At the end of the book, Harry transcends the traditional limitations of magic in his final confrontation with Voldemort. In an uncontrollable burst of power and emotion, he ignites the atmosphere and triggers the rapture. All the witches, wizards, and magical creatures are left behind to burn for their pagan beliefs. Then Vernon Dursley gives a sagacious speech about drills and the folly of sin to satisfy critics on the religious right.
I'm flying over to a town called Killarney and staying for a week to enjoy the lakes and mountains and unbounded awesome. It's a bit like Switzerland, but on the cheap and in the English. As a bonus, it's famous for the sort of walking and biking tours I intend to do. My hostel promises free internet access, so I'll probably manage to write in often. The photo is obviously not my own, but I'll take plenty when I get there.
To that end, I decided to pay up for tickets to Wicked, a musical telling the story of the wicked witch of the west (from the Wizard of Oz of course). I could tell I was in for something good when I saw the green body paint on the fans outside the theater. The production had drummed up a cult following, and there were fans milling around with painted nails and pointy hats discussing their last few viewings.
I began to build momentum for my switch while zoned out at my Progress Energy internship. I was in a nasty situation where the work was so dull and mindless that it dragged me down to its level. After a week, you'd think I was operating at maximum capacity because I was asking dumb questions and failing to read instructions. I hated it, because I don't like to be dumb and mindless for extended periods of time. What was worse, though, was that my veteran co-workers hadn't exactly found workplace bliss either. Nobody was really appreciative of anybody else's talent, but instead thankful for other people's willingness to trudge through unpleasant tasks. I began to wonder whether engineering was really for me, which raised a lot of questions.
Ever since middle school, everybody has assumed that I would go into science and engineering; myself included. When you're good at math and critical thinking, that's just what you do, right? I went along assuming that math and science were going to be the bread and butter of my future career, and I was perfectly happy with that. My insights were always useful and appreciated, and I was generally a big fish in a small pond. I took geometry in 8th grade, and I only had three classmates. It was easy to be uniquely talented, and that's the way I liked it.
I was getting a very handsome paycheck, but I had to quit. Some people will say that it's naive to expect work to be pleasant all the time, but you can't pay me to underemploy myself in a downward spiral of morass, stupidity, and depression.
Granted, I had my mid-life crisis sooner than most, but I still wish it had come sooner. I've taken a number of laborious courses that are useless to me now, and I'm not entirely certain that I will graduate on time. It's bothersome, but I can cope with it. At least I don't need to worry about feeding myself or anybody else at the moment. Pending good job prospects, and indeed the success of my entire life, this has been a good idea.
When I have a moment void of immediate responsibility, I feel like I'm putting it to waste if I'm not on the internet. Doing anything else would be to deny myself what I'm owed. Catching up on sleep is an inferior option. Working on a long-term project is overly anxious, and I can procrastinate with confidence and pride. Better make it internet.
I'll click one of my links, and maybe there will be something new revealed about an upcoming videogame. Maybe one of my friends will have added to a continuing conversation. Maybe there's something in my inbox for me to consume. I anticipate these things, and check for them greedily, particularly when I have been away for long enough to expect a hearty crop. Occasionally I'll check something repeatedly without thinking about it, even though a new update is absurdly unlikely.
ticing my humor and rhetoric. It releases chemicals in my brain, but so does everything else in life, so I hesitate to label my internet use an addiction. However, I've become unhappy with the way my habit restricts me and imposes upon my work and sleep. Compulsive enjoyment has a way of becoming less enjoyable over time. Recently I meditated and decided to go to sleep very early rather than staying on the internet, and I felt incredibly liberated. I'll see if I can cultivate that feeling, but I can't promise anything.
We are staying at Somerville College, which is a small campus that falls under the Oxford administrative umbrella. It was once a women's college, and it was the first Oxford University college to be non-denominational. The buildings are a mix of new and old construction that would not fit together without the help of some perplexing stairwells and hallways. It can be confusing at times, but Somerville is a very comfortable place to live.
My room is huge, and I have it all to myself. The only thing it's missing is a sink, but they have two half-way down the hall that I can use with little competition. The cleaning staff vacuum, take out the trash, and change the sheets regularly. I wish they would have the good manners to do my laundry for me too, but that's England for you.
Almost all our meals are provided at this fancy dining hall. The food is excellent for a cafeteria, and they always have cereal and baked potatoes to fall back on if the main courses get too crazy. The long tables are good for slowing the formation of cliques. The raised area at the very back is where professors and administrative staff eat food from their own special lunch line. Theirs is cafeteria experience of great dignity and priviledge.
y confused and offended by the concept. I was told in error that the train I wanted was booked.
s hoping to be rewarded with magic gauntlets or a treasure map or something, because that's how it works in videogames, but I'll take what I can get.
meal was the preamble to my spontaneous mountain climbing plan. While touring a castle the day prior, I saw a really cool hill-mountain-thing off in the distance, and declared that I was going to walk to it and then climb on top of it. I captured the imaginations of two others, and this grand adventure was set in stone. Time for a breakfast of champions. Better make it an English breakfast.
