Since I've got them, I might as well post them: I'm going to be back in the UK from May 14th to August 12th.
Three months, close enough. What am I going to do with all that time? Well, it depends to some extent on whether I need to get a job; I'm still optimistic that I might scrape by without (though anyone with a job offer is welcome to tell me). Otherwise, well:
I'd like to get some extra-curricular work done - revise a couple of papers, do some reading;
there's some conferences I might go to;
couple of weeks doing permaculture at Glastonbury;
John's Rye weekend;
trip to visit people in Europe - Berlin, Rotterdam, Paris, Granada;
places and people to see in UK - York, Sheffield, Bristol, London, Nottingham, Glasgow, Lake District, Reading (if I must);
and y'know, general hanging round having fun.
Anything I've missed there? Anyway, point is, filling the time shouldn't be hard at all. Nor should it be hard to fill the time till I leave here. On which note, back to the essays....
Thursday, 27 March 2008
Tuesday, 18 March 2008
Calle Ocho
Calle Ocho means two things in Miami. First, as the literal translation suggests, it refers to SW 8th Street, or more precisely, the long stretch of the street that's regarded as the centre of Little Havana. It's where the Cuban expatriates congregated when they first arrived here, and is still the place that news organisations go when something happens in Cuba and they want some commie-bashing quotes from old men playing dominoes and drinking cafecito.
Second, Calle Ocho refers to the annual festival held on the street around the start of March (a completely arbitrary date, so far as I can tell). The event was first held in 1978, and is intended to celebrate Miami's Latino culture. It's sometimes referred to as a carnival, but the pedant in me points to the lack of parades and masquerades and sticks with 'festival'. I imagine that it was overwhelmingly Cuban originally, but these days, though Cuban flags and colours still predominate there's strong representation from every Spanish speaking country and island in the Americas (and the Portuguese speaking one, too. This pedant in me can be tiresome sometimes).
For Calle Ocho the festival, a two mile stretch of Calle Ocho the street is bookended by stages, and lined with stalls. At most intersections, another stage is placed, blocking the intersecting avenue (streets run East-West, avenues North-South). The stalls are a mixture of food places, people selling stuff, and corporations giving out freebies. The biggest queues were for the freebie stalls. People were patiently lining up and waiting probably half an hour to get some free toothpaste, or a cheaply made bag, or some other pinchbeck, branded tat. Every other person seemed to have got something or other from one of these places. I couldn't understand this eagerness to grab corporate goodie bags in the full knowledge that their contents were crap, but never mind.
The smell as you walk along the road is exclusively of meat cooking over coals or being fried; Cuban cuisine, and it seems most Latin American cuisine, is based around huge hunks of flesh, often pork, cooked simply and eaten without ceremony. The most famous Cuban dish - the high point, the zenith of their culinary culture - is the Cuban sandwich. This consists in roast pork, ham, 'Swiss' cheese, thinly sliced dill pickles, and yellow mustard, layered between two buttered slices of Cuban bread (soft, sweet, moist white stuff made with lard) and lightly toasted somewhat in the manner of a panino, but without the grooves in the grill. They're quite satisfying, in a suspicious sort of way, but hardly subtle. In truth, there are some good Cuban recipes for things to do with black beans, rice, and so on, but not many were on display at Calle Ocho, just the meat. I saw one despondent looking guy sat behind his stall, a large pile of fruit and two pristine, unused juicers on the table.
The combination of this diet and the music everywhere produced some truly horrifying spectacles. You think the freaky documentaries on C5 are bad? You've seen nothing till you've seen a 17 stone Cuban woman dropping down and shaking everything her mama gave her and all she's added since to some dutty piece of reggaeton. Seriously, seriously disturbing. The music was, of course, mostly Latin-influenced, but this ran the gamut from the aforementioned reggaeton, to flamenco, latin jazz, Spanglish hip hop, some pretty terrible latino house hybrid stuff... and several more styles that I can't distinguish descriptively. Sorry. Peculiar exception: there was no Diplo-style funk carioca or the like. Maybe it just doesn't sound right at an event running from 11am to 7pm.
The curious thing about Calle Ocho, I found, was that though it's ostensibly vibrant, it seems rather polite, lacking in edge, somehow. It's a pleasant enough way to spend an afternoon, but seems too well-behaved to be really fun. I also realised, as I left, that I'd seen nothing overtly political, apart from the wizened chap in the white suit and red bow tie who is always hanging round the area with his sign saying "Muerte es Fidel'. I even saw someone wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt, apparently unconcerned that he might get lynched. I do wonder, for all the talk of exile, how many American-Cubans would return to the island if it were to be democratised tomorrow. It seems that the political attitudes are more a kind of article of faith these days, rather than a fervently held opinion, certainly amongst the younger generations who've never even seen Cuba. As Calle Ocho demonstrates, with its massive turnout and close attention from the corporate big boys, the Latino presence in South Florida is firmly established, and these days, intrinsically American.
Second, Calle Ocho refers to the annual festival held on the street around the start of March (a completely arbitrary date, so far as I can tell). The event was first held in 1978, and is intended to celebrate Miami's Latino culture. It's sometimes referred to as a carnival, but the pedant in me points to the lack of parades and masquerades and sticks with 'festival'. I imagine that it was overwhelmingly Cuban originally, but these days, though Cuban flags and colours still predominate there's strong representation from every Spanish speaking country and island in the Americas (and the Portuguese speaking one, too. This pedant in me can be tiresome sometimes).
For Calle Ocho the festival, a two mile stretch of Calle Ocho the street is bookended by stages, and lined with stalls. At most intersections, another stage is placed, blocking the intersecting avenue (streets run East-West, avenues North-South). The stalls are a mixture of food places, people selling stuff, and corporations giving out freebies. The biggest queues were for the freebie stalls. People were patiently lining up and waiting probably half an hour to get some free toothpaste, or a cheaply made bag, or some other pinchbeck, branded tat. Every other person seemed to have got something or other from one of these places. I couldn't understand this eagerness to grab corporate goodie bags in the full knowledge that their contents were crap, but never mind.
The smell as you walk along the road is exclusively of meat cooking over coals or being fried; Cuban cuisine, and it seems most Latin American cuisine, is based around huge hunks of flesh, often pork, cooked simply and eaten without ceremony. The most famous Cuban dish - the high point, the zenith of their culinary culture - is the Cuban sandwich. This consists in roast pork, ham, 'Swiss' cheese, thinly sliced dill pickles, and yellow mustard, layered between two buttered slices of Cuban bread (soft, sweet, moist white stuff made with lard) and lightly toasted somewhat in the manner of a panino, but without the grooves in the grill. They're quite satisfying, in a suspicious sort of way, but hardly subtle. In truth, there are some good Cuban recipes for things to do with black beans, rice, and so on, but not many were on display at Calle Ocho, just the meat. I saw one despondent looking guy sat behind his stall, a large pile of fruit and two pristine, unused juicers on the table.
The combination of this diet and the music everywhere produced some truly horrifying spectacles. You think the freaky documentaries on C5 are bad? You've seen nothing till you've seen a 17 stone Cuban woman dropping down and shaking everything her mama gave her and all she's added since to some dutty piece of reggaeton. Seriously, seriously disturbing. The music was, of course, mostly Latin-influenced, but this ran the gamut from the aforementioned reggaeton, to flamenco, latin jazz, Spanglish hip hop, some pretty terrible latino house hybrid stuff... and several more styles that I can't distinguish descriptively. Sorry. Peculiar exception: there was no Diplo-style funk carioca or the like. Maybe it just doesn't sound right at an event running from 11am to 7pm.
