In honour of the ceaseless rain into which I must soon venture, a little Dante:
"I am in the third circle, in the round of rain
eternal, cursed, cold and falling heavy,
unchanging beat, unchanging quality."
- 7-9, Canto VI, Inferno
Monday, 31 March 2008
Sunday, 23 March 2008
Optic Nerve
Back in NY, very tired after a night flight via Cleveland. Cleveland's airport is almost like a museum/tribute to Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James (a basketball player, for those of you back home; he's an absolute phenomenon, and can currently be seen on the front cover of this month's Vogue). Seattle was extremely lovely, and perhaps just as importantly, my visa status has been completely resolved thanks to the very helpful and friendly immigration officers at the US-Canadia border. On Thursday Matan and I went to Vancouver. It was a very strange city, a juxtaposition of absolutely stunning natural beauty (Stanley Park and surrounding mountains) and really quite shocking human poverty and degradation. For all of Canada's much-vaunted welfare system, I saw far, far more homeless people on the streets of Vancouver than Seattle, or indeed any other US city. And, just as disturbingly, Vancouver seems to have a real problem with drug addiction: we saw people buying and selling drugs in backalleys, not to mention the woman with needle puncture marks up her entire leg. Unsurprisingly, we didn't linger in that area for too long.
After returning from Vancouver Matan and I spent most of our time watching/playing basketball and watching some films (Hoop Dreams - bit of a theme going on here - 28 Days Later, and some other bits and pieces). I read half of Mishima's 'The Sound of Waves', and a bit more of Chris Brown's excellent 'Moral Capital'. Very, very busy 10 days or so coming up, but hopefully I'll be able to post once or twice. Unlike this rather meandering, go-nowhere message, I actually have a couple of things I want to say/write about.
Anyway, if you so desire, you can check out some photographs from my recent wanderings in New York, Seattle, and Vancouver here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=90371&l=6b316&id=222304758
Finally, in the time that I've been away, the toilet water in my apartment appears to have turned blue. I wonder why this would be? Right, I'm off to check the New Zealand-England cricket score; I sense a rare England test series victory, a victory made all the sweeter by the bragging rights it gives me over my New Zealand coursemate Toby. Go Sidebottom!
After returning from Vancouver Matan and I spent most of our time watching/playing basketball and watching some films (Hoop Dreams - bit of a theme going on here - 28 Days Later, and some other bits and pieces). I read half of Mishima's 'The Sound of Waves', and a bit more of Chris Brown's excellent 'Moral Capital'. Very, very busy 10 days or so coming up, but hopefully I'll be able to post once or twice. Unlike this rather meandering, go-nowhere message, I actually have a couple of things I want to say/write about.
Anyway, if you so desire, you can check out some photographs from my recent wanderings in New York, Seattle, and Vancouver here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=90371&l=6b316&id=222304758
Finally, in the time that I've been away, the toilet water in my apartment appears to have turned blue. I wonder why this would be? Right, I'm off to check the New Zealand-England cricket score; I sense a rare England test series victory, a victory made all the sweeter by the bragging rights it gives me over my New Zealand coursemate Toby. Go Sidebottom!
Wednesday, 19 March 2008
Greetings from Seattle
Just a quick update from Seattle. I finally arrived here late (very late) on Monday evening after spending 14 hours in Terminal 3 of JFK. The reason for this? No, it wasn't excessive fondness for the near-unavoidable lounge music blaring through the PA system; rather, I was bumped from my original 8:20am flight and instead put on the 7:20pm flight. This was annoying indeed, but happily I was upgraded to Business Class and given a $400 travel voucher as compensation! I spent most of the day reading books, watching CNN, and trying to calculate the best things to buy with my meal vouchers (I went for smoothies, fruit, and cake from *shudder* Starbucks - better that than rotting my innards with the terrible, terrible alternatives). One extremely pleasant flight later, and I was in Seattle!
