and:F

drinks

2012-01-29T00:24:00.003Z

As I get ready to watch Revolutionary Road (which the BBC generously put on the iPlayer the other day), I contemplate the drinks options. Last night, I watched Open Range. That was an easy one. I had whiskey, a Bushmills Black. The glass unfortunately finished the bottle. I'll have to restock next weekend at the airport.

When I started college, the idea of strong spirits revolted me. I had friends who casually mentioned their well-supplied liquor cabinets, the drinks they would prepare and the necessary ingredients. It made me shiver. Drink is nothing to brag about.

I still didn't get it when I was in Utah, though there was not much to get there. For a friend in lab, I once ran contraband across the Zion curtain in the form of a bottle of Lagavulin because the hooch was much cheaper in Germany. It was beyond me that anyone would spend 40 euros on one bottle. Later, a Scottish friend of a friend let me sample a few of his treasures – disgusting without fail.

My eyes were ripped open at another lab member's housewarming party when a colleague brought a bottle of Herradura Añejo. I had tried tequila before, in margaritas mainly, but the colleague requested shot glasses. "Don't mix this stuff", he said, "and don't toss it." Like silly aunts, we started sipping with pointed mouths. It was incredible. A bottle of Herradura has since been with me most of the time.

Then, when I left France, a student gave me a bottle of Balluet Très Vieille Réserve which years later, when it was empty, compelled me to go on a trip to Cognac and visit Mr Balluet's distillery. I booked checked luggage for the trip back and brought three bottles home with me.

Cognac was on my mind before I started watching the film but when I checked my reserves, I realized that there were only two bottles remaining. What happened to the third? Gone already? But no worries, it's been a year and a half.

With alcohol it is just as with meat – I'd rather have something better and a bit less of it. I guess that holds true with many things in life. There's nothing wrong with a glass of good booze every now and then, but for many that's too difficult to manage. England is apparently the world leader of binge and puke.

I didn't open the second bottle. All in its own time. There was one other option, a memory of a trip to Portugal last year. And so with a small glass of 20-year-old Croft tawny, I sat down in front of the screen and hit play.

Revolutionary Road was delightful as historic documentation – work desks without computers; salesmen speaking letters into dictaphones, not for voice recognition by the word processor but for transcription by the typist; everyone smoking, in their homes, at work, in restaurants – and amazing for its fatal clash between dreams and reality. As entertainment, it came a bit heavy but moving slowly it gave me plenty of time to finish this post.

easy option

2012-01-25T21:20:00.005Z

A phone call brought it to a head. This has been going on for too long, and still the smokescreen persists, was the complaint. There wasn't much I could say in return. It was all true, all points were valid and needed immediate addressing. Flucha hung up and I got going writing, remedying past injustices.

The trigger was the New Year's post where I envisioned the year to come, sketching the things that might happen and letting a projection of myself dream a bit. As befits my blog, the freewheeling vehicle of my vanity, I wrote only about myself. Today, over the course of a long conversation, I realized what it means to look at the result with the eyes of the mysterious other person that has been implied long enough but never mentioned explicitly.

I didn't go to Cornwall by myself. Frequent trips to Marseille were not taken solely for the beauty of Provence. A we that keeps cropping up as if it had a will of its own. Three indicators that things are not as they used to be, that they are in fact very different from when this blog was started. The list could be expanded ad libitum.

I've been with Flucha for several years, the last of it, thanks to the vagaries of academic careers, long-distance. Continuing despite the separation was not an easy option, but quick and reasonably priced direct flights between London and Marseille made it at least bearable. Now we stand stronger and with a vision for the future.

Here in London, I've three months left. My search for the ideal next position hasn't led to it yet, but I'm not fretting. My goals are high; I would never settle for second best, never in any context. If I have to take a break from work for a month or two, the world wouldn't end. Life, in contrast, might even improve – once make the journey down to Marseille one last time, with all my possessions in tow.

All posts of this blog are filed under the fictionalized label. That's what it says on the tin – or, to be precise, at the top of the page, directly below the title. But this post is less fictionalized than any other, and certainly much less than the appalling post that, by a tortuous chain of events, led to this one.

questions remain

2012-01-21T15:34:00.002Z

The things that happened this week in relation to the story that I'm telling didn't follow the conventions of logic, leaving me baffled as much as the story has baffled me since it started more than five weeks ago. But it has now reached a conclusion. I made a few more calls to the Orange call center in Belfast and received a few from them. I was surprised that up until the end, there were still people that I hadn't talked to. The call center must be a sizeable operation.

Last week, the state of things was that there was something wrong with my phone line, that the fault was external and that an engineer would have to come by to fix it. Things had, in other words, not moved since the first engineer had come to my flat a month earlier, a time that can be called, with some dramatic flourish yet accurately, last year.

As the fault was external, the engineer wouldn't need access to my flat. Hearing this came as a relief. After all, I had waited for an engineer in vain twice before. But I knew that my relief was of the religious kind. It flew in the face of observable facts. Yet I clung to it.

On Wednesday, I got a call from an engineer who told me rather cheerfully that my fault was very nearly fixed. In fact, it might possibly be fixed already, and would I mind letting him in to verify that? I was at work; it was the early afternoon. "I'll see you in half an hour", I replied, not wanting to give him the chance to miss another appointment, and rushed home through dense sheets of drizzle.

Every now and then, I complain about work in acadmic research. Sometimes I get profoundly disenchanted. Jobs are precarious for the most part. Instead of building cohesive and efficient units, it is universal policy to drive staff out after a few years. Pay is low relative to qualifications. But there are undeniable benefits to this line of work as well. Freedom is treasured highly. I have my own projects and organize my efforts and time to my own best judgment. If something more important than work comes up, it can take immediate priority, currently running experiments permitting. The time missed in one part of the day can simply be made up for later. This flexibility might even be beneficial to the outcome of work because experiments often involve periods of waiting and can extend beyond the eight hours of a working day.

At home, I still didn't have a dial tone, and two-and-a-half hours later, when night had fallen and nine-to-fivers pack up and go home, the engineer told me he'd have to be back to finish the next day. "There's no need for you to be here. I'll call you when everything is done."

The next morning, the London winter drizzle from the day before was gone, replace by hard rain from low clouds that looked bottomless. The engineer looked miserable as he lifted the cover from one of the cable jointing manholes, bracing himself for a day in the trenches of hard work as I was off to a dry though occasionally rather smelly lab.

That night, my landline was restored. I had a dial tone and could make calls. The internet was back as well. I called Orange, partly to report the successful completion of the work and partly to say goodbye to a group of people that had become an ersatz social network to me. After all, I had spent more time with them than with my family since my phone went down. It hadn't registered.

"Are you sure you are with Orange", the lady on the phone asked me when I had given her my phone number and a bucketful of personal details for security purposes. I almost cried, it was so cruel. But I managed to convince her and close the case. Or so I thought. The next morning, I got a call from a familiar voice, Ashling enquiring about the status of my phone line. My problem might be fixed, but chaos still reigns at Orange.

At least my phone's working. I'm happy about that, obviously, but I'm inordinately happier that I don't have to deal with this anymore. It wasn't a battle taking strength and determination, it was a war of attrition where nothing I did seemed to make the least difference, and it was just by pure chance that I got my way. The call center worker were friendly without fail, but I never got even a single word of apology.

fragrances

2012-01-15T23:41:00.001Z

The woman in my seat is voluminous and on the wrong side of youthfulness. She advertises her despair at the physical tolls of aging by copiously applying the cosmetic equivalent of masking tape – in bright orange. Heavy fashion accessories dangle from neck and hair, her face is covered in thick paint, and a dense fog of volatile chemicals shrouded her figure. She was the exact opposite of the city I was leaving.

Marseille is ageless, old beyond numbers and concern. The Phoenicians traded in its harbor when the Romans were still too young to be let out on their own. Marseille is unbothered by appearance, refreshingly aloof in questions of style or fashion. It's also a mess: chaotic, dirty, colorful, rushed and confused.

In contrast to most other French cities, Marseille doesn't try to hide its minorities and sequester its social problems in the banlieue. There are monstrous high rises at the periphery and neighborhoods best avoided, but the mess and jumble isn't contained. And it doesn't just spill over. It's everywhere; it belongs. Deprivation is as much a part of life as is wealth. The city, a mosaic in time and space, accommodates all.

With the stolidity of age comes an imperturbable confidence, the lack of any pretense, a sense of being down to earth because the earth is the only thing of permanence. The conviction of having seen it all, over the centuries, nullifies any attempts at grandeur. Marseille doesn't have to prove anything.

This afternoon, I saw a fine example of this self-assurance in Mazargues, a marginal part of town, far from the center but not exactly a suburb. There, a neighborhood pizzeria was called Top 20. Consider, for a moment, the kind of message this name sends. The place doesn't claim to be Numero Uno or even Top 10. Here, people don't mind being associated with top 20, somewhere above average in other words. Maybe just about average, if you think about it, maybe a tick below. Ok, towards the bottom, to be honest, but certainly not last. And even if, who cares?

Earlier, I had woken up to a fine morning, to the eternal summer of the Mediterranean where the cold January air is always mellowed by a hot sun. It felt like vacation. The sea lapped against the shore in gentle waves starkly at odds with all the upheaval and violence these waters had witnessed over the millennia. Away from the sea stretched the Provence in unlimited scents and unbelievable color, a region to come back to and stay.

Life isn't so generous. With the sun setting, I was on my way back to Gatwick where, on the way out a few days earlier, I had felt compelled to ask the boarding pass inspector at the entrance to security whether everyone was on strike or still on lunch break. The departure hall looked abandoned, as if evacuated after some unspeakable incident, but the line I found myself in was epic, and largely immobile.

"It's Friday afternoon, sir", the wallah replied. "It's always like this." If this had been a tightly scripted movie I would have feigned incredulity. "How come you not only know about the problem, but also about its recurrence, and still you haven't asked your supervisor to assign more staff to remedy the situation?" Instead, in the stupor reserved for situations where a brain is an impediment, I crawled on. There was enough time to make the plane even in a slow line, but not enough to engage in futile discussions.

The lady from the beginning, by the way, had been in the wrong seat. Muttering the French of the oppressed and enraged, she moved into her middle seat and let me slip across to the window. As I fell into my seat, the cloud of perfume left behind by her departure condensed on my glasses and in my throat, depriving me of vision and oxygen.

I fell momentarily unconscious. When I recovered I found my neighbor dig through a PowerPoint presentation of corporate vacuousness from the world leader of flavors, as every slide proclaimed. The woman could have been senior secretarial staff or senior management. The difference is hard to tell at the best of times, and with the hot air in front of her, all bets were off.

exchange

2012-01-12T23:52:00.001Z

The day began auspiciously enough. Before I had as much as walked down the road outside my house, I saw two BT vans going by, purposefully, it seemed to me. Around the corner and still within shouting distance of home, I saw a BT engineer kneeling before a small roadside cabinet not unlike the wayside shrines you see in Catholic countries. The man wasn't praying, though. He was up to his elbows in a dense tangle of wires that spilled through the open doors of the cabinet, unplugging and reconnecting the sockets that were visible behind. Was that the exchange that the Orange service guys kept talking about? I admit that I have only a vague idea of a telephone exchange, one colored by personal experience from many years ago.

In the summer of 1996, two friends and I spent three weeks in Romania, walking and hiking in places that were not simply off the beaten path but squarely off the map. The country had come out of the dark ages of Ceaușescu and then gone through six years of confusion that went unnoticed by the outside world. Spending our summer there was a plunge into the unknown for the three of us, a true adventure.

The first week we spent walking through the countryside of Transylvania, connecting, by a chain of footsteps, villages that had, only ten years earlier, been home to families of German descent that had lived there for generations. They settled there as early as the 12th century, some dropping out of the Crusades to lead a quiet life in the countryside, others actively recruited by the King of Hungary. Their presence at the fringes of the Western world became an important security concern. The threat of the Ottoman Empire was looming over centuries. The Transylvanian Saxons, as they were known, found safety by encircling their churches with up to three defensive walls, turning them into veritable fortresses that could shelter the entire village for weeks and stall the progress of armies from the east.

By the time we got there, most ethnic Germans were gone, thanks to a law allowing anyone claiming German descent to gain German citizenship. But a few were left, and with the help of sketchy directions, we searched them out. Every time, we were welcomed, sheltered and fed with the warmth and generosity that come with true poverty.

In the village of Biertan, famous for having the mightiest fortified church of all, our rural walk was nearly over. The next day, we'd see a town for the first time in a week. While my friends improvised an evacuation hospital and treated, like true heroes, the blisters on their feet with sewing needles, I decided to call my dad and reassure him that we were still alive, not evident at a time when the evening news in Germany were dominated by Romanian organized crime.

I stepped into the post office and communicated my wish. No problem. The lady behind the counter swiveled in her chair until she faced a cupboard. She opened its doors, put a headset on and began to plug cables into gleaming sockets. The setup in front of her looked rock-solid. Beside the brass sockets and heavily snaking cables were wooden knobs and enameled plaques. Early in the 20th century, Romania rolled out was then the most advanced telephone system in the world. In 1996, I understood the concept of quality and durability.

The lady talked to the next lady down the line (names of cities were the only thing I could understand) and adjusted the position of the cables in front of her according to what the person at the other end, sitting in front of similar kit, was saying. Over the next forty-five minutes, the lady swung from exchange to exchange, stringing together the segments that would build my connection. Even if I hadn't talked to my dad in the end, watching her work the magic of telecommunications (before it had become entirely black-box) would have been worth it.

So – and this is quite a mental leap – maybe the guy on his knees was fixing my line. But I didn't care. I as said yesterday, I wasn't going to pursue the matter any further. Too much time and money have been wasted already. But then in the afternoon I missed a call from Belfast and then, a second later, got another, from the same number. It was Stephen from Orange. He wanted to follow up on the fault report.

Things were looking up, he said. The problem had been fixed. The evidence? He was calling me on my landline. My reminder that all my calls are forwarded to my cell phone put a bit of a dent in his good mood, but he stayed optimistic. "Please check that you have a dial tone tonight. I'll call back tomorrow to see if we can close this fault."

I opened my door with considerable anticipation tonight. I tiptoed into my living room and carefully approached the long-neglected phone. I picked it up. I pressed redial and then the green call button. There was a moment of silence. I held my breath. The moment stretched. The silence only broke when I slammed the phone back into its cradle. Nothing had been fixed. Ten minutes later I realized that my internet is now also gone, and with it my second line. This is not the last post on the subject.

part two

2012-01-10T23:30:00.005Z

In many regards, I intensely dislike change. What works, works, and there's no need fiddling with it. I would never replace gadgets because they've become superseded technically. The PowerBook I write this post on hails from early 2003. Obsolete is too harsh a word. If clothes have done their job ten years ago, there's no reason they shouldn't do so today, provided they're not ripped to shreds. My sweater of highest confirmed age is one my dad gave me for Christmas of 1990. Its age shows; it's certainly not something I'd wear every day, but to me it exudes the dignity of a revered elder, and I take it for a stroll from time to time.

