They've all gone to look for America...

This one is a bit late, I wrote it on Friday but have only had the chance to actually post it now. Keep your eyes peeled for more about New Haven and Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts...

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At the moment I am sitting on the Greyhound looking out over a freeway to a grim sky that looks like it’s about to fall at any moment. And it’s great.

I know there’s been a delay in updating recently. I was going to wait until I had a proper moment to blog about New York, as I promised I would. It’s only now really that I’ve had the time and/or inclination to actually update, and I don’t think I could do NYC justice now. The delay may have something to do with the fact that before now I have not been sitting with nothing to do but watch the world go by. There have been times when I have been sitting doing nothing but watch the world go by, but usually I have actually had something I have supposed to have been doing, and shamelessly blogging for an hour is a little more blatant a method of procrastination than even I can handle.

As you may or may not know by now, I’m done at the University of Delaware now and am off on my American Adventure. It was my last day yesterday and I received both a free lunch and a free oversized teacup from people in my lab, which was very pleasant and has led me to resolve to leave jobs more often. I have enjoyed working in the lab; everyone has been very friendly and, despite experiments not working, hours of data analysis/making pretty graphs and lots of little fiddly bits that are rather dull but require attention, the work itself has been pretty interesting. I should perhaps admit that I don’t feel I have done nearly as much work as I should have done (lack of sleep, complete absence of self discipline and a 60 second attention span may all have contributed to this), and I do wonder how much help I have actually been. But oh well, I’ve liked me working in the lab even if noone else has.

Having a much more accurate view of PhD life has not made it any easier to decide what to do after graduating. I really enjoyed the atmosphere both at UD and at the OU. Everyone is a bit of a geek (a bit more than a bit of a geek in many cases) and I like that; I am among my own kind. I don’t honestly know, however, whether I could hack life as a PhD student. As I said earlier, I do not have the greatest motivation or attention span at the best of times and being honest I know I’m not one of the obscenely bright people who will have a glittering career in academia. It seems like a long time and an awful lot of money to spend on something I won’t ultimately be that good at. But oh well, something to think about I suppose.

As I (think I) said in my last post, I’ve spent the last two weeks staying in a Typical American Family Home, in this case the home of Chris, Skip, Ben and Caroline Cook. Although I was a bit apprehensive about it before I went, I don’t honestly think it could have turned out better. I don’t want to gush for fear of embarrassing them in front of the whole interweb, but I will say that they are lovely lovely people who are very kind and accommodating who are good fun to be around. Plus they introduced me to steamed blue crabs, meatloaf and the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. It should be mentioned that ever since I was little watching Sesame Street, I had never seen the point of a sandwich with peanut butter and jam on it. But now I do. Seriously. In return I introduced them to Marmite, so I’m not sure they got the better of the deal there (although I did have to watch High School Musical*) They also experienced the HP sauce bacon sarnie and jelly babies, so I wasn’t completely evil.

Eep I think I have finally arrived in New Haven, Connecticut, where I shall be staying with Emma. I was going to write about other stuff I did with the Cooks, but I shall have to leave you with pool party, Rita’s, Baltimore, barbecue and Blue Rocks game.

*Just don’t ask. To know about High School Musical is to become part of it, and have it’s squeaky clean songs branded onto your brain.

Another faintly maudlin one

I realise that I haven't yet blogged about New York, or indeed about anything for a while. I thought that maybe I would do so today, but thinking about it I'm not in the most "New York, New York" kind of mood. We moved out of the dorm yesterday evening and, although my host family are really very lovely people (and please don't get me wrong about that. They are very nice, very friendly and very tolerant and accommodating), they are not my Ray Street folks. I have had the most "awesome" time in the dorm. It has been magical, truly fantastic, and I have made some wonderful friends. Real ones, not just random acquaintances, people who I very, very much hope to stay in touch with and to have come impose themselves upon me in London some time very soon. Even ignoring the nacho nights, salsa sessions (both in Timothy's and beyond), various birthdays, multiple trips further afield, evenings out and film/Doctor Who nights in, just being able to knock on someone's door or sit chatting in the lounge til 3am has made this Summer probably the best two months I've ever had. Now all the American folks have gone home (or to Hawaii, which is frankly rude) and I'm not going to see most of them for many months, if at all.

Having said that though, this has been one of the best times of my life. Ever. And I do really miss all my people at home, especially now I'm in a family home rather than the dorm. I've got friends now from all over the States and I intend to keep them (the people in question have no choice in the matter). We have MSN/AIM, Facebook and email, and I'd like to think that, even if they don't want to see me, that the opportunity to get free accommodation in London would attract some people to come and stay. I have photos and video and memories (and a chicken trophy) to remind me of how fantastic it has been, and I wouldn't swap them for anything.

You meet some strange people in this country...

New York last weekend: more about that in a dedicated post (after I've emailed Toria, who is apparently feeling neglected). Before that though, I thought maybe people who don't/can't fully appreciate the timewasting wonder that is Facebook would like to meet a few of the dodgy characters that I've gotten to know over the past weeks:

From left to right, Priyan (well part of him anyway), Steven and Adamsan. All from Imperial, although some more officially than others.

Matt, another Imperial person and a Physicist, so he must be cool. He also juggles at random moments, such as here on the subway platform waiting for the train.

Barbara and Emma, computer science major from Ohio and future Yale Law School student from Newark respectively. Emma is one of the two lovely ladies who have been looking after all of us in the dorm, and is possibly the only other person I've met who appreciates Doctor Who in the same way that I do. Barbara is visiting Delaware from Xavier University, Cincinnati and has Mad Foozball Skills.

This is Mark, who is from Long Island. I don't know whether he normally does this on the subway or whether it's just for our benefit, but it would be interesting to see him try and do so on the tube. Mark thinks that he has Mad Foozball Skills, but he is mistaken.
Matt, Adam and Priyan again, with Mike, Ilana and Cecilia. Mike I only met at the weekend, so I don't know much about him but he appears to be cool. Ilana (in the middle) is my roommate, who is very nice, gives me sweetcorn and milks cows. Cecilia is the other Imperial student and the only one of us Brits who wasn't 21 when she got here, although this doesn't appear to have been a problem as she just hands over her passport, looks innocently at the barman and gets served.

I'll upload some more interesting photos at some point as well as update about New York New York. I'll leave you with the view from the top of the Empire State Building at midnight: