Christina In London Bristol
Tuesday, December 30, 2003
 
STUPID INTARNET QUIZ
(because I adore Kevin, even if I hate stupid quizzes especially when other people's answers are better)
(also because I can't sleep)


















- posted by Christina @ 2:19 pm
 
I am a bad, bad blogger. And gynecologists are funny but don't highlight the invisible font if you're TMI-sensitive.
Happy holidays, I hope you and yours's hearts are light and troubles out of sight. I am currently Christina in Kelowna, not London. I haven't updated the time zone, so subtract 8.

My erstwhile prom date, who is possibly the most type-A hippy in the world, has a theory about Kelowna. It is this: those who return but temporarily to this backward town, having already got out, are susceptible to The Stupids and The Borings. I am valiantly trying not to catch The Stupids, because I have three large projects due at the beginning of Lent Term. Instead I've come down with a horrible case of The Borings and a bit of another classic Kelowna-induced ailment, The Sleeping At Weird Hours and Not Seeing Much of My Friends Who Are In Town Because We're All Too Busy With Our Families. This is my excuse for not posting, along with food preparation.

But hey, at least I'm not dying. On my way through Vancouver I had a follow-up appointment with a gynecologist . They had in their file that I was in London, so the nurse was asking me how I was enjoying living there and how long I was home for. I explained I have a month off, but it's not really off because of the projects due at the end of the break. The doctor came in as I was saying this and said "that's good!". I looked at him quizzically and he said, "you know what happens if you have nothing to do, right?" I said, "you relax and get caught up on sleep?" He said, "No, you die!" and went on to discuss the people who retire and die soon afterwards because they have nothing else to do. I said I wasn't too worried about dying from a month off at my age, but he explained "you're never too young to keep busy." He also said they'll probably never need to see me again. Works for me.

My grandfather had another heart attack Sunday morning, but seems to be determinedly not dying either.

I'm headed to Vancouver on the 2nd and back in London on the 7th. On the 12th all my projects will be handed in and I'll be posting again, one hopes, with no residual The Stupids or The Borings.
- posted by Christina @ 12:55 pm
Monday, December 15, 2003
 
Apple crumble + captured genocidal dictators = a good day
Yesterday evening, my brother (who is wonderful and a better baker than I) came over with a dish of apple crumble and some clementines he wasn't going to eat before leaving for Canada this morning. As we were eating the crumble there was a lot of street noise coming in the windows of my flat: clapping, hooting, happy yelling. 50 or so people were dancing down the sidewalk, waving an Iraqi flag and with a guy walking near the front of the group wearing a Saddam mask, with his hands bound and being pulled along on a rope.
- posted by Christina @ 11:47 pm
Sunday, December 14, 2003
 
What do we want? CHRISTMAS! When do we want it? NOW!
Santa callShouting this on December 13th, especially when you keep telling random strangers who ask for their presents now to be patient, is fun. I also liked my brother's (not SantaCon appropriate, he simply knew it would entertain me) call and response: "What do we want? REFORM! When do we want it? IN DUE COURSE!" I nearly choked on my beard.

This post is to let Grash [formerly-but-henceforth-not known as G-Money, as she and I both think that's a dumb nickname, and Pranav and John are both in Paris so they don't get a vote] know I made it home safely, despite the surliest, most stressed out bus driver in the world (on the 207, not the 29, so I can't even blame zone 2 for the weird night bus experience). Thanks G., I enjoyed the party, I should have stayed later but am excited at the prospect of sleep.

In due course, possibly even tomorrow, I will write something about Santa Con. For now, only this: anyone who has not experienced Santa bumper cars has not truly lived. And "when Santa is tired of London Christmas, he is tired of life."

Santa bumper cars Santa swings
- posted by Christina @ 3:59 am
Thursday, December 11, 2003
 
Punctuation
This Guardian article about Eats, Shoots and Leaves reminded me of the e-mail my brother forwarded me about this Saturday's Santacon (check out their carols). First, there was a bit about apostrophes:
"Its technical address is xxxxxxxx St., London, SEx xxx, but you probably don’t really need that. Just like you don’t need to worry whether the pub sign could do with an apostrophe."
Then there was the reminder to "greet other Santas on arrival at the pub with a hearty ‘hello Santa’." I don't need to worry whether there should be a comma after hello, either. My best friend has a black tshirt with a silver line drawing of a monkey above the words (in sequins, perhaps) HELLO MONKEY. Or possibly HELLO, MONKEY. Which makes me laugh delightedly, as does this: HELLO SANTA MONKEY.