In other regards, I can't do without change. I hate it when continuity slides off into boredom, and I'm usually gone before that happens. Frequent relocations are one consequence of this. Getting explosively enthusiastic about something and then dropping it a little while later (Arabic, anyone?) are another. This need for change and diversity is also reflected in the topics of this blog. Most of the time, there is not even the most tenuous connection between subsequent posts.

Today, things are different. This post seamlessly continues the previous one. My home phone is still broken. I wasted two mornings waiting for an engineer to show at my flat when I could have been working, advancing my career or, at the very least, playing football, which I missed on Monday because I didn't make it to College on time.

On Monday I waited until noon, one hour before the latest possible arrival time of the engineer, before I called Orange. I couldn't take it any longer. I should have called earlier. The call-center wallah told me the engineer hadn't been able to contact me – despite my cell phone's being on and with me all morning. Before I could schedule yet another appointment, the connection went, an annoyingly frequent occurrence in these ill-fated service calls.

I called back, going through a routine that has become painfully familiar: "Welcome to Orange! Please listen carefully as our options have changed." I listen carefully, and they're still the same as a few minutes earlier. I punch two and then two again and am on hold. Thankfully, the loop of an inebriated village pub choir belting The twelve days of Christmas has now been replaced with assorted pop music samples. Then the soft voice of an Irishman's "Hello, how can I help you" (without a question mark), followed by the confirmation of my home phone number, full name, first line of address, postcode, and, if extra diligence is taken, the first and fourth characters of my online password. By now I've paid a pound for the call and have received nothing in return.

But another appointment is quickly scheduled. "How about tomorrow morning, 8 to 1?" — "Yes", I say, and have the wallah read my cell phone number back to me so there's no chance of another miss. I have at least one more day of the pleasure of getting my landline calls forwarded to my cell phone.

What I've found out so far is that telemarketers don't exist anymore. These days, machines do the job, not just the dialing but the actual calling as well. Tapes (what a quaint notion, I realize) start playing in my ears, yabbering about purchasing insurance and obscure banks dealings. What's the hope here on the caller's side? Who is so emotionally deprived to converse with a recording and subsequently engage in a commercial transaction with it? I guess the cost of this kind of business is marginal; any turnover will be profit. But how can the success rate for the caller be any higher than zero?

This conundrum unresolved, I sat on my dining-room table by eight o'clock this morning, my cell phone (profile: outdoors) at arm's length, waiting for the engineer. After a hearty breakfast and some reading, the clock struck eleven and there had been no progress. Afraid to be stood up again, I called Orange – same options, same security questions – and was reassured by Paul that the appointment had been scheduled and that the engineer would come by.

I was not reassured. I asked Paul, and then asked again, to call BT Connect and confirm that the appointment was still on, that it hadn't been lost in a busy morning like the previous day's. "No worries", I was told after suffering through another two minutes of assorted pop samples, "the engineer is on his way. He will be at your flat before 1pm." He never arrived.

At this point, the question of whether Orange or BT Connect is more painfully incompetent could be debated with passion. Orange has friendly automata as call center staff, good for a conversation but not exactly helpful. And it can't fix a telephone line it provides and (at least indirectly) charges for even after three weeks. BT Connect has engineers that don't call when they're supposed to and do when they're not. Sounds like a tie, but I don't care. I have now given up on my landline. I don't need it anyway. It was never worth the trouble. The few people that call me there will get an email with my second line's number. It won't make a difference to them. And with my internet service, nothing will change either. That's a good thing.

phone blues

2012-01-07T19:09:00.004Z

Early in the second half of December, my landline died on me. I didn't notice it at first. I don't get many calls on it, and then most are from telemarketers whose absence from my ears I wouldn't miss. Then my dad called one evening and wondered where I'd been the night before, and the night before that. I had been home, I said. He insisted he had called – every half hour from eight to midnight on both days, as he likes to exaggerate – and no one had picked up.

That's when I noticed that calls to my landline were lost in the ether, ringing at a number that was, at least temporarily, inactive but gave no indication of the fact to the unfortunate caller. On my side, I didn't have a dial tone. The line was dead.

Curiously, my internet was still working and with it my second line, built on IP technology and my primary phone for outgoing calls. I sat down and called Orange, my service provider. Unless national and most international calls, which are included in the DSL package, this service call wasn't free. This is Europe, after all, where service costs extra. At least it didn't take long. After clicking through a few options, I quickly talked to a person, audibly of Irish descent and eager to help.

"Can I call you on your cell phone?" Ashling asked and with "there are a few tests I need to run with the line", he walked me through the obvious troubleshooting that I had already done. "Is the phone plugged in? Please connect the phone that's working directly to the socket. Still no dial tone? Looks like there's a problem with your line. We're going to send an engineer by to investigate. No, you don't have to do a thing. We'll get back to you by Wednesday, 6pm. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

There wasn't, and with Irish warmth he hung up, but not before promising to forward my landline calls to my cell phone, a mixed blessing if there ever was one. I was suddenly made aware of all the credit advisers, insurance agents and medical malpractice investigators that spend their afternoons calling potential victims. But I could also receive my family's and foreign friends' calls wherever I was.

On Wednesday afternoon, I talked to Orange again. They had by then firmly established that my line was indeed faulty. To trace and, ultimately, fix it, a BT Connect engineer needed access to my flat. The earliest appointment they could give me was the next day in the morning, between 8 and 1. I was stunned by yet another example of staggering efficiency but couldn't take advantage of it. The next morning I'd be flying to Germany, out of town until the 28th. "How about the 29th in the morning? Would that work for you?" the guy on the phone asked, with an Indian accent this time. "Have a nice Christmas, sir."

Things were well on their way, I felt. The problem was all but solved. Unfortunately, things haven't looked that good since and the problem of the broken landline has developed into a confusion of Kafkaesque proportions. Here's what happened:

On the 29th in the morning, a wink after 8 o'clock, I stepped out briefly to get breakfast, dashing to the Cooperative across the street to buy rolls and juice. I was gone for five minutes max. It might have been that in that time, the engineer came to my door, ringing the bell with increasing desperation. Or maybe he came later and the doorbell didn't work. Either way and curiously for someone in telecommunications, he didn't call my cell phone, which I held in my hand throughout the day. I had to call Orange for another appointment, which was promptly scheduled for the next morning.

Quickly after arriving the next morning, the engineer had established that the fault was external. He called a sidekick with whom he'd try to fix it there and then, but after two hours of waiting and working, it turned out there was more to it than had met the eye. The engineer would have to come back with the right tools and parts. "Please call your service provider to keep the forwarding", he reminded me before he left.

Then it was New Year's Eve and I was off to see the fireworks when I noticed another message on my phone. Some rambling about my landline that was so low that I didn't understand a word and could hardly make up the sense later in the quiet of my flat. I called Orange again on the 3rd and found out that the file that had been opened upon my reporting the fault had been closed. Enough time had passed for the line to be repaired. "But it's still dead", I retorted weakly and a parallel world of problems opened up before me.

"We have to do some quick tests", the service guy told me, with an Irish accent again. "You need to get off this line. Could you please give me your mobile number so I can call you back?" My insisting that the fault had already been established as external was of no use. Tests were run. My phones were found working. My line wasn't. "Regarding charges", Kenny said when all was done, "I must inform you that you will incur a call-out charge of up to 150 pounds and labor charges of 100 pounds an hour if it turns out that the fault is caused by your equipment." — "If I hadn't already agreed to that, the engineer wouldn't have come out the first time around", I replied, and the joke wasn't entirely lost on him. "BT Connect are dealing with the problem. You don't have to do a thing, but call us in a week if it's still not solved."

That same day in the afternoon, I get a rather irate call from a BT engineer. Justin claims an appointment and is angry that I'm not home to meet him. I'm at work, but later in the evening I call Orange again. I'm sure my phone bill has ten quid of service calls on it by now. Stephen, gentle and soft-spoken, another Irishman, is incredulous. "We did not send that engineer. No one should have come by your flat. But BT asked us to confirm that the fault is still ongoing. Could you unplug your DSL box tomorrow morning and plug the phone directly into the socket. We need to run some tests."

"You ran tests this morning", I say weakly, feeling the devastating impotence of Joseph K. in The Trial. Stephen is more upbeat: "Those were quick tests. Now we need to do further diagnostic testing. We will call you tomorrow after 9 to let you know."

The call from Orange never materializes, but a day later, the phone still out of work, I get another call from a BT engineer. It's around lunchtime. Pete has an appointment for that afternoon, 1 to 6, and wants to know if I'm ready. I'm working, and tell him so. "Please get in touch with your service provider, which is Orange", Pete says, clearly in the loop, "so that another appointment can be scheduled. An engineer needs to come to your premises and measure from the socket to check what has been done previously." I don't have the strength for a reply.

That evening, last night, I call Orange again. Patrick, with the soothing lilt of all Irishmen, is there to help me. What has happened to the world, I wonder. A few years ago, the Irish made fortunes flipping properties as if they were pancakes and now they outcompete the Indians for call-center work. Patrick is thorough. "We need to do some tests", he begins and I lose it. "You don't need to do tests", I interrupt him rudely. "You've done tests three times already. An engineer has been here to establish the fault as external. What you need to do is to fix things. You need to send someone out to fix my phone."

"That's no problem", says Patrick, unperturbed, all service, and I jump at the chance to let off more steam. "No, it is a problem, and it needs to be fixed." After this, I pull myself together. It's no fun yelling at an Irishman. They're just too gentle and kind. Patrick gets me an appointment for Monday morning, and this is where the story currently stands. It's been three weeks and my landline is still dead.

new year

2012-01-05T23:05:00.003Z

The first week of 2012 has almost run its course, the first workweek in any case, and it's time to follow convention, however belatedly. Happy New Year! Wishes of health, success and happiness shouldn't know a season or need a specific occasion, but it's time for them, and more: resolutions, plans, hopes.

I don't do resolutions, but I have great hopes. As I've mentioned a yawn-inducing number of times before, this year will be a year of great change for me. This alone wouldn't be worth mentioning. If I can do anything, it's change. What's new is that I still don't know what these changes will look like.

Previously, I've always known at least half a year in advance where the next step would take me, enough time to prepare and shift my mindset. Maybe that was luxury; maybe I had it too good. Whatever it was, this time is different. My current job will fill my days with things to do and my life with meaning for a paltry four more months. The future beyond that is still unwritten.

Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe hopping from one sorted-out situation to the next, seamlessly and painlessly, was keeping my wild side sedated. Maybe I need to go all they way to the end and look into the void beyond. What turn might my life take if I suddenly found myself unemployed and bound by no obligation or schedule?

It's not exactly a prospect I yearn for. London is not a place I can afford for too long without a salary, but a move makes sense only if I know where I'm going. While predicaments beget opportunities and problems can open their victims' eyes to creative solutions, I'd much rather prefer to sort things out before complete meltdown strikes.

On the other hand, I could do with a chance for profound self-inspection or time for the things that are currently suffering from undeserved neglect: hobbies, infatuations that burn hot but fizzle out too quickly, and long-suppressed interests. A few months of freedom, a cabin by a lake, a sabbatical of sorts, to find out which unimportant things are important in my life, what I would like to do more of – at the expense of other possible activities.

This is where hope comes into play. The perfect progression of 2012 would see me interview successfully for a new job deep into the tail end of my current one and be offered a position starting somewhere in the second half of the year. I'd pack my bags and decamp to wherever life takes me and rip through a few months of something close to the uninhibited hedonism of my student days (with one notable difference). And then I'll dig with mad enthusiasm into a new challenge. That's what a happy new year would look like.

three days

2011-12-21T23:31:00.004Z

Three days to go, and this is the last post before Christmas. Tomorrow I'm flying home to Germany, as is tradition. And as my mom still contents herself with dial-up while my computer doesn't have a modem, I'll be cut off from the world for the week around Christmas. This is good.

Admittedly, it's not immediately good. My departure is less then twelve hours away, and I haven't written a single Christmas email. I cowardly wish I were on Facebook and could just post a Merry Christmas to all my friends on my wall. But I'm not, and I'll have to sit down and crank out the well-wishing prose when I'm done with this post. But when I'm done I'm done, and the computer will stay off after that.

Christmas for me is intensely familial. I don't want to see anyone or talk to anyone or read anything or see anything not related to family. It's the only week of the year to shut down completely and stop the world. Reading this you might say that instead of writing this post, I could have linked to the one I wrote last year, but there's a little twist. Things will feel different this year because it will be the last time they are as they have always been.

With my life on an uncertain, unpredictable and often shifting trajectory through time and space, Christmas in the embrace of my family has been the only constant through the years. I've only missed it twice, when the distance was prohibitive and I had been home not too long before. Both times marked the low points of their respective years. Quite undeniably, something was missing.

Over the course of the last few months, prodded by events outside my control, I have come to the conclusion that life cannot continue like that. The comfort I keep drawing from tradition is hollow. Knowing where to be for Christmas, feeling the love and being able to share, has shut me off from my own life in a way. It has prevented me from making the holiday my own, from creating my own tradition.

As life inexorably progresses, some changes to even the most treasured routines become inevitable. I don't expect to see myself in Germany next Christmas. Next year there will be no family Christmas as I know it but my own, as it will be. It's not because I'm moving on but because I'm growing up, and it's high time for this.

Merry Christmas, all my friends!

buy me

2011-12-13T23:53:00.005Z

Christmas is coming up; there's less than ten weeks to go. With my flight home booked as it is, only one weekend, all of two days, remains to be devoted to the most important activity of the festive period. Here in Britain, there's nothing clandestine about the priorities of Advent. Christmas is called Christmas, and not matter whether you're a Muslim or a Mormon, whether you worship the tooth fairy or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, you're exhorted to do your patriotic duty of supporting the high street and, by extension, the national economy that threatens to slide back into crisis.

When it comes to rescuing economies, I'm not a good citizen. I don't go out and shop because the economy needs me. In contrast, blasphemy of blasphemies, I think that the economy should work for my benefit, not the other way around, and that if it doesn't do it, it needs changing. But let's not talk revolution quite yet. Let's talk shopping.

There was a time when shopping filled basic needs. Sometimes it still does that. I go to the market to buy apples, kaki fruit and tomatoes because I need energy and vitamins. I buy clothes when what I wear is so ripped that it doesn't protect me from the elements and the eyes of the people I meet from what they don't need to see. Sometime I even buy shoes, though that often develops into a project that even Odysseus wouldn't have taken on. But need is a negligible driving force of commerce these days.

It is telling (and it never fails to crack me up) when high-street stores explain poor results with the weather. There was snow in the run-up to Christmas last year. There was a cold and wet summer this year, and few fall days so hot the Met Office had the lunacy to call them heatwave. The rest of fall was unseasonably warm. All of this served as excuses for slower sales than expected, by John Lewis, New Look, makers of luxury ice cream, and pretty much everyone else.

If people can easily be deterred from shopping, it means that they don't need the things they're being tempted with. Otherwise they would simply catch up when the weather turns more clement. Retailers wouldn't see a difference besides a marginally delayed cash flow. But they are worried, mortally concerned in fact, because they don't meet people's needs. They try to fulfill people's desires but have to compete with other attractions, like a park when the sun's out, a gallery when it rains or home when it's miserable.

Frivolous consumption is s a poor business strategy and explains much of the current misery in the retail sector. The park, the gallery and home are free. Shopping is not. In a time of austerity, who's losing? In London, charity and various pop-up stores have been able to fill most of the space already vacated by failing chains, but outside the capital, the situation is apparently dire. Boarded shopfronts stretch for blocks. Not a pretty sight.

But even after some initial pruning, the scale of retail is staggering. In Germany, all I've ever heard since I started listening, nearly two decades ago, was the plight of retail, the hesitance, even reluctance, of consumers, their unwillingness to part with money in exchange for things they don't need. And yet, the retail sector accounts for 57% of GDP. That's in the country that leads the world in exports. In the UK, the figure is in the 60s, and in the US, closer to three quarters. Who buys all that stuff?

Who will pay for it is another question. Credit cards do the trick if you're happy to pay much more later than you could have saved before, but these days, everyone is talking about cutting back on debt. The British Prime Minister got himself into a bad pickle when it was leaked that the speech he would give the next day would recommend paying off credit card debt pronto.

Mathematically inclined commentators quickly noted that credit card debt currently stands at a sixteenth of GDP and that paying it off over, say, a year, would deprive the economy of that amount of money, basically depressing GDP by 4%. Not a healthy proposition if you barely grow by 2% as it is. I never understood the concept of officially leaking the content of speeches before they were given, but here it paid off. A bad economic blunder was broadcast to the world, but at least it wasn't imprinted on Tory party stationery.

The untouchability of credit card debt makes it look like a classic pyramid scheme. If people withdrew their funds, the system would collapse. If people don't withdraw their funds, i.e. pay back their debt and avoid future interest payments, they might collapse economically themselves. At this point, I can't help go back to an earlier point of this post. Between the economy and the people, who benefits and who serves the other? Without wanting to sound Marxist, shouldn't the economy work for the health and well-being of the people?

out of work

2011-12-06T22:51:00.004Z

This morning, like many a Tuesday, I arrived early at Imperial for breakfast with a colleague and friend. We meet at the Library Café when business is still resting, chat, have a coffee and a pastry when the bar opens, and write some. We call it writers' breakfast. This morning, I wanted to turn my recent experience with HR into a little story but my enthusiasm didn't burn hot enough. The café, its doors wide open to the chill of the morning, was so cold that the coffee cooled in minutes and my breath showed in white puffs. After less than an hour, we were out and on our way to the warmth of the lab.

What I had wanted to write about was that last week, I received an email from HR, reminding me that my contract is coming to an end or, as it was put in rather stiff language, that I was "staff at risk of redundancy". I have five months left, but administrative procedures have already been launched to make the end an event. I have never experienced that. When previous jobs had ended, I had left and that was that.

Not so at Imperial. A month and a half ago already, a departmental administrator sent me a leaver's form with the request to fill in my last day, a forwarding address and information on my new position. Back then, the event seemed so far in the future that I had nothing to say at all and ignored the email, but it drove the seriousness of the situation home to me, the inevitability of my departure. I started looking for jobs with increased urgency.

Now came the email from HR, a verbose, multi-paragraphed composition that promised to "start formal consultation" and "investigate thoroughly any opportunities for redeployment". By the second paragraph, my head was hurting, but the email also contained three attachments with the undeniable authority of office-speak. One was the Faculty of Natural Sciences Job Search Information Pack. Under the heading of Job Search Techniques, it includes this gem: "If you feel that you have enjoyed your present position and that it fulfills your needs, you can direct your search to similar positions". Thanks, will do.

The pdf is more than 20 pages long. Against the odds, there's some valuable advice but most of what's written is hollow drivel. Some is outright dangerous, like the recommendation to start a cover letter with the following paragraph: "I wish to apply for the position of [job title] within [organization], and I have enclosed my CV in support of my application. I feel this demonstrates my suitability for this position, and I shall expand on my strengths below." There's no doubt that the more people take this advice, the higher my chances of getting an interview.

I've had a few interviews already and overall, I'm rather optimistic about the next step, but inevitable, as I called it earlier, it certainly is not. Voluntary inevitability would be a better term. If I really wanted to, I could probably stay, even without taking advantage of college redeployment. My boss keeps engineering possible solutions and encourages me to find something related, nearby, but her suggestions have become fewer lately. She knows as much as I do that, for my own benefit and professional development, I have to move on. We both know that there's little for me to gain here.

I can't yet imagine the moment that I swipe my card the last time and say good-bye to College, but I know that there are certain things I won't miss in a hundred years, the aggravations that surround a largely happy work environment. Lately, for example, power cuts have been frequent enough to put a third-world country to shame. Twice, I had long-running computing jobs go down on me because the power went out campus-wide. The cuts are apparently caused by hectic underground work to bring London's infrastructure up to 20th-century standards in the run-up to the Olympics, and they drive me nuts.

What has driven me mad from day one is ass-tight security that keeps all doors electronically locked after six and before eight. Entrance doors should be locked at night, you might say, and I agree, but I doubt the sense in locking the doors between the lab and the office or, get this, between the office and the toilets. There's no point arguing with security, by the way. They have their own way of operating. They've given me access to the sixth floor of a building across campus where I need to use a particular instrument, but not to the building itself. Every time I go there, I have to wait to tailgate in.

A few weeks ago, the main entrance into the library started getting a make-over, though it had always done good and reliable service and never complained. Now, with a blue hoarding blocking the entrance, the only way into the building is through its side doors, big French doors that, in summer, would give the Library Café a pleasantly Mediterranean flair, were they left open. However, their outer door handles were removed when the building was refurbished a few years back, and they remain shut most of the time.

Now that these doors are needed, there's no way for people to open them from the outside and they need to be propped open permanently. And while the person who came up with this solution is in gainful employment in a comfortably heated office somewhere well-hidden, I can't even sit down and write about my end-of-contract tribulations because my fingers would freeze to the keyboard.

among champions

2011-12-04T23:39:00.005Z

When I was a kid, from first grade in primary school all the way to university, I was on a chess team, training every week and having games most weekends. Our team was successful and we had a blast as mates, but the activity took so much time out of my life that I abandoned it shortly after leaving home (though I had mentally given it up much before that).

For old time's sake, I hung on to my paraphernalia (board and pieces, clock, a few dozen books), leaving them in a box in my mom's garage that I didn't open for years. When I moved to France, I was formally evicted from the garage. Most possessions I took with me in a bulging Xsara Picasso that I had rented for the occasion, but the chess books had to go. I left the lot to my old club, to kick start their club house library.

Over the last half year, I've rekindled what had been a passion in suspended animation. I discovered the joys of rapid chess, games in length halfway between the mad dash of blitz and the torpor of classic chess, and tournaments where six games can be played in a day and a winner determined. In June, August and October, I made my way up to Golder's Green for mental jousting, but for December, their calendar is blank.

The reason is the London Chess Classic, a grandmaster tournament held at Olympia, just up the road from where I live. There, the world's four best players and another from the top ten plus England's three best players and another from the top 10 duke it out in a curious round-robin of nine participants. Games being played by pairs means that in each of the nine rounds, one of the players has a bye and, innovation by the organizers to rope spectators in, must do co-commentator duties while the others play.

Maybe you don't associate chess with spectators. Maybe you weren't aware that you can watch chess, much like you can watch baseball or pole dancing. But think back a few decades (or watch Genius and Madman, the Bobby Fischer biopic currently on the iPlayer), and you'll see chess as front-page news, chess holding nations enthralled. It must have been a strange time when news anchors debated the relative merits of queen-pawn and king-pawn advances.

As much as I like chess, I'm the first to admit that it's a hardcore niche activity. To the uninitiated, what happens on the board is totally obscure. It's not like football where, aside from offside, everything is clear, and every circle of drunk friends can talk knowledgeably, judge the proceedings and offer opinions, which is what you want to do when watching sports. You also want to cheer for your team. In chess, you can't do that.

The games at Olympia are played in a solemn auditorium in the atmosphere of a freshman physical chemistry class where half the students are in speechless awe of three-dimensional volume-entropy-internal energy graphs and the other half are fast asleep, lost from the first sentence uttered. On the stage, the players make their moves in silence; every breath of a spectator is shushed by his neighbor. A ringing phone will get you thrown out.

I stopped by the auditorium only briefly, right around when the games opened. In a back row, I could hardly see the players' faces and certainly not the boards. Overhead, the ventilation hummed distinctly. A sense of competitive urgency might develop as the clocks wind down or the positions turn decisive, but even then it will be rather muted. No one will cheer or wave flags. In the commentators' room, the spirits fly higher, but I gave it a pass. I hadn't come for the grandmasters anyway.

The grandmasters' tournament, all of four games a day over ten days, is surrounded by a hurrah of associated events, a dozen tournaments of various kinds that are for anyone to enter. The organizers are trying to create and exploit synergies – and give enthusiasts the chance to compete with their idols, though the preposition is used rather loosely. It's the with that lets cyclists ride the course of the Hamburg Cyclassics one day before the pros race it or me run the London Marathon with Emmanuel Mutai.

Going with the bimonthly tradition established in June, I had signed up for the first of two rapidplay tournaments. Walking into East Hall was much like visiting a car show - the buzz of males of a certain age walking about and chatting, their eyes aglow with inexplicable pleasure. The story of my day is quickly told. I played two games rather skillfully but lost both when that was all but impossible. I played two more games rather poorly and lost them as well. The fifth game I sat out and the sixth, finally, I won, though that wasn't an effort to be proud of.

My results if not necessarily my playing disappointed me, and it would have been a dismal day had I not discovered, in the second-hand book sale that accompanied the event, a book that I owned as a kid. Advanced Chess Strategy, translated from the Russian in the East German edition I knew, yellow dust jacket and all, lay there incongrously. With an investment of three quid, I've started rebuilding my library.

winding down

2011-11-27T23:06:00.005Z

Out on the terrace is not exactly the most obvious place to hang out with the calendar going inexorably towards December, but it's still unseasonably warm. It's been dry for weeks and the gales that wreaked havoc on the islands off the coast of Scotland last night haven't done much to disturb the peace here. There was some wind this morning but now it's calm. Best of all, the sun is out, though it's hanging quite low in the sky.

The view is stunning, as always. St. Paul's is imposing, rising imperturbably above the increasingly messy protest camp at its feet. It's a spectacular sight from any direction and cause of severe planning restrictions. The number of high-rises that slowly spread outwards from the City is surprising given the views protected by ordinances. On certain lines-of-sight, nothing can be built that might obstruct the mighty cathedral.

Ten miles up the Thames in Richmond Park is a little hill, a knoll, to employ a word that gave me good points in a game of Scrabble the other day, called King Henry VIII's Mound, with a telescope. Point the telescope at the plain in front of you, the obvious view overlooking the river, and you see the plain in front of you. Point it back towards London at a narrow clearing in the trees and you're bound to gape. Out of nowhere, St. Paul's jumps at you, hovering above the city like a mirage, with nothing in the way, rising above the horizon formed by the low wall encircling the mound. This view is part of the soul of London and the telescope free for all.

Nothing can be built between King Henry VIII's Mound and St. Paul's, in front of the cathedral or up to a dome and a half to either side. No one would imagine building something between me and St. Paul's at the moment either. The terrace I'm at is on the fifth floor of Tate Modern, facing the river and the cathedral behind. Leave Tate and walk a few minutes towards Southwark station and you will wonder how permission was ever granted to build the enormous power station that now houses the gallery, but out on the terrace, all you see are the river, the riverfront on the other side and the footbridge that takes you there.

The bridge was built in the run-up to the millennium festivities and like the Millennium Dome – the other highly visible infrastructure project at the time – it came dangerously close to being a complete failure. The bridge opened in June 2000 and earned the moniker Wobbly Bridge during the first two days when those crossing, mostly as part of a walk in support of Save the Children, experienced a noticeable sway. Some felt unwell.

Too late, engineers realized that the minimal lateral vibrations that were part of the design would cause people on the bridge to walk in step, amplifying the motion to intolerable levels. Two days after it opened with great pomp, the bridge was closed for refitting. It didn't open for another two years. Even so, that was much better than the Millennium Dome's immediate fate.

After running a mildly successful exhibition during 2000, the Millennium Dome stood empty for years. It was leased to a developer who initially couldn't figure out what to do with a gigantic events center in the void of North Greenwich. It was off most people's maps and sat there, a spiky white elephant of public spending gone horribly wrong. Somehow it was turned around, and now it's the world's busiest music venue, with frequent knock-out shows. Led Zeppelin's ephemeral reunion in 2009 could have sold a million tickets. Prince played 21 nights in 2007. Michael Jackson was scheduled to play 50 (but that proved too daunting a prospect).

I've never been to The O₂, as the Millennium Dome is called these days, but, to bring this post back to where it belongs, I've been on the terrace at Tate Modern many times. It's the best part of the member's room, a café only accessible to those shelling out for an annual membership to Tate. I've been a member pretty much since I moved here. While Tate Modern and Tate Britain are free to visit, the temporary exhibitions cost dearly, but members always go free. When Salvator Dalí came around in summer 2007, I bought a membership and never looked back.

It was a good deal. After four visits, I had recouped my investment, and there are at least eight shows a year in the two London spaces. Sometimes I would go see an exhibition twice. Overall I got so much out of my membership that I was a bit embarrassed at times. I was not so much supporting the museum as taking advantage of it. Here are my favorite exhibitions over the last four years (Tate's online archive helping me remember):

Salvator Dalí ("The difference between me and a surrealist is that I'm a surrealist") got it all started. I didn't expect much of Francis Alÿs but was bowled over by his poetry in everyday actions. Pop Life was a gaudy riot. Rothko's enormous canvases seemed to change color as I watched them. Cildo Mereiles's installations turned the exhibition into an adventure.

