Jetsetter

It feels like I’m suddenly doing (or preparing for) a lot of travel – perhaps because I am. First, I have a significant birthday approaching (one that involves a zero), and I decided my birthday present to myself would be a trip to California (it was that or an iPod touch – crazily, flying to California was cheaper) – I have enough frequent flyer miles to cover the trip, so the cost will be minimal. I’ll be in the Bay Area April 3, 4, and 5. It will be lovely to escape Boston‘s crazy weather (yesterday was most certainly not spring-like), and I’m looking forward to seeing my Californian friends again.

Secondly, my job interview was successful, and it looks like my next home will be in Tokyo. I’ve never been to Japan – in fact, I’ve spend hardly any time in Asia at all – and know no Japanese and next to nothing about Japan or Tokyo. Yesterday, I enrolled myself in a beginning Japanese class (first class is next Monday) and bought some Lonely Planet guide books about Japan and Tokyo. Yay! I’m increasingly excited about the impending move. I’ve also started to think about reducing my stuff – I’ve decided to stop buying CDs (substituting iTunes albums) and books (so much for the guide books I bought yesterday, although I’m sure they’ll be useful in Japan – I’m generally pretty good at borrowing books from the library rather than buying already, though) – surely the first step to reducing my belongings is to stop adding to them? I’ve been thinking about buying a digital book reader – the Kindle 2 and the Sony Reader are the two top contenders at the moment – to try and cut down on the space and weight my books occupy.

Finally, I’ve been thinking about walking in the Yorkshire Dales. I haven’t got very far in my planning, but it seems like basing our trip on the Leeds-Settle-Carlisle Railway might be a good idea. It would remove the necessicity of a rental car, and, by all accounts, the rail route is spectacular.

Yorkshire Dales?

I bought a plane ticket to England last night – I’ll be there from May 31 – June 10th. The main reason for the trip is to see my Dad. He’s going to be in a Manchester for a conference, and once the conference is done we’ll take a week or so of holidays. We’re tentatively planning to walk in the Yorkshire Dales (I’ve been watching All Creatures Great and Small), but we’re also planning to spend some time in Manchester (where we’ll catch up with Tom & Julia) and Cambridge (where we’ll catch up with Satnam and family). I’m flying in and out of Manchester, which is much better than flying in and out of the Heathrow – it has meant a less-than-direct flight though, and, for the first time, I’ll be flying Aer Lingus.

I’ve got some “research” to do before I leave – I’ve really no idea where we’ll be staying and walking, although it seems like the Yorkshire Dales National Park might be a good place to start.

Two Days in New York

I had an interview for a job in New York on Wednesday, and most of the past week has been consumed with the interview and the related preparations. The interview occasioned the purchase of my first suit – not a particularly fun undertaking. There seems to be some kind of rule that suit pants should look terrible on women. After exhausting the suit options at Benetton and Ann Taylor, I was beginning to think I was going to have to buy a suit that had a skirt. Fortunately, Banana Republic came through – I really should have trusted my instincts and gone there first: the clothes fit, they carry a petite line (no pant shortening necessary), and their pants are acceptable. Better than that, they had a fantastic sale, and combined with a discount with my Gap card and a $10 coupon, I got the whole suit (jacket, pants, white shirt, and knee high stockings) for around $150. I’ve since learned it’s possible to buy a lightly used suit on eBay (and presumably craigslist) for even less, but I’m glad I tried suits on before I bought them. Besides, I was running out of time – it would have been difficult to buy the suit online and get it by Wednesday.

In any case, I now own a suit. It’s very conservative (black), but it fits, and it looks OK. I mean, I’d hire me. :-) As much as I complain about my stuffy high school, it did leave me comfortable wearing a suit.

I took the train down to New York on Wednesday morning (someone else was paying) and returned to Boston on the bus on Thursday evening (I was paying). The trip was mainly for work – an interview and a meeting with collaborators (both went well, I think) – but I managed to fit in a little fun as well.

The trip down on the train was very pleasant, as it almost always is. I put on my noise canceling headphones, listened to music, and then worked a little on polishing my job talk, before settling in to knit. I finished one sock and started another – so altogether a very productive train ride.

After the interview I hung out in a  coffee shop until Oliva (a high school friend who now lives in New York with her husband, Jon) finished and work and came and met me. We returned to her apartment, got changed (my interview involved the purchase of my first suit), and headed out to a Mexican restaurant (noisy web page!) where we met Jon for dinner. Olivia’s apartment has a wonderful New York view that’s constantly changing as the sun moves across the sky, and lights in room in sky scrapers turn on and then off. I was lucky to be sleeping in the living room on the sofa bed, and with a spectacular view from bed – it was nice to fall asleep and wake up to New York.

This morning, we had a fantastically decadent brunch before I headed uptown to meet with collaborators. (I don’t know that you’d be able to find brunch on a week day anywhere other than New York). We walked from Olivia’s apartment, stopping to check out a couple of fantastic buildings (Olivia is a very good New York building guide) and at some nice stationary stores, finally making our way to Norma’s – not the cheapest brunch location in New York, but not completely over the top either (unless you order then $1000 caviar omelet). I’m of the opinion that when traveling you should just accept that money’s going to fall out of your pocket (within reason), starting the moment you step out of the house. I find I have a much better time if I take this approach, and don’t necessarily end up spending a whole lot more. We had delicious orange juice, good tea, and complimentary samples of the fruit smoothie. Olivia ordered the crispy belgian waffle which came with fruit (and chocolate sauce on the side, at her request!), and I had the chocolate French toast, which was unlike anything I’ve had before. Delicious, rich, and completely impossible to finish.

