Day 4:
I woke up refreshed this morning - I seem to be getting used to my surroundings and even started singing a tune when I entered the metal casket for a wash.
For breakfast I decided to get some Special K, because I thought that out of my two breakfasts today, one should at least be healthy. Getting the cereal is however more tricky. Because they probably buy them in bulk, all the cereal is stored in these huge glass containers - you press a lever and hey presto. That is how it is supposed to work anyhow. Having psyched myself up, I placed my bowl underneath the opening and pushed the lever – immediately an avalanche of cereal emptied onto my bowl. My reactions aren't the quickest (as many will know) and for a couple of seconds the Special K continues to spew out. At this point most of it was hitting the floor... I looked around - except for a highly skittish woman no-one had seen me. I leveled off my bowl and walked away quickly - I didn't do nuthing or see nuthing...
Breakfast is scrambled egg (which somehow manages to clump less than its English cousin); bacon of the crispiest streakiest kind ( this probably doesn't even come from a pig - but it's still good); and little potatoes (which are a nice change from hash browns). Yesterday I made the mistake of getting a portion of white butter - but today I searched out for the yellow. White butter looks like lard and lard on toast (from the counter not from the industrial toaster...) isn't my favourite of dishes.
Having finished breakfast I went to grab a coffee from a cafe that's above the dorm room - I'd like to make clear that this is nothing to do with the fact the guy serving coffee is fit/attractive... (I can look but not touch!) Anyway, although he's obviously straight it's great fun in America because anyone serving you will always catch your eye and hold it - so I can imagine that in some small way we were flirting in those moments of 'Enjoy your coffee sir' and 'Have a great day sir'! Some times Americans will take it to the extreme - one waitress at a restaurant was incredibly happy serving us (if someone was this happy in England they'd have manic depression) and ended the evening with 'Have a good life sir'... 'You too'...)
I apologize for my extensive rants about American toilets but here goes again... So I realise that flying to Kalamazoo and back to give a 20 minute paper on an obscure medieval topic may not be the best use of my carbon footprint. I am in other words already racked with spasms of guilt. But, what makes this worse is that every time you go to the toilet here you use a small lake of water- (for some reason there is about 4 times as much more water in the bowl than in England, which also means that you're closer...one slip and you have a wet hand...). Anyway, I'm going to have to do something dramatic to offset all this waste - I was thinking of adopting a monkey and ordering a monthly veg box (organic of course) when I get back.
After coffee, the day went well - papers merge into one as I walk from a session on voluntary flagellation, saints' relics in Brittany, and the great Bede. I notice today that there are two sub-species of medievalists that I failed to address in my last post. The first is really an amalgamation of the two classes - that is, the man in a suit with a pony-tail. I think most of you will agree that this is just wrong... Don't try and escape the classification! The other species is the art-historian, who because she/he is clearly a failed artist has to show the world they do have some kind of artistic merit - this generally involves them (a) dying their hair red (b) having zebra-style highlights or (c) having a short choppy hairstyles that just radiates cool (or all of the above).
After the sessions had finished for the day, I went for dinner. There is just an hour for dinner so most people try and go early to avoid the rush. After you hand your dinner ticket to the clearly bored attendant, you have one of two lanes which you can choose to join - but once you've made that decision there is no going back... Anyway, I picked the left one... DOH! For some reason we had the two thickest servers known to existence. Whereas the servers on the right were belting them out and working simultaneously, on our line both servers would do one plate - the first serving the meat, the second the vegetables etc. Even when someone didn't want any sides, the second server would just wait, chewing gum and looking off into the distance...
Day 5:
Today is my main day of pain, as the paper still needs some work and I feel that to give a semblance of structure/sense/historical accuracy I need a good handout - in fact I decide on two handouts in the end: That way if I they get bored at least they have some paper to doodle on. The reason why the paper is still not satisfactory in my mind is because after 3 years of the PhD I have become an expert on knowing how much (really I should say how little) I need to do for an average-I-won't-be-laughed-off-my seat/they-will-take-pity-on me paper... So today is spent finishing the handouts and conclusion. I do have one moment of panic when my computer cable breaks mid-way but thanks to a friend (the amazing Fumiko) I'm able to continue and get the work finished by about 4pm. I have a read through and although I get slightly bored mid-way I feel that it is satisfactory to good. Tonight is the Kalamazoo dance, but because my paper is at 8.30am in the morning and because I've been working most of the day I'm shattered and decide that I should try and be sober for the talk (Consequently, at another conference this summer I plan on being plastered throughout)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment