PTSD

The weekly update

1. Returned from my long road trip up north, all ready to do work. No work happened so far. None.

2. Planned a campaign to crash BigNameMeeting. Was told BNM has name tag policy and high security. Thought about crashing it anyway. Realised that I, for one, would definitely be found out since the clothes I brought into the City this week are mainly stuff I took to Maine (think the sort of clothes backpackers travel around in: T-shirts and tattered jeans). I hardly think the staff at BNM would not realise the random person with a dodgy-looking name tag, wearing jeans and flip-flops, is perhaps not an academic.

3. Stayed with Anomie and have to say she has a lovely apartment: walking distance to Uni. Perfect. Envied it, especially as am still homeless and am (illegally, perhaps) moving into a flat this weekend without being formally approved to do so by the management. Should I be writing of my lawbreaking ways on the blog? Too late to worry about that, eh?

4. Discussed with Elizabeth about putting up more episodes of the Road to Big Name Meeting in Our Field (I’m sure we have given it a name but I can’t remember what it was). Apparently, discussions about who gets in on the BNMIOF will be going on at BNM this weekend. Chances of E and I going about being the new I and B and publicising our work are currently minimal. For reasons, see no. 2 above.

5. Just got an email from someone I promised a chapter on Homeland Security for. Work done so far: not much. Memory of having to do this: none. Experience in writing for HS: none. Chances this will go down well with my non-HS oriented mates: non existent. Chances this will amuse them: hopefully high. Any help by readers experienced in maritime aspects of HS will be much much appreciated. I will sell you the part of my soul that is not already about to be sold to LS flunkieness in exchange for help.

6. Sister left on Orientation. Unlike “normal” unis where orientation consists of bunch of kids being taken around like sheep to various buildings within the Uni, this one takes the kids camping and hiking and whitewater rafting for 4 days. Despite being from a TWC, we are not used to being in places without running water or showers or even toilet paper. Am waiting to see what the result of this will be. Am also v glad that my uni in small-town Australia did not have any such things (though, since this was Australia, we had a keg party for orientation).

7. Still in search of converter thingy for my computer.

8. I really want to drag this to 10 points but am having a hard time. Oh, yes, I didn’t realise how MP and the Holy Grail would appear to someone who didn’t know what the HG was. Anomie, in the context of our conversations, said that she didn’t know what the HG was until very recently (I thought all Europeans/people of certain religiously-dominated geographic areas would know about this but I was wrong). I am trying to imagine seeing MP and the HG without knowing what the HG was and why it was important to find. Or even seeing it without knowing about the Arthurian stories. Would it still make sense? Btw, for MP fans, try watching Little Britain on the BBC channel. It’s rather funny for a “modern” comedy (I’m of the conclusion that all good comedies were done in the seventies: BlackAdder, MP, Red Dwarf, H2G2)

9. Another new thing this past week: my Mum has discovered the Internet. She writes daily emails now (and this is quite a feat since she has to go to a “computer café” to do so). This means daily reports are necessary or I get emails that go: “Priya, why are you not writing? You should write since you are the eldest”. Now, I didn’t know age and writing emails were supposed to go together (and I’m known as the slacker in my family anyway so what does she expect?).

10. The last thing this week: my first winter here, I bought a 14-day pass on Greyhound and travelled down south: Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Texas and coming back through Nashville (Tennessee), Savannah (Georgia) and Raleigh (North Carolina). Most of the trip itself was pretty tough: buses in the USA are not the way to travel, as my more experienced colleagues (E being one of them) had warned me about. But, it was my first year here and I wanted to see more of the USA.

Of all these places, Louisiana and Texas were the most fun. I spent New Year’s in New Orleans and it was fantastic: a great combination of weird and wonderful with people who were not too friendly (thankfully) and who appreciated the odd and the eccentric. My friend, an Australian paleontologist who had moved to Baton Rouge and become enamoured of voodoo, took me to loads of little shops in New Orleans, most of which seemed to specialise in wacky voodoo charms and books and we toured historical sites during the day and had haunted/voodoo tours and hung about in the many bars during the nights. Great fun.

It is still unbelievable to think the entire place is now under water and heaps of people have had no food or clean water or showers for days. More than enough people have written about all that so there’s no point in my writing more. I do want to say this though: I still have the picture I took of the columns inside the capital building in Baton Rouge which had bullet holes on them from the time when some bloke assassinated the governor. And, the one of the house where Faulkner used to live in in New Orleans. I learnt a lot about US history on that trip. And, about the people. The usual question people asked was (as is common): Where are you from? And, when I answered that I’d come from Washington, they usually looked at me in such a way as to say that “now we can see why you had to take a bus all the way down south here because, you poor girl, you are from Washington”.

Oh, and since my last post was on accents (sort of), I loved the way people down there talked: musical and with a cadence to it. Not like the more clipped speech of the northerners. The people on the street were unfailingly helpful, directing me to the bus stops, putting me in touch with random people who would then drive to various out of the way bus stops to get me and put me up in their places and even show me around. The contrast between the people I met and the reports of rioting and looting going on in the city is high. From up here in Washington, it's difficult to imagine of such a breakdown in social relations. But, it's not just the people who were great when I was there. Even Mike the Tiger at LSU in Baton Rouge, ventured out of his home in order to check out his visitor. I read he’d just had a new home made for him this year. Hope he's still doing well too.

That's it for the week. E is going to blog about exchanging business cards in DC.

posted by Priya @ 11:56 AM