outings

Over the past few weeks I have made more of an effort, consciously of by accidental convenience to get out and do more with the limited spare time I have.

Last week I headed to the Royal Albert Hall for the Proms. The New York Philharmonic was playing Tchaikovskii, which can never go wrong, really. For one thing, the building itself is great. The Hall was designed by Captain Francis Fowke and Major-General Henry Y.D. Scott and built by Lucas Brothers. The designers were heavily influenced by ancient amphitheatres, and it shows. The place looks vaguely like a Roman Coliseum, with a huge organ in the middle. The acoustics of the building are actually not the best, but the setting makes up for it. I sat at the top, and thus got an excellent overview of everyone else. Unfortunately I didn’t take opera glasses, I would have had the best people watching post in London if I had.

Then this week I headed to Southbank to catch a multimedia rendition of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves. Ok, I admit I have never been a Virginia Woolf fan. I partly blame my secondary school teachers for this, having been forced to read A Room of One’s Own, which I detested, in the 10th class. i think my general dislike also stems from a great mistrust of anything that suggests feminism, to which I have a vague allergy.

Those hesitations aside, the production was technically very well done. The Waves is a saturated and self- aware work, which it has been argued, represents a high-modernist destruction and reconstruction of the concept of the novel. Presented as a play, it comes across as a radio serial form an earlier era more than a standard script. The monologues are typically Woolf, interior free associating monologues with complex vocabulary. The characters are caricatures of themselves, with each fulfilling his inevitable destiny, and the man around whom much of the action revolves, Percival, is left voiceless, uttering not a word of his own throughout the performance. The actors and choreography were amazing. Minute detail was paid to every sound and image, creating an acute impact on the senses. The timing was impeccable and the mis-en-scene incredibly striking, accurately reflecting the obsessions of the modernist mindset. Various microphones planted around the stage captured every little twitch and rustle, while cameras also projected onto a screen emotionally vivid images at well-chosen moments. Technically the play was perfect. I thank God I was not born a member of the English upper middle class at the turn of the century, as more emotionally repressed environment I could not imagine. Still don’t think I will ever be a major Virginia Woolf fan though, something about her writing just makes my skin crawl.

the nutters are everywhere!

Well i have spent the past month swamped by the russian media, but today i have to confess i got sidetracked.

ok, mccain himself is bad enough. his choice of running mate on first glance seemed worst. the announcement that her unmarried 17 year old is 5 months pregnant with the kid of a high school drop out was just entertaining: right wing americans are so preachy on family issues that is amused me to see their hypocrisy revealed so publicly.
but the video on display in the office today was just scary:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/02/palins-church-may-have-sh_n_123205.html

click on the video part, and you will discover that:

1, an oil pipeline through canada is gods will
2. the war in iraq was gods will

what next? can this get any more absurd?

part III (what next?)

There is now no end to the number of petitions streaming in every day. todays pronouncement goes:
"There is no alternative to the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh," said Bako Saakyan, president of the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. "The existing differences must be resolved through direct dialogue. Everyone should realize once and for all that independence has no alternative and cannot be a subject of speculation. Today we can proudly state that we have created a strong and capable army, a progressing country which complies with international standards and is one of the key factors ensuring stability in the region...Rest assured, this is only a matter of time," the NKR leader said.

incidently, today was the 17th anniversary of the NKR's self-declared independance. no one has recognized them yet, but clearly the dream is still alive, as the occasion was celebrated with much show in the republic's capital of Stepanakert.

in case you are unaware, this self proclaimed state is entirely surrounded by Azerbaijan, but its population of 138,000 (after a major exodus of azeris in the 1990s) is around 95% Armenian. However, the Karabakh Armenians speak a dialect of Armenian which is considerably different from that which is spoken in Armenia, making mutual comprehension at times difficult.

the Lonely planet has a book called Microstates. It is written in tongue and cheak and dedicates a page to all the unrecognised, self proclaimed states around the world. Some, like Cristiania, are well known. Others are not. i wonder if they all intend to petition the russian government for recognition? i think there were at least 80 or so in that book!

paris, yet again

strange how efficient the eurostar is in comparison to all other trains in Britain. The journey time from London to paris is now less than 2 hours and 15 minutes, and the ride is smooth, far more so than my little nightly commute home, and more so than 3 years ago, when I was a regular commuter on the paris-london line.
So it has now been three years since I moved away from france. I have more or less switched here to writing in English, and I think in English more as well. (not that everyone is impressed by this great transition, given how often I am asked what my native tongue is!!)
Paris is good for visiting, far better than it is for living. So Sunday, as the weather held, I wandered around the right bank, dragging my 2 friends from one old haunt to another. We had brunch at le fumoir, where yaelle and I used to spend endless slow Sunday afternoons back in 2004-2005. I always find it amazing how so much is closed on Sundays in france. When I worked there is always really annoyed me: I worked on Saturdays, so I always had to run around after work and stock up on things, knowing everything would be closed the next day.
I also find it amazing how little the city changes comparatively. Three years have passed since I lived here, and still all the bars and restaurants I used to frequent are still in place. The shops have the same names and some even the same menu. I still know where things are and where to get what I need/want. This is such a contrast to, for example, Moscow, where there is more change in 6 months than in a paris decade. I sometimes find the endless continuity reassuring though, and it certainly makes it easier to play the tour guide!
But despite the continuity, I am aware how quickly time passes: it has been 3 years since I lived in paris, 4 since Budapest, 5 since Moscow, 8 since st Petersburg, 9 since montreal….and 27 since the friend I am showing around and I first met in the play yard of a school, whose name I no longer remember.

part II

Well the last posting was quasi a joke. I couldn’t believe a representative of Somaliland would really write my office here to ask the Russian government for recognition of Somalilands independence. But several other mini states have been in touch since, with similar requests. Some get taken seriously, others don’t. this one did:

"Transdniestria has by no means been thrown overboard. I believe that we've still got everything ahead of us," Oleg Gudymo told X in connection with Russia's recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. "Fortunately, in Moldova the ruling elite has turned out to be much more intelligent than the Georgian one. Moldovan nationalism is not as terrible as Georgian nationalism. And President Vladimir Voronin is a wise politician and is unlike Saakashvili, who has gone crazy," Gudymo said. "I believe it is Moldova that should be the first to recognize us," he said. “If they want to live in peace with us they have no other option because they realize that we will never go back on our position," Gudymo said.

That combined with the statement issued today by Dmitry Rogozin that "We will ensure the safety of our citizens no matter where they live - among polar bears or in Africa or in the United States. Ensuring the safety and human dignity of Russian citizens is the constitutional duty of our leadership," Rogozin stressed.

This was said on the radio (Ekho Moskvy) in response to a question about the Russian community in Crimea. Draw your own conclusions!

dilemmas

When you work for the media, I guess you get used to dealing with lots of unexpected people and situations. i never would have guessed three months ago that I would have had some of the experiences I have recently. I have had breakfast with the Malaysian minister of tourism (lots of charts on the success of the Malaysia Truly Asia campaign) and I have one with the prime minister of Georgia coming up at the Ritz in Geneva in a few weeks. I have also met some powerful bankers, industrialist and government officials. But I still have yet to figure out how to deal with my increasingly odd correspondence. This morning I came in to find this email waiting for me. Honestly, my heart goes out to the people of Somaliland. Everyone I know who has been concurs that it is functioning as a separate entity and has been for years….but I am neither the UN nor the president of anything- what can I do? i am just a poor phd student!!!!

Dear Madam,

Kindly pass my greetings to H.E the Minister of Foreign Affairs

I understand the Russian Federation is in discussion to recognise Abkhazia and South Ossetia. This is welcome news to us people of the unrecognised republic of Somaliland as we share the predicament of these two peoples and the people of Transdniestra too. Your Excellcies we have been seeking recognition for 17 years. We have far more de facto and de jure claim to Statehood than Kosovo and all other countries of former Yugoslavia none of whom suffered anywhere near the oppression we in Somaliland suffered at the hands of Somalia. Your Excellency I challenge anyone to look into this in any detail and come to any different conclusions. We have secure borders, clear historical timeline of nationhood, elected national and local institutions, the rule of law, our own currency and passports; our own legal system and seperate judiciary yet we have been ignored and dissmissed by the Western nations for reasons beyond our comprehension. It appears they have one rule for the Balkans and the Caucuses and Russia and another for the rest of the World.

A recognition of Somaliland will show Russia is principled nation which values the self-determination and human dignity for all nations unlike the patronising West who are smothering our young nation to death with neglect and indifference. A recognition of Somaliland will also once more demonstrate Russia has its own independent global policy which is based not on self-interest like the West but on principle. It will win Russia an eternal little friend on the shores of the Red Sea. It will be the first African nation which Russian is taught in schools. Russian companies will be given a priority on investment. Putingrads and Medvdevgrads will adorn the deserts of Horn of Africa.The Port of Berbera which you built in the 70s will be open to Russian ships and navy. Most importantly you will show the West's poltical hypocrisy and double-standards when it comes to international affairs. And there is not one single negative poltical fallout for Russia from recognsiing a deserving little country. Even Somalia itself is happy for Somaliland to secede. Ask their ambassdor in Moscow.

