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Scene: I spent the day in the college office yesterday, handing out University ID cards to new grad students. One of the grad students was a lawyer from Chile, so he and I conversed for a bit in Spanish.
Person nearby: Kaitlin, you're so clever, how did you learn to speak Spanish like that?
Me: Ummm, I'm doing my degree in it...
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Scene: Andy and Corwin are helping me move.
Me to Corwin: That box has my plates in it. You don't actually have to be too careful with it, I'd like an excuse to get some new plates.
...a few seconds later...
Me to Andy: That box has my gin in it, please be careful.
Corwin: Well, I can see where your priorities lie...
Dear College,
I know the various housing contracts for the college state that the cost of the room includes "reasonable use of electricity," and that as a college it is not always easy to keep the bills paid. But how do you expect to keep your costs down if your heat doesn't turn off and I have to open my windows and turn on a fan so I don't accidentally evaporate?
Keep on truckin',
Kaitlin
So at Catz we have two dinner seatings - one at 7:15 where you sit down and someone serves you 3 courses, and one at 6ish where you line up and choose from a variety of fried foods. The latter is called "Scaf" and basically has two types of customers:
(1) People who can't get to hall for 7:15 - they usually have to be somewhere and/or don't have time for a sit-down dinner, and
(2) Undergrad boys who eat the fried food BEFORE they sit down for the regular dinner.
"Scaf" is short for "Pete's Cafe," named after the former domestic manager. It is known ONLY as Scaf to most people, so lots of newbies ask, "So why is it called Scaf?"
Most of the time, without thinking, I answer, "Because the guy who invented it was called Pete." As if that made sense or something. I realized that when you are at a place for a long time, certain things that may make sense to you may need a bit more explanation to someone else.
I was never a student government person in high school or college. I actually didn't like people who were in it - I always thought they were a bit snobby. But having served a year in "student government" (i.e. the Middle Common Room Executive Committee), I realized that these things actually do teach you useful skills.
One of the most useful skills I learned by being on the committee? How to get dressed in 5 minutes.
As you know, I was one of the social secretaries on the committee. Namely, I was the one who planned the parties. When you're the one who plans the parties (especially the ones that coincide with dinners), you have a lot to do. You decorate. You lay out the place cards and write out the menus. You make sure the DJ knows where to go and the bar staff has enough spirits to make cocktails until closing time. And a lot of this happens right up until the 11th hour.
There were quite a few times when we'd be getting ready until 6:50 for a dinner that started at 7. A black-tie dinner, that is. And many of those times, we had guests that I had to meet at the door "just before 7." So I had to get dressed fast.
This is a skill I've been able to take with me. Once, my family was going to a wedding in Cape Cod, and we were very lost. We had maybe half an hour to change before we could get to the church. I was the first one dressed. My parents and sister couldn't believe it - they still had all kinds of stuff to do. Another time, as Junior Dean, I was supervising an exam for people who needed extra time (learning disabilities, etc.). The regular time exam ended at 5, and this one kid took up until 6:15, using all but 15 minutes of his extra time. I had to pack up his materials, make sure the printers and computers were turned off, submit all the paraphernalia (exam books, clocks, etc.), and get ready for a dinner that started at 6:15. I was a teeny bit late (not a big deal since there were drinks first), and I forgot my jewelery, but I made it.
I think this is a very useful skill, but I'm curious how to market it. Time management? Efficiency? In any case, it's one of the few skills I'll take with me beyond academia.
I really want one of those teeny laptops. I think it's something I would use a lot, so it would be worth the expense.
I wouldn't use it for heavy duty work, but it looks convenient to take to a library to take some notes. I'd also use it at the airport, and to watch movies on a plane.
I've seen them around here for $300-$320. I could probably get one in the States for $250, based on a quick look at Google, but I don't know if that's used or if it'll take weeks to deliver.
Does anyone have one of these little guys? Is it worth it? I'd be interested in your feedback.
Cheers!
This is becoming more of a travel blog than anything else, but I'd much rather use this blog as a release from my boring research, so there you go.
