city (+vicinity), a statue of Leif Erickson donated by the US, and all sorts of sculptures of important Icelanders/Danes/Norwegians. The first two days (or day and a half, depending on how you look at it) were off to a great start.

Reykjavik's cathedral

View from the cathedral tower over town and the bay

Iceland pictures

2012-05-26T19:52:00.001+01:00

Hello hello, dear friends and family!
I returned from Iceland on Friday to unusually warm London weather. So warm that the lady voice in the underground was reminding us to carry water and "sip" it frequently. I would like to argue that 25C/75F is really not all that hot - particularly in low humidity - but especially after what seems to have been months of rain and grey.

While I work on finding time to write posts about my Iceland trip, I did want to get pictures along sooner rather than later. It is one of those things that the longer I wait, the less likely it is to happen. Activity on my facebook account is perfect proof -- I haven't uploaded any photos since last September as "there is always tomorrow."

For your viewing pleasure:
http://lfdickey.shutterfly.com/pictures/520

Stories to come soon! Happy Memorial Day to all those back home.

Cambridge day trip

2012-05-22T22:52:00.003+01:00

With exams done, I was long overdue for a trip out of the city. Amidst the end of term shindigs and progress starting my own research, I took a day off to go with three of my closest coursemates to Cambridge. We could not have picked a better day – while a bit nippy, the sun was shining and the sky was [mostly] blue. It definitely put everyone in a good mood as we hopped our train out of town, through the countryside, and toward Cambridge.

Lovely day on the river Cam

Beyond being a university town, Cambridge is definitely historically important as well. A coursemate from Cambridge insists that it is far too much of a bubble – particularly within one of the many colleges/universities – but I actually quite liked the coziness of it all. London is walkable, but Cambridge all the more so. A lot of people were on bikes and there was a lot more of a “buy local” movement. It had Oregon vibes in an odd sort of way. We opted to begin our morning by going punting on the river Cam. For those of you otherwise unaware, punting involves propelling (or in our case, being propelled) in a long wooden boat by pushing a pole against the shallow river bottom. In a group of four girls, none of us were feeling particularly athletic – having used all of our physical strength on exams of the weeks past – and we opted to pay for someone to give us the grand tour on the river. It actually worked out quite well; the fact that our punter (?) could have been a model for Hollister was, in the eyes of two of my friends, an extra bonus. We were taken around the river seeing the various colleges (Trinity, King’s etc.) and hearing stories about the history of each college, pranks students have played, or intercollegiate rivalries. And it was sunny and relaxing :)

King's College Chapel from the river

With all these pictures, it suffices to say that I enjoyed the river and the sun!


Inside King's College Chapel

From punting, we had hoped to go to the library at Trinity (who wouldn’t want to see the first copy of Winnie the Pooh?!) but our appetites got the better of us and we missed the opportunity to do the library. Guess there is always next time! With a lot of the college campuses closed for exam period, our ability to peer in on the famous architecture was somewhat limited, but we endeavored to make the best of the opportunities we had. Thus our first stop after lunch was to the King’s College Chapel. We wandered around a bit – passing a man playing a guitar in a rubbish bin – until we found the actual entrance. Having heard concerts from the King’s College Chapel air on BBC3, I was really impressed with the size of the venue…and to get to be there in person, too. The chapel was filled with organ music, definitely creating the right sort of atmosphere for our visit. The Gothic style architecture was on par with what can be seen elsewhere in the UK, but what makes this chapel unique is that it is the largest fan vault ceiling in the world. I am probably not the right person to explain all the physics/architecture of this particular attribute, so do google it if you are interested, it really is a very neat way to build a chapel! As to be expected, there was also a lot of stained glass. But perhaps unlike other churches/cathedrals, the stained glass windows were divided. The top halves had stories from the Old Testament; the lower halves had the fulfillment of the stories in the New Testament. The windows themselves were removed during WWII and the building made it through the war years unscathed – definitely a good thing!

Goofing off inside of sculptures at Fitzwilliam

After the chapel, we wandered through the central streets of Cambridge towards the Fitzwilliam museum. We couldn’t come to a complete consensus on which museum the four of us wanted to visit, and the Fitzwilliam seemed to be a happy medium as it had art and artifacts alike. There were some very nice impressionist pieces (Monet, Renoir), a few noteworthy sculptures (Rodin, Degas), an abundance of Italian church artwork (e.g., lots of Jesus-on-the-cross pieces) and a special exhibit on… China! Go figure, the one day I try and switch off academic mode and not think about anything SOAS-y, it still pops up in Cambridge. The exhibit brought together artifacts from the Han dynasty (~2000 years old) courtesy of two museums in Jiangsu and Guangdong provinces. Most all of the artifacts were from tombs of an emperor; similar to things seen in China before, but nice to see outside of the country too. If you want to see the exhibit and can’t get to Cambridge, do point your cursor to the Fitzwilliamwebsite as all their exhibitions are also online.

I think it was about 5pm when we wrapped up at the museum and everyone was getting tired and a bit goofier. We happened to stumble (literally) into the place in Cambridge for Chelsea buns and ordered enough coffee and buns to boost our energy for the trip home. Our day at Cambridge essentially ended there as most of the town began to shut down by 6pm and there was nothing left we could see. We shuffled slowly back to the train station and arrived in London by 8pm, all too eager to jump into bed and catch up on sleep.

The Fantastic Four -- a successful Cambridge trip!

Speaking of catching up on sleep – I am posting from Iceland tonight and that is something I have been very keen on doing! This island/country is so unbelievably quiet...and the sun is still hours from setting at 10pm! I guess I didn’t realize how much noise pollution there is in London until I left it for a bit of a breather, so definitely a good R&R opportunity for me.

More updates to come soon!

Post-exam bliss :)

2012-05-08T21:20:00.001+01:00

Hello everyone!

Exams are officially over for me and I have popped back onto the radar, the worldwide webs to be more specific. I had three exams over the past eight days - one per module - and while they were all challenging, it was a good kind of challenge. Revising for the exams was a fun experience in and of itself; there was so much learned and absorbed in two terms' time that it was a bit like a life-size puzzle of putting all the pieces in place both before and during the exam.

Tonight, I can say that it has officially sunk in that I am "done" with coursework for my Master's degree. It does feel a bit odd, as I now have all this time that was otherwise spent study, but a joyful feeling nevertheless (Cue Handel's Messiah). The past three weeks of living at the SOAS library - or other libraries in the vicinity - can now just be another chapter in this postgraduate experience. I hope, too, that my dreams at night time will no longer include the names of authors responsible for coining various ideas in the fields of diplomacy, international security, or China studies. My coursemates were pestering me today about how I would spend my first day of freedom as most all of them still have exams remaining. I honestly didn't do anything too special: grabbed a coffee, came home and took a break before heading to....the library! You're probably thinking that I would head anywhere but the home-away-from-home of the last few weeks. But I think it was my coping mechanism as I was able to pop in, pick up a book on coercive diplomacy for my dissertation and leave shortly thereafter. The objective was to wander around on the first sunny day since last week, but I ended up in another bookstore looking at China-related things. So much for turning off the brain and relaxing! After a few hours of wandering I returned home to actually cook dinner (rather than just doing something quick and easy) and write this long overdue blog post.

While I have few updates of the past few weeks - unless you care to read about the interesting creatures that I coexisted with in the small spaces of SOAS - I do have a few more Rotary experiences that are worth sharing. On 23 April, almost right after my return from China, I presented at Tooting Rotary. They were a very nice club (albeit, in a very cold venue) and ultimately extended an offer for me to attend their evening gala at a posh Mayfair venue in June. The profits from that evening will go to the club's charities - Mercy Ships and a project with their partner club in Bangladesh. Rotary does such cool things! At my second presentation this month to the Rotary club of Golders Green, the German president could not believe that I was not using any notes in my 15min talk. It really is at the point where everything is committed to memory - just like the names of all those theorists for my three modules :) I was particularly touched by the thank you gift the club presented. Rather than a tangible object to take home, they were going to send a certificate to my sponsor Rotary club in Peoria acknowledging that I had presented at their club and donating a tree to a Rotary forest here in the UK in the Peoria club's name. Perhaps I was most touched by how personal the gift was, as it really takes Rotary as a global movement and condenses it down to two clubs, connected by one Ambassadorial Scholar.

I would hope that this much of an update should suffice. There is much more that I am looking forward to in the coming weeks -- and, by default, things that you can look forward to reading about soon too!

London Symphony Orchestra concert @ Trafalgar Square on Saturday night
My final two Rotary presentations (the final one will be at my most wonderful host club, Southgate RC)
End-of-year celebrations with coursemates from the Centre for International Studies & Diplomacy
Day trips to Cambridge, possibly Oxford, and the Harry Potter Studios
Week-long trips to Iceland and Geneva (Switzerland)!

I trust all of you are doing well. Hopefully spring is more spring-like wherever you may be reading this post at then in London. They say that April showers bring May flowers...but I think (for the most part) we are still trying to sort out the fact that it is May!

Easter in China

2012-04-13T07:21:00.003+01:00

Note: A large chunk of this post was written on a 13hr flight back to London. I clearly had plenty of time to get details out, but much was still left out, so apologies if anything seems tedious.

Greetings! Easter holiday is just about at a close and I am ready to work through the next few weeks, studying and reviewing for my three exams at the end of April and in early May. China was a very nice break from London – I am back with a fresh perspective and feeling all relaxed and ready to work again. As for my time back in China, the first nine days of break were relatively easy-going as it was just me and my mom at our Suzhou apartment. I visited some of the expatriate events that she goes to on a regular basis (weekly coffee, a monthly trip with other foreign wives) and we had our time together before my dad returned from a business trip. We then traveled together for a week to the southwestern province of Yunnan; my final two days back in Suzhou were then spent catching up on laundry and life, doing the turn around to get ready for the return trip.

Sunset over construction site near home -- you can actually see the sun!

"Across the Bridge" Noodles

As for our week in Yunnan, we began in the provincial capital of Kunming and took a northwesterly path across the province. Yunnan is known for its “eternal spring” weather and slower pace of life – some say that Kunming is the Seattle of China. While I am not quite sure if I would agree, mainly because there was still a bit more air pollution than anywhere in the Pacific Northwest, the pace of life was definitely slow. In most all of the cities we were in, roads were still rather empty at 8:30 or 9am. The people were all quite friendly and ethnic minorities (i.e., not Han Chinese) increased the further we moved from Kunming. Beginning our trip with Yunnan’s famous “Across the Bridge” Noodles (过桥米线), our first excursion in Kunming took us to the Stone Forest. The Stone Forest is a swath of land covered with limestone formations rising from the ground, almost like stalagmites do in caves. According to Chinese legend, the forest is the birthplace of Ashima, a beautiful girl of the Yi ethnic minority group. She was forbidden to marry her chosen suitor, choosing to turn into a stone (in the forest) instead; her suitor then opted to turn into the pond lying right in front of the stone…making for a most bittersweet ending to their relationship.

At Stone Forest, with the parents

Kunming temple

After a trip to the Provincial Museum and more exploring in Kunming, we left the next morning on a plane for Dali. With the mountains in the province, driving or taking the train would have been anywhere from 6-8hrs total; our flight was a quick 35min in comparison. We jumped off the plane and onto a boat shortly thereafter to travel across Erhai Lake to explore Jinsha Island (I think that was the name…!). Being completely landlocked, Yunnanese are particularly keen to simulate the ocean with big lakes. The only problem is that the province is four years into a drought that an American scientist predicted would last at least 20 years. But back to Dali – the region has been settled predominantly by Bai and Yi minorities. The name “Bai” means “white” in Chinese, but the people themselves are actually quite dark as a result of their time in the sun and labor in the fields. Both our guide and driver were Bai; and I found that, as in Kunming, my ability to communicate in Dali and elsewhere in the province was directly dependent upon my ability to decipher the local variation of Mandarin. Our first day in Dali quickly wound to a close as we explored the Three Pagodas. The pagodas are made of brick, covered with white mud, and form a symmetric triangle nestled on a mountain hillside. It was actually a whole big Buddhist complex – higher up on the foothills behind the pagodas were various temples and assembly halls that we passed on our way down to the pagodas. The pagodas were very much a tourist site in the works, however, as a parking lot was quickly being thrown together before the peak travel season kicks off in the late spring/early summer months.

Grilled seafood -- Jinsha Island in Erhai lake

Temples in the Three Pagoda complex

Dali -- Three Pagodas

We were fortunate enough to be in Dali at a time when they hold an annual outdoor market, a tradition that has apparently been around for thousands of years. On an evening preview of the market, we saw a lot of food vendors and people selling everything from Yunnan’s instant coffee to travel-sized manicure/pedicure sets. Jade vendors had apparently come up from Myanmar and Cambodia to sell their precious stones. With an official jade/marble market for the ASEAN region in Dali, I guess their presence should come as little surprise. Perhaps it was our Western (Caucasian) presence that was more unusual! Before we left Dali, we walked up to the market just in time to catch the fireworks-exploding, streamer streaming opening ceremonies for the market. Dali, in comparison to Kunming, seemed much more lively…but that is definitely due to the timing of our visit as it coincided with the annual market.

Market opening ceremonies, just before four dragons came out to dance

We drove from Dali to Lijiang, stopping along the way to visit the Bai minority village in Xizhou. Wandering down the narrow alleys, we got a glimpse at just how the Bai people live. We walked by the local coffin maker (a very profitable business it would appear) and by local homes until we reached a loctal embroidery school. The school was founded in order to give women something to do – that yields an occasional profit and helps them find a sense of self-fulfillment – while the men are at work or in the fields during the day. Our excursion in Xizhou concluded with a song and dance performance by the Bai, accompanied with the traditional three cups of tea (first a bitter tea, then a sweet tea, and ending with a ‘natural’ tea said to reflect the ups and downs of the human experience). We then left Xizhou and continued driving on to Lijiang. I really enjoyed all of our windshield time this trip; Yunnan is truly a beautiful province and it was fun to drive up and around the mountains and through river valleys, admiring all the terraced plots of land and local homes.

Quiet morning in the old city of Lijiang

The old town of Lijiang (versus the new town on the other side of the hills) was recognized at the turn of the millennium as a UNESCO Heritage Site. It is very well kept – the water in the small canals was so clear you could see to bottom and few scraps of trash lined the street – but definitely very touristy based on all the shops lining the streets. And it wasn’t completely Westernized with a Pizza Hut located a few blocks away from street food and all sorts of things on skewers. Someone with a strange sense of humor had even skewered a rat to a wall opposite the row of vendors selling meat on skewers. Oh, China. We spent our first evening exploring the old town, finding our way amongst the small (and later tourist-filled) alleys into the less touristy part of the city. The ultimate goal was to find dinner, but after only finding snack shops and a large statue of Mao Zedong gracing a central city square, we retreated to the depths of the old town and its winding streets for a dinner. The next day in Lijiang (and the vicinity) was an incredibly full one. With the whole waking up late thing in mind, my family of early risers set off to explore the old town a bit more (sans Chinese tourists) before we began our official itinerary. We began at a local park – the lake was nearly dried up but it was quite beautiful nonetheless.

Drought means no lake in the park -- but a nice view nonetheless

Dongba costumes

In Lijiang we were finally starting to get a glimpse of the mountains Yunnan province is known for. From the park we were able to see Jade Snow Mountain (玉雪山) on a lovely clear, blue-sky morning. And this was one of those definitely blue sky days, not the kind in Suzhou or Shanghai where you are trying to decide if you can’t see the sun because it is cloudy or because it is air pollution! Within the park, we stopped at the Dongba Culture Museum. Our guide told us that Dongba are essentially the religious leaders because they have the ability to read this fancy hieroglyphic-type script, exorcise spirits, and lead important spiritual/cultural events. But the more we talked to our guide, the clearer it became that the Dongba are more of a culture rather than a religion. There is a move in Lijiang to ensure that the art of being a Dongba sticks around despite all the modernization and capitalist tendencies…so hopefully the museum’s presence will aid such efforts.

From the park, we visited the Baisha village of the Naxi ethnic minority (local to Lijiang). The village is most famous for the Buddhist fresco in its temple, a fresco that made it through the Cultural Revolution only because the temple itself had been used as a pigsty. While a bit difficult to see in some place, the fresco was divided into three horizontal layers depicting the levels of human existence (from the Buddhist perspective): enlightenment at the top, reality in the middle, and hell on the bottom. Buddhism was a recurring theme throughout our trip, so I will come back to this religious stuff shortly. Our day had been planned such that we could avoid the crowds on Jade Snow Mountain, and as we arrived at the mountain from the temple, it was clear that there definitely would be no fight to ascend. We were initially the only people on a bus that would take us to cable cars (which would then take us to the top)…and the bus filled right up only to empty at these natural spring pools a few stops before our own. The cable car operators had to start the system up just for us! We got to the top of the mountain (well, sort of, as it was really just a small mountain pasture facing the mountain…) in no time and proceeded to hike along a boardwalk up towards a Buddhist temple. As the temperature dropped really quickly just after 4pm, and a rainy/snowy mixture hit, we didn’t stick around for too long on the pasture.

Temple at top of pasture opposite Jade Snow Mountain

1st bend of the Yangtze River

After a very full day in Lijiang, I don’t think anyone minded having to spend a bit more time in the car the following day. We got held up as soon as we tried to leave the city, however, by what appeared to be a top government official’s visit. Four outbound lanes became a parking lot as we sat and waited for the sirens (escorts) to arrive and disappear in a 20min span. I had worries while sitting there that this was going to become the next “Chinese traffic jam lasts for days” headline in some international newspaper. Fortunately it was not nearly that bad…and we only had to follow the government official and his unnecessarily large escort (complete with water cannon on wheels) until we turned off for a road running alongside the Yangtze River. The Yangtze River, for those of you less familiar with China’s geography, is one of the most important rivers as it runs from the West to the East, hitting the ocean at Shanghai. We stopped at the first bend of the Yangtze River – definitely a scenic spot – I guess it would be like going to the first bend of the Mississippi or Thames? From there, we continued to drive a bit longer until we reached the Stone Drum village. Definitely not much to see besides an old stone drum (Qing Dynasty) and, in retrospect, it would probably be the one thing on our itinerary I could have lived without. The final event of the day was Tiger Leaping Gorge (虎跳峡). According to one of many Chinese legends, villagers had accused this one particular tiger of stealing their crops etc., and on his escape his jumped across the gorge, utilizing a huge boulder in the midst of it that is covered in the high summer waters. We climbed down to the bottom of the gorge, getting a good view of the rock, the rushing waters, and the people with the less scenic view on the other side of the gorge. Other tourists were opting to pay for two people to carry them back up the stairs in a covered chair, but we walked the stairs back up…as real men and women should! :)

Tiger Leaping Gorge

En Route to Zhongdian

We arrived in Zhongdian (aka “Shangri-La”) that afternoon – at a height of 3000ish meters above sea level (that’s 10,000ish ft. or approximately the same elevation as Leadville, Colorado) our guide warned us quite explicitly about showering and moving slowly to avoid altitude sickness. Our family had done just fine in Tibet two summers ago, so we weren’t too worried. The immediate concern was finding something clean and reasonable to eat for dinner! We ended up at a local shop – newly opened and cleaner – serving local specialties. Being so close to Tibet, the diet was similar but with a bit more green vegetables available. We had some form of meat coated in barley, some chicken and mushrooms, and two green vegetable dishes. What made the restaurant most unique was the tables only a foot or so off the ground. Guests were all essentially squatting on these tiny stools…long legs are definitely a disadvantage! We knew we were in rural China when two horses without owners meandered by the restaurant during our meal. Zhongdian was definitely my favorite leg of the trip, and definitely not because it is the “Shangri-la” China has hoped it would become.

Outside Songzanglin Monastery

Despite having arrived in Zhongdian on a clear afternoon, the next morning was hazy and rainy. I guess the price of being in the mountains is the unpredictable weather. Our Tibetan Buddhist guide took us to the Songzanglin Monastery, the largest monastery in the province, first thing in the morning. We were already a bit familiar with Tibetan Buddhism from past travels, and I think that we were thus able to have even deeper discussions on the religion this trip. The temples were all quite beautiful, as were the wall paintings. It was clear that – had the artwork not wholly survived the Cultural Revolution – it had since been repainted, as all the colors appeared brightly on the walls. I left the monastery that morning with an even deeper respect for the Tibetan Buddhists. Yunnan and Tibet are two very different places when it comes to political and religious issues, but people in both places keep practicing their religions. Our guide mentioned that she worries, however, that Tibetan Buddhists in Zhongdian will gradually lose sight of important values as increased tourism and presence of Han Chinese translates into an increased exposure to capitalist ideas and tendencies. From the monastery, we went to explore a Tibetan village and the surrounding grasslands. With snowmelt, parts of the grass land will actually become a lake during the summer months – perfect for the yak herders. But for us, as it was technically still late winter in Zhongdian, everything was all brown grass.

Tibetan-style village in outskirts of Zhongdian

We had lunch in a local Tibetan home on the outskirts of Zhongdian before spending the early afternoon at a Tibetan rodeo. We arrived rather early at the rodeo and were welcomed into the home of the owner. I love when things like this happen, as it always seems to be the best way to learn about how things are wherever one may be. In this case, I learned that in Yunnan, Tibetan women are allowed to have two husbands (and a husband could have two wives). Polygamy is essentially the result of having brothers and sisters. So, for instance, if a family had three sons, the oldest would care for the parents in their old age, the middle and younger ones would stay near to home or move elsewhere in search of work. One of the woman serving us tea was the “big wife” (i.e., wife #1) of the man who had established the local rodeo after his own successes as a rider. It didn’t seem that there were any tensions between wives and that everyone was happy with how things worked out – for them it was tradition, and something else would have been abnormal.

Rodeo... on these super small horses! Must be the altitude?