- posted by Christina @ 8:43 pm
 
"A high potentiality for the common motherfucker to bitch out"
I just checked my first books out of the LSE library... until now I'd been using online journal articles and the two texts I got through Amazon and Waterstones. I realised this sad state of affairs existed last week, and had planned to hold out until the end of term tomorrow, but I just came up with a potentially good idea for a paper that's due late in January and wanted material now. It was rather thrilling.

Today I handed in a working copy of my simulation model, and a brief on the experiments I plan to perform over the term break. Doesn't that sound like the most exciting way to spend the holidays ever? But wait, because the excitement is only beginning. I also have a mathematical program to model, and a large stats project in which I need to figure out what the categorical variables are for a collection of paintings. And reports to write for all three projects. Whee!

With classes ending tomorrow, the OR department held a mini-post mortem to discuss how things have been going so far this term. I haven't been writing much about the MSc thing, because there's not much to say other than it's keeping me incredibly busy, I am learning tons, and I love being a student again. But when someone complained about how we didn't learn much in simulation, I delivered a mini-rant on the fact that if people would actually listen in class instead of talking to their friends throughout, we might actually get through more material. Except then I felt like I'd said it all wrong, so I e-mailed the other Masters students:

Executive summary: if you’re one of the people who rarely if ever talks to their friends during lectures, clearly this isn’t directed at you. In fact, I am a huge fan of yours and love you to bits on that basis alone. Not to say that I’m not a fan of yours if you are a talker, but you are making me crazy.

I want to clarify my comments from yesterday's mini post mortem about stupid questions and noise levels in classes. I don't actually think anyone's questions are stupid and should not have said that. The problem is also not that I think any of you are stupid or that I dislike any of you, and I really hope I didn't give that impression. In fact, it's the opposite. I've been impressed by everyone in both the OR and Decision Sciences that I've talked to, which is why I find the way some of you act in some classes so insulting and annoying.

I understand that some of the lecturers don't hold your attention. If you're not getting anything out of a class, of course you'd rather be talking to the person next to you than listening. But when there are 2 or 3 conversations going on, it becomes very challenging for anyone else to hear the actual lecture. If you're confused about something in the course, obviously it makes sense to ask a question. If, however, you were talking to your friend when someone asked a question so you missed it, and you ask the exact same question five minutes later, you're wasting all of our time. Since it only happens in some courses, it's obvious that the talking is a conscious behaviour and is not inevitable, which is why it’s so frustrating to me.

This may be a cultural issue, but I interpret both the constant talking and the time wasting with repeated questions as showing a severe lack of respect both for the lecturer and for everyone else in the class. I feel like you're making my LSE experience less valuable, so not only do I feel insulted, I'm resenting the drop in the return on my tuition investment.

I have a few requests that might improve the atmosphere in lectures next term:

- if you're getting nothing out of a class, instead of complaining to the person next to you, consider talking to the professor in their office hours, or bringing it up in some productive way that could actually improve the class for everyone

- if you have a trivial comment to make to the person next to you, please whisper or, better yet, text them

- if you find yourself talking for large portions of a class, maybe it makes sense to meet your friends for coffee instead of coming to that class, or to write notes to each other, or to find some clever way to keep your social interaction from being seriously distracting

Obviously if you're one of the constant talkers, you're free to ignore this and to do whatever you want in class. I'd rather not spend my time in lectures so annoyed that I'm snapping at people to shut up, but it's either that or grind my teeth to stubs. In which case, I would be tempted to send my dentist bills to the worst offenders.

Regards,
Christina

I was aiming for a tone that skated the line between funny, moderately bitchy, and semi-diplomatic. I think it worked because one of the Greek students who is a frequent but not constant conversationalist in class told me the last sentence made him laugh, and now he has two conflicting opinions of me: "One is, I think you're a total bitch. Other times you are incredibly sweet." I told him that was about right, that if you push me too far I will stop being sweet and bitch out.

It remains to be seen if our project class tomorrow will be any quieter.