Thank you,

X

music

it has been a bank holiday weekend here in england. one of those bank holidays i shall never understand the purpose of, but if am never one to object to....a day out of the office?
normal people would have written " a day off work" but actually i did go into work today, on the holiday, but it was my fun job, at the bookshop, and i only did a 4 hour shift, for which i will receive double pay, so no complaints there!
in the evenings, after all the counting up had been done in the back office of the shop, i went home to work on my very neglected thesis. it is sometimes hard to remember that i came to this country to do a phd. sometimes it seems that since i have been here, i have done everything except that. i often regret having ever started it, but i do want to finish, i have wasted to much time on it not to.
so i got home, changed into my domashnaia odezhda and tried to edit. but i realised something was missing! my Ethiopian music!
i have always had eclectic taste, but there are very few things i can productively work to. i cannot work at all though, without music or distraction of some sort. so for the past few months, i have turned on my Ethiopian tunes before even bothering to open word.
All the albums i have were made during the supposed golden age of ethiopian sound, a remarkably brief period between 1969 and 1975. but the stuff produced in those 6 short years was enough to fill albums of incredible variety. the influence of western jazz is strong, as are Armenian rhythms, apparently the result of the Arba Lijoch, a group of 40 Armenian orphans who escaped from the Armenian genocide in Turkey, and were then, randomly, adopted by Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. For some reason, the emperor concluded Armenians were unusually musical and paid for their ongoing musical training. Selassie didnt much like the decadent sounds that came out of his country in his last years, and tried to stop the musicians from performing live concerts. but that was nothing compared to the Derg, which executed and imprisoned tens of thousands of its opponents without trial, hitting the musical community hard. Those who were left were forced underground or into exile. one has to wonder what would have happened had the political situation gone another way?

entertainment

in the middle of my shift at the bookshop, james walked up to me and handed me a sheet of paper, reading

drab as a fool, aloof as a bard

a man, a plan, a canal: panama

I smirked at his pedantry and snarkily informed him I am generally more interested in content than form.

But then, this week, back in my cubicle, I started thinking in desperation and boredom:

Коростели летели, летели, ..., летели лет сорок

Socorram-me subi no onibus em Marrocos

I topi non avevano nipoti

Then I remember that when it comes to linguistic formalism, the hungarians always go over board:

Kis erek mentén, láp sík ölén odavan a bánya rabja: jaj, Baranyában a vadon élő Kis Pálnét nem keresik
such a strange tongue. no wonder the country produces so many scientists, if you can manage that, you can probably come up with anything.

i saw it coming, but i didnt

when i accepted a job "representing" the russian media in western europe, i went into it with my eyes open, i thought.
everyone knows Russia doesnt have a free media, and hasnt for many years now. my division focuses on financial/commodities reports, so i didnt think this would matter. in any case, i needed the money, badly.

what i didnt expect was what has happened over the past week: a war in georgia, allegedly over two sad strips of land, and a massive propaganda campaign. i didnt expect that every time CNN or SKY news called me i would be given a script to read from. i didnt expect that i would be required to lie publicly, to clients, to the western media, and to investors. and lie i have. i have read out statements from the ministry of foreign affairs with a straight face, knowing perfectly well they consist of fantastical misrepresentations of the truth, some have been absurd to the point of comical. and i have listened as my friends in Gori, in tbilisi, and in sukhami have called me and held their phones in the air so i could here the shots and the screaming. at least the phones lines stayed open.

but most of all, i have concluded russia is weak and putin as scared as ever. this has nothing to do with the war itself, the situation in south ossetia and abhazia is not what i am getting at here (although i have been to both regions and know them well, i have been trying to tell people about the potential for conflict in abhkazia for YEARS now). rather, what is the most telling from my perspective is the way in which the russian leadership fears the media. the way in which it is apparently worried enough about the reality to restrict access to it. if you read the western media in the early days of this conflict, you probably noted all the western news stories were coming from the georgian side. you could say this reflects western media biases, but that is bullshit. the problem is russia restricted access of western journalists and prevented them from representing the russian side of the story. at the start of the conflict, my company and one other (also russian) were the only ones allowed in, giving us complete control over the media....or rather giving the russian government complete control over the media, since they are, ultimately, our bosses. now part of this is the result of endemic corruption (ie we can pay to make sure we are the only ones allowed to cover a story) but it is also the result of fear. what were the russian authorities so scared western journalists would find? that the russian troops were poorly trained and dreadfully fed? we all know this already. i think instead it was because of a mania for controlling the news, in any form, whether it is necessary or not. even if a western journalist wanted to write of the heroic efforts of russia in the region, they probably still would have been restricted, since the authorities trust no one over whom they do not have total control and veto powers.

so the stories that emerged are slanted on the georgian side, and the media filled with endless images of poor elderly georgian pensioners with destroyed houses behind them. russia might have succeeded militarily, but it has lost the image war in the west, and it has only itself to blame for that.

money

so there is apparently a recession on. combined with that soaring fuel prices and 60 million seats slashed from airline schedueles. with the result that i just paid 1,200 pounds for a ticket which this time last year would have cost me 700. ouch.

her highness at rest

food

Ok I am the first to admit I am a pig. I like my food, I always have.

I like trying different tastes and exploring different cuisines. And, since I still preserve the manners of a broke student, I can never ever pass up the site of free food.

So, Friday was a slow day. My boss didn't show up, as he often doesn't on Fridays. And he thus forgot that he and another college were meant to be going to a meeting at canary wharf with a major investment bank. So I went in his place. I wasn't really looking forward to it, it wasn't in my territory, and these presentations are normally a bit stressful, so going to one last minute on a Friday afternoon was not my idea of a good time.

So we got to canary wharf and went to the bank. We were escorted into a large conference room, at which point our jaws dropped. There was a massive and beautiful wood table, filled with a mouth watering spread of delicacies. There was a cheese platter, an enormous fruit platter of pineapple, apricot, blackberries, strawberries kiwi and blueberries. There was a silver tray of biscuits neatly arranged in a display. Then there was another platter of savoury biscuits to go with the cheese selection….

We stared in awe for a moment, then negotiated….could we get away with a bite? Was this for us? Would anyone notice if we dug in? could we get away with sticking some of the grub in my purse for later? At least some wrapped chocolates?

We couldn't resists, we munched some berries, assuming they were little enough not to be notices. Then we decided we should finish ALL the blackberries, cause it would be obvious if there was only one or two left….one thing led to another and we were discreetly wolfing down gobs of expensive food. And we got away with it. Eventually the clients showed up. They didn't give a crap about the presentation, they were bored and looking to spend their Friday as painlessly as possible. One handed me a plate and invited me to dig in, which I did, again.

battle royale

The summer of 2004 was a dismal one. I spent most of it on my friends couch. I was unemployed and had just had my visa to live in hungary revoked, forcing me to leave the country and move to paris, where (I was told at the time) I should work while killing time over the course next year, waiting to be allowed to begin a doctorate in another country. Had all of this happened just a few months later, it would have been unnecessary, hungary would have been in the EU and I wouldn't have needed the visa anyway to stay on there.
But things happened the way they did and I ended up unemployed and in paris.
It was a bad summer, but it would have been a lot worse without the gloomily entertaining presence of Laurent.
Laurent actually was employed, he just barely ever bothered to show up at his workplace. He got away with this as apparently he was a genius in some aspect of computer engineering. Since periodically his company would fly him to 5 star hotels in odd places (gabon, chad) I guess he must indeed have been bright.
He was also depressive, yet amusing in an off beat way. He liked gory asian films where lots of people get killed. So the best parts of that summer were spent on the couch watching strange Japanese, Chinese and Korean murder films with Laurent. I eventually got a job and he followed some girl (kiki? Miki? Niki?) off to gabon, I haven't seen him since. But then this weekend I was doing some returns at the bookshop, when the barcodes on my clipboard sent me into the manga section, which I normally avoid due to the unpleasant body odour that tends to accompany the teenage boys to that part of the shop.
There, going through the mangas to find the right ISBNs, my eyes passed over a copy of Battle Royale, one of the first of the many gory asian flicks I watched with Laurent.
If you don't know it, battle royale is a gory Japanese modern-day lord of the flies. Japan has turned into a police state, known as the Republic of Greater East Asia. In this sick society, obsessed by reality TV, a show called The Programme has developed. Supposedly started as a military research project, The Program is a means of terrorising the population, of creating such paranoia as to make organised insurgency impossible. According to the rules, every year since 1947, fifty 3rd year junior high school (14-15 years old) classes are isolated, and the students required to fight to the death until one student remains. Their movements are restricted and monitored by metal collars around their necks which contain tracking and listening devices; if any student should attempt to escape The Program, or enter declared "danger zones", a bomb will be detonated in the collar, killing the wearer. If the students refuse to participate, they will all be killed simultaneously. As you might imagine, a brave protagonist steps forward to attempt to destroy the perverted and twisted system.
So, anyway, I bought the manga, took it home and started reading. The quality of the images astonishes me, and the story is so dark you cant help get pulled in. to my surprise (I am not normally a manga reader) I found myself this afternoon placing an order on amazon for the next ones in the series. I already know how it all ends, but I want to read/see it again for myself in print.

double life

It is more a triple life in reality, as I am supposed to be doing a phd. But that has been relegated to the side for the moment. Even I can only juggle so much.
So yesterday I left the office at the usual time, with the usual pleasantries of the "have a nice evening sort." But my evening directed me to my other job for the annual stock take.
I get called up for this every year. This is partly because I am one of the few who is willing. Most people complain endlessly that it is dull and inconvenient, but my view is pragmatic: free pizza, easy work and double pay. I don't see any reason to object! My entry from last year describes the routine: squads of around 40 indian guys come into the shop right after closing and start beeping the books. They spread throughout the place, and we follow with endless sheets of paper, checking up behind them. We work through the night, mainly underground (our lowest floor is Europe's largest underground trading area) wandering around the shelves like zombies, refuelling on bad pizza and nachos when necessary. This year, as the "experienced" member of staff I had to go through the safe and cash office as well, counting up every piece of paper that could resemble a voucher or certificate.
Every time they send me home in a taxi (which they have to do by contract after midnight) I wonder at how empty the streets are. The city whirls past and only the occasional drunk reveller is still on the street. and I know things will look very different a few hours later when I am heading back to the centre, to my other job, and it all begins again…..

out of office messages

1. I am currently out at a job interview and will reply to you if I fail to get the position. I may be a little moody so be prepared.



2. You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of the office. If I was in, chances are you wouldn't have received anything at all.



3. Sorry to have missed you, but I am at the doctor's having my brain removed so I can be promoted to our management team.



4. I will be unable to delete all the unread, worthless emails you send me until I return from vacation on 4/18. Please be patient, and your mail will be deleted in the order it was received.



5. Thank you for your email. Your credit card has been charged £115.99 for the first 10 words and £11.99 for each additional word in your message.



6. The e-mail server is unable to verify your server connection and is unable to deliver this message. Please restart your computer and try sending again. (The beauty of this is that when you return, you can see how many in-duh-viduals did this over and over.)



7. Thank you for your message, which has been added to a queuing system. You are currently in 352nd place, and can expect to receive a reply in approximately 19 weeks.



8. Hi, I'm thinking about what you've just sent me. Please wait by your PC for my response.



9. I've run away to join a different circus.

the gym

I have become a regular at the gym near, not out of a love for physical fitness, but rather out of boredom.
Going to the gym is one of the few socially acceptable reasons to spend lots of time out of the office. For some reason, if you say you are meeting a friend, or going shopping, this does not meet the criteria, and you can be accused of being lazy, or not pulling your weight. However, taking an hour and a half in the middle of the day to go work out is fine, in fact it is commended, it shows drive and energy, which is apparently mentally linked to ambition.
So, seeing this, I went off to the gym around the corner and asked what I have to do (and how much I have to pay) to become a member.
I was taken to a little room to have a "consultation" with a "personal fitness consultant," who turned out to be a nice south African guy about my age. I later realised that everyone who works in this particular gym is apparently from south Africa, oddly.
So the guy went through a list of pre-prescribed questions seeking to establish why I wanted to become a member: did I want to tone my body? Improve my sex life? Increase my strength? Endurance levels?
No, I replied. i am looking for an acceptable reason to escape the office
The guy looked at me like I was nuts. But I am sure I am not the only person in this position, I am probably just the first to admit to it. In the end, I took a sample 3 month membership to see if I like it.
I have been going at least 3 times a week since then. It is a bizarre experience. Given that the area I work in is overwhelmingly male, and that the few women in the area tend to be secretaries (and thus unlikely to be able to afford the ridiculous costs), I am often the only female in the place. Sometimes I get the whole changing room to myself, including the whirlpool and sauna area. On Fridays after using the equipment I go in their and just lay about, passing the time and splashing water on the wood.
The actually exercise area is a mirror of my office: filled with alfa males preening in front of the mirrors and each other. they totally ignore me, which is a relief. but i study them endlessly, it has become a sociological observation unit in my head. i feel like a fly on the wall observing a world i can barely comprehend.

the line of beauty

my sudden tour of the thatcher kingdom that is canary wharf, combined with the upcoming Booker of Booker award (celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Booker prize) led me to pick up a copy of Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty.
I had been aware of the book for some time. it was a regular sellar at the book shop as well as a staff favourite, but it was only now i managed to pick up a copy and read it. on the one hand, i regret that i waited so long to enjoy this masterpiece, but on the other hand, maybe it is better. I can appreciate it all the more now within my current setting here in the City.
Many people have labelled the book "gay fiction" or a "gay romance" but i find these labels absurd. yes the protagonist is gay.....and? sure, there are plenty of gay sex scenes, but i fail to see how this makes the book worth button holing in such a fashion. if it needs classification, i would put it as a brilliant social satire, or even a historical memory of Thatcher's London, in the same way that Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanieties is a brilliant documentary of Reagan's United States.
It begins in the summer of 1983 "the last summer of its kind there was ever to be." Young and impressionable Nick (an ultimately middle class boy) moves to london and stays with his friend's parents. the father is a palpably ambitious tory MP, determined to impress the Prime Minister (or The Lady as she is generally refered to). Nick is given a front row seat to the happenings and pretensions of the time.
And what a ruthless decade the 80s was....and a self satisfied one too, for some. with a keen eye for social nuance, Hollinghurst recreates this universe with almost scary accuracy. it is all there: the bankers and their coke addiction, the self important Tory MPs who declare "the 80s are going on forever" as 3.5 british citizens are without jobs and mines are closing all over the north, the Diana hair cuts, AIDS, and Every Breath You Take.
Nick is and is not part of this world, and in such a way is the perfect observor, close enough to comment accurately but still reflective. A PhD student at UCL, he is obsessed by aesthetic beauty which he pursues relentlessly amist a world of ultimately philistine Tories who seem to see art exclusively as a symbol or social advancement. Intrigued by Hogarth's Line of Beauty, he attempts to create an artistic world together with his millionaire Lebanese lover. So, yes there is a gay love story, but it is the personalities of the characters that intrigue me. I was just old enough to remember these times, and i recognise too well some of the types: the vulgar businessman turned millionaire by creating an empire, but still remains the crude entrepreneur, the disatisfied who are always lurking beneath the shiny surface. it reminds me of the parties i attended at the time: the posh tory parents who drank too much and disappeared to the bath room to cut lines with their platenum credit cards, leaving us (the kids) to lounge bored around the pool. i remember all to clearly the time my classmate (we were about 11 or 12) took the keys to his dad's Mercedes.....and drove it into a lake....he swam out through the window. the parents grounded him for 2 weeks, and bought another Mercedes.
a vulgar and excessive time.

canary wharf

aside from some hedge funds in the west end, london has two main business centres: the city and canary wharf.
i sucessfully avoided these areas until this past month when i took a job in the city. there was actually no real reason why i avoided the city before, it is just that i never had any real reason to go there. now every day i arrived in a metro car that resembles a game of sardines, and i am normally the only woman except for the occassional secretary.
since there is a lot of business between the two, it seems i shall also frequently be expected to go to canary wharf.

According to wikipedia (ever reliable source that it is!) Canary Wharf is built on the site of the old West India Docks on the Isle of Dogs. From 1802 to 1980, the area was one of the busiest docks in the world, with at one point 50,000 employed. According to the guy in a siut i found myself sitting accross from yesterday, it used to be completely cut off from london. The man was telling me that he had been raised in the docklands, back when it had functioned as a seperate entity with its own police force and restricted enterance. apparently, Canary Wharf itself takes its name from the sea trade with the Canary Islands, whose name comes from the dogs which the Spaniards found there (think in latin here), producing the terms Dog Islands and the Isle of Dogs.
but then the world economy changed, and the docks were useless and obsolete by the 1980s. so, the area is no longer a dock, but an english equivelent of paris's la defence, a wierd business complex partly cut off from the rest of the city, and so different architecturally that is appears more of a seperate entity entirely.
the place is a scary testament to thatcher and the 80s. The Big Bang deregulation of financial services in London radically changed the way merchant banks operated. Instead of the small, corridor and office based buildings occupied in the traditional square mile, like the building i am presently working in, the demand shifted to large floor-plate, open plan space which could be used as a trading floor. actually, i find these huge open plan creations horrid, i always feel i am being watched. but, that was the trend of the time and canary wharf is its lasting legacy. everything here is big and over sized. but i will admit there are some spectacular flats in this area. They all seem massive and well built, both unusual characteristics in london! they have large open spaces and huge windows overlooking the whole city. but i guess the downside is you have to spend all your time in canary wharf....

the job

this afternoon i found myself in a suit, standing in front of a room of businessmen making a presentation in the middle of a massive development in Canary Warf.
i was the only woman in the room, just as i am the only woman (aside from HR) in my company.
i spent nearly an hour going over a database which provides market analysis. i rattled on about the usefulness of the project in due dilligence.
afterwards i wandered over to the ontario tower in canada square and inspected the cocktail bar, already filled with tipsy men in suits, even though it was only lunch time.
and at a certain point, i wondered how the hell i ended up here.

milton keynes, take 2

those of you who have been reading this blog for years might remember an entry from several years back. it was my first weekend in the UK, and my good friend harry (who is not a fan of this country and spends as little time in it as possible, although he was in fact born in london) decided to horrify me. i think he wanted to pursuade me that i had made a grave error in relocating here, or maybe he just wanted to open my eyes fully to the reality of modern england.
in any case, he took me to milton keynes.
specifically, we went to the milton keynes leisure centre, which was probably as far from the world i was just leaving in paris as possible within the European continent.
milton keynes is one of the most culturally lacking places i have ever been (ok, it is not as bad and the MAll of Americas, but up there).
the whole place was strategically planned in the late 60s, and really took off under the dark days of thatcher when such planned communities were considered the way forward. the organisers planned the major road layout according to street hierarchy principles, using a grid pattern of approximately 1 km interval, rather than on the more conventional radialpattern found in older settlements. Major roads within the town run between communities, rather than through them: the major roads are known locally as grid roads and the spaces between them are known as grid squares. so, the place looks like a board game, with zero organic growth architecturally.
i wouldnt want to live here, but maybe i have something wrong with me. unemployment is practically non-existant, houses are larger and cheaper than in london, the birth rate is one of the highest in the country, and families are supposedly happy and intact (if you believe the locals, that is). for my views on the "leisure centre" see the early entry from September 2005.
regardless of what the place is or isnt, my recent evening spent there was truely lovely.
i dont get to see harry that often, so i have to take advantage of the opportunities i get, even if they happen to involve milton keynes. harry and his god mother picked me up at the station and took my to the god mothers house. there, harry and i had a long catching up chat in the back garden over tea while vivian prepared a delicious home cooked english meal. very rarely do you read praise of english cuisine in these pages, but this i assure you was delicious. very rarely do i ever get to have a home made meal in an actual home, including good company, a big dessert and endless cups of tea. the experience was so unusual it seemed strangely exotic.....

the new strong russia?