Our final evening in Zhongdian ended with explorations in the old town. Like Lijiang, we found out quite quickly that all the shops, hostels and restaurants indicated the touristy nature of the old town. We found a bakery selling the best muffins I have ever had in China, hands down. In a country that doesn’t seem to use ovens (or much butter for that matter) it was quite a treat to have a chocolate chip banana muffin. I think my parents and their magic bars and peanut butter chocolate bars would feel exactly the same way! We hiked up a hillside that had another Buddhist Temple on it and a hugeprayer wheel. I have seen some pretty big prayer wheels, but this one took 12 people a lot of strong pulling to get into motion. Technically, a prayer wheel has to go around three times but we only got it around two times before calling it a quits. At the elevation we were at, it was definitely a good aerobic workout! After a yak dumplings dinner, we headed to the old town’s central square to watch the locals dancing. My dad in particular thought that I would have no problem catching on, so after watching for a bit, I followed on the circumference of the circle trying to learn the steps on the run. Between the nightly dances and the pulling of a giant prayer wheel, the locals definitely stay in good shape at the elevation they are at!

Temple, huge prayer wheel on Zhongdian hillside

The final morning in Zhongdian was our own – so we walked back to the old town to explore a bit more before having to bid the lovely little town goodbye. We went to a museum, one of those ‘nationalist’ museums that the Chinese love to build just so they can make sure the officially acceptable story is known. And, ironically, it was built right next to the temple we had climbed up to the previous evening. As the official line has it, the Great March and Communist presence in Yunnan ‘liberated’ the Tibetan Buddhists from their own ‘poor’ leadership. I will give the Party credit for the Zhongdian Meeting and agreement upon key points of how the Han Chinese/Communists should treat the Tibetan Buddhists. If only they had agreed to not enter temples, not deface religious sites, or harm Buddhists in other parts of the country! Anyway, that becomes highly political and I will digress all too quickly into something that I should just save for one of my exam papers.

We made it back to Suzhou without any problems on late Monday and I had a bit more time to catch up before my flight back. This trip was I think what was most needed…and just at the right time, too. Yunnan was a good reminder of the ‘real’ China, so to speak. It was also a good reminder of how religion and daily life blend, particularly as seen in Zhongdian through our Tibetan Buddhist guide. London seems like an absolutely parallel universe compared to all of this. I am confident, however, that I will jump right back into the swing of things without any problems as the city is my home now too!

End of term (!!!)

2012-03-23T02:03:00.001+00:00

2:00am on the late night/morning of my departure for Easter and it has once again dawned upon me that my poor blog was pushed onto the back burner over the past 20 days. So, bearing in mind the hour of the night, I shall do my best to catch back up before diving behind the Great Firewall in China and no longer having access to blogspot, facebook, twitter etc. until my return in mid-April.

My papers have now all been submitted and all that remains of my Master's degree is the three exams I will have in early May and the dissertation I will be writing over the summer. Definitely very exciting stuff! It has been a most challenging year to present, but the more I have worked through my various modules, the more rewarding it has been. There has been plenty of fun along the way, too, as I have gotten to know my coursemates in our colonization of the library's insufficient number of computers. All humor aside, it really feels like I have spent the better part of the last few weeks living in either the SOAS or British libraries. But now that my papers are submitted, I have finally emerged from the stuffy confines of my favorite study spaces to enjoy the London sunshine before heading to what I can only assume will be a less sunny and more polluted China. I suddenly have "free time" on my hands that I am otherwise unable to cope with. Today, for instance, I literally just wandered around central London watching people pass by and exploring new nooks and crannies near to campus. I also started to read a book "for fun." All because I had nothing else I really felt like doing! Celebrations for the end of term were in order and I went for Mexican with the usual group of girls in Covent Garden area...following it with dessert at a French patisserie. Eating our way around the world per usual in London :)


Thrilled to be done -- and waiting for our table at Wahaca

As for the past few weeks, it honestly hasn't been anything too different from the first half of the term. What has made life more exciting, I would suggest, is less the fact that I am finding time to do 'new' things but rather that I am finding time to talk to people (be they Londoners or other foreigners) and get 'new' perspectives on the world. I have had some time to explore different parts of town - Sloane Square (in the borough of Chelsea) on a Saturday has to be a new personal favorite - and visiting plenty of other Rotary clubs has definitely helped. With my most recent presentation, I do believe that I reached 12 club visits in the area; while each club has different dynamics, they are all still very much the usual warm and friendly Rotary gathering that I have become used to. At SOAS, another few weekends were sacrificed along the way; most recently for the annual crisis game. While the crisis game was only a day-long affair, I was expected to act as Japan's Foreign Minister for the entire day regardless of the crazy (and often unrealistic) circumstances that developed in Asia Pacific. It was a good way to put all of our other trainings (e.g., mediation and negotiation) to the test!

Because I am starting to lose steam really quickly, I think I had best wrap up and squeeze in a nap before the sun pops up in a few more hours time. I have loved every moment of this term - as challenging and busy as it has been - and look forward to a break with my parents in China. That said, I am also just as ready to continue working and preparing for exams or starting to research for my dissertation as this whole concept of "free time" seems all too foreign for me! A lot has been learned these past few weeks, at SOAS, in London and at various Rotary meetings, and I remain as grateful as ever for all of Rotary's support throughout my time in London.

Look for updates of China travels and my London return after April 12th. In the meantime, a very happy spring to each of you!

Supreme Leader-style negotiations

2012-03-04T14:29:00.000+00:00

Hello again, dear readers. Its a very rainy and dreary afternoon here in London so I am mixing paper-writing and foreign policy analysis with blog-writing mainly out of the fear of falling behind on the latter.

The past few weeks have been a flurry of activity for me -- it is hard to believe that reading week was already two weeks ago. My time has been spent, per usual, divided between SOAS and Rotary with the occasional adventure or bit of fun as time permits. I have only had three Rotary presentations in the past two weeks, so a bit lighter of a load than previously. I finally got to go to a Rotary breakfast meeting. It was definitely one of the nicer ways to start a day. Not only did I get to experience the transition from complete darkness at 5am to the 7am-ish sunrise, but it was just a nice way of starting the day with Rotary first. The dynamics of the different clubs overall continue to provide valuable insight into Rotary in the UK/London. I must admit that I was most surprised by just how relaxed one younger club in central London was last week. Not only was there no toast to the Queen, there was hardly an agenda! Everyone just gathered for drinks and kind of chit-chatted the night away. It was a good thing that I had been warned that things were much lower-key than elsewhere, otherwise it is very likely that I would have turned up in much nicer clothes than necessary.

Last weekend (25/26 February) was spent in the confines of an academic building for negotiation training with my course. With the sun out and temperatures near 60F, it was a bit harder to want to be inside for both days, but definitely a valuable weekend in retrospect. The thing I most like about negotiation is that it is so much like bargaining for purchases in China. You push a little, the other side pushes a little and it becomes much more of a zero-sum game as both parties work to achieve their interests whilst minimizing concessions. Beyond the technicalities of negotiation, we did a whole bunch of role-playing on Saturday and Sunday. Sunday was by far the more challenging of the two days as I was assigned to very opposite roles. In the morning session, we negotiated our way through the Six Party Talks and I got to be the North Korean Supreme Leader. With the news of successful Six Party Talks just this past week, it was fun to see just how similar our outcome was with the actual negotiated outcome in the 'real world.' (See BBC News article here) Is the moral of the story that I would make a good Supreme Leader? Hopefully not -- but it was a challenging role to play nonetheless.

In the afternoon session, I was given a completely opposite role in the assignment of representing my own country at UN Security Council dialogue regarding the current situation in the Horn of Africa. My coursemates lamented how easy it should be for an American to represent her own country, but it was really anything but easy. Perhaps the hardest part was that I was only aware of the very basic situation in Ethiopia/Kenya/Somalia right now; having to absorb all the details and nuances of the conflict in a mere 15 minutes and turn that knowledge around in convincing other UN states of the advantages of the US-proposed draft resolution....that was the challenging bit. As expected, a lot more was accomplished in the corridor discussions rather than in the actual meeting room itself. But what also became quite challenging was balancing all the other discussions smaller countries wanted to have with me - the US representative - and my own need to have discussions with other countries - the NATO ones - that mattered in voting. Things got out of hand as time drew quickly to a close, the French delegate played dirty (typical, n'est pas?), and I had to veto bits of my own resolution. Lessons were definitely learned.

I wish I could say that I have been doing some really exciting things over the course of the past few weeks, but with one weekend gone and essay deadlines quickly approaching, everything has been pretty academically oriented. There has however been time for dinners, desserts and coffees out with friends and coursemates as I continue to explore all the good eats in this city.

There have been a series of articles in the NY Times this week about London; one of which attempts to explain Londoners. This week was probably not one of my better weeks in London, so perhaps next time around I, too, shall attempt to de-mystify Londoners.