Update at 13:00 Friday Dec 12: It was! It was much quieter. I am so damned pleased with myself. There were also fewer attending than usual, what with it being the last day of Michaelmas Term and all, so my high self regard is probably a classic example of how "Most people display unrealistically rosy views of their abilities and prospects [Weinstein (1980)]. Typically, over 90% of those surveyed think they are above average in such domains as driving skill, ability to get along with people and sense of humor." (from Barberis, N., & Thaler, R. (2002). "A Survey of behavioural finance." Working paper.)

Weinstein, N. (1980). "Unrealistic optimism about future life events", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39:806-820.


- posted by Christina @ 7:37 pm
Saturday, December 06, 2003
 
What part of No don't you get?
Just because someone can lead does not mean I should follow. This is what I learned tonight at Crush.

Today was the AU Barrel, which involves the members of the Athletic Union getting very drunk, very early in the day and parading around in funny clothes in the afternoon. London School of Alcoholics. I skipped that. This evening, I went to Crush with Oz, G-Money (another decision sciencer, chose her own pseudonym) and Future ThinkTanker. We started out in the Tuns, and Future ThinkTanker went home earlyish. We stalwart three repaired to the Quad, and the dance floor therein.

I am not too old for Crush. Should I ever get too old to enjoy shaking my thing as part of a gyrating, sweaty group to You Can't Hurry Love, and I Want You Back, and Like A Prayer, and Love Shack, and Stuck In The Middle With You, with the strobe light making everyone look like better dancers than they in fact are, I will be too old, period. I even enjoyed dancing to my "theme song" (according to Oz and G-Money), Dirrrty, and that horrendous Ace of Base All That She Wants song that was overplayed freshman year at McGill. And random songs that had nothing to recommend themselves but a heavy bassline. The DJ was an awful beat matcher. Ça m'est égal.

I did not enjoy the guy who "drank a bottle of wine" and who, after I danced with him briefly, kept surfacing and trying to pull me away to dance with him some more. Oz and G-Money were marginally effective deterrents. G-Money says she has perfected the fuck-off-and-die anti-boy glare, but I am skeptical.

Other things I learned this evening: And now I am home, ready for sleep and all the work I must get done this weekend. Hooray for night bus 207. I expect by Monday my ears will have stopped ringing.

- posted by Christina @ 3:40 am
Friday, December 05, 2003
 
Ethiopia
My grandpa seems to have rallied, so my hopes are up.

Jacob (or, as he's signing e-mail these days, Yacob) is working in Ethiopia, and has a lot of beautiful pictures and thoughtful commentary that you should go look at. I love Mitu and her self-portraits that the guy who lives next door's girlfriend must not see at all costs. Bebi is quite possibly the most adorable child in the world.

Speaking of photos, I still have three rolls of film from Barcelona to take in (and a file on my laptop describing the trip waiting to be copied and pasted), but I posted the shots of the sunset on the ill-fated coach ride to Stansted here. The file names are all spur-of-the-moment associations, because otherwise it was going to be sunset56, sunset 57.... Anyway, this one's my favourite:
sunset58

- posted by Christina @ 8:35 pm
Wednesday, December 03, 2003
 
time and chance happeneth to them all
My prospective waltz partner decided that for scheduling reasons he's quitting the team. Given the amount of course work I have right now, I'm entirely sympathetic, and maybe slightly relieved. I enjoy jive and cha cha more than waltz and quickstep anyway. It also probably serves me right for objectifying him on the internet.

In any case, it's not even a concern right now. My grandfather seems to be dying more quickly than the rest of us, and I'm feeling very far from home. When I left for London, I prepared myself for not seeing him again. Even then I knew that that sense of preparation was almost as false as denial would have been. My task list is long enough and my stress level high enough to keep sadness at bay, but just barely.

From a time and chance perspective, I'd say my grandfather did better than most. If he had been spared the vascular dementia it would have been better, obviously, but I'm happy he had 85 years of a mostly good life, 62 or 63 of them married to someone who adores him.

This is my Christmas wish list right now:It sounds like it's unrealistic to expect him to hold out until the 20th so that I can say goodbye. I'm rereading Dan Shapiro's Why Me? article as a reminder that
The sad truth is that crisis is a part of life that we can't always control, the part that causes us to change and, with any luck, learn.
It was more comforting the last time I was in crisis than it is now. Such is life.

- posted by Christina @ 2:02 pm

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