a view through my own eyes

It is that time of year, the students are back on campus and suddenly the place is full again of the great unwashed. Since I am now one of them on a part time basis I guess I should either shower once every couple of days or just do different bits every day so I get clean over the course of a week.

So now each week averaging things out I have 1.5 lectures and 1.5 seminars a week – which is I guess not too bad.

What I do have though is tons of reading. Earlier this week I picked up the ‘course readers’ which allegedly contain the essential reading for the courses. These two weighty tomes together are around four inches thick of double side printed sheets of A4. I suspect that sleeping may not be an issue over the coming months.

On top of the readers though is a reading list which is not on the short side and is reccomended on the basis that the provided course readers (in the sense that they provided and I paid up ready cash) provide the bare essentials to get through the course. Handily around a third of these are journal articles, most of which, through the library are available online as PDFs suitable for download and printing.

However this means that on top of a full time week at work I also in theory have to find around 20 hours in which to do the course part time. Don’t suppose anyone has a way to add an extra 4 hours to every day?

Possibly more importantly though the student card means that I qualify for a discount at Waterstones, HMV and other less usefull places.

I only took two books on holiday with me on the grounds that two would probably be enough and if need be I could purchase another book or two if need be (no sniggering at the back by those of you who witnessed the slight accidents in Dreamhaven, Uncle Edgars & Uncle Hugos and of course Barnes & Noble).

Started on the plane on the way over was Mystic River, I had heard of the film but had not seen it, so spotting it in a jumble sale earlier in the year it seemed a reasonable try for all of 25 pence.

Jimmy, Dave and Sean as we open the book are three eleven year old friends, one day whilst hanging out one of the boys goes off with some men in a car. A few days later the boy returns and their relationship is changed forever and they go their separate ways. Twenty five years later, Jimmy has served time and is going straight, Sean is a Homicide detective and Dave is trying to save his marriage.

Jimmy’s daughter is murdered the same night that Dave returns home covered in blood and Sean is assigned to the case.

This is not just a whodunnit it is also an exploration of relationships and how they change over time combined with monumental events. Because of what happened in the past to the boys changes their outlooks, their reactions and their emotions from I expected.

Lehanes style of writing I feel can best be described as concise whilst providing a huge amount of detail, consequently the story moves at a reasonable pace building up to a stunning finale. This I think has to be one of the best whodunnits I have read certainly this year and it did keep me guessing until the end, though I did have my suspicions around two thirds of the way through.

In some ways the best of the book was mrspao reading it after me, as now and again I would ask who she thought who the culprit was – what I found interesting was the way the at various stages of the book mrspao was lead around the same hoops that I was.

Highly recommended.

I hope Michael who I passed the book onto enjoyed it as much as I did. After all it feels somehow right to leave an English edition of and American authors book in America.

First things first, Robert Jordan died a few days ago, so spare a thought for his family and friends.

I finished this book weeks ago before we went on holiday and never quite got round to blogging.

Jordan’s fantasy tour de force continues, as amongst the many threads Rand attempts to remove the taint from the One Power.

I find it very difficult to say much about the story of the WoT, not because there is not anything to say – on the contrary – there is, the problem is that reading anything (even the sleeve notes) about the latter books can give away a great deal about the earlier books. So I won’t.

What Jordan has given us, is another 800 page volume in his grand tale of fantasy, politics, intrigue and love. I have now utterly lost count of how many characters, races and nations he has introduced into his world – and all of it is interlinked. To be honest I cannot remember reading book 8, I know I received it new and that the spine shows that it has been read but I am blowed if I can remember much of the detail. Is that a reflection on my awful memory or was I so immersed in Jordan’s world that it seemed to pass by? Either way as I read Winter’s Heart I did struggle from time to time to recall prior events – perhaps because there are so many of them.

Whilst on the whole I enjoy the WoT I do wonder if we really need to know with every scene change if a character has a change of outfit, I tried to keep count of how many dresses Nynaeve wore, their colour, their cut or how frilly they were. In many ways the attention to detail is utterly fascinating and enriches the world that Jordan has created, in others the detail detracts from the grist of the story and leaves me thinking: “oh just get on with it”. That though is my biggest complaint and it is hardly harsh.

Winter’s Heart like the other volumes is not a standalone read, it like the others (except maybe the first) is dependent on the others. So to read volume 9 requires consumption of the previous 8 similar sized tomes. It is a cracking story and the weave of the threads that are introduced does get increasingly complex and has a tendancy due to the sheer scope to get sidetracked – but these threads do come back into play.

I enjoyed the read on the whole with the exception mentioned above – which although not major was if anything a minor annoyance.

Book 12 is due to be the last volume and was scheduled for the next year or so, how that stands now is I think uncertain. Since Robert knew he was ill I suspect and hope that he has planned accordingly if only to ensure that a major work of his life is complete.

Once again my thoughts are with his family and friends.

Life is mad at the moment. I am still trying to sort out the pictures from the holiday – honest. However this task is mixed up with the following:

1. a full time job
2. a full time Java course (my appraiser decided it would be a good idea – so for two weeks – last week and this; I am also a full time student learning Java in with our MSc students, although it is more part time so I can work at the same time).
3. sorting out my new part time course – inductions, timetabling etc.