Other miscellaneous happenings

2012-02-17T19:21:00.000+00:00

Alright, I think after this post I shall be all caught up to the present. It is hard to believe that 6 months has flown by...meaning that I am more than halfway through my Master's course and time in London. When this term ends in 5 weeks' time, I will be completely done with taught coursework as a postgrad; term three for UK students is about 'revising' (= studying/reviewing) for cumulative exams to take place in April and May. I am wrapping up reading week and have really enjoyed the quiet and time to research, write, and read for all of my courses. Oh and catching up on blog posts to keep everyone here and at home in the loop is always important too.

So what has been keeping me so busy, you may wonder. I flip back through my diary and the days just become collective blurs. I have been trying to jot quick notes to myself when something important/interesting happens - but, alas, there are only so many hours in the day. If anything, I feel as though I have been doing a better job of blending 'work' with 'play' this term. That's not to say that I am overlooking 'work' to go out and 'play' - as previous blog posts may (or may not?) lead you to think - but rather that I am just getting even better at managing the 18 or so waking hours I have each day. This term I have been particularly on my toes and jumping around to various London boroughs for presentations at Rotary clubs. I have given six presentations to date and have at least another eight scheduled between now and late April. Some weeks I have two presentations, other weeks none and obviously Easter break factors into my schedule as well. One way or another it has been quite insightful to travel to the ends of public transportation lines (in some cases) to meet with Rotarians and experience the dynamics of different clubs.

I also had a particularly noteworthy Groundhog's Day here in London with a family friend based in South Kensington. Apparently he has this tradition of baking 9 sorts of desserts each year on 2 February to share with family and friends; 4 desserts are always the same and 5 are new each year. There is an official log of desserts as well as prizes to those with the best attendance at his annual event, as Groundhog's Day desserts has been happening for 31 years! Dessert substituted dinner that night and I left having inherited the honor of carrying on our family friend's tradition once it hits its 40th anniversary. That gives me 9 years to start working on my dessert-baking skills -- feel free to submit your recipes to my inbox!

My love for the local theater scene continues as the BAFTAs were held just a few tube stops away recently...and the music awards are coming up on Tuesday. I try and limit myself to more low-key events, but ones that are equally impressive. With the aforementioned family friend I went to the opening night of "Tales of Hoffmann" by the English National Opera. It is a neat story of an artist/poet who, when his muse comes to him late one drunken evening, he embarks upon re-telling stories of the three loves of his life. Each act of the opera focused on a different lover - so you had a lifesize doll, a singer, and a call girl as key female protagonists. What made the ENO version of "Hoffmann" so unique was that each protagonist was played by one and the same soprano rather than by three as is typically done. It was a really long opera (3h30min) and I was really grateful for the coffee that was offered at 10pm with two acts remaining! I got to tag along to a meet-and-greet in the Coliseum's American Bar afterwards - turns out the lead soprano is also American and this was her first debut on any London stage. Definitely a gem that the casting staff discovered in their search to find someone for the lead lady! This week, being reading week and all, I also upheld last term's tradition of seeing another musical on Wednesday night. I chose to go see "Singin' in the Rain" on Press Night and was definitely not disappointed. The musical did a great job of adapting the original MGM film - many members of the audience were tapping/dancing away in their seats through the familiar 'Good Morning' and 'Singin' in the Rain' pieces. The stage was set up such that it actually did rain and the water accumulated -- those in about the first 5 rows looked to be getting splashed from where I sat. As my ticket warned about steep heights (on the 2nd of 4 balconies), hopefully those that could afford seats up front and center were warned about possible water damage to their theater attire.

Courses have all been going quite smoothly and I have been trying to keep the positive momentum going with Reading Week (no lectures) this week. Papers will start to be due and research will continue to happen as I head into the final weeks - the sprint to the finish - of the term. We have already had a full weekend of mediation training and in coming weeks I will be sacrificing two more weekends to learn negotiation skills and participate in a "crisis game." I haven't really a clue what to expect from either -- so do stay tuned for updates as things happen. My coursemates were in Geneva this week for one of two CISD-led trips to the city; I will be going in June and really did appreciate having this week to study and relax without all of them around.

This week we had a dinner for Ambassadorial/Global Scholars hosted by the Rotary Club of Radlett. I will be speaking at their club sometime in the near future... but a picture from our event should suffice for the time being.

The Group -- with District Governor and Radlett RC President, too

I trust everyone is well and weather is beginning to warm up wherever you may be! Sorry to flood everyone with updates, but I do think this brings my blog relatively up to speed.