Thus far I like Seattle very much. It's so nice to be amongst the trees and lakes and mountains, to breathe fresh air and feel the sun (yes, the sun; Seattle has proven most clement so far) on my arms. Some of the views of the views of the mountains and lakes are absolutely stunning. Yesterday Matan and I went up the Space Needle and all around the downtown area. It was nice, but slightly underwhelming. Today we went to the University District, which was absolutely great: fantastic bookstores (I picked up Felix Gilbert's 'Machiavelli and Guicciardini'; a 2-volume copy of Hobbes's translation of Thucydides; a short Mishima novel; and Emil Fackenheim's 'To Mend the World', all for very reasonable prices), nice food, and friendly people. The University of Washington campus is also really beautiful: spacious, verdant, relaxing, with some interesting architecture and buildings. Look out for photos later. I bet you can't wait!
On Friday we're going to attempt to fix my visa issues via a trip to Vancouver. Fingers crossed!
When I was 9 years old my parents took my sister and I to York (this has become an infamous family break for many, many reasons, not least of which because my mother decided, inexplicably, to drive into a pub (literally), in the process completely destroying her car. Having accomplished this, she then started laughing maniacally). A few years later, on the strength of that visit and without knowing anything about the university, or even what I wanted to study, I decided that I would go to university in York. And indeed I did. And it was a good choice, even though I decided based on completely arbitrary, even non-existent, grounds. When I was 14, I decided that I would live in Seattle when I was older. Having now finally visited the city, I would say that that was another good intuition. Seattle would be a fine place to live, especially after New York. Now, let's just hope that the University of Washington has an opening for an intellectual historian in, ooooh, 6 years time.
Thus far I like Seattle very much. It's so nice to be amongst the trees and lakes and mountains, to breathe fresh air and feel the sun (yes, the sun; Seattle has proven most clement so far) on my arms. Some of the views of the views of the mountains and lakes are absolutely stunning. Yesterday Matan and I went up the Space Needle and all around the downtown area. It was nice, but slightly underwhelming. Today we went to the University District, which was absolutely great: fantastic bookstores (I picked up Felix Gilbert's 'Machiavelli and Guicciardini'; a 2-volume copy of Hobbes's translation of Thucydides; a short Mishima novel; and Emil Fackenheim's 'To Mend the World', all for very reasonable prices), nice food, and friendly people. The University of Washington campus is also really beautiful: spacious, verdant, relaxing, with some interesting architecture and buildings. Look out for photos later. I bet you can't wait!
On Friday we're going to attempt to fix my visa issues via a trip to Vancouver. Fingers crossed!
When I was 9 years old my parents took my sister and I to York (this has become an infamous family break for many, many reasons, not least of which because my mother decided, inexplicably, to drive into a pub (literally), in the process completely destroying her car. Having accomplished this, she then started laughing maniacally). A few years later, on the strength of that visit and without knowing anything about the university, or even what I wanted to study, I decided that I would go to university in York. And indeed I did. And it was a good choice, even though I decided based on completely arbitrary, even non-existent, grounds. When I was 14, I decided that I would live in Seattle when I was older. Having now finally visited the city, I would say that that was another good intuition. Seattle would be a fine place to live, especially after New York. Now, let's just hope that the University of Washington has an opening for an intellectual historian in, ooooh, 6 years time.
Sunday, 16 March 2008
"Where is God in 1+1=2?"
Hello all,
Since my last post we have passed into a new year; New York became very cold, and then a little warmer; I returned to England for seven weeks, and then left my coat at Heathrow Airport; Barack Obama went from no-hoper to front-runner to somewhere imbetween (Vote BO!); the Giants brilliantly won the Super Bowl; my parents came to NY, but Natalie didn't; and much, much more. I've decided to adopt a new blogging tactic: after this necessarily rather long catch-up post, I'm going to post frequent short messages, rather than infrequent long ones. I feel like I'm on blogging probation and need to win back the trust of my loyal audience (all three of them). I have a story to tell in this post, but before I get to that I wanted to give some sense of what I've been doing since November. And that means lists!
I have read (or re-read): 'The Loser' - Thomas Bernhard; 'Travels in the Scriptorium' - Paul Auster; 'The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor' - Gabriel Garcia Marquez; 'Brief History of Nearly Everything' - Billy Bryson; 'The Gum Thief' - Douglas Coupland (dire - sorry Natalie); 'Chronicle of a Death Foretold' - Marquez; 'Notes From the Underground' - Dostoyevsky; 'Liquidation' - Imre Kertesz; 'A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines' - Janna Levin; 'Rashomon and Other Stories' - Ryunosuke Akutagawa; plus an extraordinary amount of Kafka, and the usual quota of academic books.
