Bristol

I took a trip to Bristol yesterday. If you are hoping for a post with lots of photo's of the bustling city, you won't find them here. I wanted to go to the zoo. I love zoo's. But I also wanted to go on a 2nd date with a man I fancy and the zoo in Bristol was the best pretense I could find to inviting him on a day out. I'm not going in to all the date details on my blog (that's what my private journal is for) but the most basic details are these:

I took a train from Cheltenham to Bristol (my first train ride). We walked, taking a scenic route to the zoo, he acting as tour guide. We walked and talked and walked and talked, we went to the zoo, we had dinner, we went up a tower, we saw other things, we walked some more, we watched a swan stalk a duck. I managed to miss the last train to Cheltenham but was able to secure a ride from a friend from Gloucester. It was perfect. The only thing I could have asked for was warmer weather, but then again, perhaps I should have been more sensible in dressing myself for the day (that turned into a night).

One of the first places we were going to see was the church in the background. It was magnificent from the outside, but a wedding was being held so we couldn't go inside. The river and it's activity on both sides of the bank reminded me of Boston though you don't see as many boats along the Charles.





I loved the pigeons and cloths pins that looked like little birds.




We followed the river out of town, towards the Clifton suspension bridge. I loved the texture and contrast of the old road, or railroad path, that is falling in decay, against the backdrop of the river.



There is a long winding paved foot path that leads to the bridge. It reminded me of a walking version of the road to Hana in Maui. We walked across the bridge and back, looking out across the city, then walked up the hill behind it. I'm not sure we could have gotten much higher in Bristol. It was a cloudy day, but there was a patch of sunlight out in the far pastures.


Towards dusk we walked past this church that had been bombed during WWII. There was a beautiful little herb garden on the grounds and I felt a small lump in my throat looking at the church.

And to end this non-tour of Bristol, we really did go to the zoo. The lemur habitat is open and the lemur's very brave. Their fur is so soft and you want to reach out and touch them, but as we walked past one of the employee's in the enclosure we noticed his hand wrapped in bandages. Lemur's are not pets. But they are cute.


And me. He was the one who suggested have the photo taken. How did he know I would want it? Not to worry, I didn't have my photo taken as every animal in the zoo.

Mom

Lillie Elsie Gournay Ziolkowski - 1919 - 2012

Every family calls the grandparents differnt names. In the South mother and father are Mamma and Daddy and for us, my mother's parents were Mom & Papa. The name was probably even more fitting as there were times that Mom was closer to being a mother to us than my own mother. We moved a lot in my early years; Mom & Papa were always home base. I was more comfortable in their house than any other house we lived in. My best and worst memories were created in that house. Most things that are great about me, and all things that are bad about me, were formed there. The smell of coffee, musty libraries, fig trees and tiger lilies, and the sound of chirping frogs and the click of flying insects hitting a screen door bring me back to that house.

Mom passed away today. It had been a long time since I last spoke with her. A long time being close to 20 years. Some who read this blog know what my family past is. For those who aren't you'll have to be left wondering. But she passed away today. In Lousiana where what little roots I have lie. I am in England. I always thought she would be the one person I would go back to say good-bye to. But it couldn't happen. And maybe I'm a little bit relieved.

I'm sad for my brother because I think he'll feel sorrow the most. I'm sad because it's another door to my past that has been closed for good. But I think at the very base of it, I'm sad for things that I never had. She was a person who lived and died, just as we all will live and die, but there are no familial heart strings and turmoil to be played on. I'm sad because I'm not sad enough.

I spent many late nights saying my prayers with her, counting the beads on my delicate blue glass beaded rosary. Tonight my prayers are that she finds peace in the afterlife to come.

Criticism

No one likes to be criticised. Even the most 'constructive' criticism can feel like a punch in the gut.

There are some careers where the person's work is criticised by the the armchair public. Acting, music, writing, and politics come to mind. In 'real world' careers, those that have hierarchical management structures, employees can be criticised on specific work, but an annual review which involves criticism is almost always mandatory. Some employee / employer relationships manage this process better than others, but no employee actually enjoys it. And for good reason. Even at it's best, it tends to be a list of subjective items to change without any direction on how to change it, how to measure if it's been changed, and often times, why it's beneficial to the employee/team/manager/organization. This form of criticism comes across more like a parent telling an eight year old child what to do.

I'm now in the world of academia where criticism is an on-going part of any piece of work you do. At first I dreaded this process having had very painful and unproductive experiences with the 'real world' types of criticism. And I'm not going to lie, the first six months of feedback was very painful, but now, I love getting a paper back with line upon line of feedback, corrections and suggestions. I don't come away from it feeling stupid or ridiculed or rejected but instead feel smarter and more capable and reassured that I do know what I'm doing.

I think this is the kind of criticism that employers in the 'real world' want to have but lack the skills to achieve it. Or maybe it's a sign that I am finally in the right career for me.

Signing-off

No, don't worry, I'm not signing-off blogging. (though my lack of blogging on a regular basis may have lead you to think this.) This blog post is about signing-off email.

In the States, typical professional and semi-professional email is generally signed-off as:

Thank you, Sincerely, and Thanks! (And if I know you well, to be followed by something silly like Heidi Hamburglar Hughes.)

