Almost done!

Wow, I'm very sorry I haven't posted anything in... three weeks?! I had no idea it'd been that long. Unfortunately I can't spend too much time at the moment because term ends tomorrow and there's quite a few things I still have to do. We had our final rowing race, the Fairbairns Cup, this morning. It went well, but I don't know our official time yet. Last Saturday was the Clare Regatta; it was about half as long but because the weather was way colder, felt like an eternity compared to this morning's race! I need to go get my haircut (first one since I arrived!), work on a couple practice essays due tomorrow, go to carol service at the college chapel and then undergraduate formal tonight (which is sometimes described as 'carnage,' though I'll have to behave because I need to finish my essays). I'll probably stay up all night working on them, turn 'em in before 2pm and go to the last seminar of the term, History of Thought, where we'll talk about the revolutionary 18th century German military strategist Clausewitz. Hopefully I can sleep for a couple hours afterwards, in preparation for the boat club formal dinner tomorrow night... whew!

Monday I fly to Edinburgh to see my good friend from Grenoble, Rachel, who I haven't seen since June 2006. I can't wait!

Oh, and because I haven't posted many pictures, here are a few... I'll post more this weekend! My new camera arrived, too, so I'm going to take plenty in Scotland.

A beautiful tree-lined walk on Jesus Green along my daily path to town



The Round Church



St John's College



The main court of Trinity College



A view south on Trinity Street. Look at all the pesky tourists! I've become very adept at avoiding... or intimidating them!

More pics from Queens Ergs

Just a handful of pictures from the Queens Ergs event last week. These should do a better job of conveying the atmosphere!

The calm before the storm...



Note the boat progress display... great motivation tool!



In the thick of it...



Anxiously awaiting their turn...

It's getting dark at 4:30pm

Oh no. The cold is finally starting to set in, but worse than that, daylight is vanishing more quickly than I thought was possible of regions outside the Arctic Circle. I am typing this at 4:29pm and the sun has almost completely set and the sky is darkening. Unbelievable. Supposedly it'll be getting dark by 3:30pm in mid-December. I don't doubt it.

Time is also flying by, with all the formal halls, lectures, seminars, rowing practices and days full of reading. I seem to be developing a tea habit as well. I used to only need one cup a day, early in the morning, to jumpstart my system but now I need tea infusion throughout the day to ward off sleep. I have some Red Bull stowed away, but I'm saving them for a real emergency... like the two essays I have due this Friday.

Classes are all going well. We're well into the seminars, which are 90 minute sessions in 'small groups' where we discuss a specific topic in detail, with everyone in the room participating. For example, in the Middle East and North African Politics class our three seminars so far have covered the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, Egypt's role in the Arab world and the Gulf Cooperation Council. In History of Thought, we've been talking about Hobbes, Thucydides and the Spanish Scholastics; this week's seminar will focus on Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Peace and Idea of a Cosmopolitan Commonwealth. Fascinating stuff, but because we're all supposed to participate it means we have to do lots of additional reading beyond the normal prep for lectures.

The War and Society class is unique, though, because we're only assigned one book for each week's seminar, though we're expected to have read it cover to cover and analyzed it thoroughly. Last week's was "Ambivalent Conquest: Maya and Spaniard 1517-1570." The book examined the Spanish military and religious conquests in the Yucatan during the 16th century, attempting to provide a view from both the Spanish and Mayan sides. It was pretty easy to tell the Spanish were bad guys, but Inga Clindennen, the author, may have romanticized the Mayans a bit much... our professor commented that he thought, "Inga wouldn't have minded having her heart cut out." There's not much time to reminisce about the book, though, because we're expected to have already starting reading the book for next Monday: "Elementary Aspects of the Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India." I kid you not. Should be a good read!

Let's see, what else can I cram in the next 7 minutes before I start reading up on Woodrow Wilson for tomorrow's US Foreign Policy seminar...