Up the river at Tate Britain, the Turner Prize retrospective was fantastic: Anish Kapoor's infinity, moving video art, and the split cow, all you ever need to see of Damian Hirst. From John Everett Millais I learned that there's no end to the meaning a few masterfully painted hands can convey. Richard Long's memories of walks undertaken were huge and subtle at the same time.

My time in London is coming to an end. Whether it's weeks or months, departure is near, and I'm slowing winding down my presence. When my membership came up for renewal this month, I declined. And so it came to pass that this weekend is the last I can spend in the member's room. Earlier, I had a tea and a little salad, but now, with the sun setting but the view still splendid, it's time to say farewell.

gaga

2011-11-24T23:18:00.004Z

If legend is to be believed, Lady Gaga, who's all the rage these days with juicy outfits and chart-busting mobile-phone commercials, picked up her name when she couldn't get enough of Queen's Radio Ga Ga. She hummed it all the time and it stuck. That's one version. Another says that record company marketing executives came up with the stage name. In either case, it couldn't be more fitting.

Lady Gaga is by all accounts an uncompromising individual, a unique weirdo, one-hundred-percent her own woman. There's no one like her, and she appears totally gaga. But there was someone who in his own time cultivated a similar in-your-face-and-whatcha-gonna-do-about-it attitude, who strutted the world's stages in hilarious kit and sang before enthralled audiences of millions.

I'm of course talking of Freddy Mercury, the frontman of Queen who died exactly twenty years ago today. I discovered Queen as a teenager and quickly bought their untitled debut album and Queen II, two jewels that are still among my most beloved CDs. Over the years, I added to the collection, everything from the 70s ("No Synthesisers!") and Innuendo, their farewell.

Curiously, Queen were most popular in the 80s when their greatest music was behind them. They recorded insipid drivel and vapid rock anthems, but one triumphal stadium tour followed another. They rarely played audiences of fewer than 100,000. Freddy Mercury pranced around the stage in tights and absurd jackets, flaunting his open, free and undiscriminating sexuality. Millions watched, gaped and cheered – at the music and the show, but also at a life lived to the fullest.

Twenty years ago today, Freddy died in his house in London of complications from AIDS. On my way home from work tonight, I stopped by to pay my respects and see how he was being remembered. There was a swelling crowd of 60, many of them young but a also few older characters, some of whom behaved as if they had known him, regaling fascinated audiences with stories from way back when. A good 30 bunches of roses and carnations were piled against the door and many letters and cards. Candles lined the forbidding wall that protects the property, burning stubbornly in the November chill.

Later at home, I put Queen II on the stereo and let it rock. With a glass of whiskey in hand, I searched for relevant memories, but there weren't any. I never saw them live. Freddy had died by the time I started buying CDs. Their music and stories I read are all I have. In the Guardian I found this tribute and in the comments a line that transposes Freddy to today: He was "the original Lady Gaga". Keep yourself alive!

subprime

2011-11-23T23:58:00.005Z

The British government, a government that I did not vote for, that I have not been allowed to vote for to be precise, a government that doesn't exactly claim to represent my will or even take it into account announced earlier this week it would use the taxes I pay to make mortgages available to those who can't afford them.

I have nothing against paying taxes. I see them as a small personal sacrifice for the greater good, a contribution to a civilized society. I also have no issues with taxation without representation and wouldn't get smelly feet throwing tea into the Thames to protest nonexistent injustice. Instead, I make sure that I vote in Germany every time an election comes my way, getting representation without taxation in the process and fast trains to boot. Paying taxes here is merely involuntary reciprocity. I'm ok with that.

I'm not ok with owning property at all cost. If you till the land under your feet or want to diversify your millions, go ahead and buy, but it doesn't make sense for everyone, especially in these globalized, mobile times. Why would you lock a large proportion of your wealth in an illiquid and immobile asset? And yet, the Prime Minister talks about owning a flat as an experience he wants "everyone in this country" to have.

To this end he proposed earlier this week helping people who can't afford the deposit with a state guarantee, as if the subprime lending crisis in the US had never happened. And as if the Spanish meltdown hadn't happened and unemployment weren't at 20% down there, he dreams of using construction and house price inflation to resurrect the ailing economy.

Property prices have outstripped incomes dramatically over the last decade. There is no way this can continue. People can only pay what they have. At the moment it looks as if a plateau has been reached. Now the Prime Minister wants to encourage the less well-off to join the party in the hope to prop up prices and avoid the inevitable. Rewind five years and transpose five thousand miles to the west. It's not going to be pretty.

If people don't buy, in a country as property-crazy as the UK, with estate agents more of a blight to high streets than betting shops, chicken shacks and off-licences, it is because prices are much too high relative to income. And as long as a fall in property prices is not hailed for making property more affordable but deplored for destroying wealth, this is not going to change.

The UK has to wake up to the fact that people will rent more. As the situation is at the moment, renting is not a pleasant experience. (When I leave London, I will quote renting as one of the forces driving my away.) Tenants live without any security. They can be thrown out with two months' notice on a periodic contract or else be served with rent increases every half year. I can see how a family would be reluctant to turn a flat into their home under these conditions.

Tenant protection has to be ramped up sharply. This is clear but only part of the story. New stock has to be added to the housing market, especially at the lower end. Rents in London are apparently up 12% this year, though I can't say by what method the numbers are compiled. My rent is up 4% over two years. Anyway, Londoners, including those in unfashionable boroughs, now pay £1200 a month on average. With an average job, that's almost impossible to afford.

Boris the Clown, when he ran for the office of Mayor of London, an election I was allowed to participate in, promised to flush the city with affordable housing. Not sure this is what got him elected, but the numbers made for good PR. Mind you, they weren't high enough for everyone to afford an adequate flat, but enough for a lucky few. Fifty thousand said the campaign promise, over the course of four years, twelve-and-a-half thousand per year.

Between last April and this March, 12,870 flats were finished, easily meeting the target. In the last six month, in stark contrast, fewer than 3000 were added and work started on another 56. Is this the grim face of the recession or the bite of budget cuts? In either case, fifty-six is nothing in a city of eight million. It's obvious that neither local nor the national government knows how to use my tax pounds wisely.

living legend

2011-11-21T20:00:00.004Z

I've just popped a CD into the stereo, a young chap blowing his tunes into the wind. His voice sounds accidental, as if he had chosen song only reluctantly as a vehicle for what he had to say. Nearly 50 years after that record was made, after decades of heavy use and frequent abuse, the voice has nearly disintegrated, deteriorated beyond possibility and yet, it still sounds from stages the world over.

This past weekend, Bob Dylan (you must have guessed) was in town, giving three concerts at the Hammersmith Apollo. The venue is just down the road from where I live, but what welled up inside me was hesitation not fervor. I dig his old tracks, the passionate protest songs that were just as passionately disowned by him as soon as the public took them up as weapons in their fight and embraced him as a hero. I love the ambivalence between him and his songs as much as I love his songs. But there's more than his songs. Dylan is an attitude, a time in history. He is a legend, someone who belongs to his era. I have never seen Dylan live.

I've never felt compelled. From what I've heard and read, the Dylan on tour is different from the Dylan in my mind, far removed from the Dylan on my stereo drawling out A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall in all its existential fear. The song's powerful words are half hidden by an incomprehensible mumble, half exposed by catchy rhythm and melody. How could an old man, battered by the decades, deliver similarly?

But maybe I should see Dylan at least once, in the same way that I'd join the Queen for tea if I had the chance? A click on the right button on Dylan's endless tour schedule took me to a ticket seller (that doesn't deserve mentioning) with all options still there. Seventy quid is not cheap but certainly not outrageous. I kept clicking a few more buttons, on the verge of committing, when the final bill cleared my mind. A Ryanair-like list of extra charges appeared, service charges, delivery fees, payment supplements, I don't remember the details. But it was nearly as much as I have paid, over the years, for the eight Dylan CDs that I own. And buying the tickets at face value at the venue box office didn't seem to be an option. To avoid getting screwed I declined that final click.

I don't know what I've missed; I haven't talked to anyone who has been to the concert and there's hardly a review out there on the shows. The same old story has probably been rehashed too many times. Dylan scrambles on stage and mangles his songs. There's little new material and old favorites are frequently unrecognizable, transfigured by his ruined voice and constant reinterpretation. Maybe it's the tedium of repetition, of being asked by adulating fans to play the same songs over and over again, dozens, even hundreds of times, that drives him to experimentation, maybe it's his ostentatious nonconformism that he wears like a uniform. In either case, I don't think I'd like it much.

What does he see in it? That he enjoys it must be the answer because nothing could possibly force him. Books, paintings and continued sales of his back catalog keep him flush and, at least the first two, busy. But while he might get the kicks out of his concerts, few in the audience seem to. In the comments section of this scathing preview, there are a few opinions on Saturday's concert. It doesn't look as if I've missed a thing.

What I did instead of going to the concert was project No Direction Home onto the long sidewall of my living room, five square meters of time warp, from New York to Berkeley to Newport. To me, Bob Dylan will always be the energetic young folk singer, the musical spirit of the 60s, the voice beyond compare, the songs the shaped a generation. This is the memory that I'll always have, and even though it's not my own, it's better than what I could get.

liverpool

2011-11-14T00:00:00.006Z

Over the four-and-a-half years that I've lived in London, I haven't much ventured into the land surrounding the city. I've walked in Kent a bit and spent a week in Cornwall. I've done, repeated and three-peated the mandatory fun trip to Brighton and taken day trips to the coast between Seaford and Eastbourne when it was hot. I've been to Bristol several times. I've visited Belfast and explored the north of Ireland, and I've been to the two villages of higher learning that loom just a stone throw away, always threatening to overshadow the ambitions of London's universities.

This list sounds long, but it isn't. Since I moved to London, I've seen more of Spain and Portugal than of England. I know the south of France better than Wales. And what exactly is Scotland? For domestic travel, I think in zones, and I rarely venture beyond the boundaries of the tube map and the limits imposed by the Oyster card. This is related to the fact that I imagine the rest of the United Kingdom as so different from London that it might as well be a different country, and as dull.

On Friday, from a different country, my sister came to visit. An inveterate Beatles fan, she wasn't content with the Abbey Road crossing (near St. John's Wood, zone 2) or 34 Montagu Square, where Ringo Starr lived for a while and then John and Yoko (near Baker Street, zone 1). No, she wanted to see where it all started. On Saturday, we took a train up to Liverpool.

Railroad travel started in England. The steam engine was developed here and quickly put on wheels and rails to increase the efficiency of coal mines. It was only a small step from these early cargo and hauling engines to passenger trains, a business idea that grew phenomenally in the late 19th century but then lost the race against the car. The glory days haven't been recaptured. Trains are slow (but frequent). Ours, averaging 84 miles per hour with hardly a stop, counted as fast. But the ride was comfortable and we got to our destination on time.

A friend in the lab who had done the same journey a few months earlier had warned me: "There isn't much to see in Liverpool. One day is enough." I was left doubtful: What were we gonna do there? I knew about the Tate, and I downloaded a music-themed walking tour in mp3 format. It clocked in at half an hour. I forgot to look up Penny Lane.

Leaving the station took us straight into one of these cheerless pedestrianized shopping streets that house the same stores in all English towns and cities, exchangeable in their drabness. We could have been anywhere. Mathew St., a side street a few blocks down where the Cavern Club hosted the Beatles 292 times, could have been only in Liverpool, but around lunchtime, there wasn't much of an atmosphere, and we missed the John Lennon statue, leaning forlornly against a wall. Out of options, we headed for the waterfront, my eternal hope when everything else fails.

We were saved. The Mersey, a river of inconsequential length but impressive width and tidal might, lapped high against the flood wall. Docks, quays, luffing cranes and passenger terminals used to be here, bustling with activity when Liverpool was the gateway to America. Smoke must have sat heavy in the air and the noise been deafening, but all this was gone. The riverfront is a promenade now.

On our left was the brand new Museum of Liverpool, welcoming visitors though still under construction. A poster on the hoarding surrounding one of the remaining piles of rubble showed a Ford Anglia with the sensual curves of the 60s for which alone I would have wanted to go in, but the sun was shining and we wanted to see what else there was.

A precariously balanced building to our right, its first and second floors jutting out over the murky water of the Mersey, housed an exhibition of previously unreleased Beatles photos available for sale in limited-edition print runs and the ticket agent for the river ferries. We booked the river explorer cruise and sat on a noisily departing ferry fifteen minutes later.

I normally don't do such a thing. I like to explore on my own and detest organized tours. But this one was different. It wasn't a tedious hour-long harbor cruise with too much information and not enough time to look, but essentially a regular ferry service that offered hop-on-hop-off opportunities on the other shore. We had an hour in Seacombe and an hour in Birkenhead with ten-minute ferry rides in between.

The walk along the estuary from Seacombe to the Irish Sea looked nice but was too long for the time we had. We did part of the walk because that was the only thing in town, then caught the next boat to Birkenhead, formerly a hub of shipyards and repair docks and, judging by fine late-Georgian architecture, the prestigious address of factory owners and wealthy merchants. The town had the first urban tram in Europe and the first public-funded park.

The park still exists, but the tram runs only on special occasions to commemorate the past and overall the paint is peeling on a massive scale. Hamilton Square is still elegant, but there are more To Let signs than there are Georgian façades, and there are empty shop fronts galore. There were no people and no business. The town seemed dead, ruined by decades of industrial decline, desperate for the kind of revitalization that has transformed the center of Liverpool but with no real hope for it.

Return to Liverpool

Our ferry ride back showed the Liverpool waterfront in all its redeveloped glory. Old buildings, tycoon baroque as well as industrial utility, have been restored and put to new uses. New buildings, bold and striking, have been added. The sinking sun added sparkling highlights and painted bricks an acrylic red.

The new energy doesn't stop by the water. A few city blocks have been turned into one of the more spectacular outdoor malls I've seen, three levels high with stairs and bridges at all angles, exposed viewpoints and a plaza with a big ice-rink overlooking it all. People were everywhere, all restaurants were packed. Further out along former warehouses, the bustle continued, clubs readying themselves for the Saturday night crowds, coffee shops, bookstores and other shops. It was lively beyond imagination, an area of a good twenty minutes across in constant motion.

This was not what I had expected. London is where the UK's life pulses, economically, socially, culturally. From a London-centric, deliberately ignorant and willfully arrogant perspective, there isn't much worth wasting quality time that could be spent much better within the confines of the tube network. Liverpool proved this approach wrong, if proof was necessary. There's no way round broadening my British horizon a bit in the months to come.

occupation

2011-11-06T23:03:00.005Z

Even though it's been going on for weeks and discussed ad nauseam in all news media, it was only this afternoon that I made my way over to St. Paul's to check out the Occupy London camp set up to the feet of the cathedral. Approaching from St. Paul's tube station, the first thing I noticed were fences around Paternoster Square. Like most of the City of London, nominally a local authority but in fact a medieval old-boys' network that serves to promote the interests of the headquartered companies not the residents, the land is privately owned and alleyways and plazas are concessions, revocable at the snap of a finger, by the landowner to the landless masses. The Paternoster Chop House, deprived of footfall, was clearly not amused and advertised its presence loudly, but found few diners willing to breach the barricades.

When the camp had jumped up, church authorities were quick to denounce it. Protesting greed was deemed irreconcilable with Christian values. Or maybe it was that the income from paying visitors was more important than either. The occupiers interfered with that, and the church, citing daily losses of £22,000, threatened legal action to have them evicted. (You can't just call the police to get rid of squatters in the UK.) With the violence looming, these early days must have been tense, but they were great PR for the occupiers. The church felt the pressure from all sides, not the least from within. High-ranking clerics resigned over the painful conflict between the Bible's teachings and the church's posturing, and suddenly the eviction was off. The occupiers stayed.

They have erected about 100 tents, stacked densely along the northern flank of the cathedral and sloping around towards the forecourt. The first impression is of Glastonbury without the mud. Thick-haired hippies sit strumming beat-up guitars and blowing imposing didgeridoos or stand juggling – the usual protest carnival. One tent proudly referred back to Climate Camp 2010 in Edinburgh and a placard kept the memory of Dale Farm. Clearly, the professional againsters were there.

It was all professionally organized as well. There was a first-aid tent, a library and education tent, half a dozen portaloos that were being noisily pumped empty by a sanitation truck, an info tent, a battery of solar panels futilely pointed towards the grey November sky, a tent advertising meditation at 3, and more recycling bins than you could throw exhausted newspapers at.

A fair bustle surrounded the camp (though it didn't seem to penetrate deep into it). A despondent-looking fellow with bagpipes by his feet wailed into the raised iPad of his video-interviewer. A frail lady in a bright blue khurta with devotional symbols printed all over shuffled around with a tall crucifix in her right hand, exhorting people to follow "Jesus the King of Mercy". Here and there, people were hunched over laptops, but there were vastly more spectators, photographers, journalists and tourists visiting St. Paul's that were caught unawares than there were protesters handing out revolutionary pamphlets or debating exit strategies from the economic crisis.

By the fountain in front of the cathedral was a little stage with a microphone and two big speakers, but while I was there no one took the opportunity to rally or pontificate. The walls of the buildings surrounding the churchyard were plastered with slogans, newspaper clippings, manifestos and calls for further protest. 9th November – Central London, 10th November – Fortnum and Mason. The coffee and sandwich shops resident in these walls were doing good business off the occupation and the attention surrounding it.

In the churchyard, the mood was one or placid routine not energetic protest. There was not much action or perceptible passion, no spirit of fight and no despair from which hope and dreams can rise. There was no sense of high stakes, but it's tough to retain your anger when the owner of the land you're occupying is rather content to let you have it, providing you separate your rubbish and don't compromise the fire engine approach. The bells of St. Paul's, which rang so long and cacophonously that their purpose cannot have been anything but driving the occupiers out or, if that proved elusive, mad, was the only thing I interpreted as official belligerence. The police just stood and watched with the distantly bemused look of British cops.

What was this all about? Occupy Wall Street coined the catchy phrase of the 99% and pointed out the disconnect between the excessively rich and everyone else. This is an issue here as well. The CEOs of the FTSE 100 companies saw their remuneration rise by 49% last years whereas common employees got a raise of 2.5% on average. But other issues feature, often raised by the mad fringe that has come along for the ride. Here are some examples: A picture of Che, mandatory and vacuous in equal parts. Bring the troops back home flyers. The UFO Society of Ireland advertising next to the Liberation of the People movement. Flu is not the problem! The vaccine is. A note, scrawled in raw despair: The System is wrong. Change it.

The problem with all the complaints – and it's easy to mock them – the problem with all the inequities pointed out and all the travesties of contemporary capitalism is that there is no simple and easily implemented solution. There are radical approaches aplenty: Privatize the banks, take money from the rich, turn businesses into worker-owned cooperatives, but none of these slogans could form the basis of a political platform that appeals to the silent majority, which is the only way, in a democratic society, to bring about change.

Maybe the occupiers in their workshops and debates develop visions that will shape the future. I have my doubts, the wackiness-to-sense ratio seems rather high. But at the very least, they've catalyzed discussion on topics that need to be tackled for us to continue living in prosperity. The present system of financial capitalism is quite clearly rotten, but at last this realization has become mainstream. Finding a way forward, even identifying starting points for change that is majority-compatible, will require efforts much beyond camping in a churchyard.

taking up the pen

2011-11-05T22:38:00.004Z

Late in September, I announced my likely retirement from blogging. October has been silent and my site left to wither. In the list that counts the posts, down on the right side, October doesn't feature, which is better than a big fat zero next to it but telling nonetheless. A gap has opened, not just between the last post and the present day but also between my desire to write and reality. This gap has now become a chasm too wide to ignore, and the only way to close it is to fill it with words.

It has been clear to me for a while that I would continue with this, though I'm still not one bit closer to figuring out what it is that I want to write about. There has never been a unifying theme in my writing. Maybe that's for the best. My life can't be put in a neatly labeled box and neither can my attitudes, passions, interests and opinions. Life is colorful, especially in London, and if I let one interest grab me for too long, I'd miss out on the rest.

So to restart the blog – and I was wondering what the topic of the first post would be – I dive my fingers into a small glass jar of characteristic shape that once contained the gooey goodness of Bonne Maman. It now serves to store the pens I keep accumulating, most holding emotional value but some fit to write. The fingers push aside lesser objects and imposters and pick, with great care and delighted anticipation, a slick silver fountain pen, its metal body cool to the touch.

I've owned this fountain pen for a good 15 years, must have bought it right after high school when I was sure I would never again be required to write with one. By that count, in all its pointlessness, it was the ultimate vanity item. By another count, in monetary terms, it quite obviously wasn't. The pen is no Cross or Montblanc. I've gone though moments of intense desire for such pieces of high luxury but I've never caved in.

The pen is a no-name from a budget store, the kind of place I used to frequent fresh out of high school, long on wants and short on cash. For its cheapness and namelessness, the pen has lived up fabulously. Whenever I rescue it after prolonged periods of deathlike inactivity – and its life so far has been a seemingly interminable train of periods of inactivity – it is ready to go. I uncap it, wipe it clean, insert a fresh ink cartridge and moisten the nib, and it starts writing just as it did when I had just bought it.

When I was in middle school, in leaner times than now, all of us wrote with fountain pens. Such were the rules, plus there weren't many ballpoint pens around. Our people-owned companies, under the rigors of five-year plans, didn't have room for frivolous activities such as giving away biros. Who would have manufactured them in the first place? China didn't exist back then.

In conditions of scarcity, the oddest objects can acquire prestige and desirability. At some point in school, someone discovered the magic of capitalist ink cartridges. Our home-grown ink, produced in the Barock factory in the next town up the river and purchased by our moms at the local stationer's at the beginning of each school year, came in cartridges plugged with a little plastic bung. Those made on the bright side of the Wall, available only to those whose grandparents could travel West, were capped with a little glass bead that could be recovered after use, liberated from the cartridge and dropped into the hollow interior of the pen where it would roll around during use with a characteristic sound.

This rattle, which could be much amplified by vigorous shaking, set the cool apart from the lame. The cool kids had other defining marks: blue fingertips, blue spots on their lips and possible blue teeth. To extract the glass bead, the empty cartridge had to be opened first, a task that was most easily accomplished by biting off the plastic disk that sealed the other end. The cartridge then had to be washed to get the bead out, spilling blue all over. One might have looked dyspraxic, but with a pen that clattered one could smugly look down on those poor and desperate fellows who wrote in silence.

These days my pen is silent all too often. While I don't need it to make any sounds – I don't recover glass beads anymore – I would like it to make metaphorical noise, liberating the power of ideas and words and turning empty space into sense. The first step, as always, is to get going, and I've done that now. The question of why I blog hasn't been directly addressed but it's contained in this rambling discourse anyway.

Blogging takes time, demands creativity and works my brain. The reward, and the reason why I'll keep doing it, is that I like the results, sometimes right away but more often, as with a fine wine, after a suitable while. In moments of quiet reflection, or when I'm tired, down or empty, I pick a random month and frequently surprise myself with the cool things that have happened and the delightful ways they are described. Some posts are drab and inconsequential, but others are memory and enjoyment rolled into one. That's how I see it, anyway. And if it's good enough for me, it's perfect for this blog.

hesitant reclaim

2011-09-29T00:17:00.004+01:00

Yesterday I said that I have to reclaim the blog or close it for good. This being a product of my vanity, what I expected from my dear readers was an outcry of shocked indignation. "How can you even think about it?" was the only possible response. Instead, what I got was the valid question of whether I was going to write fiction when I stop blogging, as if that were a foregone conclusion. I'm not going to answer that question. I can't – I simply don't know whether I've got fiction in me.

Taking one step back, I'm not sure yet that the blog needs to go. It's certainly of no use to me in its current form. It doesn't help me develop my writing skills and thus defies its purpose. But instead of shutting it down, I think I can claim it back.

When I said yesterday that the blog was a vanity project, I was right in my choice of words but not in my understanding of the situation. There can be no doubt that I write about myself, but I pick my stories with my readership in mind. Sometimes I choose words, phrases, details or mementoes specifically for one reader or another. To some extent, I'm writing for you who are following faithfully.

What I should be doing instead is taking vanity to the next level, by writing for myself as if no audience existed, taking the blog back to its original idea as a vehicle for my learning by doing. The question is whether I should start a new, anonymous blog to avoid the temptation of falling back into the comfort of talking about myself. But maybe, if I write only for myself, the readership will quickly lose interest and dwindle, and there wouldn't be a difference. I might just try that and see where it takes me.

failure to write

2011-09-28T02:27:00.003+01:00

The two types of writing I love most are short stories and travel writing. Travel writing I've done quite a bit of, and I'm rather happy with some of the results. If I had got a lucky break here (when I contacted the Guardian before going to Syria) or there (when I submitted the walk through Hama to a travel writing competition), I might be doing much more of it – and maybe getting something more tangible out of it than the pleasure of remembering good times and sharing them with friends.

On the other hand, my foray into short story writing has been utterly pathetic. When I started attending a semester-long creative writing course last year, I hoped it would open my mind to another world and set me on the path to fictional glory – or at least ability. But I was pretty much lost from the first moment, out of my depth, empty of making up anything. I started two stories whose fragmentary beginnings received a warm response during group critique, but I've been utterly incapable of taking them anywhere.

Tonight, when I should have been sleeping, I pondered the state of the world and a little chess puzzle and suddenly realized with absolute clarity why it is that I suck at fiction writing. My approach is flawed and the blog has to do with it.

This blog was started as a writing exercise. I believe that one's writing can be dramatically improved by dogged persistence. The blog was supposed to be self-inflicted pressure to learn by doing simply by having the feeble nagging of an empty sheet replaced with the reproachful glow of the date of the last post. One week and no activity? How is this a blog when there's nothing happening?

No matter the weak fictionalization – the obscuring of details, the deformation of chronology, the invention of incidents to drive a story, and the avoidance of names – the blog is me. It chronicles, with some artistic license, chosen aspects of my life. It is not entirely autobiographical, but it couldn't be much further from fiction.

What I realized tonight is that the difference between blogging and fiction is in the narrator. In fictionalized blogging, the writer imagines himself as the narrator, even if the story is told in the third person. In proper fiction, the writer imagines himself in the shoes of the narrator, even with a first person narrator. It's what would I do versus what would the character do. It's obvious which approach drives a story forward.

Until tonight, I was fully subscribed to the dictum that all fiction is autobiographical. It is true that there are often strong aspects of the author's biography in fictional writing, probably most of the time. But that doesn't necessarily make the writing autobiographical. A good writer fills the characters of a story with elements of his biography because that's what he knows best, but he is not the character.

In my blog, I'm always in character. I realize that this fictionalization thing has been nothing but a lame excuse. It lets me continue with a blog that does nothing for my fiction writing ambitions, an effort that, if anything, is detrimental to them by sucking my energies into a black hole of pointlessness.

To generate fiction, a writer has to leave the characters he has created. He has to let go of them lest they become a collection of surprisingly dull alter egos. The writer must stop imagining realities alternative to his own and start simply imagining, letting invented but convincing characters drive the story.

This blog's original purpose was to get me started as a writer, to get me comfortable with language, ideas and expression. It has done that, but I have long hit a wall. I'm not making any progress anymore. My blog has degenerated into little more than a vanity project, my fifteen minutes of fame twice a week. Even to myself, is just like any other blog.

Is it time to reclaim the blog – or abandon it for good?

getting curiouser

2011-09-25T20:16:00.004+01:00

I wish I had something else to talk about, and the other day I thought the apartment/landlord drama had come to end, but it keeps escalating, although for me it has long reached a level where I'm not comfortable following.

Yesterday, I found two letters in my mailbox. The first was from my landlord. It was a document I had requested nearly six months ago, though I made my case again on the phone on Wednesday. The letter states, categorically, that "the Landlord, any of the Landlord's employees or any of the landlords [sic] agents will not enter the property without 24 hours' notice". It's pathetic that this would need to be put in writing, but I was happy. The beautifully placed apostrophe on the "24 hours" was an added bonus and made me generously look over the one that was missing on the third "landlord".

I got down to signing the new tenancy agreement that has been lying around and gathering dust ever since it was sent to me three weeks ago. But there was the other letter. I opened the second envelope and retrieved a color photograph of my building, the yellow of the downstairs shop's sign eye-wateringly bright.

Besides the photograph was a detailed description of the building, its tenants and the lease terms (total current rents just a bit more than I earn before taxes and deductions), there was a second sheet that invited me to bid on the property, being the "occupational tenant" and all. My building is coming up for auction.

I was getting sufficiently frazzled at this point, I have to admit. A property auction usually means economic distress. Has the landlord not been paying the mortgage? Is a bank now trying to minimize the damage by extracting from the heap what it can? Is this a repossession and what does it mean for me as a tenant? The letter reassures me that "this should not affect your current tenancy agreements", but how naive do you have to be to believe a real estate agent? And note the strategic placement of "should". Could I be out of the flat the day after the auction?

I will have to call the landlord on Monday but I'm not very optimistic about learning much. After all, Kingstar UK didn't consider it necessary to tell me that the auction was coming up in the first place. They didn't even tell me what the purpose of last Monday's inspection was. And why do I have to sign a new lease? The sales sheet mentions my old rent.

