Yes, ok, I know I’ve been a bit dreadful about keeping this thing up to date. But I got notified earlier this week that one of the photos I took to post up here had been selected for inclusion in the Schmap Guide to Brighton (no, I don’t know either), and I figured, if that wasn’t a sign to start blogging erratically again, I don’t know what is. So hi.

(The photo, by the way, is here. It’s not really one of my favourites, but then again I get the feeling that “Schmap” isn’t exactly a hugely reputable outfit, so hey, I imagine it balances out.)

The photo included with this update has nothing to do with any of that. I took it on a walk into town along the seafront. Why Brighton has a zen koan slash inspirational saying emblazoned above the seaside shops I have no idea, but given Brighton, it’s entirely possible that the “desire” in question is more physical than inspirational. Who knows.

I’d love to say that I’ve posted the above photo on my ceiling and every morning I leap out of bed and dive into the academic representation of my intellectual great desire, such as my DPhil thesis. But I would be lying. A large part of my lack of blogging has been due to the fact that I have been struggling with and hating my lit review. Intensely. I come from an English literature background and am moving into media studies, and it turns out that while the fundamental methods of analyzing a text are not extremely difficult across disciplines, being an English major trying to explain audience studies is… challenging. Fun, mind you, but stressful, time-consuming, and more work for less output than I remember ever being the case before.

I finally took a deep breath, accepted that I’m going to be re-writing this piece for the next couple of years, and threw it at my supervisors so they could tell me how to fix it. Hopefully that will work out well. I’ve been poking along on the second half of (what will be) the introduction, which is much less agonizing. (I’m feeling much better about my academic self-worth, too.)

In other news, I am both amused and impressed by the fact that as a Commonwealth citizen, I am eligible to vote in British elections. I got an official voter registration card in the mail, and an announcement of my polling venue, and everything. I think that’s really cool, actually. I promise not to abuse my powers too greatly.

Harrods foreshadowing, originally uploaded by kathryne.

The last time I was in London as a tourist – prior to last month – was almost eleven years ago, as part of a trip with my junior high school. My group of friends and I missed out on Harrods that time, but then, it might have been a good thing: I don’t know how up on my Shelley I was then, and I might have missed out on the thundering irony of this couplet from Ozymandias plastered across the wall of the famous Harrods Egyptian escalator. I’d like to believe that it’s intentional irony, but given that the other crowning glories of the building include two different memorial sculptures of Diana and Dodie as well as a Madame Tussaud’s-esque figurine of Al-Fayed Senior… I don’t think it is, really.

(Not that I’m saying anything against Harrods itself, mind: the place was pretty amazing, and in a complete reversal of form I fell in love with a Louis Vuitton. I did not, however, get it: my mother and I collaboratively established that no, she doesn’t actually love me that much. My aunt has been deputized to find me a knockoff.)

I do a pretty dreadful job of actually taking in the sights while I’m here – with the exception of going to the theatre, which I do as often as possible and with great joy. Partly that’s to be expected, what with the whole schoolwork thing, plus the fact that I’m not exactly funded for frivolity. Still, I’m trying to be better at using the system and applying for conferences in fabulous places I’d like to visit.

I have to admit, pretentious as it is, I have a secret academic travel dream: writing part of my DPhil thesis in a cafe in Paris with a cappuccino and pain au chocolat. It’s more memorable than Starbucks, anyways. (My second choice is returning to the Veuve Clicquot champagne bar in Harrods, but then, I’m not sure that would contribute to the readability of my work…)

The wheels of bureaucracy grind slowly – oh boy, do they ever – but grind they do, and I have now fulfilled all the requirements for extending my student visa. I still don’t know if I’ve been successful, nor do I know when I’ll have the results (sometime between “any day now” and “ten weeks from now,” basically), but, well. It’s nice that there’s nothing else I can do.

Now I can stress about entirely different things!

I’m used to, and fairly capable of dealing with, the ‘cycle’ of the academic year that runs from early-semester low-stress startup through to end-of-semester high-stress assignment time, with a brief break prior to doing it all over again. Doing a PhD is pretty much entirely different, and it’s taking some time to get my head around that. I mean, the semester ends in a month, but I don’t have anything due till the end of May. Instead of a long-term stress build-up, I have lots of little stresses: supervisory meetings, for example, or conferences, or abstracts. It’s different.