I took the Bolt bus to Boston. Definitely better than Greyhound or the Chinatown bus, but not quite as good as you’d hope either. The real reasons to take the Bolt are as follows: relatively cheap (<$20 one way); new buses; a guaranteed seat if you buy a ticket online ahead of time; some semblance of order in the boarding process; and power and a wireless internet connection on the bus. It’s pretty good, but I ended up in a seat with a broken overhead light (no reading, no knitting), and the internet connection was patchy, at best. At some point it stopped working altogether, and a rebooting of the system did nothing to alleviate the problem. I’m not sure if it was a bandwidth issue, but I wasn’t hoping for anything particularly fast – I really just wanted to be able to check my email, and perhaps work through some responses. The was possible to begin with, but it really only lasted the first 15 – 30 minutes (and it takes 4 1/2 hours to get from New York to Boston).

Update: You can read Olivia’s version of events (and see my ginormous mountain of chocolate French toast) here, and there’s photos of the view from Olivia’s apartment here.

Travel Plans

So, despite staying in Boston for the inauguration, I’ve bought a plane ticket to Washington, DC: I’ll be there the weekend of Feb 21. I’m staying with my cousin, and will catch up with a whole lot of people; it turns out I know a quite a few people who have moved to DC. I’ve been to Washington once before, when I was 18, and a high school exchange student in upstate New York. I was in the marching band (yes, really – I played piccolo – all those trills in the Sousa marches were me!), and in the spring we went on a marching band tour, of sorts. We went through Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, and to Washington, DC. I have vague memories of playing as part of the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival. I really can’t remember if we played in DC or not, although I suspect not, but I do remember arriving after dark, and seeing many of the landmarks that way – lit up artificially. We stayed somewhere nearby overnight, and the next day we were set loose on the Smithsonian, with very little supervision, as I remember it. In any case, I remember enjoying it, and I’m looking forward to going back, and finding out how good my memory is. I’ve bought a guide book (it arrived today), and I’ve developed a sudden interest in all things related to the US capital.

There’s a fantastic blog post in the New York Times today: I LEGO N.Y.

A taste of what's on offer at I LEGO N.Y.

In fact, I was so enamored with it, that I read the rest of Christoph Niemann‘s posts – and would encourage you to so, too. There are only 5 or so of them, and you don’t want to miss his bathroom art (not nearly as dodgy as it sounds). If you still haven’t had enough (I hadn’t) you can check out his portfolio. It turns out I had seen his work before; he’s done a bunch of New Yorker covers.

I’ve been listening to Scritti Politti’s White Bread Black Beer, and have really been enjoying it. It’s nice, mellow music to have on in the back ground, and it’s completely possible to work while it’s playing. It’s the first time I’ve (knowingly) listened to Scritti Politti, and I’m glad to have found them. I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting – something harder, I guess – but once I put it on it was a pleasant surprise. I’m planning to explore them a little more – I have Cupid & Psyche 85 on my request list at the library. It’s significantly older than White Bread Black Beer - I’ll be interested to see if it’s at all dated.

The Real World is Scary

I had a “real world” (ie. not in academia) job interview last week, and can report back that the real world is scary. I think the interview itself went OK – my first of this kind, so it was a learning experience, if nothing else – but they kept asking questions about things I just don’t normally think about: my career path, my mobility, health care plans, 401(k) plans. By the end of the day, I was happy to collapse in a restaurant, enjoy dinner with a friend, and catch at movie.

The movie we watched was Happy-Go-Lucky, which I have to admit to feeling a little ambivalent about. It’s a British movie (this isn’t why I feel ambivalent about it, though), and not a great deal happens in it. And, at least if you’re me, the lead character grates on you in the beginning, although she does grow on you as the movie progresses. Perhaps this is the point? In any case, I felt much better about the movie at the end than I did in the middle of it.

I finally have got around to down loading photos from my camera that I took while I was in Adelaide (at the end of August). I really only had half a day or so to explore, before the conference started, but I actually really liked what I saw (and I really had very low expectations before I got there). I spent my half day walking along the River Torrens and through the botanic gardens, both of which were very pleasant. On my last day, I had a bit of time between my conference ending and needing to be at the airport, so I explored the central market, which is truly amazing – lots of delicious food.

Palm House at Adelaide Botanic Garden

More interesting (to me) stuff, in bullet points:

• Recipe for Concord Grape Pie from Naples, NY, where I spent a year on high school exchange. I’ve been to the Naples Grape Festival. (I think I even played in a marching band at the Naples Grape Festival).
• reCAPTCHA (Stop spam, read books). Someone in my lab reviewed an article on reCAPTCHA for journal club a while back. It’s a pretty cool use of technology, and now that I know about it, I see it everywhere. Basically, they use “not robot” tests (ie. where you have to enter in letters or a word to convince the internet that you’re a person) to improve the digitization of old texts.
• What is the what: The best book I’ve read recently. It’s a compelling story (it follows the life of one of the Lost Boys of Sudan), but it’s also incredibly well written – I couldn’t put it down (I gave an entire weekend to this book!).
• Knit One, Save One: For people wanting to knit for a cause.
• bills food: Has an excellent recipe for baked risotto – you’ll never stir a risotto for hours over a stove again.
• Biodegradable compost bags: I thought I’d come up with an original idea – sadly someone else thought of it long before me! So much for patenting it and becoming rich.