The curious thing about Calle Ocho, I found, was that though it's ostensibly vibrant, it seems rather polite, lacking in edge, somehow. It's a pleasant enough way to spend an afternoon, but seems too well-behaved to be really fun. I also realised, as I left, that I'd seen nothing overtly political, apart from the wizened chap in the white suit and red bow tie who is always hanging round the area with his sign saying "Muerte es Fidel'. I even saw someone wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt, apparently unconcerned that he might get lynched. I do wonder, for all the talk of exile, how many American-Cubans would return to the island if it were to be democratised tomorrow. It seems that the political attitudes are more a kind of article of faith these days, rather than a fervently held opinion, certainly amongst the younger generations who've never even seen Cuba. As Calle Ocho demonstrates, with its massive turnout and close attention from the corporate big boys, the Latino presence in South Florida is firmly established, and these days, intrinsically American.
Saturday, 23 February 2008
More photos
For those sensible people not on Facebook, I've updated my Flickr site with new(ish) photos. It's a bit messy, since they don't let me have more than three albums without paying, but you'll manage. Some more lizards, some parrots, and a lot of slightly blurry eclipse photos. This was a frustrating evening; the cloud built up at the same rate as the event, scattered at the start, a complete blanket during the total eclipse phase, and then completely clear right at the end. Anyway, some of them are quite good.
Thursday, 21 February 2008
Shaw thing
I've been trying hard, in best scientific style, to not just look for confirming instances of my stereotypes and cliches regarding America. After all, it's an enormous place, and as I'm told with wearying regularity, Miami is very different from the rest. This post, though, amounts to a long endorsement of the George Bernard Shaw commonplace about the US and the UK being two nations divided by a common language.
It's easy to trot off a list of words, mostly nouns, which have different meanings on either side of the Atlantic. I cooked a meal the other day involving aubergine, courgette, and coriander; after a conversation with my housemate about what I was making, I wondered if I could have possibly made anything (palatable) with more ingredients whose name we disagreed about. But the linguistic divisions go deeper than individual words. It's a lot to do with rhetorical forms, inculcated call-and-response routines, and differences in tone.
A few examples to illustrate that obtuse little list. During a class discussion on rhetorical figures of speech recently, litotes was mentioned. The (English) lecturer and I had no difficulty
in dashing off a long list of examples - 'not so bad', 'none too shabby', 'no big deal', and so on and so on. The American students were still struggling slightly with how the trope was supposed to work. The idea of asserting something by uttering its negation just seemed completely alien to them; the rhetorical form isn't part of American speech.
By 'inculcated call-and-response' routines, I mean the kind of everyday conversation-oiling exchanges that you can spell out in advance; greetings are a good example. I've still not got used to being asked 'what's going on?' as a form of 'hello'; my mind starts scrabbling around for a literal answer, whilst an American has some non-literal, non-committal answer instantly ready that gets the conversation going. By contrast, when I, in typical English style, greet someone by saying 'Y'alright?', or similar, they often look slightly surprised... 'yeah, I'm fine, why, do I look ill or something?'.
As for differences in tone, well, I think this might be the origin of the canard about Americans not getting irony. Most do, at least in print. But they often fail to notice every instance of irony in my speech, because (it seems) they don't recognise the contexts, intonations, and sentence-forms that indicate that I'm not being serious. This isn't just to do with me; I've noticed the same thing happen with other English people, in person or on film or TV. It's as if the tone, the tenor, of English-English discourse is more allusive, less direct, more replete with extra unspoken meaning and opportunities for irony.
So what of all this? Two consequences occur to me, one personal, one more general. The personal aspect is that, without (heaven forfend) adopting an American accent or vocabulary, the tone and content of my talk is changing slightly. I've been making a more or less conscious effort to not use much slang or dialect words, since I'm tired of having to explain them; but additionally, without deliberately trying, I seem to be using more direct forms of speech, fewer distinctively English non-literal phrases, less irony and so forth. I'll have to watch that I don't become excessively bland by the time I leave.
The general consequence is rather speculative, but worth thinking about. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis says, roughly, that the thought of a population sharing a language is shaped at least partially by the nature of that language. A lot of people accept the converse, too; i.e., that the thoughts of a population are reflected in their language. So it's interesting to wonder about the American preference for direct speech, its origins (perhaps in 'plain-speaking' pilgrims?), and the way in which it may have shaped the country's self-image and behaviour. I also wonder, listening to the apparently vacuous pronouncements of the presidential candidates, if the things they say are in fact replete with meaning for an American, meaning that's lost on me as an outsider; that is, whether the words and phrases ('dreams', 'hopes', etc) just don't have the same resonance in the English mind.