Here in the UK, most of the email I recieve from colleagues ends:
With Regards, Best Wishes, All the Best, and Cheers.

Cheers seems to me to equal in tone and relationship as Thanks. I like it. I'll use it with people that I've exchanged more than one email with.

With Regards, Best Wishes and All the Best? The tone of these sound more like 'up yours'.

A recent email started with 'Hi Heidi' (which if I'm to understand correctly is a very American and overly friendly salutation) and ended with 'All the Best'. So are you telling me in a very friendly way to get bent?

Let me say, that if I can't figure out the tone and meaning of email sign-off, I'm a bit worried about spending two years trying to interpret UK employees in their daily work-place behavior.

Happy Birthday

Unless there is a gourmet dinner and a decadent cake made by my friend Charles, I'm not really much for celebrating my birthday. There have been some years, pre-facebook era, where I've tried to fly under the radar come birthday time.

Yesterday was my birthday. No fun plans were on my calendar and this post is not going to be about how an awesome surprise was thrown for me. But the day was a flurry of academic activity and a tasty zemon lest cake.

My mock-viva presentation was yesterday. We're not sure that I will have to do a viva but I am interested in presenting my research at a conference so this was good practice. I was grilled. The questions were out of left field and the other attending research students are now good and frightened about having to give a presentation in the future. But several times the interrogators, I mean panel, suggested the research only needed a few minor adjustments and it would be ready for conferences. I'm excited. They're excited.

And then I was handed a class to teach for this term. It was very sudden. As in, I got to my research office yesterday morning, turned on my computer, got a phone call from the head of the department, ran up to his office, he gave me a 10 minute explanation about why the class is being run this term, told me to meet with my supervisor who moderates the course, and then to email him the module guideline (syllabus for you American readers) by the end of the day. Before 5:00 p.m. I had sent my first email to my first set of students and Viola, I am a lecturer.

The funny thing about my life is that I have strange and sudden things handed to me, but yet, I know they aren't 'just' handed to me because I've been preparing, and researching, and running calculations, and making spreadsheets about how, where, and what of my future. I've run at least a dozen different scenarios to catch all the 'what-if's'. This wasn't one of the scenario's I had planned for, but I am prepared. And so very excited.

I'll be teaching Research Methods. I think every lecturer on campus is happy that they will not have to be teaching any of the assignments this term, but I can't think of a better class to teach. I LOVE Research Methods.

We'll see how I fare in ten weeks.

One Year

Once upon a time I had a bicycle accident. I broke my arm and was in a series of casts for six months. I was cast free for two months when one cold icy day in Boston I slipped on the ice covered cobblestones of Harvard Square. Naturally, when falling on ice, I used my hands to catch myself and felt tension and pressure in my very unflexible wrist. Xrays and MRI's did not show any new break but the doctors felt the need to put me back in a cast for six weeks "to make sure".

The new cast lasted a week. It took three days of constant sawing with a steak knife, cutting little pieces off at a time, before I was free. After six months, and no detectable injury, I couldn't endure another six weeks of being bound.

Thursday will be my one year anniversary here in the UK. I have loved almost every single day. England is a beautiful country and I can't believe I've been lucky enough to live here and to do my graduate degree. I've worked hard during my Master's, rarely taking any breaks. The Master's was recently submitted and now I'm on to the PhD, which is a little less time and space restrictive.

I will be doing my field research in the States, and suddenly, my living conditions have become like the six week cast. Once endurable because of the need to be here, I am claustrophobic and eager to move on now that the time has come to do so. A year is a long time for me to be in any one place, but I live in one room and yet have no privacy. I can only afford weekly groceries, but even if I had money to spare, material goods like proper fitting running shoes don't exist here. I haven't the money to travel and see the sights, and at the same time work odd unstructured hours so I wouldn't have multiple days off to go far anyway.

I have no idea when or where my next stop will be but I'm anxious to get there.

Poop

Have you ever read the book Everyone Poops by Taro Gomi? It's a funny little book about how everyone, animals and humans poop. The illustrations try to capture the different piles left by different animals. I never really understood the boy though. He's running away naked and poop is flinging all behind him.

As I don't have any children, talking about poop is not a common occurrence for me, but part of living in a different culture is dealing with bathroom issues. I'm not living in a 3rd world country where I have to dig a latrine, but relieving ones self is different here.

First, vernacular: Americans say "I'm going to the rest room" or 'bathroom' which could mean that you're relieving yourself, or freshening up, or snooping through someone's medicine cabinet. It gives the other members of the party something to think about other than you doing number one or number two. Here, most people say "I have to go to the toilette" which seems direct and graphic and gives the American mind no alternative choices to think about what is going on behind the closed door.

Second, flushing: All toilette's are designed to flush with a little pressure (for pee) or a lot of pressure (for poop). In most public places, the highest pressure doesn't seem to flush even all the pee. Don't poop in public restrooms.

Third, bowl design: Toilette design is not universal. I never spent much time looking inside an American toilette bowl, but I noticed that British toilette's have a tendency to retain stuff in a way that I never noticed in America. It comes down to the inside back wall is sloped more than an American commode. I'm not sure what purpose the design is for - maybe cutting down on splash - but it results in flushing with the high pressure, waiting for the tank to re-fill and flushing again.

So now you all know about pooping in the UK. I'm sure you're glad there are no pictures to accompany this post.