I'm back in Oxford. I had a very laid back summer, which was great. We went in the hot tub, I helped my mom apply for jobs, and I became addicted to two shows: Jon & Kate Plus Eight and Army Wives. I also spent some time in the library making a start on my next diss chapter, which is good.
My flight back today was pretty cool. The only international flight (Canada doesn't count) from my local airport is through Amsterdam, so for the first time I tried that flight. (Sadly, they are ending that flight service at the end of this month!) The plane was crappy - shared TVs and only one movie rather than "on demand," which is more the norm for international flights these days. It was also hard now that I've been on a business class flight, to know that they're having nice dinners with linens and silverware while I am eating what is essentially a TV dinner. But there were some things I liked about the experience that made me want to do it again.
I really liked Amsterdam Airport. All of the signs were in English, and the Dutch speak really good English, so it was very easy to navigate. I bought lots of souvenir crap when I was there - everything with wooden shoes and tulips and Delft designs. It actually made me want to take a proper trip to Amsterdam at some point - I think it would be easy to manage.
The best part was that when I got to London, the customs lines were very short. This is because I usually fly on some giant plane from some major US city, so 500 non-UK and EU people spill out and you have to wait for ages while the 12 UK and EU people zip through customs. (In the UK and the European Union, you can pretty much fly anywhere like you might do in the States, and customs is very easy. The non-Europeans have to queue with their passports to get stamped and all that.) Since this flight came through Amsterdam and had mostly Europeans on it, they had to queue while the small handful of non-EU people got to zip right through! Also, this flight had only a hundred or so people on it, so I didn't have to wait for ages while 500 people searched for their luggage. It was very convenient.
Got back to Catz a little before noon. I've been sleeping off the jetlag ever since, and I just had my usual back-to-the-UK dinner of Chinese delivery. Tomorrow is Chung's going-away party, and I'll probably get cracking on some work!
Stay classy, blogosphere,
Kaitlin
I was looking over my blog stats tonight (a highly addictive activity), and noticed that a large number of my visitors come to me from Dean Dad's blog. This is actually a trend I've noticed for a while. It's probably just because I'm towards the top of his blogroll, but I'm very grateful for the traffic. So I thought I'd reciprocate with a shameless plug of his blog.
I read lots of blogs written by academics of all types, but I like his a lot because he is one of the few (if not the only) administrators out there in the blogosphere. My brother attends a community college, and I actually pass along a lot of Dean Dad's wisdom to him about course selections, enrollments and transfers at CCs.
So, if you're one of the few people who didn't come here via his blog, stop on over and say hi. Cheers!
When I go on trips, I like to take pictures not only of monuments and pretty things but also of things I find odd or amusing. I have a lot of photos in my Flickr that I end up having to explain to people, often ending with a "you had to be there" of some sort.
So, in an attempt to produce blog content, I thought I would do a few posts explaining some of the more interesting photos in my Flickr. I'll start with a few weird pics from Spain.
El Corte Inglés is Spain's largest department store, with huge stores all over Spain. They have everything you could think of in their main stores, and lots of smaller boutiques specializing in things like travel, autos, books, electronics, etc. Whenever I talked about bringing stuff to Spain, my friends told me, "don't worry, if you need [pajamas/towels/ballgowns/food] you can pick it up at the Corte Inglés."
In Sol, a very touristy area of Madrid, there were some areas where you could find a Corte Inglés on every corner. Some of their shops sold souvenirs, and had signs in many languages directing you to the aforementioned souvenirs. As you can see, this store had souvenirs on the 7st floor. I found this funny because the "st" is more the exception than the rule, so they really shouldn't have made this mistake - especially for a gigantic national conglomerate!
The pharmacy across the street from my hotel had this ad, telling you to use authentic snail slime globules (I can't think of the proper word in English). For what, I do not know.
A liquor store not too far from my hotel sold this wine called "Mi vino" (My wine). It reminded me of the generic vodka that they used to have at the grocery store in Oxford.
What trip to Spain would be complete without a picture of the Ham Museum???
A store called "Jesus and Buddha," in (I think) the Chueca neighborhood of Madrid. It just sounded like the beginning of a weird joke to me. (I have no idea what they sold - I didn't go in.)
And on a related note, I saw this sign in a lot of Metro stops. I think this particular one was at Embajadores, where I got off for El Rastro. It's an ad for a store that sells tarot cards and all kinds of stuff for rituals and the like. I found it interesting because when I did my first Master's and wrote my thesis on Hispanic magazine ads, I found a lot of ads in big Hispanic magazines for this type of stuff - it was actually one of the more popular advertised products. Seeing these huge ads, right there with ads for stores and cell phones and consulting companies, made me think that this type of thing might be a big deal.
Well, that was fun. More photo excitement soon!
I have a love/hate relationship with a lot of things: professors, jobs, snack foods, this year's presidential candidates. My newest love/hate relationship is with Google Chrome.
As a former educational technologist, I enjoy trying out the latest software. I downloaded Chrome when it came out last week, and for the first few days, I loved it. It was so fast! So easy to use! It didn't crash!
But as time went on, I wasn't so impressed. Some things made it sort of sluggish, like Flash- or JavaScript-heavy pages. And sometimes I couldn't get pages to load at all, and couldn't find any option to make the page load - like when you try to open up a page in Firefox and it asks you if you want to download whatever ActiveX controls it needs to make the page work.
Perhaps I should have waited a few weeks for the browser to get more "settled" and for the surge of new users to calm down. I always wonder if the bugs that come up in a new application like that come from having more users than anticipated.
Anyone else try it yet? What do you think?
On Saturday, our last day, we did the activity I was looking forward to the most but we had the least time to do: we went to Portugal.
As I mentioned previously, we had planned on going to Portugal earlier in the week but were unable to rent a car. Not only were most cars rented for the vacation season, but Justin and I are both automatic drivers and Enrique can’t drive at all, which limited our car choices a bit. What made things even trickier was that Justin’s and my flight left Vigo at 5, not at 7 as we had originally thought. So our day would have to be a bit tightly packed.
Anyway. We were able to get transportation that day because Enrique’s mother drove us. (She offered to lend us her car earlier in the week, but again, Justin and I are automatic drivers.) We only had time for one stop in Portugal: Valença, a walled town just over the border of Spain.
Valença is famous for its fortress (mostly protecting it from the city of Tui in Spain), and the big things to see are inside the walls. We spent a few hours there walking around, looking at the shops that sold beautiful tiles, ceramics and linens, and practicing our nonexistent Portuguese. It was really cool to stand in one country and look over the river to another. (In fact, since we returned to Oxford that night, we were actually in three countries in one day!) We also bought some postcards and last-minute souvenirs, which was not easy because I was out of Euro cash and did not want to get more on the last day.
After Valença, we crossed the International Bridge (designed by Gustave Eiffel – yes, that Eiffel
) into Tui. We tried to get into the cathedral, but it was closed, which surprised us. We wandered around a bit but didn’t have much time, so we went for an early lunch and called it a day. (I can’t remember the name of the place where we had lunch, except that it was impossible to pronounce!) We did tapas, and I was pleasantly surprised for two reasons: they had croquettes that I liked (usually I think they have no taste) and the octopus wasn’t too bad (I think it was grilled instead of boiled – I’m never a fan of boiled stuff).
After lunch we went back to collect our luggage and to head to the airport. I didn’t fly in to this airport, so I was surprised to see how tiny it really was. (Even though we were there a few days earlier to pick up the boys, I couldn’t tell how small it was after security.) It only had 6 gates, maybe 5 check-in desks, and very few international destinations. Also, there were no coffee shops/restaurants/etc. after security – you just get through the security line and boom, there’s the teeny gate. So, we said our goodbyes kinda quickly – you know how it is at the airport when you have a car parked outside – and got ready for our flight. It was kinda funny because Justin and I were the only non-EU people on the flight, so for once the line was very short and easy once we got through customs back at Gatwick!
After waiting forever for luggage and forever for the bus, we made it back into Oxford rather late. Justin and I met up with Darcy, Justin’s girlfriend, who had Chinese food for us at Hertford when we got there. I got back to Catz around 10:30 pm and called it a night.
So this ends the Great Spain/Portugal Adventure. As always, you can check out all of the glorious photos on my Flickr. Thanks for reading!