I don't suppose that's the case all the time, mind. When Miami city commissioner (cf councillor) Marc Sarnoff says of the assault rifles he's trying to crack down on that they're 'designed to kill with lethal force', I'm pretty sure that he's talking thoughtless rubbish, whatever language he thinks he's speaking.
It's easy to trot off a list of words, mostly nouns, which have different meanings on either side of the Atlantic. I cooked a meal the other day involving aubergine, courgette, and coriander; after a conversation with my housemate about what I was making, I wondered if I could have possibly made anything (palatable) with more ingredients whose name we disagreed about. But the linguistic divisions go deeper than individual words. It's a lot to do with rhetorical forms, inculcated call-and-response routines, and differences in tone.
A few examples to illustrate that obtuse little list. During a class discussion on rhetorical figures of speech recently, litotes was mentioned. The (English) lecturer and I had no difficulty
in dashing off a long list of examples - 'not so bad', 'none too shabby', 'no big deal', and so on and so on. The American students were still struggling slightly with how the trope was supposed to work. The idea of asserting something by uttering its negation just seemed completely alien to them; the rhetorical form isn't part of American speech.
By 'inculcated call-and-response' routines, I mean the kind of everyday conversation-oiling exchanges that you can spell out in advance; greetings are a good example. I've still not got used to being asked 'what's going on?' as a form of 'hello'; my mind starts scrabbling around for a literal answer, whilst an American has some non-literal, non-committal answer instantly ready that gets the conversation going. By contrast, when I, in typical English style, greet someone by saying 'Y'alright?', or similar, they often look slightly surprised... 'yeah, I'm fine, why, do I look ill or something?'.
As for differences in tone, well, I think this might be the origin of the canard about Americans not getting irony. Most do, at least in print. But they often fail to notice every instance of irony in my speech, because (it seems) they don't recognise the contexts, intonations, and sentence-forms that indicate that I'm not being serious. This isn't just to do with me; I've noticed the same thing happen with other English people, in person or on film or TV. It's as if the tone, the tenor, of English-English discourse is more allusive, less direct, more replete with extra unspoken meaning and opportunities for irony.
So what of all this? Two consequences occur to me, one personal, one more general. The personal aspect is that, without (heaven forfend) adopting an American accent or vocabulary, the tone and content of my talk is changing slightly. I've been making a more or less conscious effort to not use much slang or dialect words, since I'm tired of having to explain them; but additionally, without deliberately trying, I seem to be using more direct forms of speech, fewer distinctively English non-literal phrases, less irony and so forth. I'll have to watch that I don't become excessively bland by the time I leave.
The general consequence is rather speculative, but worth thinking about. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis says, roughly, that the thought of a population sharing a language is shaped at least partially by the nature of that language. A lot of people accept the converse, too; i.e., that the thoughts of a population are reflected in their language. So it's interesting to wonder about the American preference for direct speech, its origins (perhaps in 'plain-speaking' pilgrims?), and the way in which it may have shaped the country's self-image and behaviour. I also wonder, listening to the apparently vacuous pronouncements of the presidential candidates, if the things they say are in fact replete with meaning for an American, meaning that's lost on me as an outsider; that is, whether the words and phrases ('dreams', 'hopes', etc) just don't have the same resonance in the English mind.
I don't suppose that's the case all the time, mind. When Miami city commissioner (cf councillor) Marc Sarnoff says of the assault rifles he's trying to crack down on that they're 'designed to kill with lethal force', I'm pretty sure that he's talking thoughtless rubbish, whatever language he thinks he's speaking.
Wednesday, 6 February 2008
Full Cycle
Decent article from the Miami New Times here about cycling in the city (though the headline's rather lurid, and the webpage is horribly cluttered). If you get through the thing, you'll get a good idea of why Miami should be, but isn't, a great city for cycling.