I got this letter circulated to me by an old friend. he wrote it, it is about his family. now i work for the state media, and a brief inquiry into our computer system revealed nothing has, and most likely nothing will, be published on this....most likely because it is not in the local government's interest. so much for the state of law in putin, um, medvedev's russia.



ДОРОГИЕ ДРУЗЬЯ!
Я И МОЯ СЕМЬЯ СТАЛИ ЖЕРТВАМИ БАНДИСТКОГО ПРОИЗВОЛА, НАПРАВЛЕННОГО НА ЗАХВАТ БИЗНЕСА МОЕГО ОТЦА В Г. ЭНГЕЛЬСЕ, САРАТОВСКОЙ ОБЛАСТИ, ЗА КОТОРЫМ СТОЯТ ОТДЕЛЬНЫЕ СОТРУДНИКИ МЕСТНЫХ ПРАВООХРАНИТЕЛЬНЫХ ОРГАНОВ И АДМИНИСТРАЦИИ Г. ЭНГЕЛЬСА, САРАТОВСКОЙ ОБЛАСТИ. 17 МАЯ 2008 В ЕГО СЛУЖЕБНЫЙ АВТОМОБИЛЬ БЫЛ ПОДБРОШЕН ПИСТОЛЕТ.
20 МАЯ 2008 ГОДА ЗВОНИЛИ С УГРОЗАМИ МОЕЙ МАТЕРИ.
18 ИЮНЯ 2008 ЕМУ В ОФИС ПОДБРОСИЛИ НАРКОТИКИ.

ПРЕСТУПНИКИ МОГУТ ПОЙТИ НА ФИЗИЧЕСКОЕ УСТРАНЕНИЕ ОТЦА ИЛИ КОГО-ТО ИЗ ЧЛЕНОВ НАШЕЙ СЕМЬИ.
ЕСЛИ МОЖЕТЕ СООБЩИТЕ ЭТУ ИНФОРМАЦИЮ ТЕМ ВАШИМ ЗНАКОМЫМ (ВОЗМОЖНО ЖУРНАЛИСТАМ) , КОТОРЫЕ МОГЛИ БЫ СВЯЗАТЬСЯ СО МНОЙ И СООБЩИТЬ О ДАННОЙ ИСТОРИИ ШИРОКОЙ ПУБЛИКЕ.

СПАСИБО ЗА ПОДДЕРЖУ
X

----------

DEAR FRIENDS!

I AND MY FAMILY HAVE BEEN ATTACKED BY A GANG OF CRIMINALS FROM ENGELS, SARATOV REGION.

CRIMINALS ARE TRYING TO TAKE OVER MY FATHER’S (NIKOLAY MOTSNYI) BUSINESS WITH THE USE OF CORRUPTED LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIALS.

FIRST THEY PLANTED A GUN IN MY FATHER’S BUSINESS CAR ON 17 MAY 2008 AND HE WAS CHARGED WITH ILLEGAL POSSESSION OF FIREARMS.

CRIMINALS ORGANIZED A NEW ATTACK AND PLANTED DRUGS INTO THE OFFICE OF HIS COMPANY IN ENGELS, SARATOV REGION ON 18 JUNE (JUST 2 DAYS AFTER HE WAS CLEARED OFF THE PREVIOUS CHARGES).
MY MOTHER RECEIVED A PHONE CALL WITH A THREAT ON 20 MAY 2008.
THIS CRIMINAL ACTIVITY IS FULLY SUPPORTED BY SOME CORRUPTED MEMBERS OF LOCAL POLICE AND SOME OFFICIALS FROM ENGELS CITY ADMINISTRATION.
CRIMINALS ARE READY TO GO FURTHER AND MURDER MY FATHER OR ANYONE FROM OUR FAMILY.
IF YOU KNOW ANYONE WHO COULD CONTACT ME FOR MORE DETAILS AND TELL THIS STORY TO THE WIDER PUBLIC PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO HIM.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT

X

teaching and learning

I have loads of experience in teaching English as a foreign language. In such a way I supported myself through various parts of university, albeit in a minimal subsistence way. I taught English to spoiled Russians in Moscow mansions, French business men and a mix of 20 something students in Cambridge. I always knew I wasn't meant to be an English teacher, I fell into the profession completely by accident…..but it was a means to an end and I got away with it well enough for long enough that people were willing to overlook my lack of certificates and qualifications.
But then one day I hit a block and realised that I couldnt do it anymore, so I started selling books to fund the rest of my doctorate. Even as that job has now come to and end, I think I made the right choice at the time.
In my years of teaching though, I did become proficient in the various theories and trends circulating in that industry. I learned to keep my TTT (teacher talk time) to a minimum, and to do loads of pair work. I learned what a supervisor wanted to see when they opened the door to my classroom: loads of students sitting in pairs, looking happy and speaking the target language. After a few years I became confident enough to walk into classrooms smiling and knowing what I had to do. Funnily though, none of this prepared me to be on the other side of the desk, in the students place.
So yesterday, as I sat down in my first class at the Spanish embassy I was surprised to find that I felt slightly nervous.
The thing is, I had decided about a month ago that the time had come to sort out the muddle of languages in my brain. I speak (sort of) 6 languages. I have studied over 10. I have attended school in 5. I am often a bit lost. The right words don't always come out at the right time, I know what I mean, but not everyone else does. So I decided to do something about it. I trotted around embassies, checked out the prices, and found myself in an advanced Spanish class at the Cervantes institute. Our class is small, there are only 5 of us, plus the teacher, which my former TEFL self tells me is ideal. Interestingly, not one student is English: the other 4 are south African, Portuguese, polish and Australian. English people are famously disinclined to learn languages other than there own, which appears to be the explanation. The teacher seems good. I found myself analysing the exercises as we went along, knowing well which skill every activity was meant to hone. I think it will be an interesting 12 weeks…

work

my new job is boring beyond all belief.
i have had many ridiculous jobs in the past, i have given out flyers outside the paris metro. i have taught english to spoiled brats in moscow mansions. i have had to take overly intoxicated canadian students to hospital to have their stomachs pumped, and i have sold a lot of books. but i have never sat a desk and tried to imagine ways to look busy. my collegues dont seem to mind this. they spend hours chatting, drinking coffee and reading the sports news on the internet. but this utter lack of productivity drives me mad, especially as we are not allowed to do anything productive if it is not company based. so although i have loads of time, i cant get out my thesis and start working on it, that would be "of task," but i can sit for 2 hours and discuss the football, and that is alright. in fact, it is encouraged, as it apparently shows i am a team player!!! i spend hours staring at the clocks (all of which are now showing the right time around the world, as i went around changing them my first week). i read the guardian, the economist, pagina 12, grandma internacional and the bbc several times a day. if you have a blog, i have read it i assure you! you might wonder about my job. the thing is, i do it, easily. but it doesnt take 8.5 hours a day. with concentration and organisation, i can do everything in 4, condeming myself to another 4.5 hours of nothingness. my collegues tell me i work too hard, but i prefer hard work to boredom. surely there has to be some way to improve this situation? helllllllllpppppppp.......

poland

Poland it had been exactly a decade since I last stuck my feet in Poland, and nearly two decades had passed since my first fleeting visit to Warsaw. Needless to say, some things have changed. Warsaw today is much more than I expected it to be, and an era apart from the drab grey city I remembered from earlier encounters. The architecture has changed rapidly, especially in the business-oriented parts of the centre. There are sparkling new glass and steel structures that look impressive. Our own office is in one of these buildings, and has a large balcony overlooking the entire centre. Yet this new design is completely uneven, there are big new glass buildings next to old socialist ones, next to hand built kebab shops. The new centre is hectic and lacks planning, but I am assured it is improving every year. The old core has taken on the aura of central European kitch, but surely part of this is inevitable in an "old town" that was entirely rebuild in the 1950s, based on 19th century paintings of how it had supposedly looked prior to the Nazi occupation. Like parts of Cracow and vaci utca in Budapest (and all of Prague for that matter) the kitch does not entirely detract from the charm. The old square is cute with nice cafes to sit and have a drink in. and we do. The polish staff in our office there prove to be incredibly friendly and helpful. they nearly even kill us with their hospitality. after a huge breakfast at the hotel, and a brief meeting in the office, we headed for "the best sushi restaurant in Poland." It is indeed amazing how sushi has taken over the cities of eastern europe. it is a ubiqitous as mcdonalds now in moscow, and the trend has clear spread to poland too. the sushi was indeed good, and i enjoyed myself immensely. This culinary fun was followed by a city tour given to us by one of the guys in the office there, and included a stop by the best ponci (Spelling? like a buluchka, but a polish varient) bakery in warsaw, and then, with my stomach still full, a trip to the best mexican restaurant in poland for an early dinner. by the time my burrito arrived though, i barely had the energy to take a bite, as much as i love mexican food, even in its polish transcultured appearence!

football season

it is european football time again.
it is strange how i measure time by football, especially since i would not even describe myself as a major football fan. i played only a little bit as a kid, but i was never especially good. i have little interest in the clubs games, and i support rangers only nominally as my family has supported them for generations and it just seems the inborn logical club to back. but for some reason i do watch the international games. as they happen rarely and always in the summer, over the past 2 decades they have also become my way of counting time. i remember always exactly where i was and what i was doing during every world cup or european championship over the past 20 years. one of my earliest memories is of meeting the entire saudi world cup team in the airport, right after they had been knowcked out of the tournament. i was young and ran over and asked the guys to sign my diary (this was before blogs, clearly) they were all very kind, some even drew little pictures in the book.
the last european cup coincided with one of the roughest times of the past few years. I was back in buda, and had just learned that i would not be able to stay in the country for another year. i watched all the games with my friends at liszt ferenc ter, shouting at the screens in the open air cafes. there were always loads of us there, watching. marci and ferenc as our hungarians, marko and jelena in their croatian tshirts, oliver from estonia whose team wasnt even playing, and dogan and bilge from istambul. they were my friends, my circle, and i knew my whole world was about to come to an end. sure enough, we have never all been in the same room together since those days of football. the last game (portugal-greece) i watched in new exile in paris, on my friends couch. i called back to the buda guys, longing to be with them, and hating france for having been dumped there so randomly.
as this cup moves into the semi-finals i cant help but remember those dark days 4 years ago. the first match i watched in a dodgy bar in holloway, munching a veggie kebab (only in england could you buy such a thing!) with a pole, an azeri and a russian from latvia. part way through the game i looked around and realised that i have somehow managed to reconstruct my life here. it is not the same, but i have friends here none the less.
amazingly, dogan and bilge arrived just in time for the start of the tournament. i hadnt seen them since 2004, and it was a delight to see them again, just as the turkish team was advancing in a most surprising and unpredictable way. it is good to reunite, especially over football.

holland

i have actually spent quite a lot of time in this country over the years. added all up i am sure it would be a fairly substantial number of months. but i dont ever really "get" holland. being here feels normal, i know my way around the major cities, i know the food and I have a surrogate home to stay in. Yet i could never imagine living here. i think it is just far too clean, that is surely the big difference between here and england. holland is clean and orderly, and the people are friendly and polite, but (like in england) you never seem to really get to know them, they are somehow always a step removed, and distant.
my days here are always the same, they are spent chatting with people who have known me since birth, eating, and watching roland garros. For some strange twist of timing, i happen to always be here while the great competition is taking place, and as the people i stay with are major tennis fans, who always spend some time watching the matches, especially when Rafael Nadal is playing. Despite several years of exposure, I barely understand the complex scoring system and need it explain to me yet again, every year. i dont know exactly why i am so slow on this matter, but i have given up worrying about it.
then, after tennis, i go for a walk along the canals and marvel at the incredible planning that must go into building these houses on the narrowest of land bridges, and on mini islands separated from the road by draw bridges and moats. the gardens are pretty and immaculate. i appreciate them as an outsider who doesnt understand about such matters can, with learned understanding. i throw bread to the cute ducks on their water nest and observe their peculiar method of communication. the canal in the backyard is patrolled by an authoritarian goose who quickly informs me that i have stepped to close to the nest, and i am obliged to take a step backwards. the after saying hello to the cats, i go back inside to play wordoku.

gatwick

I have never liked Gatwick airport. I just don’t see how it could be convenient for anyone. It is far from the centre, and unlike Luton, has the pretension of being a real international airport. The shopping is rubbish, and the ticket to get there ridiculously overpriced. I have also always thought it smelled. And yet, despite my efforts to avoid the place, I still unfortunately end up from time to time cooling my heels in the building, watching the people stagger about, dazed from jet lag, discussing their trip that has just come to an end, or the one that is just about to begin. I yawn and wait for my plane. It boards from gate 1, and the waiting room must be 45 degrees, stuffed as it is with English louts waiting for the wild adventures they imagine they are off to, and no ventilation system. The flight must be 85 percent male, and almost exclusively between the ages of 20 and 30. Such are the folk would board flights to Amsterdam!!

close encounters

I saw him the moment he entered the shop, it was like a flashback to the 1990s: black leather jacket, black leather trousers, black sunglasses, shaved head, no neck and a HUGE Orthodox gold cross dangling around his middle. I took one look and fled to a remote corner of the fiction section. He apparently headed downstairs, but did not find what he was looking for and approached the guys at the till down there. Apparently, even when he was still several metres away, one colleague told the other to call me. Sure enough, the phone rang on my floor and the duty manager asked me to come down to speak “to a Russian.” But the fellow was not Russian, he was from Vukovar, one of the saddest places I have ever been. During the war, he had joined a certain well-known Serbian paramilitary group, he fought in the krajina for the land he imagined to be his, and he killed lots of people (which he explained to me by air gesturing the act of using a machine gun, complete with sound effects, while my astounded colleagues watched on, from a safe distance). After the war, he went into the foreign legion, and then ended up doing “security” in Moscow. Whatever that means. I am not sure at which point he became a nut case. I suppose some people are just born bonkers, but I doubt this guy was. Rather, events ran their course and took their toll over time. He claimed to have been born in 1975, making him 16 when the war started. I imagined him as a semi-educated provincial who was suddenly given a gun and cause, but never any real background to go with it.
He wanted books on what he pronounced as “brutsele” which after several attempts and gestures I eventually understood was a Serbian rendering of “Bruce Lee,” this guy’s proclaimed hero (after the certain ex-paramilitary leader).
What was weird is that he insists his former leader is still alive today and directing a legion group. He claimed to have seen him, since the time when his brains were allegedly splattered over the carpet of a Belgrade lobby. I found this incredible to believe…I would say impossible even, except that I have learned never to use that word when applied to certain parts of the planet. He showed me some other pictures though, and they were gruesome enough.
As he left the shop, the entire building seemed to give a sigh of relief, myself included. There are things from my past I think I would prefer forgetting, and association with guys with gold chains and tattoos of big cats is certainly up there.

eurovision and more

so russia finally won eurovision, after coming close for several years in a row and watching several neighbouring countries win.
i cnant say i am a huge eurovision fan, although i attended in 2003 (or was it 2002?) in Estonia. but i will be curious to see how the russian authorities manage to arrange such an event, since the recent chelsea- man u football match revealed certain drawbacks to hosting events in moscow: there are very few hotel rooms in general, and those that exist tend to be in luxury business hotels aimed at guys with expense accounts, not tourists. furthermore, russian hotels tend to dramatically raise prices when they know many foreigners will be in town. and then the visa issue....
i might even be about next year for moscows eurovision moment.
sadly, my time working in the bookshop is coming to an end, after over a year and a half of working with endless amounts of fiction, i am moving on. i will be very sad to leave my collegues, many of whom are very cool, and sad as well to leave the books...but economics has forced me to look for better paid ways to spend my time. on my return from south america i sent my CV around, and got offers from the Guardian and from the russian media. i am going with the latter, as it pays better. more on that soon.

books

I recently gave in my notice at the bookshop. It has been a great 1.5 years but I need more money to pay off my student debt, so I had to start looking elsewhere.
And was lucky enough to be offered a job working for a Russian news agency, so we shall see where that will lead me.
But I will really miss my collegues at the book shop, as well as the books. One of the great parts of the job has been the constant exposure to new fiction, and realising just how much stuff is out there. I recently read Travesuras de la nina mala by the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, whom I have always detested. But we got his most recent book in English in the shop, and it looked interesting, so I decided to try to get over my prejudice and read it. I tracked it down in Spanish in Buenos Aires, and then oddly got given a French copy in paris….and I confess that I was completely mesmerized from the start. It is, ultimately, a twisted love story….the dynamics of the two main characters are troubling and uncomfortable. You know early on that there will be no happy ending here. The female main character is a deracinated modern madame bovary, incapable of supporting the bourgeois life proposed to her by the only man who truly loves her. But it is not only the perverse characters that drew me in. the novel sweeps through the second half of the 20th century, from peru in the 50s to paris in its early 60s heyday, to London in the late 60s and 70s to Tokyo in the 80s and Madrid in 90s. conservatism, Sartre, post structuralism, anti Vietnam protests in Trafalgar square, AIDS, high tech globalization- it is literally all there too, but only ever as an intriguing background.
So having got so wrapped up in the work, I decided to give Vargas Llosa’s writing’s another go, thinking my earlier prejudice was perhaps the remains of a more activist youth…..but no. on an Iberia flight to Madrid recently, I picked up an article he wrote in El Pais on Argentina. And he is, as I always thought, a twat. The article made me annoyed. It trashes the current argentine intellectual scene with the ressentiment of someone with a serious complex. Vargas Llosa has always annoyed me for his very right wing views, intolerance, and his self satisfied views towards his position. A brief scanning of recent articles in le Monde and el Pais confirmed I still find him as annoying as 10 years ago when I was studying the latin American Boom.
And yet I loved his last book. My friend Cesare pointed out you don’t have to like a writer to like his work, and he gave the excellent example of celine, an excellent writer, yet an appalling anti- semite and human. At work, my collegue james pointed out that surely SOME right-wingers are capable of producing quality literature, and correctly noted the way in which the European left has long monopolized the field. It is an interesting question….but ultimately what I look for is good fiction, and Travesuras de la nina mala more than provided me with that, to Vargas Llosa’s full credit.

paris

Spring is pan-european family errand time. The timing (april-june) and destinations (paris, Brussels, various small Dutch towns) are always the same, as are the missions. But this predictability does not make for boring excursions, rather there is something pleasant in the annual ritual. And so, I find myself sitting with yaelle, waiting for solenne by the assemble nationale, her latest place of employment. it is a ritual, every time i am in paris we have a reunion, the three of us. we have been doing it for over a decade, how time flies!
and next stop: gibert jeune....

london

I always find London a let down, where ever I am arriving from. Perhaps it is the weather, which is always rubbish. Or maybe the incredible inefficiency. Or the ridiculous prices. London has been my unavoidable transport hub for three decades, yet I cringe every time my plane begins its descent into heathrow, wishing every time that we were landing somewhere else. Get my oyster card topped up (111pounds, and that is with a 35percent student discount) and head for work, wishing I hadn’t boarded the plane in rio.