Also different is the amount of ‘administrivia’ I’m doing – entirely through my own design, but still, being the one organizing the events is a definite shift in perspective. I’m also not entirely sure I like the ease with which I’m getting involved in said organizations – it’s certainly part of academic life, but I’m not sure it’s the part I want to be best known for or capable of! I work better with several different things on my plate at once, though, so at least I’ve got that going for me.

Question of the day: if you had a choice, would you prefer to attend a conference in Utah or in France?

Culture!, originally uploaded by kathryne.

I stumbled across a fabulous new band recently and, in the stumbling, discovered that they actually hailed from my hometown.* The biography on last.fm described Edmonton as “a moderately-sized city,” a phrase that makes me giggle but is quite appropriate.

Edmonton is both Canada’s second-biggest provincial capital and the most northern North American city to have a population over one million (even if just barely), but that makes it sound rather grander than it actually is. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lovely place, and I miss it dearly. It’s honestly an amazing city for the arts – the annual Fringe Festival is the largest outside of Edinburgh and the music scene is always producing something new and amazing – but now that I live less than an hour from London, Edmonton is starting to feel a bit like the poor hick cousin no one invites to the party.

I can’t get over the sheer availability of excellent theatre in England. I can tell you already it’s probably the thing I’m going to miss the most when I leave. Not only do actors with talent frequently appear on stage, the ticket prices are (generally) not exorbitant! It’s as if the universe said to me, “Hey. All those shows that never come to Edmonton? Here’s your chance to see them. Go nuts.”

And now, like a true gift, I don’t even have to go up to London to see what might be the theatre event of the year. Yes, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen will be spending several days performing! together! here in Brighton!

…I may never recover from this level of easy access to high culture. (Low is much more my style.)

All of which is to say, I have two extra tickets to the McKellen and Stewart “Waiting for Godot” on 24 March. Anyone interested? You’ll never get that in Edmonton…

*The band, for those of you interested, is Faunts, and their music miraculously manages to suit both Edmonton’s state of perpetual light in the summer (we don’t get ‘dark,’ we get ‘twilight’) and Edmonton’s state of perpetual dark in the winter (ok, we do get a few hours of sun all year round *g*). Think Death Cab for Cutie marries Metric only more instrumental.

Well, that was a bit of an unexpected blogging hiatus.

In my defense, in the interim I wrote two term papers, a visa application, and a scholarship application; organized a graduate seminar (ok, that’s still ongoing); spent a week doing touristy things with my mother and grandfather; oh, and graduated as a Master of Arts. So I’ve been just a little busy.

Today was supposed to be the resumption of normal activities – well, normal-ish – but instead I am experiencing my very first snow day ever. When it snows in Edmonton, nothing stops. It can’t, because if it did nothing would happen between October and May. In England, it’s a slightly different matter.

Buses in Brighton aren’t running. Coaches aren’t running. Heathrow is shut – which means my mother and grandfather are stuck here for a further two days. The seminar I was meant to be attending today has been cancelled as the university is closed – and I’m hoping that the seminar I’m organizing for tomorrow won’t have to be cancelled as well!

But in the meantime, I had a fairly excellent snowball fight, built a snowman, and am enjoying the sight of the palm tree in our front garden drooping under the snow. You don’t see that every day.

The promised storms have as yet failed to arrive – the wind picked up to the point where it was banging the letter-flap around last night, and it’s meant to snow tomorrow, but it was absolutely gorgeous today when I wandered down to the Marina. What a January. I can’t wait till my lovely new BIG bed shows up so I can curl up in relative comfort and listen to the wind being all blustery!

Anyways. Weather aside.

Now that I’m slowly getting back into the swing of term-time things – which may or may not be a euphemism for ‘buried under stuff that needs to be done yesterday’ – this whole DPhil seems a lot more real. And now that it’s easier to conceptualize, I think I’ve finally realized what the downside is to the streamlined UK system as opposed to the lengthier Canadian system.

At first I more or less assumed that there was no way that a two-to-four-year UK program wouldn’t be far better for me than a five-to-seven-year Canadian one. Sure, I am a perpetually geeky student who always leaps at the chance to take more courses on subjects that interest me, but then again we’re talking about time to getting into the job market now, and the sooner I do that the greater likelihood that there will actually be a job market when I become eligible. I had a fairly developed, and somewhat time-sensitive, thesis proposal in mind when it came time to start applying to schools, so staying in the UK seemed the way to go.

But here’s where the time crunch really hits. Not in writing or researching, no. In that more insidious and yet clearly necessary arena of presentations and publications. In the Canadian system, the extra years of classes and papers are set up to allow students to create works that are presentable, if not publishable.