I was never a cyclist in the UK. I always lived within walking distance of most places I needed to get to, and moreover, I always lived in places with many big steep hills. Miami has no hills, and most of the places I need to get to are further than is feasible on foot. Moreover, the public transport network is, at best, skeletal. So I've taken to two wheels, on a second hand mountain bike that's probably a little too small for me but was only $35. It has numerous gears; I don't even know how many, since I never shift it from the top one. It took me a while to find the top one, in fact. The right hand shift is numbered 1-5, and the left hand one has a series of lines with 'low' at one end and 'high' at the other. It was a couple of weeks before I realised that the lever could be pushed well beyond the point marked 'high', thus engaging a higher gear (set?). I had thought until then that I'd become disastrously unfit, but I was just being dense.
When I got it, I borrowed some Allen keys from the head of department, a keen cyclist, to adjust the handlebar height. He warned me to be careful, because Miami drivers 'don't see cyclists'. I asumed this was just colourful exageration on his part, but after a couple of incidents in which I was nearly mown down by vehicles pulling out of intersections, I realised that he was speaking with proper philosophical precision; they really don't see cyclists, probably because they're not used to looking for them.
Actually, they sometimes do see cyclists, and that's where the real problems can start. As the New Times article suggests, the attitudes of the drivers here towards cyclists range from the inattentive to the downright murderous. Riding on the carriageway (like you're legally meant to) is an invitation for drivers to shout abuse, honk horns, and if they're feeling particularly frisky, see if they can run you off the road by passing far too close and then sometimes even swerving closer as they do so. After a few too many experiences of this nature, I gave in and became something that, in the UK, I hated; a pavement cyclist.
I assure myself that this is less of a sin here, because there's hardly any pedestrians to mow down. I cycled 1o miles earlier today, and saw four, three of whom I passed on a cycle track/footpath. However, cycling on the pavement is frustrating. The surface is often awful, and you have to stop, or at least slow down, at every one of the frequent intersections. Better, though, than risking the road. My ride earlier today was in some ways the most pleasant I've had, because it involved some of Miami's very few dedicated cycle lanes. To be able to go fast and feel safe was a sort of revelation about how efficient cycling can really be given the right conditions.
Really, I should overcome my road phobia. Plenty of my peers cycle in the traffic, and none have yet come to calamity. According to the New Times, there's a small Critical Mass group in Miami. Hooking up with them, perhaps, might be the way to conquer the city from the saddle.
I was never a cyclist in the UK. I always lived within walking distance of most places I needed to get to, and moreover, I always lived in places with many big steep hills. Miami has no hills, and most of the places I need to get to are further than is feasible on foot. Moreover, the public transport network is, at best, skeletal. So I've taken to two wheels, on a second hand mountain bike that's probably a little too small for me but was only $35. It has numerous gears; I don't even know how many, since I never shift it from the top one. It took me a while to find the top one, in fact. The right hand shift is numbered 1-5, and the left hand one has a series of lines with 'low' at one end and 'high' at the other. It was a couple of weeks before I realised that the lever could be pushed well beyond the point marked 'high', thus engaging a higher gear (set?). I had thought until then that I'd become disastrously unfit, but I was just being dense.
When I got it, I borrowed some Allen keys from the head of department, a keen cyclist, to adjust the handlebar height. He warned me to be careful, because Miami drivers 'don't see cyclists'. I asumed this was just colourful exageration on his part, but after a couple of incidents in which I was nearly mown down by vehicles pulling out of intersections, I realised that he was speaking with proper philosophical precision; they really don't see cyclists, probably because they're not used to looking for them.
Actually, they sometimes do see cyclists, and that's where the real problems can start. As the New Times article suggests, the attitudes of the drivers here towards cyclists range from the inattentive to the downright murderous. Riding on the carriageway (like you're legally meant to) is an invitation for drivers to shout abuse, honk horns, and if they're feeling particularly frisky, see if they can run you off the road by passing far too close and then sometimes even swerving closer as they do so. After a few too many experiences of this nature, I gave in and became something that, in the UK, I hated; a pavement cyclist.