rio

I cant imagine a city with a more beautiful setting than rio de Janeiro. It has pristine beaches which are exceptionally well maintained by squads of beach cleaners. The hills and water add to give it exceptional views, combined with the lush vegetation found in the tropics. It is a laid back city, where shirts qualify as semi-formal is they have sleeves. People walk all around the city in beach wear and flip flops are the official shoes, coming in every colour and pattern combination imaginable. The life style is chilled as well: sonia tells me she plays beach volleyball for 1-2 hours every morning before work. I ask her at what time exactly she starts her job, and she responds “oh when I feel like it.” All day long, any day of the week, there are people out on the beach. They don’t just lie there sunning themselves though, as cariocas like their exercise. The beaches are filled with surfers, standard beach volleyball, and especially its brazilian variant- a kind of volleyball where you can use any part of the body to get the ball over the net, except your arms. On Sundays, they close the streets along Copacabana and ipanema, turning them into a huge, endless track for joggers, rollerbladers and pedestrians like myself. The air is soft with humidity, and even when it rains, it feels pleasant. I can imagine the lifestyle must be addictive, and if you have lived here it would be hard adjusting to anywhere else.

a death in rio

well i had imagined writing more here about the beauties of rio, and i will, but now.
yesterday one of our group members died.
horacio made the announcement right after lunch: ruth died, in her sleep, age 92.
understandably, many were upset. but i thought, what a way to go! she was a spunky woman with a tremendous zest for life, and she died after a great holiday, peacefully in her sleep, at a hotel on copacobana, after a night of drinking and samba dancing. if i die at that age and in that way, i will consider myself very very lucky.

montevideo

I am not sure I would want to spend the rest of my life in Montevideo, it is a small and provincial variant on Buenos aires. But I certainly would not mind having a flat there. The city is located in a sort of peninsula, so the coastline is long and lined with beautiful flats, most of which have a view overlooking the water. The blocks of flats seemed nice, many having enormous balconies over looking the beach. The beach is completely clean and people swim in it during the summer. Today there were some guys out playing beach volleyball or jogging, but the swimming season has now passed. Then we went through some leafy neighbourhoods with huge houses protected by large gates with fancy security systems. Isabel assured us that this was more for fashion than crime prevention. Crime is low in Uruguay, but some have the idea that having a fashionable high tech gate looks cool.
In the afternoon we headed to the bodegas carrau winery/ estancia. Like argentina and chile, Uruguay is a wine producing country and the people are proud of their local wine, and thus insistent we try it (with good reason). The owner gave us a tour of the property, and we got to go into the cellars….pablo and I ran around like nuts trying to take The Perfect Picture in dim light, holding our hands as still as possible, for as long as possible. In the end our photos came out almost identical, except for the slight difference in perspective pablos extra height gives him. After the tour came the huge meal and wine tasting. There was so much food none of us ate dinner that evening. It was the usual southern cone fare: meat appetizers, followed by meat served with meat. There was pork, chicken and beef, as well as some pate stuff I couldn’t figure out. When I confessed to being the southern cone’s one and only vegetarian, a huge salad and quiche were produced, only a corner of which I could eat. The quantities of wine were equally generous, enough so that at one point the 88 farmer in our group got up and did a tango with an Uruguayan woman young enough to be his granddaughter. Even my father did a little dance for us. “we aren’t exactly rich, but we live well.” Isabel assured us, and I believed her.

bookshops of BA

In chile I had been shocked at the incredible prices of books- 15 euros for a trashy fiction paperback! Pablo had claimed it was due to 1. Chiles isolation 2. Chile being a very small market 3. Chile not having any publishers of note and needing to import everything 4. The government applying VAT to books, unlike in other countries, such as England where books are exempt. Needless to say, I bought no books in chile, although I would have like to have. Argentina is a different case altogether. The books go for about 5 pounds or less each, and the selection is excellent. Even more interesting are the bookshops themselves. On corrientes, my father and I wandered through endless rows of new and used bookshops, but that was nothing compared to el ateneo, a huge bookshop housed in an old theatre! It immediately went to the top of my world bookshop list. The collections were good, both of literature and music, but the setting was the best part. The stage had been converted into a café, and what had been the seats into rows of bookshelves. My father drank coffee and I wandered about in delight. We both noted that the top 2 bestsellers were peron-related: number one was on the last days of evita (how many times can people want to read the same thing over and over again???) and number 2 was about the peronist party. Clearly this country has some political oddities, but agh, the fiction section……

the world according to taxi drivers

In addition to all the wonders of Buenos aires I have already mentioned, I have to contribute a special entry to the city’s taxi drivers. Since my father is not so good walking great distances and gets tired, we have taken a fair amount of cabs. We don’t normally do this, but the taxis here are VERY cheap (a 25 minute drive across town is about 4 pounds), you get to see the city a you drive, and the taxi drivers are the most opinionated on the planet. Everyone seems to want to enlighten and update us on the state of things in the city. Today, for example, we took three taxis. The first featured a lecture on the accomplishments and shortcomings of evita, contrasted against the current government of cristina Fernandez. The driver informed us that the current government are not REAL peronists, but just filled with peronist sounding hot air. (the taxi driver was a real peronist, and nostalgic for the good old days, which were apparently about the time he was born). The lecture included a 10 minute explanation on the peronist doctrine, as it should be.
Lecture two started with a discussion of ethnicity as the driver discussed his Italian versus his Spanish grandparents. From that point he migrated on to the beauties of lunfardo, the odd mix of Spanish and Italian spoken by people in Buenos aires. This led to a hilarious imitation of how Mexicans speak, and from there on to literature (as we were heading to a bookshop).
Lecture three was on the rich and how they got to be that way. This was inspired by our passing some very nice flats in recoleta on our way to Palermo Viejo. We established that these luxurious pads were not owned by foreigners, as my father had enquired, but by wealthy argentines with major inheritances of “landed money.” Somehow, this all led back to evita, as seems to happen regularly here.
If I had more time here I think I would be tempted to write a book: the history of argentina, as told by its taxi drivers. It is a truly insightful experience.

mi buenos aires querido

This must be one of the best cities in the world. A friend of mine claims on his web page that he has lived in montreal, London, cape town and Sydney, and thanks god every day that he was born argentine. I can see why. Both the country and its capital are phenomenal. There are many aspects I could elaborate on here: the architecture with the amazing circa 1900 buildings, or the shopping malls which spurn international marks in favour of their own local brands (cause they are actually better), the diverse neighbourhoods with their sidewalk cafes and boutiques, the people who are both friendly and gorgeous, the flat which have the most amazing balconies imaginable, recoleta with its slightly ridiculous professional dog walkers, the restaurants serving big chunks of steak, and the book shops housed in abandoned theatres with shelves spilling over with latin American classics.
I think I should move here. I wonder how I would justify that to my supervisor….

the boat 2

I am something of a personage on the boat. Everyone knows my name and says hello as I pass, crew and passengers alike. Such notoriety was not difficult to achieve- I am the youngest person on board by several decades. Most people are in their 70s and even 80s. I have met several people pushing 90. But if I have learned one thing on this ship it is that life doesn’t have to end at 40 or 50 or any other specified age. There are people out there doing exciting things all their lives. And some of them have truly amazing stories to tell. This morning I had breakfast with a 85 year old who had interesting stories about travelling through Uzbekistan in the 70s. another travelled all around germany as a teenager right after the war, just to find out what it was like! I have eaten several times with an 88 year farmer from Oregon who swears like a trooper and is a democratic party activist. I have got shopping advice from Carmen, my 60+ year old Spanish friend (her Spanish passport was torn up in the days of franco, and her british husband keeps threatening to tear up her british one if the credit card bills keep mounting, but I don’t think this threat is too effective as I caught her buying amber yesterday!) so I have met many interesting characters and I will look at old people in a different way from now on….at least on boat trips.

The Falkland Islands

The Falklands War is one of my earliest memories. Actually, I don’t remember it too well, I have more just the memory of something happening down there than I do of specific events. But the national memory of war doesn’t fade so easily as does a child’s and the events are still remembered in certain circles today. I know people who fought. My family has friends who fought, and we know people who died there. My parents didn’t agree with the war, as they didn’t in general with any of Thatcher’s policies.
Visiting the Falklands, it is hard not think what a tremendous waste the whole thing was. Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges likened the war to two bald men fighting over a comb, and he was right. More soldiers died in the conflict that there were inhabitants of the islands in those days. And the United Kingdom certainly does not need these islands. Unless oil is found (as it is rumoured to have been), there is nothing here other than rock. Not even trees grow here. The islands have great white beaches, but they are mined and blocked off by barbed wire. Plus, the water temperature rarely goes over five degrees. Snow can occur at any month of the year. The wind never seems to stop. Even more than Ushuaia, it is the end of the earth.
And it is a surreal place. The inhabitants are more English than the queen. There are Union Jacks everywhere, and it seems the place froze in the 1950s. the stores were amazing. My father and I wandered into a grocery store to find the saddest “fresh” vegetables ever. Everything is flown in from the UK, thus for 3 pounds you can get a handful of sad carrots. For 4 pounds you can get mouldy cauliflower and for several more pounds, and apple. Little is grown locally as the soil is much too shallow. People live off frozen produce. Close to 80 percent of the islands population are employed by the government. The houses seem to come in 3 models. There is a good reason for this: they are sent down from England in pre-prepared boxes, IKEA style, with instructions on how to assemble them. Apparently not many models are available in such a format.
The guide who showed us around was a pleasant change from the pompous argentines in Ushuaia, who sought to convince us their city was something other than a forgotten backwater. “we don’t have much here in Stanley, so we will make sure you see everything” he stated as we passed the water tanks and the petrol station (part of the tour!) At the post office my father and I tried to post some post cards. My father asked how long they would take to get to Europe. “awhile” was the answer: the Falklands only has post 2 a week, so they wouldn’t even be processed until next Tuesday! the people were nice, in an inbred way. I would not want to join them down there though.

South

The body of water that separates the Horn and Antarctic is one of the toughest passages in the world, but I can now say I have done it. I even have a certificate testifying to the fact, in the unlikely event I should ever need to prove it.
The bottom of the world seems completely disconnected from the rest. From Moscow or Caracas you can still feel part of a worldwide connected community. Here you feel everyone else has left you and gone off to do something better and left you stranded in the ice. I had prepared for the cold, it is not like I don’t have experience living in cold climates. But something about the wind here added a chill I wasn’t prepared for, so I shivered even under my layers of wool and fur. And I watched penguins and sea lions as the latter attempted to make lunch of the former. “that’s the thing,” said the guide “everyone thinks sea lions are nice and cute until you watch one rip the head off a penguin, then people get horrified.” I suppose no one likes to see the realities of nature brought home. And penguins are cute. We looked at them in their little houses, and watched as late chicks tried to remove the last remaining brown feathers off their tuxedo like fronts so that they would be able to swim away and join their kin on their great migrations.

cape horn

The nausea comes in waves. It hit me first. We were leaving the dining room when I started to feel a bit wonky. They claim looking at the horizon helps, but it makes me feel worse. Thing is, I don’t like going up to the 10th floor lookout point since at this point south, it is really cold and windy, plus I think things sway more up there. although I have a great view of the horizon, from my window I cant look at it without also seeing the huge crashing waves below. So I try not looking out at all. I close my eyes and curl up in a ball on my bed. Drinking sprite helps. After a while it passes
But then it hits my dad, and he deals with these things worse than I do. I give him medication. We both nibble ginger. This is the roughest sea passage in the world, we have talked to people who have been on 30-40 cruises and no one has experienced something like this before. At first the waves are “only” 25 feet high (according to the captain) and we come within sight of cape horn, but there is no chance of landing. Then the storm strikes and things get much much worse. At my age I am more stable on my feet than my father, so I stumble up to reception to ask for the drugs….they make me feel like the beetle in kafka’s metamorphosis, I am climbing on the walls, spinning through tunnels, soaring on a rainbow….and praying for land.

punta arenas/ ushuaia/ the end of the world

Visiting is cool but living here must suck.
The place feels totally isolated and like you are standing at the end of the world. Punta arenas is a wind swept village. The weather is amazing. We get on land and it is sunny, but 15 minutes later it is pouring rain. And hour after that it is sunny again. By the time we leave it has rained several more times. But the rain is close to sleet and it tings as it hits things. The city was initially founded mainly by croats, and they have left their traces everywhere. Francesca complains they are cliquish and only employ their own people. Wandering through town I randomly befriend a group of catholic school girls. They are 17 but seem much younger, so sheltered and isolated are their lives. They are nice and surround me, asking me questions when they understand I am a foreigner. They seem impressed by the name of my country, but I wonder if they know where it is. Many latin Americans think my country is a province of spain, and I suspect these girls did as well. I cant blame them though, from here Europe must seem very far.
Ushuaia is almost identical in feel to punta arenas, except that with argentina bombastic tendencies, it has attempted to make money out of its unfortunate position, by styling itself as the Official End Of The World. It might have a point. Technically, Puerto Williams in chile is a bit more south, but almost no one lives there. I ask Horacio, an argentine, who claims “Puerto Williams is not the end of the world, it is the underworld. The end of the world is in argentina.” What Ushuaia makes lacks in, um, most things it makes up in extreme natural beauty. You enter the city via the beagle passage with all of its glaciers and snow capped mountains, and then arrive at Ushuaia, which is itself surrounded by snow capped mountains. The place was apparently found first by the british. The argentines were afraid that the british would occupy the land completely if they didn’t colonise it first, so they build a penal colony on the island (tierra del fuego). Being sent to Ushuaia was just one step below the death penalty. Few tried to escape, and those that did were normally found later, frozen to death, and I can see how: it is the beginning of autumn here and already freezing. In the mountains (but not THAT high up) the snow is still visible from last winter, it never melted. I go to the end of the panamerican autoroute, which runs from here to Alaska, according to the sign. We take the Train To The End Of The World, following the path the prisoners used to take. It ends in a dead end at the foot of a mountain. There is nothing around but animals and rock. Weird place.

glaciers

Outside it looks like a black and white photo. The sky is so dark and the light so low, that through the window I can see no colour at all. Only clouds, snow and rock. Large chunks of ice float by in the water, when you g out on to the deck you can hear the glaciers and chunks of ice creaking loudly. But you can stay out on the deck for very long, since it is both cold and windy. Yesterday evening there was even snow, but that is gone now at least. This is possibly the bleakest part of earth I have seen, but it is beautiful in a way as well. We sailed past both the asia and amalia glaciers and they were stunning, the asia glacier was coated in a spooky blueish light that made it look more like something from another planet than something earthly….but some of the glaciers are dying, the warming temperatures have led to huge waterfalls and run off, they look beautiful, when in fact they are the signs of destruction…..

serb vs croat in the south

i went to the museum of croatian history in punta arenas. such a thing exists since the earliest settlers came from croatia....so you can imagine my surprise when i sat down to watch the museums documentary to hear TAMO DALEKO playing as the theme song! even with the lyrics "tamo je selo moje, tamo je srbija!"

land

the landscape of chile's south is spectacular.i keep trying to post pictures but the internet connections are too slow down here to do more than type.
we went hiking through one of the national parks (which consists of all rocks and waterfalls, no grass thank god). it reminded my father of scotland. certainly the temperatures are about the same. yesterday we got back on the boat and sailed the darwin passage. i didnt take any photos, concluding there was no way the camera could capture what i was seeing all around me, on all sides. there were mountains everywhere you looked and blue blue water.
there are no roads connecting southern chile. front puerto montt south, the country is basically nothing but mountains and islands. if you want to go south there are three ways i am told. 1 by plane (but that costs a fortune) 2. by driving 36 hours through argentine patagonia (which is what all the big trucks do) or 3. by boat. (us)
more updates soon

puerto Montt

Puerto montt and surrounding area feel a very long way from Santiago or Valparaiso. The climate and landscape is much more like scotland’s than the nice warm Mediterranean weather we had up north. It is about 12 degrees when I step out into the Puerto Montt morning, and it is raining slightly. The skies are grey and sad. The architecture only adds to the confusion. The region was settled in the 19th century by germans, who filled the place with their own churches, cafes and houses. Sitting in café haussman, looking at a Lutheran church and avoiding the rain, it is hard to convince myself that I am in fact in latin America. Many of the signs are in german and the supermarkets are filled with german produce. Weird.
Puerto montt is not a beautiful city, it is the commercial and administrative hub of chile’s south, but as a town it is more odd then attractive. Additionally, lots of the town was destroyed in an earthquake in 1960 so there is not as much of the old architecture as there apparently once was. But Puerto montt is the starting point of many adventures.
From there I headed to Puerto varas, a beautiful resort town on a lake not far away. It is small and the weather was bad in the morning, but sun came out in the afternoon and it was possible to walk on the beach (but not swim!). the mountains and volcanos around the lake made an amazing view. …the region is famous for its salmon, in fact the town seems to serve little else….not a vegetarians paradise!

the boat

this old person cruise is quite a world unto itself. I am the youngest participant by about half a century, and my father, in his mid 70s is among the next youngest. Yet these people, regardless of their ages, are living life to its fullest. There is an 88 year old who is sailing around the southern cone, up to rio, from where she will take another boat to Gambia and Senegal and up to Lisbon. She hasn’t planned for after that, but if she is still around she will. Her logic is “fuck it, if I die, I die, but as long as I am living I want to live.” Fair enough. Another told my father that she had buried 3 husbands but was looking for a 4th, while another couple, in their 80s were recently married, having met on a previous elder hostel adventure. Last night my father and I sat down to dinner with two widows from Minneapolis, Minnesota, who seemed boring and conventional until they started telling us about their safari adventures in Kenya and various treks through china. One of them had gone through germany as a teenager right after WWII!
Lots of the participants are retired university professors, and others are just eccentric. Many are American/ Canadian, but there is an older French couple, several british, some south African jews, and an elderly black woman from Bermuda who has the most amazing accent (I spent a whole dinner trying to figure it out, but gave up and finally asked) and odd tales of studying in London in the 50s.
Yesterday we went to Casablanca wine valley for a wine tasting and these pensioners like their drinks! Some were having three or four glasses at 11 am! My dad and I came away with 4 bottles, and that was relatively little! A few have complained of hangovers, but most seem to manage large amounts.
We have now set sail from Valparaiso (a lovely town on the coast where I would like a dacha if I had the money) and are out at sea. I am curious what trouble these pensioners will get up to on the boat. I need to work on my thesis…