I have seen: No Country for Old Men; The 400 Blows; There Will Be Blood; Juno; Network; Paranoid Park; Dog Day Afternoon; The Deer Hunter.
I have been to: New York; London; Bristol; Bournemouth; Oxford; Philadelphia.
.....
My story:
It all began innocently enough. On Friday morning I got up very early and walked to the Social Security Administration building on 125th. Knowing that it was likely to be very busy, I arrived at 8:45am. The reason for my visit? Professor Mark Mazower is employing me as a Research Assistant, which necessitates me taking a further step toward legitimating my existence in the United States by getting a Social Security Number, without which I cannot be paid. Everything was going well, and by 9:30 my case was being processed. I was little aware of the farce soon to unfold. "You're here on an F-2 visa?" asked the woman behind the desk. "No," I replied, "F-1." For those of you unfamiliar with such arcane terms, an F-1 visa is a visa for international students studying in the US; an F-2 visa is for their partner or spouse, and has very different kinds of restrictions. The distinction, as I was about to learn, is rather important. The woman behind the desk replied that I was "down" in the "system" (an ominous word at the best of times) as F-2 which, she conceded, was rather odd given that both my Visa and DS20-19 clearly state that I'm F-1. "But I can still get an SSN, right?" I asked naively. "No. In fact, you have to go down to the Department for Homeland Security (DHS) in Federal Plaza to straighten this out." On hearing this news my heart begun a long, sinking descent; I knew what this meant: bureaucracy of the very worst kind: American bureaucracy.
Gathering what few wits I had left, I journeyed 140 blocks south to Federal Plaza, an area of New York every bit as heinous as it sounds. After surviving an interrogation as to the purpose of my visit by two armed guards, I was finally allowed into the building, only to be subjected to a virtual strip-search accompanied by the ominous ping of latex gloves snapping into place. Soon enough I found myself wandering cluelessly around the lobby of a vast, vast building. Eventually I found a "help" desk (of sorts) and explained my situation. The woman at the desk asked to see my passport, and explained that the immigration officer who processed my re-entry to the US back in January had written my visa status on my I-94 unclearly. As I could plainly see this for myself, I asked the woman to fix it, whereupon she told me that I had to go back to Terminal 8 of JFK and visit The Center for Immigration Blunders, or some such. Now, anyone who has ever tried to get from Manhattan to JFK on the subway (the only way method of transport I could afford) knows that it is a journey made tolerable only by the thought of one's forthcoming escape to happier climes. The thought of undertaking that journey - there and back - for the privilege of standing in line for hours before paying the DHS $320 to fix their mistake did not exactly fill me with glee.
I pointed out that I was planning to leave NY, indeed the US, next week, and that the office in JFK didn't process applications on Fridays, was shut on Sat and Sun, and that my flight left JFK before the office opened on Monday. "You're not going anywhere," cackled the bureaucratic drone with a perverse kind of pleasure. I explained my situation: "On Monday I'm flying to Seattle an-" "Sir," she interrupted, "I think you'll find that Seattle is in the United States." Suppressing my urge to eviscerate her, I instead responded that I was well aware of the geography of Seattle, but that my friend and I were planning a trip to Canada. I was bluntly told that I was not allowed to leave the US until this was sorted out, and, indeed, because my status in the US was currently illegal (because the "system" didn't match my paperwork), I wasn't really allowed to do anything except shut up and go and sort this problem out immediately.
Negotiating my way out of the DHS building ("What was the purpose of your visit?" "Piss off." ), I decided to visit the International Scholars and Students Office (ISSO) at Columbia, wherein I found out that almost everything the DHS told me was wrong; not only was I allowed to leave the US, I had to leave. It was true that my legal status is currently hazy, to say the least, but that the way to fix it is not to visit the Department for American Idiocy in JFK, but rather to exit and re-enter the US, and thus to get a new I-94. It is thus very, very lucky that I happen to be going so near to the Canadian border next week. The only snag is that sometimes the Canadian authorities refuse to accept I-94s from visitors crossing over from the US, so I have to beg them. If they absolutely refuse, I then have to beg the US authorities when I re-enter to give me a new I-94. The ISSO have given me a letter to present to the Immigration Officer explaining my situation, but there is a very small chance that I might be stranded in Canada for a little while.
The thing that really irks me about this whole situation is that Immigration Officer at JFK: all of my troubles come down to the fact that he failed to write '1' instead of '2', even after I double-checked. And what makes it worse is that when I got to his desk he asked to borrow my pen because he didn't have one (this alone staggers belief). So I gave him the very nice Tate Modern pen that Natalie had kindly sent me from England, only for him to fail to return it! So the very same pen which this incompetent buffoon stole from me is the pen which he used to completely mess up my immigration status. A thousand poxes upon him! In conclusion, then, tomorrow I'm going to Seattle. At some point Matan and I are going to Canada. If all goes well, I will be allowed to return. If not, it's a transfer to UBC for me.
Happily, the rest of Friday turned out to be an extremely wonderful day. Daniel and I took a six-hour walk around the East Village, Alphabet City, and Lower East Side, ending up in East River Park underneath the Williamsburg Bridge watching the aeroplanes land at JFK. Then followed the buying of some books, much revelry at Abhishek's birthday celebrations, and finally the close of the evening which saw me, James, and Adam playing very old arcade games in a hotdog place on St. Mark's. Even in his inebriated state Adam inevitably crushed James and I.
So, more, including photographs, when I return from Seattle. If you made it to the end of this gargantuan post, thanks very much.
Songs for the Deaf: 'Jamie' (acoustic) - Weezer (a song about something very awful which somehow makes it seem a little less painful); 'Today's Lesson' - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds; 'The Mending of the Gown' - Sunset Rubdown.
Since my last post we have passed into a new year; New York became very cold, and then a little warmer; I returned to England for seven weeks, and then left my coat at Heathrow Airport; Barack Obama went from no-hoper to front-runner to somewhere imbetween (Vote BO!); the Giants brilliantly won the Super Bowl; my parents came to NY, but Natalie didn't; and much, much more. I've decided to adopt a new blogging tactic: after this necessarily rather long catch-up post, I'm going to post frequent short messages, rather than infrequent long ones. I feel like I'm on blogging probation and need to win back the trust of my loyal audience (all three of them). I have a story to tell in this post, but before I get to that I wanted to give some sense of what I've been doing since November. And that means lists!
I have read (or re-read): 'The Loser' - Thomas Bernhard; 'Travels in the Scriptorium' - Paul Auster; 'The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor' - Gabriel Garcia Marquez; 'Brief History of Nearly Everything' - Billy Bryson; 'The Gum Thief' - Douglas Coupland (dire - sorry Natalie); 'Chronicle of a Death Foretold' - Marquez; 'Notes From the Underground' - Dostoyevsky; 'Liquidation' - Imre Kertesz; 'A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines' - Janna Levin; 'Rashomon and Other Stories' - Ryunosuke Akutagawa; plus an extraordinary amount of Kafka, and the usual quota of academic books.
I have seen: No Country for Old Men; The 400 Blows; There Will Be Blood; Juno; Network; Paranoid Park; Dog Day Afternoon; The Deer Hunter.
I have been to: New York; London; Bristol; Bournemouth; Oxford; Philadelphia.
.....
My story:
It all began innocently enough. On Friday morning I got up very early and walked to the Social Security Administration building on 125th. Knowing that it was likely to be very busy, I arrived at 8:45am. The reason for my visit? Professor Mark Mazower is employing me as a Research Assistant, which necessitates me taking a further step toward legitimating my existence in the United States by getting a Social Security Number, without which I cannot be paid. Everything was going well, and by 9:30 my case was being processed. I was little aware of the farce soon to unfold. "You're here on an F-2 visa?" asked the woman behind the desk. "No," I replied, "F-1." For those of you unfamiliar with such arcane terms, an F-1 visa is a visa for international students studying in the US; an F-2 visa is for their partner or spouse, and has very different kinds of restrictions. The distinction, as I was about to learn, is rather important. The woman behind the desk replied that I was "down" in the "system" (an ominous word at the best of times) as F-2 which, she conceded, was rather odd given that both my Visa and DS20-19 clearly state that I'm F-1. "But I can still get an SSN, right?" I asked naively. "No. In fact, you have to go down to the Department for Homeland Security (DHS) in Federal Plaza to straighten this out." On hearing this news my heart begun a long, sinking descent; I knew what this meant: bureaucracy of the very worst kind: American bureaucracy.
