DC part deux

Ok, in a better mood now. In the lab again with West Side Story on the mp3 player, so cannot help but be in a good mood. So, more about DC. Well, we've been twice now, once a few weeks ago and once a few days ago. I may even have to go again at some point; there is so much to see and it is all so interesting. I could happily spend a day in each of the Smithsonian museums, and that's without starting on all the monuments, parks and interesting governmental buildings that are everywhere in Washington. So far I've only managed four half-Smithsonians, the outside of the Capitol and the White House, a couple of memorials and the Mall*. I have to be honest: the White House was, well, just a big white house with a pillock in it, nothing particularly special really. You can only see from a fairly long distance away and, as I say, it's just a big white house. The Capitol now, that looked impressive. A bit like Saint Paul's and not at all like Westminster. At all. All shiny white, on top of a hill and looking out over a huge green space. As I said yesterday, it's all very noble and very impressive. Unfortunately there were only four tickets between about ten people for the tour when we got there on Saturday so I didn't get to see it, but hey I haven't been round the Houses of Parliament either.

The four Smithsonians I've been half-round, together with some of the highlights are:

• The National Gallery of Art - probably the only time I've spent three hours going round a quarter of an art gallery. Some wonderful pieces of artwork in here, not because they were done by famous people or are particularly iconic in themselves, just that they manage to convey a feeling or a moment spectacularly well. One of my favourites was a painting of two women framed, as it were, by a window. Both were looking straight out at all the people looking at them, one gazing rather dreamily and the other laughing behind her hand. It captured the characters of the girls fantastically and left me and Barbara at least wondering about who it is they were looking at. There was also a picture of Jesus by a Venetian painter (can't remember who but it was in the "Development of Venetian Art" exhibition). It was nothing like a lot of the other iconographic paintings that we'd seen so many of. It was just a close up of a man in pain and sadness looking back over his shoulder. It wasn't until you had a closer look that you realised he was carrying a cross. It was very different from any other picture of Jesus that I'd even seen, and it was very moving. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see a good proportion of the museum because I had to meet Adam to go to...
  
• The National Air and Space Museum** - this is possibly one of the coolest museums I have ever been to. When you consider that a goodly proportion of the advances in aerospace engineering have happened in the States, they're in a pretty good position to have the definitive aerospace museum. Full scale models of Skylab, the original moon lander***, and the Voyager spacecraft and the authentic versions of the Spirit of St. Louis, one of Amelia Earhart's planes and the honest-to-God original Apollo 11 command module. Suffice to say I had a good time. And I got a cool key ring.
  
• The Freer Gallery - this was also pretty wonderful, although in a slightly different way. Rather than being a specific era/movement/style of art, this gallery consists pretty much of the personal collection of Mr. (Arthur, possibly) Freer. It's not a huge place, and so is the only museum I saw the majority of, but it has a huge range of extremely interesting artwork. Freer was apparently very interested in Asian and Islamic art, so there are works from all over the world being presented in a way that you don't normally see. Ancient Arab caligraphy, for example, has always been presented (at least in my experience) as an interesting archeological curiosity rather than the beautiful artwork that it is. It was very interesting to see painting, poetry, sculpture and artifacts on display together, being appreciated for their aesthetic rather than historical value. Plus, there was loads of Japanese art, which anyone who knows me will know I think is cool.
  
• The American History Museum - Dorothy's ruby slippers, Skeksis, Kermit the frog and Deep Blue****. I don't need to say any more. Oh, and the original Star-Spangled Banner, although I admit that probably meant less to me than it did to Mark and Barbara.
  

I do have to admit though, that the whole museum experience was slightly dented by the completely ridiculous amount of security in some places, and this hasn't just been in DC. Ok, so checking big backpacks is probably understandable if you're going somewhere that would be missed if it got blown up. But really, I swear I had to jump through more hoops security-wise to get into the Ronald Reagan building for lunch than I did at Heathrow. Metal detectors, x-ray scanners, ID checks and big blokes with even less sense of humour than immigration officials. Honestly. If you didn't want to blow up a museum beforehand, you certainly did afterwards.

Gar. I am in shout-at-the-radio mood again now. Stupid bloody paranoid Americans. I'm going to go back to the dorm now and have a cup of tea. Probably microwaved.




Bleugh.


*how many points do I get for that? And no, not the shopping one and not the one in London either.
**see what I did there?
***yes, I know there's the same thing in the Science Museum in London, but this was an American version.
****if you don't understand any of those then I'm not going to enlighten you

DC

In the lab again at the minute. Should really go and blog elsewhere, but in my head I've finished for the day so I suppose it doesn't make a difference whether I'm blogging here or in my room. To be fair, In my head I haven't really been at work at all today, which may be why I appear to have accomplished so little today. Oh well.

I promised that I'd talk about DC after the weekend, so here you go. DC is probably the most un-citylike city I've been to, apart from MK*. Everything seems very white and very open, not like grey, cramped London at all. It's all very regal, very dignified, very land-of-the-free-home-of-the-brave, which I guess was the point really. Being in a place where the most potent symbols of a country and its government come face-to-face with one of the greatest educational institutions on the planet can make anyone, even someone as cynical as me, feel inspired. It's just a shame that the awe wears off, replaced by the reality of what such a great country founded on such beautiful ideals is in danger of becoming, and how my country seems to be mindlessly following the same path for no good reason.

How bizarre. I was having similar thoughts when actually in DC, especially when looking at the Vietnam veterans' memorial, but in articulating them they seem to be having much more impact. I'll try and update later, when I've got out of my shouting-at-the-radio mood.



*and yes, it does count as a city. Maybe not the capital, but a city nonetheless :-p

Contemplative

In a contemplative mood. I think this is what happens when I do not get enough sleep and have been watching thought-provoking films and reading thought-provoking books. Also helps I guess that I'm in lab at the moment, not awake enough to actually come up with intelligent ideas (although I'm not sure I'd be capable of doing so regardless of my sleep pattern) and consequently doing lab monkey work that requires little thought. Another week exactly and we'll be half way through our time here. Another three and a half weeks and we'll be moving out of the dorm and in with our homestay families. This makes me sad, I think. It's weird. I'm at the point where the novelty (and the jetlag) are pretty much worn off and I have moments when I wish I could get away from everything here and go back home. At the same time, though, I'm already sad about the fact that I'm going to have to move out of Ray Street, and soon after that out of the States. I've met so many people that I believe I'm going to miss very much when I go home, and the prospect of going without the conversations til two, random film and salsa nights, nine cups of tea from two tea bags and elocution lessons (iss well good innit?) makes me pause for thought.

Philly cheesesteak - food of the gods

My apologies for the interrupted nature of my previous post. Having a supervisor around is in many ways a good thing, but does mean that things get a little hectic, especially when every time he comes down to the lab I get another job to do. These jobs are starting to pile up at the moment, and some are larger than others. The big one that I'm trying to ignore a la elephant-in-the-corner is writing the introduction to a paper that Karl (supervisor) is hoping will be submitted. This scares me somewhat, especially because writing a paper would imply that I am in some way a decent physicist and that I know what I'm talking about, both of which are blatant untruths. At least, though, I'm not having to work weekends and/or eighteen hour days*.

I realise that I haven't yet written anything about Washington DC last weekend. This is bad, as it was a major feature of this trip, making almost (but not quite) as much impact as the lack of kettle. But I'm not going to write anything today: we'll hopefully be going again next week to catch up on some of the stuff that we didn't have time to see last week, so I'll just have to write everything in one go. Besides, there has been much going on this week and I'm going to forget most of it if I don't blog it now.

The major feature of last Sunday was Zizou, bless him, showed his disdain for the normal footballing tactics of "wait til the game restarts and then take the *&"^£%) down" and decided to be a bit more creative. I think it was a shame that the game ended up going to penalties: given England's performance in penalty shoot-outs I do not have a very positive view of them in general anyway, but it seems slightly off that the whole tournament could (and did) rest on something as flukey as a penalty. I also think it was a shame that the final was between Italy and France, given that France were abysmal at the beginning of the tournament and that most of the Italian team should have been given Oscars. But I digress. It was fun to sit and watch football with a fair few folk from the dorm, especially as football was a new experience for many of them. At bit different from going down the Goose, but an interesting atmosphere nonetheless. Went swimming in the outdoor pool after this. It's a lovely pool and a relief to get into after sweating outside, especially as the pool and the air have probably got a similar amount of water in them.

Monday night a group of us went to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Twas good fun, even if the film was a bit self conscious at times and starred Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley**. I managed to confuse someone (I shall not name him for fear of embarrassing him to the Amerikay community) by sending an email the following day including the words "ahoy there matey" "avast" and "arrrrrr". No, British people do not normally talk like that, it was because we went to see a film about pirates the night before. Bless.

The reason for this email was to encourage people to go and eat half price nachos and $2 margaritas at Klondike Kate's***, something which is rapidly threatening to become a bit of an institution. They are absolutely wonderful as long as you don't think about what the "cheese" is made of. It isn't cow juice for sure, nothing with the consistency of tar and the sticking power of plastic cement could never have occurred naturally. Nacho "cheese", Fluff (just don't ask) and cockroaches will be the only things to survive the nuclear holocaust/meteorite/alien invasion that will eventually finish off civilisation. The other thing semi-wonderful thing about Kate's is looking at the drinks menu. I get all excited when I see "Kate's Kosmo", "Kate's Spring Water****" or "Kate's Strawberry Daquiri", but then I'm disappointed when it turns out that, despite having my name on, I have to pay for them. Mind you, with really nice margaritas for $2 I can't really complain.

Wednesday we once more went salsa dancing, and it was as much fun the second time round as it was the first, once you discovered the ingenious tactic of dancing behind the pool tables so that you don't get your heels stepped on by fancy-dancing salsa ladies in spangly skirts and extremely pointy stilettos. I have now learned how to do five different moves, which is good, but have not yet learned how to let the bloke lead, which while being all very admirable in terms of equal rights and such is not too great in terms of actually dancing properly. I have also learned to be careful not to do anything which may give rise to gossip, given the amount of gossip that was going on among various Ray Street people about certain individuals.

Thursday and Friday, all very nice, especially getting pitchers of Yuengling (vaguely tolerable American lager, yes, it does exist) for $8 at Deer Park and sharing them with nice people who don't see me as some sort of alcoholic because I know stuff about beer. Yesterday, though, was cool for the food rather than the drink. A group of us, much smaller than the group who went to DC, went to Philly yesterday to check out the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall and other such landmarks of freedom and democracy. With their associated x-ray machines, metal detectors and other terrorist aquisition devices, of course. It was very interesting finding out about American history, something I realise I know less and less about the more I am here. Also interesting going to the Mutter Museum of Medical Oddities. Yup, medical oddities. Very interesting and I'm sure very worthy, but it did make me slightly uncomfortable: donating your body to medical science is one thing, having the pickled bodies of aborted babies and 19th century people only disected because they had noone who cared enough about their death to object, is another.

Philly seems like a cool city though, and is the home of the most indelicate delicacy I've every had: the Philadelphia cheesesteak. A long bread roll containing a big pile of very thinly sliced fried steak, topped your choice of cheese, onions, ketchup and pickles. Absolutely beautiful, even if you can feel your arteries blocking as you eat it. Whatever else Philadelphia may be like, it will be excused anything as long as I can have another one at some point.



*Priyan, complain! You are not a small Malaysian child making Nike trainers!
**Completely blank or slightly puzzled and pouting respectively
***Which describes itself as a restaurant/"saloon"
****Vodka, soda water, Sprite and lime: truly my kind of spring water

Arrrr!

This may or may not be a long post. I'm currently sitting in lab half asleep with little to do and noone else here, so I figured I may as well blog a little. However, if I'm suddenly cut short, it isn't because I've had a heart attack or because I decide I don't like you (probably), it's because someone who's going to care whether I'm doing any real work or not has turned up.

On the subject of work, despite what I have just said, work in the lab has been getting a lot more interesting lately. I am actually starting to get real results that I can analyse, rather than squishing platinum powder into pellets. I must admit that sometimes the actual analytic process can be a little dull, but at least I can get something (hopefully) vaguely useful out at the end. I also don't end up with black stuff all over my face, which is a hazard when you're doing lots of stuff with very fine powder. Having said that, I guess if I am going to have black smudges all over myself then I may as well have platinum ones.

Out of the lab (and if Priyan's supervisors are reading then this shouldn't just be in order to eat and sleep) ...

Spoke too soon. Supervisor turns up and now I'm making pellets again. Goody.

Da da da, da da da!

While nothing particularly fancy has been happening lab-wise, I feel that last night should receive an honourable mention for one of the best evenings so far on this trip. It must be noted that generally I dance even more rarely than I wear a dress*, but for some reason I was convinced to go to a bar last night. Nothing out of the ordinary there, you may think, but this was no ordinary night out at a bar. That's right, I went dancing. Salsa dancing. Yes, you did read that correctly; I went salsa dancing. And had possibly one of the best evenings I've had for a while. As far as I can tell, the other nine people that Alicia managed to persuade/annoy/bully into coming had a really good time too, which is nice because it means that when we go again next week there will be people to dance with. The only problem was that, while by brain was content to allow the bloke to lead, my feet did not seem to be so keen. Mind you, they seemed to have their own agenda for most of the evening anyway, so it was hard to tell what was a deliberate move and what was random falling over. It was also slightly mystifying how an "Irish" bar called Timothy's can justify a salsa night, but oh well.

*and that's generally once or twice a year, although you should know that if you know me at all :p

Tea

Tea. One word says it all. So why am I writing a post about it then, I hear you ask*? Well, while one word may be all you need to describe the wondrousness that is tea, many words are required to describe the travesty that is microwaved tea. The fact that I am only coping because I brought (or should that be smuggled in) a packet of Tesco's Fairtrade tea shows how desperate the situation is to start with. A proper tea bag does not have a piece of string attached! Yes, I do want milk with my tea, I do not want bloody lemon!! And I don't care whether it's Assam, Kenyan, English Breakfast I JUST WANT A CUP OF TEA!!! Why do people in this country not understand that?! I could cope though, if it was just a questions of not being able to get a decent cup of tea without a huge amount of stress in coffee shops etc. But no. I can't even get one in my room. Apparently, along with tins of tomatoes and breakfast cereal, electric kettles are something of a luxury commodity. So there isn't one in the dorm.

.

.

.

Just in case the full enormity of that last statement was lost on you, I'll say it again. THERE. IS. NO. KETTLE. As in, no way of boiling water short of getting out the saucepans. And seeing as though the box of kitchen stuff is not always readily available, saucepans are not usually an option. So I have to use the microwave. To make a cup of tea. A microwaved cup of tea.

I feel so dirty.




* or I would if someone would COMMENT, or at least send me an email**
** woo! footnotes, Terry Pratchett style!

Eeeeeeee!!!

The Doctor AND Cybermen AND Daleks?!?! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!


That is all.

No. Just....no.

What can I say about today? Very very good bits combined with very very bad. Despite missing the first twenty minutes of the match due to heavy traffic, we managed to see most of the game in a sports bar on the boardwalk of Rehoboth beach. It was a little different from sitting in the pub (no queue at the bar for one thing, and having to drink Bud for another), but there were a few other English people. Nothing like ex-pat solidarity to make you feel better about Becks getting substituted. I refuse, however, to talk about THAT incident. No. Just....no. Wrong. Bad and wrong. Bad.

Anyway, managed to get over it, just, eventually. To be honest I'm amazed we managed to hang on for another hour with only ten men, and without Rooney, Beckham and Joe Cole. I had the feeling though, after the first half, that it was going to go to penalties. Didn't think we were going to lose though. I could say that the novelty of sitting up to the bar proper American style, with a barmaid who kept wanting me to say things because my accent is apparently cool (someone else is finally realising that the MK accent is well good innit) and a nice random English lady who wanted to by me shots because she was too tense once it got to penalties but didn't want to drink alone, makes me feel better. But it would be a lie.

After that though was very much better. I'll tell you a secret: the Atlantic, right, is cool. Very cool. It's big, blue and goes up and down and it's possible the most entertaining body of water that I have had the fortune of meeting in a long time. Despite the fact that I have been discovering crevices I never knew I had, only noticing their presence by the large volume of sand wedged therein, it was extremely good fun. Had a sleep on the beach afterwards also; sleeping in the middle of the day is always good, especially when you got up at 8am on a Saturday. Also went outlet shopping afterwards, which was nice. Saw many nice shiny shoes and t-shirts (even though they were Calvin Klein and probably made by small children in a jungle in south-east Asia) but was good and didn't buy anything. Then saw the most lovely suede jacket that fitted fantastically and was $40 reduced from $125. So I bought that.

Normally I wouldn't think of leaving for a trip down the pub at about 11pm, but this is the land of opportunity after all. After we'd got back and had dinner and I'd been thrashed at foozball yet again, by Matt this time, we went to the Iron Hill Brewery, yes I did say brewery. Featuring the finest, locally brewed, cask ales that Newark can offer (and they were actually quite fine, although some were finer than others) at only $2 a glass (not quite a pint, but almost. The only time I've seen small portions so far) it was very nice and very good value. I do also enjoy the warm, smug feeling of knowing that I've had not just beers but ales that Toby has yet to sample :-p