Shopping time

The details of the trip my father and I are to take arrived at his address, since it was thanks to him (and his age) that we are eligible for it. He seemingly read all the information and told me in great detail where we would be going and when. He then did additional research to provide me with even greater detail on all the places we will see: one of the world’s largest penguin colonies, the official End Of The World etc. he did not however, read the small print in detail. So last night my mother calls me in my Santiago flat to ask if I knew about the formal dinners? How many cocktail dresses had I brought? “What!?!” I squawked back. No one told me I needed cocktail dresses for this! What on earth for? Being a meticulous person, my mother had gone through my dad’s forms and had discovered that, in addition to visiting penguin colonies, we would also have several formal dinners. According to the paper work, “cocktail dresses would be suitable for women.” Hence my mothers question. I asked what exactly a cocktail dress might mean, and my mother, a product of another society and era, claimed it meant “you know, what you were to a bar with your friends.” I refrained from telling her I often venture to bars in jeans, the poor woman would be shocked. Anyway, having established that I had only one debatably cocktail like dress with me, she ordered me to go shopping.
Of course I had no clue where one buys cocktail dresses in Santiago, but I figured francesca would know, as she knows everything about Chilean social life. So today we headed off to a shopping mall, on a mission. The mall was located next to the Chilean national military academy, which we had to walk around on the way. The soldiers were out doing various warlike things. Some were marching about (I never understood the point of endless practice marching!) while others were in small groups running around trees with machine guns in their hands. Despite the Chilean military’s dark and dodgy history, these guys didn’t look threatening. A lot of them were about my size (ie small). Just in case however, I refrained from taking photos, even though I really wanted to. Eventually we got to the mall. It seems Chileans are really proud of their malls, but I confess I struggle to understand why. The mall we went to looked exactly like any other modern shopping mall in Budapest, Moscow or Toronto. It had the exact same shops at the exact same prices (Mango, Diesal, Karen Millen, Benetton, Zara, Camper, Esprit). The only novelties were a shop called “London: urban style” and a Chilean department store called “Paris.” Oh, and the fact that those strutting around the mall in fashionable clothes seemed to be a skin tone shade lighter than those on the streets, as always seems to be the case in Latin American shopping malls. Needless to say I did manage to find something to wear. The real shock was when I wandered into a book shop. The clothing prices were almost identical to London ones, but the prices of books were absolutely astronomical. Chilean writer Isabel Allende’s latest autobiography was going for over 17 euros- I bought the same book, also in Spanish, at bookshop where I work in London for 9 pounds, before my staff discount! All the books seemed to be at least 15€, with some history ones more like 25€. I was really surprised. If you want to buy books, wait till you get to Argentina, was francesca’s suggestion.

my ignorance strikes again

“What do you mean you have never seen a llama?” Asks veronica, scandalised. I find this astonishment unfair. I am used to my London acquaintances poking fun at me for never having seen a chicken or a pig (other than the corpses in the supermarket). Although I maintain that there is no particular reason why a confirmed urban troglodyte like myself should have necessarily come across a chicken or a pig living in Moscow, Paris or London, I can still accept that such sightings might conceivable. Other people in these cities have indeed probably seen such beasts. But really, is it fair to expect me to have seen a bloody llama? “ where would I have seen one? They don’t walk around London, you know” I protest to veronica. She is unconvinced. We are standing on top of the cerro san cristobal, in the shadow of a 14 metre high statue of the virgen de la immaculada concepcion. The walk up took a good while, had in known I would have taken another mode of transport, but it is too late now, and I am panting and pondering the number of blisters that must be surely appearing on my feet. The view is worth it though, from the top of the hill you can see all of Santiago, which stretches out in every direction as far as the eye can see. At the edge of the city, it is possible to make out the outlines of the andes through the smog cover. Over a well earned ice cream, veronica consults with her cousins, all 15 of them, and they apparently share her horror in my animal ignorance. We take the funicular down the mountain, my view of the panorama only slightly obstructed by the 3 year old I have been give to hold. And just my luck, what do we encounter at the bottom of the mountain? Three llamas posing for photographs with their owners, for a fee. All 15 cousins drag me over for a viewing, presenting me to their national beast.
Llamas smell.

Santiago

As you fly into Santiago, the setting is dramatic. You fly over incredible snow covered mountains for nearly an hour, and then land very suddenly in the city, which is just at the feet of the Andes. Up close though, Santiago shares with mexico city (although not in such an extreme way) the problem of being in a smog-covered bowl. Apparently on a clear day you can see the andes in Santiago. Today, however, was not apparently one of those days.
The city is of medium size, about 5 million, and looks like a typical western hemisphere creation: sky scrapers and straight streets. It is apparently not a tourist destination: I saw/heard no other foreigners on my excursion today.
The city seems a bit up and down. The architecture is pretty generic, kind of like la defense or canary warf, but all over the city not just in one region. There is little historical stuff. I am staying in las condas, a particularly soulless region that is truly an overgrown la defense. There are starbucks on every corner and lots of guys in suits barking into their phones. That said, my hotel is amazing. I have an enormous studio flat, complete with kitchen, living room, and a huge balcony. The place is both bigger and better equipped than my place in London. My flat is very high, which means I am in an ideal position to spy on all the neighbours. Through this mode of enquiry, I can see that some people in this city have truly amazing flats. Some have huge garden patios on their balconies, which are big enough to host a huge party on. Others, further down on the street level have gated gardens bigger than my huge flat, sealed off from the world by enormous palm trees. The climate is such that now, even in autumn, I can sit outside on the balcony comfortably in a tank top, watching as people have their family dinners below. People are sitting out in their palm-lined gardens drinking what appear to be very enticing cocktails, smoking and chatting.
furthermore, even I, a confirmed urban troglodyte, must concede that there are some incredibly beautiful parks. I spent an hour or so today wandering through st lucia and was amazed at the things that kept turning up (natural stuff like waterfalls, as well as numerous lovers who appeared to have no where else to go to make out). Perhaps the rocky and mountainous nature of the park appealed to my troglodyte soul, or maybe it was the wonderful views of the skyscrapers, but I did enjoy the excursion. The other thing about Santiago is that it seems incredibly safe. There were no catcalls or hooting as I walked around, there are public dustbins everywhere, and when I accidentally walked out of a shop without all my change, (about 1 pound) the woman who worked there came running after me. Today I made an investigation of the centre. I wandered aimless for several hours, ending up munching an enormous ice cream at plaza de armas. A satisfying day.

madrid, the gateway south

much like the ghetto begins on the lower floor of gare du nord, latin america seems to begin in the iberia satellite terminal of madrid aeroport. there is no other reason to take iberia unless you are going to south america, the service is the same (ie non existant) as on easy jet and within europe iberia is more expensive. so i have only taken it when going to latin america, and thus last night found myself on an iberia flight to santiago de chile.
i always saw the chileans as a rather somber people by latin american standards. what i didnt bank on was their apparent interest in foreigners, and their ability to paralyse people with endless questions. the flight was almost all diaspora going home early for easter. their were 5 british passengers on the flight, and i was apparently the only one who spoke spanish. i hadnt even sat on the plane before i was identified as an abuela magnet and the questions started. Are you spanish? no? why are you going to chile? (to meet and spend time with my father, apparently a correct answer, as my grandmotherly interrogators seemed pleased) does it really rain every day in scotland? do you hate the english? have you seen braveheart? do people wear kilts every day? are you married? why not? no children? what do you study?
i was exhausted and i hadnt even located my seat. the girl next to me was my age, a chilean studying in barcelona, who talked non stop for about the first 4 hours of the flight. she was very nice....but these people are talkers!

time to pack my bags (again)

it is time for me to pack. it is very hard to condense everything you will need for several climate zones into one suitcase, especially when that suitcase must also contain some 10 academic books and several piles of notes. and my new camera. but it will get done.
before heading off though, a list.
the lonely planet bluelist book 2008 has a section on travellers' blags/ tall tales to tell the gullible. many of them listed are a bit crazy, but i will question one. the guide says a common travellers' tall tale is that of getting upgraded to first class (trying to look like a movie star etc). the lonely planet claims that this virtually never happens and that staff can get fired for doing so.
that is ridiculous. i have been upgraded to first class loads of times, and never because i have tried to impersonate anyone. what the lonely planet seems to forget is that airlines are desperate to avoid bad press and to cover their own mistakes. so here is my list: reasons for be upgraded to first/ business class
1. the flight is overbooked and they just dont have room in economy, if you are a single traveller, they often upgrade you to avoid dealing with the problem of putitng you on another flight, and offering compensation.
2. the flight is overbooked and they dont have room anywhere, so they ask for volunteers to wait for another flight. they are required to give you compensation for that, and if you ask they will normally give you a first class seat as well. the last time it happened i got a first class seat, meal vouchers, and 500 dollars, which made the 8 hour wait in atlanta airport almost worth it...
3 the airline has a delay, which is due to a fault of theirs, and as a result you miss your connection. if the next flight is full, you can demand to a seat in business/ first and get it: it is cheaper to stick you there than put you up in a hotel waiting for another flight.
4. same as above, but you have a short time to make your connection, due to the airlines error. the last time that happened to me (i had 20 minutes to make a connecting flight in paris, since my flight from moscow had been delayed by 1.5 hours) they gave me the first seat on the plane, so i could get off fast and bolt to my next gate.
5 my aunt is a travel agent. she wags her pass, and if there is room she and her companions got straight to first.
6. once i was the ONLY woman on a flight. the venezuelan, also all male, crew sat me right up front.....which seemed like an honour until i realised i would have to chat with them the entire time....

the reason i think should qualify for an upgrade (but it hasnt worked for me yet) : the person in the seat next to you is grotesquely obese and as a result you can barely breathe, especially if you have a middle seat.

oxford

winter is not the time to plan a lengthy walking tour of oxford. i swear the temperature is at least 5 degrees colder than in london. many people underestimate the beauty of smog: it holds in heat. and so i shivered from the station to the random point in the street where i ran into marci, who had been late to the station, but had caught us with us midway into town.
we did attempt some strolls, but after 30 minutes the cold would get to much, with the result that much of the time was spent in pubs, chatting. oxford is a lovely town, even if i will always prefer cambridge. it also has some great pubs. we headed for the most convenient and central: the bear, tufts tavern (not the place for a cold day) and the kings arms. we had a nice subsidised lunch in one of the colleges, marci getting us in by flashing his magic student card. hans once described oxbridge as being academia's answer to disneyland, and i remember his words every time i go back, and shall probably continue to do so, even as i prepare to leave academia. the pampered, cosseted life seemed claustrophobic when i lived in cambridge, but it certainly has its own advantages...