Gathering what few wits I had left, I journeyed 140 blocks south to Federal Plaza, an area of New York every bit as heinous as it sounds. After surviving an interrogation as to the purpose of my visit by two armed guards, I was finally allowed into the building, only to be subjected to a virtual strip-search accompanied by the ominous ping of latex gloves snapping into place. Soon enough I found myself wandering cluelessly around the lobby of a vast, vast building. Eventually I found a "help" desk (of sorts) and explained my situation. The woman at the desk asked to see my passport, and explained that the immigration officer who processed my re-entry to the US back in January had written my visa status on my I-94 unclearly. As I could plainly see this for myself, I asked the woman to fix it, whereupon she told me that I had to go back to Terminal 8 of JFK and visit The Center for Immigration Blunders, or some such. Now, anyone who has ever tried to get from Manhattan to JFK on the subway (the only way method of transport I could afford) knows that it is a journey made tolerable only by the thought of one's forthcoming escape to happier climes. The thought of undertaking that journey - there and back - for the privilege of standing in line for hours before paying the DHS $320 to fix their mistake did not exactly fill me with glee.
I pointed out that I was planning to leave NY, indeed the US, next week, and that the office in JFK didn't process applications on Fridays, was shut on Sat and Sun, and that my flight left JFK before the office opened on Monday. "You're not going anywhere," cackled the bureaucratic drone with a perverse kind of pleasure. I explained my situation: "On Monday I'm flying to Seattle an-" "Sir," she interrupted, "I think you'll find that Seattle is in the United States." Suppressing my urge to eviscerate her, I instead responded that I was well aware of the geography of Seattle, but that my friend and I were planning a trip to Canada. I was bluntly told that I was not allowed to leave the US until this was sorted out, and, indeed, because my status in the US was currently illegal (because the "system" didn't match my paperwork), I wasn't really allowed to do anything except shut up and go and sort this problem out immediately.
Negotiating my way out of the DHS building ("What was the purpose of your visit?" "Piss off." ), I decided to visit the International Scholars and Students Office (ISSO) at Columbia, wherein I found out that almost everything the DHS told me was wrong; not only was I allowed to leave the US, I had to leave. It was true that my legal status is currently hazy, to say the least, but that the way to fix it is not to visit the Department for American Idiocy in JFK, but rather to exit and re-enter the US, and thus to get a new I-94. It is thus very, very lucky that I happen to be going so near to the Canadian border next week. The only snag is that sometimes the Canadian authorities refuse to accept I-94s from visitors crossing over from the US, so I have to beg them. If they absolutely refuse, I then have to beg the US authorities when I re-enter to give me a new I-94. The ISSO have given me a letter to present to the Immigration Officer explaining my situation, but there is a very small chance that I might be stranded in Canada for a little while.
The thing that really irks me about this whole situation is that Immigration Officer at JFK: all of my troubles come down to the fact that he failed to write '1' instead of '2', even after I double-checked. And what makes it worse is that when I got to his desk he asked to borrow my pen because he didn't have one (this alone staggers belief). So I gave him the very nice Tate Modern pen that Natalie had kindly sent me from England, only for him to fail to return it! So the very same pen which this incompetent buffoon stole from me is the pen which he used to completely mess up my immigration status. A thousand poxes upon him! In conclusion, then, tomorrow I'm going to Seattle. At some point Matan and I are going to Canada. If all goes well, I will be allowed to return. If not, it's a transfer to UBC for me.
Happily, the rest of Friday turned out to be an extremely wonderful day. Daniel and I took a six-hour walk around the East Village, Alphabet City, and Lower East Side, ending up in East River Park underneath the Williamsburg Bridge watching the aeroplanes land at JFK. Then followed the buying of some books, much revelry at Abhishek's birthday celebrations, and finally the close of the evening which saw me, James, and Adam playing very old arcade games in a hotdog place on St. Mark's. Even in his inebriated state Adam inevitably crushed James and I.
So, more, including photographs, when I return from Seattle. If you made it to the end of this gargantuan post, thanks very much.
Songs for the Deaf: 'Jamie' (acoustic) - Weezer (a song about something very awful which somehow makes it seem a little less painful); 'Today's Lesson' - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds; 'The Mending of the Gown' - Sunset Rubdown.
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