Me, I’m left scrambling to place my MA papers – those of them that are acceptable – but without the same latitude in terms of available material or available time. Once I start producing DPhil chapters, those might be usable for conference material, but that still puts me at a distinct disadvantage, numbers-wise, compared to students in longer programs. I think that’s a shame, because I really enjoy conferences. I can see them getting in the way of writing and research, or teaching, far more than I’d like, though, given the limited amount of time in which I’m attempting to finish this degree.

…the fact that I’ve just booked a “business trip” to the most beautiful part of the Netherlands, via the Eurostar, with a couple of extra days in which to explore Brussels, has absolutely nothing to do with my enjoyment of conferences. Honest.

I have to admit, there’s something rather satisfying about spending a Saturday morning mucking about in the garden in a t-shirt. (Take that, Edmonton weather report. +20 this week… ha!) Granted it was some pretty unpleasant mucking around, but it was a nice morning and there’s a lot worse I could have been doing.

It makes up for the fact that it’s supposed to snow here on Tuesday, and storm for most of the week. Siiiigh.

Relatedly, I took this photo out my bedroom window earlier this week. I am not entirely sure what type of animal that is, standing on the roof of our neighbours’ garden shed. Fox? Jackal? Hybrid? Maybe it’s just watching me.

Yes, I am indeed back in Brighton! I set out today with every intention of taking some nice shots as I wandered into town along the seafront to run several dozen errands, but was thwarted by a) so much rain and fog that the tops of apartment buildings disappeared (still, better than -40!) and b) the discovery that I had my camera and memory card, but its battery was still stuck in the wall charging. Alas.

So unfortunately, all I had on me was my phone, hence the really quite terrible photo that does not at all do justice to its subject. The two vans in the photo advertise a company called “Dial-a-hubby,” the tagline of which is apparently “Anything your husband won’t do, we will!” No quotes necessary!

I won’t say you only see this sort of thing in Brighton, because that’s blatantly untrue. I will say that perhaps it doesn’t stand out here quite as much as it might elsewhere, though…

Well, I’m back in England, which at least partially explains the lack of blogging over the last few days (also, I ran out of interesting photos – that too). England, land of tea! I definitely drink more tea here than I do in Canada – which is saying something, given that my Scottish grandmother certainly raised me to appreciate the importance of a good cuppa.

I’ve always been a tea-drinker, but I’ve become a big fan of more experimental types of tea lately. Tea with chocolate bits in? Or caramel? You betcha. Today, though, I am ridiculously excited to try a new kind of tea that is the culmination of a tea-quest nearly a decade in the making. Finally I have found a loose-leaf saskatoon berry tea with real saskatoons!

If you don’t know what a saskatoon is, you are a sadly deprived person (but I’m afraid I probably won’t be sharing my tea with you, as it is mine). They’re a type of berry that only grow, as far as I know, on the Canadian prairies, where they grow wild and in great abundance. I’ve spent almost every summer in memory in the river valley picking bucketsful for pies, jams, scones, and just plain stuffing my face. They’re vaguely similar to blueberries, only smaller, denser, purpler, and earthier in taste. They are extremely delicious and absolutely my favourite fruit. So if this tea actually tastes like saskatoons, I will be importing it from Edmonton in bulk.

And maybe then I can be talked into sharing.

One of the things I really do miss about Canada while I’m in the UK is the bilingualism. Practically speaking, Western Canada is not actually bilingual, except for various little French-Canadian hamlets and the occasional government employee. Thanks to federal laws, though, pretty much all our products are labelled in both French and English country-wide (though there are additional persnickety laws in Quebec that lead to different requirements). And I love it!

While I was surreptitiously snapping a photo of my cup (and hoping that Second Cup, unlike some Starbuckses, doesn’t frown on photography – though I cleverly waited till I was finished my drink in case I did get kicked out), I was thinking about whether I loved the Canadian French-English bilingualism or just bi- or multilingualism in general. I think it’s the latter. I remember my fascination, and frustration, this past summer with Korean museums that labelled things extensively in three Asian languages – Korean and what I think were some forms of Japanese and Chinese writing – before giving a terse one-sentence description in English. I only understood one of the languages in that case, so I couldn’t speak to accuracy of translation or anything like that, but it was still interesting.

I definitely miss consistently engaging with more than one language when I’m in England. I’m sure my vocabulary is suffering from the lack of French cereal boxes.