I assure myself that this is less of a sin here, because there's hardly any pedestrians to mow down. I cycled 1o miles earlier today, and saw four, three of whom I passed on a cycle track/footpath. However, cycling on the pavement is frustrating. The surface is often awful, and you have to stop, or at least slow down, at every one of the frequent intersections. Better, though, than risking the road. My ride earlier today was in some ways the most pleasant I've had, because it involved some of Miami's very few dedicated cycle lanes. To be able to go fast and feel safe was a sort of revelation about how efficient cycling can really be given the right conditions.
Really, I should overcome my road phobia. Plenty of my peers cycle in the traffic, and none have yet come to calamity. According to the New Times, there's a small Critical Mass group in Miami. Hooking up with them, perhaps, might be the way to conquer the city from the saddle.
Thursday, 24 January 2008
Seeds and saplings
I've started volunteering at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. Founded in 1938 by David Fairchild, an eminent botanist, the garden consists in an enormous (83 acre) site. The garden is arranged around several small lakes, and has areas dedicated to, amongst other things, rainforest plants, butterfly favourites, succulents, tropical fruits, and replications of tropical ecosystems like the coastal Florida Keys and the spiny forests of Madagascar. The list of individual plants growing there runs to 291 pages, a catalogued collection of palms, vines, flowering trees, orchids, cycads, and a host of other incredible, beautiful things. Walking around the place is wonderful, a visual, aural, olfactory delight.
I asked for a horticultural placement, rather than anything to do with education, staffing gift shops, or the like. As it turns out, most of the gardening jobs get filled pretty quickly in the Miami winter; come the summer, they're more freely available as everyone prefers an air conditioned working environment. So rather than working in the garden proper, I've been set to at the Centre for Tropical Plant Conservation.
The CTPC is part of Fairchild's research and conservation work. It's located about a mile from the garden, on a nondescript site behind locked automatic gates. The security is not just for show; some of the species under cultivation in the greenhouses and outdoor growing areas behind the fences are both rare and valuable. In the chaos following the last hurricane, some opportunistic thieves turned up with a truck and helped themselves to plants worth hundreds of dollars. The section of the CTPC to which I've been attached has two main projects. The first involves a set of lab experiments designed to assess the viability of the seeds of various tropical species under storage conditions. The work feeds into the seed bank project in Colorado; samples those that are found to be sufficiently robust are sent for storage there, to allow for reestablishment of the species in the event of their extinction (similar to the planned seed vault at Spitzbergen).
Though this is, of course, tremendously important and exciting stuff, lab work is not really my forte, and so I've been assigned to help out with the other project. This is a massive, ongoing effort to cultivate specimens for reintroduction into the wild, or to replicate fast-vanishing ecosystems. For example, the pine rocklands of South Florida, which used to sustain a wide variety of succulents and associated wildlife, have been under severe pressure from development, climate change, the usual factors. At the CTPC, there's a host of plants being carefully grown in containers for replanting, either within the garden or in protected locations elsewhere.
So my four hours of contribution to this yesterday mainly involved re-potting a succession of seedlings, vines, and saplings. Pleasant, vacant work. The Americans, it seems to me, have a habit of making some good efforts at conservation and environmental friendliness, but not getting it quite right. Recycling points only accessible by car, trying to reduce dependence on petrol by investing in bio fuel, that kind of thing. So I was only mildly perturbed when told that the potting soil used in huge quantities at the CTPC is mainly peat. Anyway, that aside, I left after my morning's work feeling happy that I'd spent some time mucking around in muck, doing something useful, and not thinking about logic. Although, given the massive rainstorm that soaked me through on the cycle ride home, I could have saved myself the effort of watering in my new charges.
I asked for a horticultural placement, rather than anything to do with education, staffing gift shops, or the like. As it turns out, most of the gardening jobs get filled pretty quickly in the Miami winter; come the summer, they're more freely available as everyone prefers an air conditioned working environment. So rather than working in the garden proper, I've been set to at the Centre for Tropical Plant Conservation.