• Rowing - Going well, this week is the first week that the first men's boat starts practicing on our own. We have a 7:30am Wednesday erg session in the gym, Friday morning practice on the water and Sunday afternoon practice on the water. It's been great exercise and I've really enjoyed it so far. That said, rowing on the water is far more difficult than practicing on the erg machines. On the water there are all sorts of tricky issues involved in balancing the boat, making sure your arms are at the correct height, keeping in time with the rest of the guys... it can make for some pretty frustrating moments when you're just a bit off and your oar goes into the water at the wrong angle, making a huge splash and totally throwing off your rhythm. Not that that happens to me... Also, rowing makes me hungry ALL THE TIME. If I try to snack, my stomach just gets angry. Like tonight's after-school snack: I've had nearly a third of a delicious Camembert-like cheese (of course, it's French; English cheeses so far have been terrible), lots of Ritz crackers (thanks Mom!), two yogurts, two cups of tea and a banana. And I'm still starving. Argh.
  
  
• Travel - Looking at traveling to Edinburgh at the end of term, followed up with a trip to Barcelona, Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen? Overly ambitious right now, so I think I might have to just pick two of the four and save the others for next term.
  
  
• Electronics - I've had terrible luck so far. First a friend dropped my phone into the River Cam while we were punting. Then my laptop hard drive died and I had to have a new one shipped from America. And now my camera is dead after suffering a fatal drop Saturday night! Terrible! After 2.5 glorious years, countless expeditions throughout France and Europe, it's bitten the dust. Rest in peace DSC W-7. You will be missed. Though your replacement has already been ordered... I've been forced to do away with my Lexmark inkjet printer, too, because it guzzles ink faster than Sean Sean drinks Pepsi. Ink cartridges are like $25 and last, at most, 230 pages or so. A cheap HP laser printer arrived today, so I'm eagerly looking forward to vastly more efficient printing.
  
  
• Cycling - A bike is a critical element of life in Cambridge. It makes practically every point in the entire city no more than 10 minutes away from any other point, except for perhaps the train station which is probably more like 16 minutes away.("Equidistant" is a fancy way of saying the same thing.) Lights are essential at night. As I mentioned, it gets dark really early, so you need to be able to see other cyclists barreling down at you. Also, the police will fine you if you don't have lights (assuming they can catch you, muahaha). I have a helmet, but I don't wear it as often as I should (though I do always remember to don it after a night out). I've become quite a fearless cyclist; normal cars don't faze me, though my heart still sinks when I glimpse a double-decker on my heels. But taxis are the worst. I think the cabbies all play some sort of twisted game where they attempt to get as close to a cyclist as possible without touching them.

And lastly, a few pictures!



Two weeks ago we had an exchange formal at Corpus Christi, the college across Trumpington Street from St Catharine's. It had quite a pretty dining hall, much more 'old-fashioned' than ours.



Sat next to Joanna; oddly enough we weren't intermixed with the regular Corpus Christi kids, which I thought would've been more interesting. Odd.



That Friday the Catz girls' drinking society invited me to the 'Bombay Brasserie,' an Indian restaurant more commonly known as the 'Mahal.' I was entirely unprepared for the Mahal experience and I must regretfully admit that the Mahal won. I conceded around 10pm and was home by 11pm. I never knew what hit me, but I suspect that much of my defeat owes to the terrifying practice of "pennying."



A glimpse of the Mahal chaos... it may appear relatively calm, but I assure you, bedlam reigns. What you don't see: food being tossed around, people standing on chairs declaring "General Fines" (for instance, 'General Fine for all persons with facial hair' or 'General Fine for all Americans') and overall ridiculous behavior.




A much calmer evening a few nights later with some people from my course -- here's Norwegian Bendik and American Kate.

And here, just so you can all laugh at my ridiculous facial expressions, a few pictures from our Halloween party on Saturday. (The theme -- "your worst fear." I dressed up as a creepy old man.)







That's it for now!

Queens Ergs

UPDATE: Woohoo, I made the first boat!

On Wednesday evening, I competed in the Queens Ergs competition for novice rowers. It's called Queens Ergs because it's held at Queens College and 'Ergs' because that's the short/affectionate/dreaded abbreviation of 'ergometer,' an indoor rowing machine. Each college enters as many 8-man teams as they can. Most colleges tend to have two teams, though some of the big ones have four, five or even six (like St Johns). I was on the 2nd team for Catz, which I was at first peeved about, but later decided wasn't that big of a deal. I didn't have much time to even think about it because I was too preoccupied trying to focus on the task at hand -- completing a 500 meter sprint as fast as I possibly could. That's no small feat. We were told that girls are supposed to have a time of around 2 minutes and guys 1 minute 50 seconds or better. My fastest time heretofore had been 1 minute 44 seconds and it'd been extremely demanding. I would do even better this time... but I didn't know it yet.