I tried the haggis because I'm not "a total 100% coward- wuss- pantywaist- mollycoddle- scaredy cat." Wilton says that's what I'd be if I didn't, and I can't help but agree. Now, this meal was just excellent. Look at that presentation! Delicious tater-tot style hash browns! I actually enjoyed the haggis! This was glory on a plate, my friends, and it prepared me well for the task ahead, but that's a story for another day. English breakfast is permanently redeemed.*
This entry is pretty belated, principally because I took very few of my own pictures, and have been waiting for others to upload theirs to facebook. I may have to modify that policy if I want to keep this thing prompt and current. Anyhow, I went on a day trip to the tennis tournament at Wimbledon last Friday (6/29). It was a wonderful exercise in impulsive and barely planned travel in a foreign country. Here's a hint: don't guess at which tube stop you want when you can ask a local. I'm proud to say that the whole thing went off without a hitch, and we got to see some quality tennis.
Hold on, not so fast. First I need to take you through the queue. Waiting in a queue is the British equivalent of waiting in line except for a few important distinctions. FREE STICKERS! Lots of stickers; I am the proud owner of eight. There were also queue concessions and queue attendants, all there to help me enjoy my two hour wait. Now, here's a brief lesson in free sticker economics. I had plenty of time to ponder this. When you print an absurd number of stick
ers and give your queue attendants quotas for handing them out, the market becomes flooded and the emotional value of the sticker plummets. In an ideal free sticker economy, recipients will guard their stickers jealously and wear them with glowing pride. However, in this sordid situation, these poor stickers had clearly become worth less than the paper they were printed on. Massive inflation had led people to treat this currency of joy as a sort of crude wallpapering material. It was more than one portable guardrail that fell prey to the sticky suffocating creep of queue stickers. It was horrible.
Oh right, Wimbledon. It's a pretty impressive tennis complex that seems to hold grass courts exclusively. There's a raft of simple, mid-to-low attendance courts surrounding the giant stadium housing "centre court." We never paid our way into the main event, but we did get to see Martina Hingis suffer a decisive loss. Somehow I was struck by the prominence of the female tennis players' patella tendons, and now I'm wondering whether my ability to focus on something like
that is a tally against my masculinity. The opportunity cost of my gaze in this instance was staggering. It's true though, those things were huge.
England has socialized healthcare in the form of the National Health Service, or NHS. As a result, when you get lung cancer from your lifelong smoking habit, taxpayers get the bill for your treatment. One way to take strain off the system and lower taxes would be to outlaw smoking and other forms of tobacco. That seems a bit overbearing, though, so England is just going to make it really, really inconvenient to smoke and hope that people quit out of frustration (really, really expensive didn't cut it).
"On July 1st 2007, England introduced a new law to make virtually all enclosed public places and workplaces in England smokefree. A smokefree England ensures a healthier environment, so everyone can socialise, relax, travel, shop and work free from secondhand smoke."
ncy. In the interim period, that money is lost to me. A sandwich that costs 4.25 may as well be five dollars in the short term, because those quarters are going on the desk.
I've been free to drink alcohol over here, and I've done so sparingly, but it's really going to sting when I go back home to a society that has less respect for my ability to make responsible decisions. I'd like to see the legal drinking age in the US dropped to 18 like it is here in the UK, but not just for my sake.
Yesterday the group took a bus to Wells, and then to Avebury. The trip provided a nice contrast of scenery, lifestyle, and religion. In Wells you've got a gigantic catholic cathedral whose laborious intricacy tell a story of fervor and economic power. Avebury could only boast grassy rolling hills, wandering flocks of sheep, and the odd Wiccan ritual.
The cathedral sits on a big square of grass that was made completely flat and uniform, perhaps to contrast with the incredible detail of the masonry. The focus is not on nature, but on the domination of natural forces, even gravity, in the name of God. The structure is so heavy and ornate that some of its support pillars began to sink, and it had to be reinforced by the "scissor arches" in the nave. Its only failure to bend nature it its will is the prominent pre-copernican clock which sends the sun slowly around the earth--as far as I know, this concept has not yet been imposed on the solar system. The cathedral is surrounded by a town with an assortment of shops and businesses, a market, and a Starbucks (I only saw one, but there could be more).
minefield of sheep poop that this place was indeed cooler than Stonehenge. It has huge circles of stones with all the same ancient mystery, but none of the unfortunate attributes of the tourist trap that Stonehenge has allegedly become. What's more, the field of sheep poop came complete with the fuzzy white culprits. A few of my classmates decided it was imperative that they go sneak up on
a sheep and touch it, but the rest of us wound our way out to find fresher sights and fairer grounds. I was impressed by the way that the hills just cried out for free roaming exploration, and I was pretty bummed out when I saw fences dividing the land into private properties and denying my impulse. We paused a moment to watch the local children make prudes of all of us with a festive poo flinging fight, and then finally got to the main event: people in funny clothes standing around near a rock and looking very solemn.
kipedia. To put the scene succinctly, most of them looked and acted like they came away from Lord of the Rings with a literalist interpretation. However, from what one woman explained to me about Wiccan beliefs, the whole deal sounded just as legitimate as the big ol' cathedral I had just come from. The Earth is alive with spiritual energy and prehistoric rocks are neato, all that good stuff. To be perfectly fair, Catholics wear funny clothes too; they just have a bigger budget.