The CTPC is part of Fairchild's research and conservation work. It's located about a mile from the garden, on a nondescript site behind locked automatic gates. The security is not just for show; some of the species under cultivation in the greenhouses and outdoor growing areas behind the fences are both rare and valuable. In the chaos following the last hurricane, some opportunistic thieves turned up with a truck and helped themselves to plants worth hundreds of dollars. The section of the CTPC to which I've been attached has two main projects. The first involves a set of lab experiments designed to assess the viability of the seeds of various tropical species under storage conditions. The work feeds into the seed bank project in Colorado; samples those that are found to be sufficiently robust are sent for storage there, to allow for reestablishment of the species in the event of their extinction (similar to the planned seed vault at Spitzbergen).
Though this is, of course, tremendously important and exciting stuff, lab work is not really my forte, and so I've been assigned to help out with the other project. This is a massive, ongoing effort to cultivate specimens for reintroduction into the wild, or to replicate fast-vanishing ecosystems. For example, the pine rocklands of South Florida, which used to sustain a wide variety of succulents and associated wildlife, have been under severe pressure from development, climate change, the usual factors. At the CTPC, there's a host of plants being carefully grown in containers for replanting, either within the garden or in protected locations elsewhere.
So my four hours of contribution to this yesterday mainly involved re-potting a succession of seedlings, vines, and saplings. Pleasant, vacant work. The Americans, it seems to me, have a habit of making some good efforts at conservation and environmental friendliness, but not getting it quite right. Recycling points only accessible by car, trying to reduce dependence on petrol by investing in bio fuel, that kind of thing. So I was only mildly perturbed when told that the potting soil used in huge quantities at the CTPC is mainly peat. Anyway, that aside, I left after my morning's work feeling happy that I'd spent some time mucking around in muck, doing something useful, and not thinking about logic. Although, given the massive rainstorm that soaked me through on the cycle ride home, I could have saved myself the effort of watering in my new charges.
Thursday, 10 January 2008
Wherever I lay my hat
America is the only non-EU country I've ever visited, so I don't know if you have to fill out interminable customs forms when travelling elsewhere too. It at least gives you something to do whilst sitting in the departure 'lounge' trying not to gag on the smell of fast food and travel sweat recycled by the air conditioning. Apart from the obvious environmental reservations, I quite like air travel, especially things like the view of Grand Bahama, grey-blue and blending with the ocean in the dusk as you approach Florida. But the parts at either side of the actual travel - airports, customs, embarkation, check-in - sometimes seem designed by double-agent Greenpeace activists within the relevant authorities to dissuade people from flying altogether.
I mention the customs forms not because they're annoying - though they are - but because one question in particular gave me pause for thought (two, actually. 'What is the value of all goods that will remain in the USA?'. Errr, I have a cake. It won't be leaving the USA, but I don't know if you can say it'll be remaining there...). It appeared on two forms, once plainly, once pompously: 'Where do you live?'; 'What is your country of residence?'.
Both times, I wrote 'UK' without hesitation. It was only later, queuing for passport control and re-checking my forms, that I questioned myself. Nobody in uniform did so, they waved me through happily (as happy as border police get, anyway). But was it the right answer? How do you tell? By most measures, surely, it was wrong. Even if I spend all my holidays over the next few years in the UK, I'll still be spending the majority of my time in the US. I pay taxes here, my official status is 'resident alien'. When people, strangers, inquired about my occupation over Christmas, I said that I live and study in Miami.
It's irrelevant that being back in the UK felt like putting on a comfortable pair of trainers after a day spent in cripplingly unfamiliar footwear. Being at home is always cosy; that's been the case in the past whether I've been living in Sheffield, Bristol, anywhere. I suppose I now think of the UK in a wider sense as 'home'; previously, the term only really applied to Durham, whereas this time, I got that warm feeling in the pit of my stomach as soon as the tube from Heathrow left that airport hinterland and started to pick up commuters on the way into central London. But where you call home, and where you live, can of course be two different things, and in my case, it should be clear that they are.