The event itself was absolutely electric. Amidst a throng of people outside, we warmed up, in the cold, doing some stretches and quick sprints to get the muscles loose and blood flowing. We filed in, one by one, to a deafening gym filled with 12 other 8-man teams, scores of cheering spectators on the gym's second level balcony and a tuxedo sporting MC. A DJ provided tunes - ranging from Chariots of Fire to Alien Ant Farm's "Smooth Criminal" cover to popular techno songs. I'm not sure that I've ever felt as "fired up" as I did then. All the teams got in position, our first rower's feet were strapped in and our two coaches knelt next to him, holding his feet down and speaking encouragingly. They'd soon be shouting.

The MC pulled out an airhorn and let it roar -- and the room exploded in a flurry of motion as rowers began straining furiously to row faster than they'd ever been before. The 7 other members of our team yelled support and the coaches shouted at the current rower to row faster, ROW FASTER, I WANT TO SEE YOUR SPLIT TIME (the 500 meter time indicated on an electronic screen in front of the rower) GO DOWN, MAKE IT GO DOWN NOW DAMMIT! It was intense. Very, very intense.

As soon as the first rower's 500 meters were up, the coaches unbuckled his feet and slid him off the seat while buckling in the feet of the second rower. We only had 12 to 15 seconds between each rower, so a quick swap was essential. The first rower tried to limp away. He didn't make it very far before collapsing to his feet. We patted him on the back, but he could barely speak. Whoa.

One by one, my teammates finished their 500 meters. I was the seventh rower, second to last. I was psyched. I'd looked around for paramedics earlier because I thought I might have a heart attack. I didn't see any but figured a hospital would be close by, so I didn't worry too much. (Seriously, don't laugh!) As Rob, the rower in front of me finished, I hurriedly moved to the seat while the coaches buckled in my feet and patted me on the back encouragingly. They sounded pretty composed, until the clock counted down... :03, :02, :01, :00. GO! ROW NOW! FASTER! Whoa.

I remember seeing 1:25 on the screen for the first 30 seconds or so -- a very impressive time, but one I wasn't quite able to sustain for long. I was rowing so hard, absolutely straining with all my might, that the end of the machine was popping up and one of the coaches had to stretch to hold it down while keeping my foot secure. Despite my intense focus and determination, the time inched up. 1:30. Crap. 1:35. Oh no. 1:40. With each stroke, I felt like I had less and less strength. 150 meters to go. I couldn't believe time was moving so slowly. The music faded away and I could only hear fragments of phrases from the screaming coaches. I literally felt disembodied for a bit. I don't mean that I 'floated above and saw my own body' or any nonsense like that. I felt extremely detached from the entire experience, removed, as if I was no longer the person rowing, but I happened to be inhabiting the same spot. It was an odd feeling, for sure.

The meters slowly trickled down and I gladly watched as the coaches unbuckled my feet and prodded me out of the way while they strapped in the final rower. I glanced at my time -- 1:37.2. Not quite the 1:35 that I wanted, but I was pleased. I had the fastest time on my boat, our team placed 8th out of 31 teams and I placed 27th individually out of 248. Not bad! Click here to see the stats.

I staggered to the wall and tried to lean against it but my legs couldn't support my weight, so I slumped down, chest still heaving. It took a couple minutes before I was able to even walk. On our way out of the gym, the music still echoing in my years, I spotted a pair of paramedics with an automatic defibrillator. Whew. My adrenaline was still pumping hours later and I couldn't fall asleep until 1:30am.

Here's a generic picture I snagged from someone else... there should be more coming soon! This one doesn't really do the event justice, I think it's taken from the girls' event. During the mens' event there were at least 140 people on the gym floor and another 80 or more on the balcony, screaming and waving college scarves.