On top of that I now have five bookcases and a spinning wheel to construct, an irrigation system to finish off and loads of other little piddly jobs to do around the house (like sweep grass, mow patio, varnish door, paint gates, rewire light switches so they are sane etc etc).

So do excuse me whilst I take an age to sort out pictures.

In order to fully appreciate the following post you need to be familiar with the first Harry Potter film (the books will do) particularly the goblin run bank: Gringots.

In New York, we went to B&H Photo, we tried to go on Saturday only to find it was shut – we puzzled on this for a while and decided to try again on Sunday.

Sunday came and we soon discovered why it was shut on Saturday – it is clearly a Jewish run business, I have never seen such a concentration of Jews in one place. Since they don’t work on the Sabbath the store does not open and that is fine by me.

Entering the store there are minders on the doors (it kind of feels exclusive though I suspect they are there to stop the place being turned over), this is followed by gentle but firm insistence that you deposit your bags on the way in and collect them on the way out. Well that was fine by me as my camera bag is not particularly small or light.

Having entered the store proper you are faced with a stainless steel showroom – where pretty much anything video or photographic in existence appears to be on display for any potential buyers perusal. I really have never seen so much kit in one place and then there was only one of each item. The place is huge, absolutely vast and incredibly busy. There are people poring over the shiny toys – the place is to be honest absolutely packed.

Around the outside of at least half of the store is a large counter (this is where Gringots comes in) perched on stools behind are goblins (sorry got carried away there) customer service staff. Once you get to see a member of staff the first thing they do is take your name and phone number, this is so they can create an account on their system. Next you say what you are interested in purchasing and the details are typed into the computer, once that is done the sales person leans down and pulls up a green crate from down by their feet which contains the items you just listed – the pause is no more than say a minute.

It is only then that I realised that the warehouse is below the store and had conveyors running round all over the place. It was only later that it occurred to me that the place was really really busy so there must have must have been loads of people running round the basement.

So having gone through the crate and checked the items I am handed a printout and told to head to the cashier desks at the other side of the store.

Whilst I walk over there the green crate goes via an overhead conveyor in the same general direction.

I pay, take my receipt and then head to the collection desk, where lo an behold are my items in a bag ready for me to collect.

Fantastic.

Whilst in NY (amazing how none of the guidebooks mention quite how bad NY smells – you don’t notice it after a day or so, but there is a definite whiff of hotdogs, vomit, urine, waste and burgers etc) , at the end of a rather long day (we had been up at 3:30am to go to Niagra for a day – pictures coming soon – I have at least copied them off the CF cards) I found that the hotel sushi restaurant (which was totally awesome by the way) did not take travellers cheques – so had to run out of the restaurant back into the hotel.

Running back in to the hotel was fine until the moment that I tripped on the stairs and scraped my hand by the heel. A scrape is a scrape and was not an issue, the gentle trickle of blood and the white bed sheets in the hotel room did not appear to be a good combination. So I stopped at the reception desk and asked for a plaster (band aid for the non English English readers), the receptionist wandered off and returned with a first aid kit and insisted that I bathe the wound in iodine before I put a plaster on it. An hour or so later its around 11pm and I am asleep in bed.

RING RING!

What?!

Excuse me sir, can you come and sign an accident form?

I was asleep, is the hotel burning down?

No.

It can wait.

The following morning, mrspao gets collared by the reception staff who insist that she signs the accident form – despite the fact that the accident did not involve her, nor did she witness it.

Later I get collared and asked to sign the form, reading through it, I discover that clearly the exhaustion and iodine have clearly impaired my memory as apparently Roxanne (or whatever her name was) rushed to my aid, ran to get the first aid kit and dressed my wound and finally sealed it with a kiss (OK the last bit is an exaggeration). What utter rubbish – I thought. So I looked at the receptionist (different shift) and asked “are you guys paranoid I am going to sue your asses for me tripping up on the stairs?”, “Yes”, “Oh for goodness sakes, I bloody tripped, though since you are paranoid it is seriously tempting now to through a banana skin onto the stairs along with some ketchup, take a picture this evening and then fiddle the timestamps of the photograph”. Oh you could see the colour drain from the poor girls face.

I signed the form to put them out of their misery.

But how paranoid is the US? Is the state of paranoia really that bad? Madness, utter madness.

So here we are back home.

We knew we were back when the captain of the plane announced: “It appears that another plane is at our assigned gate so we are going to have to wait”. Once we do get off the plane and look across, there are a couple of Air India 747s nearby.

We thought we had gone to the wrong country completely when we hit immigration control as the entire immigration hall appeared to have half the population of India waiting and shouting and hustling and bustling. Fortunately there were about three people in the queue for the UK and EU passports line. The Americans who were on our flight were I suspect most impressed as they had to wait until the Asian subcontinent had been processed first.

The baggage hall resembled mayhem in that the aforementioned Indians luggage was blocking the baggage conveyors and so their luggage was being removed and stacked up, so ours could get through.

The arrivals hall was something else though, for every Indian in immigration there appeared to be their entire families waiting to collect them – so thats around 20 to 1.

I really have seen nothing like it, then at the lifts to get to the carpark the entire family takes up the lift with one trolley and a small suitcase and 20 people to escort it.

Pushing, shoving, effing and blinding.

Welcome home.