So why do I write 'UK'? And why do I balk somewhat at the thought of doing otherwise? The answer's obvious, really. Despite all the considerations that suggest I live here, I feel very much like a visitor still. I can isolate three reasons for this. The first is that the culture, the lifestyle, the climate, remain surprising and strange. I'd forgotten, after just three weeks, how big the city was, how warm, how bloody awkward for anyone without a car. The second is that my lifestyle, at present, feels like one in which I've accommodated myself to the place, rather than settled into it. This applies in particular to my house, in which I feel somewhat more like a long-term hotel guest than a resident (through no fault of my landlord - I imagine this is just a general feature of lodging). Both these factors will dwindle, I suspect, as time goes on, my lifestyle changes, the city becomes mundane, I move house.
The third reason, though, I think will be constant; indeed, will become more acute as time passes. Despite the fact that I'm here for a while, despite the fact that I spend most of my year here, I'm on a finite time scale. A long time scale, for sure; very different from a fortnight's break on the beach. But I know that, once I've exhausted my visa and got the piece of paper from the university (fingers crossed), I'll be coming home. It may be a long, drawn-out, involved trip, but I'm really just visiting here. In my heart, I live elsewhere.
Well, that was all rather self-absorbed, wasn't it? Don't worry, I'll find something less navel-gazing to write about next time...
I mention the customs forms not because they're annoying - though they are - but because one question in particular gave me pause for thought (two, actually. 'What is the value of all goods that will remain in the USA?'. Errr, I have a cake. It won't be leaving the USA, but I don't know if you can say it'll be remaining there...). It appeared on two forms, once plainly, once pompously: 'Where do you live?'; 'What is your country of residence?'.
Both times, I wrote 'UK' without hesitation. It was only later, queuing for passport control and re-checking my forms, that I questioned myself. Nobody in uniform did so, they waved me through happily (as happy as border police get, anyway). But was it the right answer? How do you tell? By most measures, surely, it was wrong. Even if I spend all my holidays over the next few years in the UK, I'll still be spending the majority of my time in the US. I pay taxes here, my official status is 'resident alien'. When people, strangers, inquired about my occupation over Christmas, I said that I live and study in Miami.
It's irrelevant that being back in the UK felt like putting on a comfortable pair of trainers after a day spent in cripplingly unfamiliar footwear. Being at home is always cosy; that's been the case in the past whether I've been living in Sheffield, Bristol, anywhere. I suppose I now think of the UK in a wider sense as 'home'; previously, the term only really applied to Durham, whereas this time, I got that warm feeling in the pit of my stomach as soon as the tube from Heathrow left that airport hinterland and started to pick up commuters on the way into central London. But where you call home, and where you live, can of course be two different things, and in my case, it should be clear that they are.
So why do I write 'UK'? And why do I balk somewhat at the thought of doing otherwise? The answer's obvious, really. Despite all the considerations that suggest I live here, I feel very much like a visitor still. I can isolate three reasons for this. The first is that the culture, the lifestyle, the climate, remain surprising and strange. I'd forgotten, after just three weeks, how big the city was, how warm, how bloody awkward for anyone without a car. The second is that my lifestyle, at present, feels like one in which I've accommodated myself to the place, rather than settled into it. This applies in particular to my house, in which I feel somewhat more like a long-term hotel guest than a resident (through no fault of my landlord - I imagine this is just a general feature of lodging). Both these factors will dwindle, I suspect, as time goes on, my lifestyle changes, the city becomes mundane, I move house.
The third reason, though, I think will be constant; indeed, will become more acute as time passes. Despite the fact that I'm here for a while, despite the fact that I spend most of my year here, I'm on a finite time scale. A long time scale, for sure; very different from a fortnight's break on the beach. But I know that, once I've exhausted my visa and got the piece of paper from the university (fingers crossed), I'll be coming home. It may be a long, drawn-out, involved trip, but I'm really just visiting here. In my heart, I live elsewhere.
Well, that was all rather self-absorbed, wasn't it? Don't worry, I'll find something less navel-gazing to write about next time...
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