It also mentions that "viewings are by appointment only". With the landlord I had agreed to put the original lock back into the door as soon as they sent me assurances that they wouldn't enter without notice. This has happened, but was it just a ruse? Who will the appointments be with? I don't think I'm gonna change the lock back quite yet.

What the sales sheet doesn't mention is the reserve price of the property. It's not that I'd be interested. I'm happy to rent and, under normal circumstances, let others deal with the aggravations of owning property. Plus, the moment I owned my flat, I would have to take care of it and bring it up to my standards. We're talking new kitchen and new windows at the very least. Not something I want to deal with.

In addition, prices in London have never let up in their Ponzi-like rise, and while I could probably afford my flat with a bit of scrimping added to the usual parsimoniousness, especially if on offer at an auction, there's no way I've got the bucks (or, rather, quid) for an entire building. Still, I wanted to know what the guide price was and surfed over to the property consultancy's website.

I had to scroll down to the second page; there were dozens of lots in the raffle, promising returns on investment of anywhere between 0.4 and 40% per year. One of the few lots that didn't display an expected return was my building. There was no guide price. The lot had been withdrawn. How curious, I was thinking. Why go through all the trouble?

It got even curiouser. When I came back from a 15-mile run this afternoon, more devastated than after the London Marathon (but then I haven't run in two months), I discovered a large plywood sign protruding from between two of my living-room windows. "Auction - Freehold investment", it says. What's going on?

motivation

2011-09-23T22:39:00.004+01:00

Monday morning, I was kicked out of bed by Levent, the same dude that had already tried to get into my flat the Friday before. On Monday, he was there with a wingman to do an inspection – or so he said. I didn't know and I had no way of finding out. My landlord hadn't notified me.

Stupid as I was, I let Levent's wingman in. Friends, don't do this at home! Don't let anyone in just because that person knows his way around. Crime is up in London, and burglary especially so. Levent and his wingman could have just as well been a couple of burglars on a reconnaissance mission. I wouldn't know – my landlord never told me someone would come by.

Sometimes I think my landlord is willfully aggressive and that he tries to bully me as if I were a clueless immigrant with no recourse besides a tearful letter to his mum. Sometimes I think they're just clueless immigrants themselves. But when I call the office, the person I talk to is invariably kind and helpful, and immediately connects me to whoever I want to talk to, and things are usually sorted out quickly – more or less.

So it happened this Wednesday when I called Kingstar UK and inquired about their attitude towards trespassing and "quiet possession" and concepts like that. I don't want to mince words; the argument was heated. My contact on the other end of the line raised her voice, and so did I. It wasn't in vain. In the end we agreed that I would sign another lease, at the conditions they set but only once they've sent me a letter renouncing in writing further attempts to trespass on the property I'm renting. I'm still waiting.

Friday night we went for drinks. The bosses had got a grant funded and reckoned the lab deserved a cheer. What could be better than a pint of Broadside or a double Black Bush in the campus pub? I was late to get to the gathering but not the last to arrive. A few pints into the socializing, the bosses took off. Some students did so too, but postdocs arrived to fill the gap.

The group had thinned down, but the discussion became lively and potentially essential. How do you secure the next job? I maintained that qualifications didn't matter. At our level, we're all good. What sets the good apart from the rock stars is the motivation. If you convincingly show that you want the job, you will get it.

I've written plenty of cover letters and I've been invited to enough interviews to not have off days for vacations since Easter. Clearly I'm doing something right. But maybe I'm doing something wrong as well. I haven't got a job lined up, after all. Maybe I shouldn't focus all my energies on my flat.

rogue trader

2011-09-16T20:21:00.004+01:00

This morning on my way out, I was greeted by a dude by the building's front door. He was inside, obviously had a key, and looked as if he had business to do. I wished him a good morning and proceeded to make my way through the door, but his question held me back. "Are you living in flat 1?" he asked me.

Indeed I do and I knew what was about to unfold – yet another skirmish in the ongoing battle between the landlord and me. I remind you that my landlord, Kingstar UK, thinks not only that trespassing is legal but also that I should leave my doors unlocked for them when I'm out. I don't agree and I'm ready to fight my case, though verbally it feels much like trying to convince the Pope that God doesn't exist. Facts don't cut it, and I'm not good at screaming sense.

With either party failing to make headway, we're engaged in a standoff that I consider futile for them and acceptable for me. After all, since changing the locks I don't care anymore what their attitude towards trespassing is. They, in turn, have learned to send letters advising me of the presence of an electrician or gas man a few days in the future. That's not the same as asking me for permission – which they are legally bound to do – but it's good enough for me.

Is it also good enough for them? I was wondering that when I opened a big envelope ten days ago that contained a new lease, ready for me to sign. The accompanying letter began thus: "As you are probably aware, your tenancy is due for renewal from 19 September 2011."

As it happened, I wasn't aware of this. What I was aware of is that I signed a six-month lease when I moved in. When that expired, it automatically converted into a periodic tenancy agreement, on unchanged terms and conditions. My tenancy agreement doesn't need renewal. It continues until either of the parties bails out.

I can understand that the landlords wants more money – which is the one change I noticed in the lease compared to the old one. The proposed increase is within my means and within the rental value of the flat. In my limited understanding, rent increases in a periodic tenancy agreement need the agreement of both sides. As I do agree - paying a bit more beats finding another flat - I could just go ahead and sign the damn thing. But I'm on my way out of London, off to greener pastures (though details haven't been sorted out yet), and I'd prefer to stay on periodic tenancy.

Should I just sign the thing anyway and take a gamble? Should I call the agency and remind them of the situation - and encounter irremediable delusion? Should I ignore the new lease and risk being evicted, with a notice period of two months? These thoughts were still going around in my head when I started arguing with the gentleman by my door.

He pointed out that, for emergencies, the landlords needs access to the flat but couldn't quite get my point that an electrical inspection is not an emergency and must be scheduled in advance. (Their problems at scheduling were emphasized by the fact that the person actually doing the inspection - my guy was just an agent - had gone AWOL.) We kept arguing about the locks and privacy and got nowhere. The dude insisted my flat should be open to him. "It's in the contract", he said at some point and when I didn't believe him, he showed me. It was there, black on white. Baffled, I went to work.

Tonight, I couldn't wait to check my lease. The one I was asked to sign did indeed state that the tenant shall "Permit the Landlord or the Landlord's employees or agents to enter the Premises at all reasonable times with or without notice [...]" It could be argued that there are no "reasonable times" to enter my flat without notifying me, but that's beside the point. The point is that my current lease doesn't include the "without" part. There's no way I'm gonna sign the new one.

easy journey

2011-09-13T23:02:00.007+01:00

It happened outside Gatwick; I had returned from yet another potentially career-defining trip. The EasyBus to London was almost ready to depart. Three potential customers were standing on the sidewalk next to the orange van, unsure about how to proceed. Wagging the glowing screens of cell phones at each other, the hoped to resolved the situation. In vain. They had flown in on Virgin and booked in expectation of the usual delay but arrived on time. Now they were early, all of a sudden.

The driver, with his raspy laugh and bushy grey hair, jovially told them he was probably too full to take them though only a handful of seats were taken. He offered the hop over to the South Terminal but warned that he might have to leave them there. "Make it easy on yourself", he said, taking his seat behind the wheel. "I have to go. Sorry." And with another laugh he put the foot down.

EasyBus drivers are usually in their early thirties, hail from less fortunate parts of the world, have an air of perpetual bafflement about them, and pilot the orange Mercedes as if it were a cruise missile locked on target, with scant regard for the machine and none at all for speed limits. There are between two and three journeys an hour to Gatwick and four to Stansted, in all weather and traffic conditions, and the vans always arrive safely. That they don't regularly explode in fatal crashes is a total mystery to me.

Tonight's driver was different, an elderly gentleman with a faint American accent. Instead of the regular drivers' high-visibility vests he wore a white shirt with a logo as discreet as an orange logo can be. I almost didn't notice him as a driver. When I sat down it occurred to me that he might be a manager in disguise, so removed was he from the usual ragtag bunch. Maybe he was the CEO doing reconnaissance at the front lines, inspecting the troops to see how the new corporate strategy plays out in the real world. He certainly looked disheveled enough to be in disguise but appeared overall too comfortable with the job for it to be assumed for the night only.

The wild Rastafarian on the way out yesterday morning certainly didn't pretend anything. He took his place behind the wheel and bellowed a stern "No eating or drinking on the bus, please" by way of greeting - more than I normally get but still not exactly welcoming - and proceeded to pound the poor van as if he considered punishing the vehicle one of the perks of the job. We made it to the North Terminal in 58 minutes, a new record for me.

My trip was on Air Berlin, with that airline for the first time in half a dozen years. As before, I regretted that it didn't fly to more destinations on my radar. Air Berlin is a curious hybrid, conceived as a budget airline with the mission to blow Lufthansa out of the comfortable water of a near-monopoly. Maybe the task was too easy, because the newcomer never tried too hard to be budget. The snacks aboard were always free, the seats selectable in advance, and checking luggage never cost. And with everyone cutting costs to survive the recession, they've gone the opposite way. This time, everyone got a chocolate heart upon disembarking and there were more free newspapers than at Lufthansa, stacks piled higher than at your newsagent. There were also magazines. When was the last time you got a free Economist on board?

Why you would want to read an Economist in these volatile times is a different question. The Greek basket case is fraying so badly that no one realizes the 30% discount on stocks are a good deal. (Have you noticed that investors get purchasing urges mostly when things are expensive?) I opened the magazine from the back, avoiding the trauma of economic and current affairs news. A book review caught my eye, David Bellos ruminating on the art of translation and some of the oddities of languages, certainly something I'd like to read.

The review alone made some curious connections, mentioning for example the fact that the French language has two words for the word word, if you get what I'm saying. In my understanding, mot is grammatical while parole is more metaphorical. You can give someone the parole, for example, but not the mot. Hungarian was also mentioned, a language that does one better than German where you have compound words that can stretch to two dozen letters. (Everyone should have a Haftpflichtversicherung, for example.) But German compounds are always words in meaning. Hungarian compounds can be more complex.

I was reminded of a chapter in the book I'm currently reading, On the Road to Babadag, where the Polish author visits a place in Hungary called Sátoraljaújhely, which apparently literally means "a tent pitched in a new place". I wouldn't know, I don't speak any Hungarian, but I do remember the flashy új! on products (not tents but novelties) in Hungarian supermarkets, which is consistent with the translation.

As the EasyBus navigated the airport roads, I fell into a deep reverie about traveling the forgotten east of Europe, a region of obscure languages, cultures and customs, a region to take pictures and collect stories, a region I have yet to see. I've never made it beyond Romania in any direction. Maybe next year will give me the chance at least.

In less than five minutes we got to the South Terminal. More travelers were waiting than were already on the bus and it took a while to check and sell tickets. Luggage needed to be stowed and passengers sorted out, but none of this took much time and soon we were on our way. Four seats remained unoccupied.

at the races

2011-09-03T23:39:00.006+01:00

In some circles, the kind of circles that have scones with tea and a butler to serve them (and if they don't have the butler, they have at least the feeling of entitlement to one), races doesn't need a qualifier. It inevitably involves horses. Races take place at Aintree, Ascot or Epsom Downs and spectators come to see and be seen. There's always a big hat day at Ascot. These are not my circles, and I've never seen horses race.

What I've seen race are dogs. They are lower-key entertainment, with simpler tracks, smaller audiences and no pretentiousness in the stands. That doesn't mean they deserve derision or contempt. Greyhounds are, I learned watching an old but particularly hilarious rerun of Top Gear on the msn video player tonight, the second fastest accelerating animals, zero to 45 mph in not much more than one explosive second.

I had seen dogs race for the first time in the summer of 2008, at Walthamstow Stadium in the northeast of London. It was a memorable night but for a sad reason. That night, the stadium was opening its doors for the last time before being handed over to a developer with plans to tear it down. The partying masses around the track and the lines at the bars longer than the intervals between the races disclaimed dog racing as a dying pastime. But the owners pointed out rather bitterly that if the crowds hadn't just come for closing night but regularly, they would have never had to sell.

Three years ago, the largest and arguably most beautiful greyhound stadium closed for good, and there was nothing to fill the gap. Or so I thought. But when my mom came to visit and spoke with wild excitement about her day at the races many years ago, I fired up my favorite search engine and discovered another dog track not too far from home. Wimbledon stadium sits in an industrial site and, surrounded by car dealerships and workshops, isn't a pretty sight, but it's got dogs running two nights a week.

Last night, we were among those watching. We were late but easily found a good place to watch, near the traps and in plain view of the trackside bookmakers. Betting is essential for the enjoyment of racing because, really, how would you get excited about half a dozen interchangeable mutts completing a sandy loop in half a minute if your money weren't on one of them? The bets make people scream numbers, colors or names as the dogs flash by and then erupt in wild cheers if their dog has won. In the fourteen minutes until the next race starts, new bets are made, fresh beer is bought and chatter fills the air. As the night progresses, the crowd gets louder and the races become jollier, but the dogs couldn't care less.

I didn't care much either, to be honest. It had been a long week and I was exhausted. The intervals between races felt a bit too long. At one point I explored the facilities and made it to the food counter: venue fast food, overpriced and bad. Offering hotdogs was bad taste, I thought. When I got back to the track, the next race was about to begin. The stands were sticky with beer.

It was race 12 out of 13, and people were slowly drifting out. We moved one level up. The grandstand was littered with plastic cups, shreds of paper, random rubbish. In the center of the track, a ceremony was held. Some dog graciously accepted a trophy, but it was far away and hard to see. No one seemed to pay much attention. Night had long fallen. For dog racing, already a niche industry, the future doesn't look bright.

Wow, that was a weird post. So negative towards the end, though the evening was actually quite funny: the racing dogs are hilarious, as are the people watching. And what is it with the first paragraph that's so much like a first paragraph I wrote last year? Lack of creativity, or what?

eat animals

2011-08-25T23:53:00.005+01:00

It's been a while since I philosophized about eating meat in an increasingly crowded and affluent world. My own take at being a facultative vegetarian kept me mostly meat-free through the first half of 2010. Every now and then I had a little treat, a good way of eating meat, I thought – and very tasty. As the months passed, though, I fell a bit from the veggie gospel. During lab meeting I pick the roast beef sandwiches, I buy prosciutto di Parma from time to time and sometimes, if I need a condensed dose of animal flavor, a saucisson sec. I had chicken gizzards in Jordan and Rojões à moda do Minho in Porto (both surprisingly tasty). But my basic position hasn't changed.

Meat tastes good and there is nothing inherently wrong with eating meat. The evolution of the big brain that distinguishes us from animals would have been impossible without a meat-based diet. It is for this reason alone that I refuse to condemn, whatever happens to the state of the world, the practice of eating meat. It has done us good. It has pulled out from the jungle and put us in nice warm flats. That said, evolution provides no compelling reason to continue the uninhibited consumption of meat. In contrast, it should serve as a reminder of literally leaner times. Even at the cusp of becoming humans, our ancestral apes consumed only a fraction of the meat we stuff into our faces today.

My favorite restaurant – aside any that sits adjacent to and in perfect harmony with a well-run farm – would be Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. In case you've forgotten your Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, at Milliways the cow comes to your table, introducing itself most friendly: "I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body?" Arthur Dent, the somewhat benighted but quite likeable terrestrial, is aghast and goes for a salad. I wouldn't share his compunction and instead go with Zaphod Beeblebrox who orders steak.

Comedy as aside, the question of what animals want is a good one. Peter Singer, the godfather of animal liberation, is very clear. An animal wants to live. But how can he be sure? An animal might have reflexes to live, but a will to live? That's asking too much, in my opinion. I think an animal wants to be our meal. That's its greatest satisfaction. Try to argue me on that! You might complain that I am taking the argument ad absurdum. But I content that Peter Singer's original position is already absurd.

Do animals have moral rights? Absolutely, but they are not inherent in their existence. These rights are drawn up and granted by us humans and they matter to humans only. No animal cares about animal rights (just ask the lion feeding on a gazelle). Humans came up with the concept of animals rights, which hinges on us being human and them animals. This means domestic animals must be sheltered, fed and treated with respect and compassion. But it also means livestock will be slaughtered and eaten – again with respect and compassion. Animals must be treated humanely – but not humanly.

In talks and articles I've been introduced to the speciesism, which argues that members of different species have different inherent values or rights. Animal rights activists frequently vilify speciesism with the help of an analogy: Just as discrimination on the base of race was acceptable fifty years ago, discrimination on the basis of species is acceptable now. And just as racism is being wiped out, speciesism will be wiped out sooner or later. But if you deny speciesism, you deny that there are differences between species. You might say that one should treat a sick house cat as one would treat a sick child. Or, if you're a cold-hearted bastard, you might equate the murder of kids on an island in Norway with the slaughter of chickens and cattle. In either case you'd be wrong because animals are not human.

Here's a thought experiment: At a time when slavery was the norm, you have a pen of fifty slaves. Over the course of the next two months, you proceed to kill one slave every morning. How long do you think it will take until the slaves riot, thus proving to even the most bestial masters that they are human? But do the same with cattle or pigs. Will they even notice that their numbers shrink? Will they care? Will the start an animal farm? I don't think so, and that's why the argument against speciesism is specious.

A dog doesn't dream of being a TV presenter, a frog doesn't want to learn Greek and study the ancient world, and a cow doesn't desire chatting up the cute horse at the other end of the barn. An animal doesn't have plans for the future. And thus, by making the present as comfortable as possible for the animals, we're paying them the ultimate respect. If we kill them tomorrow, today the animals don't care.

An entirely different line of argument against eating meat concerns the carbon footprint of a steak, the health consequences of meat consumption, the waste generated in hog farms, and the suffering of cattle in feedlots. Non of this is much of an issue with responsibly-sourced meat eaten on rare occasions. And so I will continue to be a flexitarian and enjoy every bit of meat that I eat.

tea

2011-08-24T19:52:00.003+01:00

The last few nights I had tea with dinner, and I'm not talking about iced tea. Iced tea is good when it's hot. When the sun burns through the windows and heats up my living room like a greenhouse, it's time to put the kettle on, boil a liter of water and steep a few bags of cheap tea. Then I squeeze half a lemon and pour the juice into a carafe filled to the brim with ice cubes. The hot tea is then poured over the ice. If the ratio is right, only cubelets remain when the liquid has been transferred. I add a bit of sugar, stir vigorously and have the perfect drink for a hot summer night in.

Tonight is not a hot night, though it's still summer, very much so according to the calendar. But if anything can be said about this summer, it's that it's been a stereotypically British experience, and very consistently so. The sun showed for the last time late in June. Since then, it's been gray, wet and cold. I've been trying to keep up appearances and go to work in shorts without fail, but this morning I donned a jacket because it was freezing and didn't look as if it would improve. On Radio 4, the weather forecaster chirpily offered a warm day, 19 degrees. For me, it's not summer until the mercury hits 25, and when I was still cycling I wouldn't abandon long-sleeve jerseys until that mark was reached.

When it was time to leave work I was even happier about the jacket than I had been in the morning. It was pouring as if God had sent another flood. Puddles sat on sidewalks and the sewers overflowed into the Thames. And though I took the bus for all but a brief connecting walk, I arrived home wet and cold. It wasn't anywhere near the optimistic 19 degrees promised this morning. This is when I put the kettle on and made a cup of hot tea.

Tea and dinner are words that go together in the English language but not in ways you would assume. They're not a collocation, and the British don't habitually have tea with dinner. But some British have tea instead of dinner or, to put it less ambiguously, they call dinner tea.

British society, outside the cosmopolitan and linguistically challenged bubble of London, remains surprisingly class-aware, even functionally stratified. An English born-and-bred knows what defines the classes and, at least subconsciously, can assign class to a person by the way of speaking. Tea is such a word; it is distinctly working-class when it means dinner (*).

Coming from an upper-class mouth, it means something entirely different. Tea is taken a bit earlier during the day, served in the Ritz and other upscale hotels or at home by the butler. The occasion is often called afternoon tea, though not by members of the upper class themselves. They see no need for qualifiers. Tea says it all. Curiously though, afternoon tea is not really about the tea. It's a light bridging meal between lunch and super and features tea, but the tea is not always good.

It's a great paradox that while the British are among the world's most insatiable tea drinkers, they frequently consume the worst tea, prepared from heavy bags that instantly turn a cup of boiling water turbid and unpalatable unless cut with milk.

I had good tea, but anything would have done. It was about warming up and coming back to my senses. The tea did its magic on me but couldn't deal with the situation at large. It's cold outside and rainy, the recession has almost healed its wounds and is getting ready to strike once more, the stock market has tanked yet again, and science isn't what it's supposed to be.

Manuscripts carrying the promise of boosting my career are being returned with reviewers' comments that belie a marginal understanding of the subject matter. Our advances are being trivialized and our approaches mocked. The work of many years is rotting in limbo, and I'm wondering if now's the time to jump ship. But the one interview I had outside academia didn't exactly fill me with excitement and anticipation.

If this were less of a blog and more of a collection of stories – it is both, of course – I would have written it in the third person. At this point of a dead-end I could have elegantly tied it up by saying that he took a last, tepid swig and put down his mug. He stared into the distance, piercing the rain clouds, imagining putting it all behind. Thoughts of a bonfire of wasted opportunity making space for new, exciting things to come burned in his mind. But wouldn't that be rather defeatist and, worse, overly impulsive? In the spirit of the English – mustn't grumble – he went to the kitchen to put the kettle on again.

(*) This is something I remember learning from the Kate Fox's brilliant anthropological study of the home team Watching the English. Wikipedia doesn't agree and makes a north-south distinction between the two meals called tea. Either way, the beverage called tea is usually crap.

aftermath

2011-08-20T22:45:00.007+01:00

I sat in the Korova Milk Bar this afternoon, sipping on a summer special, sweet but refreshing. Horrorschau was blaring from the speakers, Campino at his best. It was a bit surreal. The newspaper in front of me went on about the riots, but outside, droogs weren't roaming the streets anymore, ready to trade the menacing bricks and sticks in their hands for wide-screen TVs and shiny sneakers. The center of Clapham was nearly back to normal. It would be any old afternoon in a popular neighborhood, were it not for the charred shell of the burned-out Party Super Store that fell victim to the rioting mob.

The Waterstone's nearby looked as it did last month. It hasn't changed a bit. It was a bit disconcerting, in fact, to see the shop in all its glory in the middle of the riots, standing impregnable like a fortress though with its doors open, when around it the high street was burning. But the looters, the lice, the rotten scum couldn't care less about books. They knew exactly what they wanted. And so the riots were not primarily about destruction, and they were certainly not about grabbing essentials. What drove the rioters was consumerism. They went out to pick up vanity items, things to impress the neighbors with, or their peers. What we saw was capitalism in action but at the same time a perversion of capitalism. The rioters might have thought they were using the system against itself, but in reality they used it against themselves.

To residents, bystanders, the police and those on TV, it was just plain frightening. Nights of lawlessness, of chaos and anarchy were sustained by the compounded energy of unorganized crowds delirious with power and violence. As darkness fell, any hint of civilization evaporated. Granny didn't dare walk her poodle anymore, cautious people stayed inside, and off-licenses shuttered their windows, even when they all they were facing was perceived danger. But by Monday, fear had grabbed London.

By Tuesday, the wild energy was gone, as suddenly as it had burned up. I doubt that police or televised speeches had anything to do with it. It had simply been enough. The madness had fizzled out. London is not Karachi; even the wildest vandals saw that this couldn't go on. The devastated high streets, destroyed properties and ruined lives of small shopkeepers made that clear. It was their own front yard that the rioters had pissed on. But instead of making them clean up the mess and learn something in the process, society and the judicial system decided to mete out draconian sentences with scant consideration of the circumstances. Authorities seemed intent on emphasizing their victory by coming down hard on the other side. Thousands were detained and hastily brought before judges who almost instantaneous sentenced them – as harshly as possible, by popular will. It was time to set examples, to teach lessons.

When Boris, the circus clown masquerading for mayor of London, reluctantly came back from his vacation in Canada, he suggested that defendants found guilty be put to work in community payback schemes. I was shocked that something as obvious as this wouldn't be self-evident. It should be blatantly obviously that the only effective punishment for rioting kids can be community work, blistering hours of clearing rubbish, painting shop fronts, restocking shelves, trimming hedges, and cleaning parks. The kids might even pick up skills in the process.

What has happened instead are gung-ho courts sentencing a kid with no relevant previous convictions (whatever that means) who pleaded guilty of taking a £3.50 case of water from a Lidl to six months in prison. Another guy who pleaded guilty to having a looted flat-screen television in his car but had no previous convictions for offenses of dishonesty (again, this sounds he had some sort of a record, but the report doesn't elaborate) was jailed for 18 months. To me, this sounds vindictive and vengeful rather than just.

It gets worse. Two kids in Northwich Town and Warrington set up Facebook pages to stoke unrest and incite riots in their sleepy towns. One woke up the next morning, regretted his action and deleted the page. In either case, no one showed for the scheduled rioting. One week later, both kids have been sentenced for four years in prison. Four years for inciting riots that never took place!

One has to wonder where the proportionality is, especially considering that the dude who inflamed, before Parliament, a war that did take place and cost the lives of thousands is not only still free but also gives lectures on his experience for five-figure fees. The cohesion of society is certainly not served by such egregious double standards. Good thing that the rioting kids for the most part are not the kind to contemplate these issues. (They are content to stick their smelly feet into new trainers and collapse comatose in front of big TVs, numbing their brains on the X Factor and Big Brother.) Otherwise they might also wonder how stashing a looted TV in your car deserves the same prison term as fraudulently claiming £20,000 pounds in expenses, as David Chaytor, MP, did.

You might argue that rioting and looting are offenses on a different scale than bending the rules for expense reimbursement. You might say that riots cannot be dealt with harshly enough because their mere possibility threatens society at its core. But then you might also want to consider that mendacious and criminal members of parliament bring democracy into disrepute, something no less evil in a democratic society.

I hope I didn't go too far off track. I'm not excusing or condoning the horrors that happened. The rioters must be dealt with, there is no question. They must be punished, and punishments must be severe. But they must also be constructive, otherwise you're sending the wrong message. Some of the run-down estates probably deserve an injection of unexpected opportunities as much as the iron fist of the law.

In the milk bar, by the window, I slurped up my drink and leaved over to the next page in the Guardian. That was it for politics and national affairs. Culture and Arts was next, but I wasn't in the mood. I was happy listening to the Hosen for a little longer, then wrapped up my stuff and walked back to the train station, side-stepping the odd bit of broken glass and passing a few ply-boarded windows. The sun was out; it was a beautiful day.

the box

2011-08-17T23:13:00.003+01:00

I stepped into the tube station with a heavy box in my hands, carrying it awkwardly in front of me like a precious treasure, one eye on the way ahead and one on the box. A bulky gentleman of placid complexion turned his heads towards me slowly and gaped for a second. This was more than the kids at the bus stop had done. Those lads, not old enough even – and this is a reference these days – to have been involved in the rioting last week, didn't move their heads as I moved by. They stared straight ahead at the lawn of the council estate where a football game between an inept dad and his uncoordinated sons wasn't going anywhere. There hadn't been a bus in a while but they were more bored than anxious to get away.

I was anxious too. The train was a few minutes off when I stepped into the tube station and the gentle giant astonished me with his question. "Is this a heart?" he asked. I held the box up questioningly, tilted me head and brought an ear to its side. "Is it still beating?" I asked back, trying to look worried. "I thought the guy was dead." The man's face fell, his mouth opened but no words came out. I climbed the stairs to the platform, the box tugging heavily on my carefree gait. I sat down on the wooden bench and studied the box.

It was white and quite obviously Styrofoam. The edges and corners were rounded to emphasize its innocuousness. Each side was about a foot long. It was covered all over with Life Technologies stickers and a paper trail of shipping labels. Before leaving the institute where I had picked up the box I had surveyed it for Toxic or Radioactive labels that might spook my fellow passengers or even get me arrested by transport police. I had no desire to feature in the kind of story that's used to impress and educate rookies.

Long ago, a box outwardly very similar to mine but boldly labeled HIV and containing mysterious samples in clear plastic trays was discarded at Long Island airport by overworked researchers returning from a few days of sleepless experimentation at a national facility. The researchers, who could have been colleagues, were detained two hours later at O'Hare airport and only released after fierce and protracted negotiations when their boss – who would be my boss a few years down the road – offered to fly to Long Island and ingest the discarded samples to prove their benignness.

Much less long ago, another researcher who is a colleague got ready to board the train to Paris when he noticed that the shipping Dewar containing his samples leaked steam. He had forgotten to pour off the excess liquid nitrogen after cooling the interior. For lack of a better alternative, he poured it in the gutter on the quiet side of St. Pancras station, creating a cloud of vapor so thick that he didn't even see the cops coming for him. He learned the hard way that after the terror attacks on London's buses and the tube in 2006, the British don't take suspicious activity around their transport infrastructure lightly.

I knew that my box posed no danger to anyone, but for a second time I made sure that it couldn't possibly appear dangerous to anyone else either. For all I could see, it was just a box, featureless for the most part, but as the platform filled, I noticed more startled looks and furtive glances than public transport in London normally provides. I was waiting at a station so far out of the way that the pocket tube maps for grabs by the stairs showed a picture that had gone out of fashion quite a while ago. October 2010, it said on the cover, and Tottenham Court Road was still shown as a Northern line stop. How would the reaction be once I reached the busy center of the network?

The train pulls in, people get on, I take a seat and put the box between my feet. My backpack goes on top, a thin cover. Minutes later I start traversing London like the courier of kidneys in Dirty Pretty Things. But not carrying organs, I'm in much less of a rush. The tiny tubes of protein and DNA that I've picked up from a collaborator are good for hours on the five pounds of dry ice that fill the box. As the anonymity of the tubes pulls its invisibility cap over me, I relax. No one even sees me.

after the storm

2011-08-09T23:39:00.005+01:00

While I enjoyed a calm and safe night last night, other parts of London stood in high flames. Croydon – halfway down to Gatwick airport – was burning and so was Hackney, up in the northeast of town. The looting continued, the violence spread, the police were helpless. In most instances, things quieted down only when the yobs got tired or their urge to try out that freshly looted TV became irresistible.

This afternoon, the question buzzing around the lab was whether the riots would continue, possibly even get worse, or abate. The good news was that the police presence had been increased three-fold in the city (though water cannons were not deployed). On the other hand, College had sent an ominous email late in the day warning of "violent outbreaks" and encouraging staff to work from home or adjust their travel times for the sake of their safety. I walked home as always, when I was done with work.

I didn't go home directly, though. Through the old-stone-cross storage yard called Old Brompton Cemetery I made my way to Fulham Broadway, the hub of my neighborhood, to see if any evidence of last night's unrest remained. Word on the street had it that the local Footlocker had been the target of looters but had withstood their assault. But whatever might have happened the night before (not much had), business was back to normal as I passed by. Union Market was selling pricey quality food, as much for the eye as for the palate, the pub next door was drawing beer as always, and hordes of commuters spilled from the tube station in short intervals.

I was a bit surprised. Earlier on my walk, I had stopped by the big Sainsbury's on Cromwell Road to pick up some cider for dinner and some veggies for a stew. The access to the parking lot was blocked with half-hearted barriers. I squeezed through and saw a gaggle of willing shoppers in front of automatic doors that remained persistently shut, no matter how many people jumped up and down in front of the motion sensors. "Due to the incidents that have taken place across London over the past few days, we have taken the decision to close this store early. [...] we apologise for the inconvenience", read a notice pasted against the glass from the inside.

In light of the location of the store – very close to the poshness of South Kensington and distant from rough estates – I saw this as excessive. Maybe the store manager, an honest man, wanted to impress his mom by saying that his store was also affected by the riots. But maybe the dark clouds of doom were ready to settle over London again, never mind the bright summer day that was coming to an end.

From Fulham Broadway I walked up North End Road, and here the mood shifted slightly. People were walking down the sidewalk as they always do, relaxed and without undue hurry, but there was almost no commercial activity. The Footlocker had its shutters drawn. Costa warned its customers that it would close at 4 today – more than three hours ago. There was no one at McDonald's and many of the Arabic grocery stores whose prime selling point is long opening hours were closed. Only Chicken Cottage was still serving customers.

Gerard, the proprietor of a busy internet café, stood next to the entrance, key in hand. Behind him were boxes piled high, the cell phone accessories, batteries, cables and memory cards that were normally pinned against the wall behind the counter safely stowed away. "I'm not leaving anything here tonight", he said by way of greeting me. "The violence is coming closer. On the other side of Fulham, shops are burning already. I'm closing up as soon as these guys" – he pointed at three figures behind screens – "are finished. It will get ugly."

I went up to my flat and cooked dinner. Then I ate it. It was quiet outside. I hadn't heard a single siren dopplering by my window. When I had finished, I pulled up the sash and peered outside. An eerie silence hung over the street. There were fewer people out than yesterday, not many pedestrians and no kids on bicycles or in groups. Two cops stood next to The Goose with nothing to do. A solitary helicopter circled above in increasing confusion. And fortunately it was thus all over London. The riots had stopped as suddenly as they had erupted. Peace has returned.

all calm

2011-08-08T23:13:00.004+01:00

Riots in London, you've probably read about it, seen pictures on the BBC or watched news clips. It started last Thursday when – during the arrest of an alleged gangster, drug dealer and criminal – the, in other news reports, caring father-of-four was shot and killed. Talk of excessive police force circulated quickly. Infuriating stories of past injustices were retold. Jean Charles de Menezes was executed on the tube because someone heard somebody say that he might be carrying a bomb, or something like that. There was nothing to it. Ian Tomlinson got beaten by a cop for finding himself in the crowd during the G20 protests, and later died. Convincing conspiracies have been woven with fewer facts.

On Saturday, while an investigation into the death was ongoing, the family of the victim and members of the police were scheduled to meet to exchange explanations and defuse the situation that was building up. The opposite happened. Kids from rough estates (and a fair share of middle-class youngsters in for a festival of kicks, I would guess), mere teenagers but possibly goaded by criminal elements, started rioting then looting in Tottenham where the killing had happened. Patrol cars were torched, buses and taxis went up in flames, shops were destroyed, several buildings burned to the ground. People apparently carried big TVs from raided Currys to their waiting cars. The police were helpless, and hapless.

The next night, the same pictures, except the violence had spread a bit. It was unnoticeable to me. Tottenham is in zone 3, in the north east, on the other end of London. Tonight, the rioting spread even further, down south and west, and it drew closer. I opened my front window. There was something in the air. The night was not like every night.

North End Road is always busy, always loud, the noise frequently pierced by the wails of ambulances or patrol cars. Tonight, there were many more patrol cars, driving at speeds that conveyed a strong sense of urgency. Cops walked down the sidewalks, not in riot gear but in groups of up to six. Kids in dark hoodies, almost invisible against the night, baseball caps pulled low over their eyes, stood in boisterous groups. It was easy to read menace into their presence.

I went down to talk to the shop owners. It is they who would suffer the most because their street-level properties are easy targets. Gerard who runs the internet café was tense. "Fulham is burning, Hammersmith is burning. I'm gonna sleep here tonight", he said. His shutters were down by ten, an hour earlier than usual. At the grocery store next door, they wrapped up their wares at the same time.

Subjectively, there was something going on. Something clearly lay in the air. Objectively, nothing much was different from any other day. Buses were still running and around eleven, a street sweeper made its way noisily up the road, an orange-vested man with a broom walking next to it, diligently clearing rubbish from the sidewalk. Civilization was hanging on.

It's interesting to consider the factors that ensure peaceful and orderly communities. Just laws and fair enforcement would probably come out on top in a poll. But the last few nights have shown that acceptance and compliance are much more important. If a sizable portion of the population decides that the laws don't apply to them, anarchy descends, at least in the short term, until the police presence has been reinforced to deal with the troublemakers. It's scary how narrow the gap between peace and disorder is, the potential for violence that exists underneath the surface.

The last three nights have also shown how large the potential for violence is. The perpetrators are almost always kids and adolescents, from disenfranchised backgrounds, from walks of life that are dead-ends in all respects, from broken families and bad schools or no schools at all. These are the Londoners one doesn't see unless there's another charity drive. These are people that have effectively dropped out of the mainstream, leading an existence on the fringes of society. With few formal qualifications, with no respect for anyone or anything outside their peer group, with no motivation or confidence to achieve anything, they are a time bomb waiting to explode. Anything can blow the fuse, for example the fatal shooting of an alleged drug dealer that the vast majority of people couldn't care less about.

North End Road is still peaceful, though there's an edgy tension in the air. There's more noise that usual, noticeably more noise from people on the sidewalks, talking to each other with excitement in their voices. People are going back and forth, crossing the street left and right, getting high on the energy of the situation, dreaming of power and possibilities. They shove each other teasingly and laugh, but one can imagine how the situation could quickly change, how banter could turn into an altercation, how a discarded soda pop can could turn into a projectile that ignites everyone. But nothing's happening, just a few more patrol cars howling up and down the street.

Nothing continued to happen throughout the night, with three exceptions. There was a congregation of two dozen cops at a 99p-shop just three doors down, ready for action, four cars with their blue lights flashing parked in a semicircle. The standoff against invisible opponents lasted for five minutes, then the cops dispersed. Then there was the moment, at around 11:30, when things could have turned ugly. A narrow passageway leads into the estate on the eastern side of the streets. Kids started throwing a few rocks and two-by-fours and immediately the cops showed, still low-key, no riot gear, just knife-proof vests. Between barricades and retreat, the kids chose the latter, but they pelted the cops with anything they had as they did so. Half an hour later, riot police made a show and ventured into the alleyway, but there was no action.

This is good because I'm not sure I'd give the cops full marks for their approach these last few days. The beat cops of the Metropolitan Police are awesome. They are dedicated, friendly, approachable, helpful, guys you want to have around in your community. In contrast, the top end of the police force is incompetent or worse. The phone hacking scandals cost the two top cops their jobs (because the hacking was allegedly not seriously investigated, allegedly in parts thanks to monetary contributions by News of the World, the word allegedly used here to avoid conflict with Britain's savage libel laws) and the force is in disarray.

It is the worst of times. But chasing kids around the blocks they grew up in is tough even in the best of times. Prevention of a repetition of the riots (once they have been stopped) must consequently start at the source. Society, the law, moral values, respect, possibility and achievable dreams have to return to the areas where they have been increasingly excluded. Social cohesion must be rebuilt, the family strengthened. I don't know how, it's not a question with a simple answer, and in any case, now it's time for bed. It's all calm outside.

rejection

2011-08-08T19:38:00.004+01:00

Last week a rejection letter landed heavily in my inbox, but it wasn't the one I have been secretly dreading for a while. This one came in response to a job application I had prepared after finding an opening (job 2) that seemed to be made for me. I was eminently qualified – if I may say so myself – and had prepared a convincing cover letter and C.V., a variation on the theme that had landed me an interview for a similar position (job 1) a month and a half earlier.

In last week's email, the HR manager was sorry to tell me that owing to "the large quantity of applications received for the [...] position in [...], it was a difficult task to short-list candidates and, after careful consideration we have decided not to take your application any further". I was briefly shocked – I had taken an invitation to interview almost for granted, especially after my success with job 1 – but laughed it off quickly. There were only two possible explanations as far as I could tell.

Either the application process was rigged. Certain organizations sometimes find themselves under the legal obligation to publicly advertise a job and interview candidates even if the prospective new team member has already identified. This approach is designed to prevent cronyism and make the selection process fair, but all it does is force the hiring manager to precisely tailor the opening to their favorite's strengths and experiences.

Alternatively, I could have misread the description and applied for a job that I was blatantly overqualified for. I didn't consider this likely but on another reading conceded certain ambiguities in the phrasing of the ad. The level of responsability was not clearly advertised. Maybe job 2 wasn't really for me. Anyway, it didn't matter. I was out.

I am still in with job 1, though. To say that I am expecting a rejection would be unnecessarily defeatist (though I keep saying and thinking it, mostly out of a superstitious belief that good things are most likely to arrive when you least expect them). Should I be rejected, I would certainly be gravely disappointed because job 1 represents the brightest opportunity I've come across in a few years, perfect in nearly every way, to die for. But job 1 is also – and that's the crux – wickedly challenging and quite scary in the expectations I would have to live up to, and I might just be that another applicant is better qualified. Which is why I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't come through.

I was not the perfect candidate. My experience in that particular line of work is patchy and, worse of all, I didn't exactly convince myself during the interview. I spent the following day reliving the many stages of the interview and found ample room for improvement nearly everywhere. I'm afraid the selection committee were no less perceptive. But, against the odds, that rejection hasn't arrived yet.

What did arrive, this afternoon, was another email regarding job 2. There had been a mix-up. The HR manager apologized that she "did not want to send a rejection but actually tell you that you are one of the very interesting candidates." She goes on to say, strangely, that the job they have in mind doesn't come up until later, and would I mind to keep hanging around, in the form of my application, in their database?

I don't mind. It takes no effort on my part, and job 2 is a great job, in a great place, with tantalizing prospects. But I have to say this was one of the weirdest things happening to me on the job market. The only thing to top this would be an offer for job 1 in the mail tomorrow.

patriots

2011-08-01T22:12:00.007+01:00

In yesterday's post, I mentioned our embattled Prime Minister. I didn't say he was embattled, but he is, barely staying afloat in a rough sea of bad news. There's the phone hacking scandal, deeply unpopular austerity measures and an economy that only Greece would be proud to have. Even Portugal would probably choose to keep its own, should a swap be offered. The one-year countdown to the Olympics gave David Cameron a welcome opportunity to step in front of the cameras with good news.

The spirit in which he took to the occasion says a lot about the English (and probably the British as a whole). He said, with delight in his words, that "normally you would be asking me, with a year to go, about strikes, why the swimming pool is leaking and the velodrome isn't built." He goes on to say, with obvious surprise in his words, that everything is pretty much ready to go, and bring it on.

I find this self-deprecating humor quite refreshing, though it can be exasperating in arguments, when a patriotic Brit will agree with every point you make about the miserable state of the railroads up and down the country and still insist that things are ok for the most part, and there's no need to bother. But it's a nice change from the uptight self-importance of France and the in-your-face patriotism of the US.

It's also much healthier than the Germans' obsession with flaws and imperfection. In Germany, if a train is late by two minutes or the weather forecast off by a degree or a façade not freshly painted and sparkling, it's a sure sign of impending doom, proof that the country is going to hell, and it's taken dead-seriously. It drives the mood down and embitters people. There's no love for the country or pride. There's no reason for it.

The British, in contrast, are patriotic. They love their country. They love it so much that even after centuries of successful conquests, they'd rather live in a council flat in Northumberlandshire than on an estate somewhere in the colonies. Ok, there aren't any colonies left, but you get what I mean. Like lifelong lovers, the British accept and cherish the limitations of their country – and there are a few: driving on the wrong side of the road, archaic orthography, the worst-quality housing in Europe, warm beer, atrocious railroads – as charming quirks. It's like the therapist in (the painfully gooey) Good Will Hunting who loved his deceased wife for her farts and smells, the intimate details only he knew.

Unless they're football fans and drunk, the British never get carried away too far with visions of glory. (If they're England fans, they never get carried away, period, though that's for different reasons.) Clarkson on Top Gear the other day gave a good example of what British patriotism is: To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Jaguar E type, the best British car ever and the best-looking, he took a fleet of them to Beachy Head and, to music of God Save the Queen, had a Royal Air Force commando attach a Union flag the size of a football field to the cliff. Filmed in sweeping panoramic shots, it was all very solemn. Then he turned the key to drive off but nothing happened. "Won't start", he said with a grin into the camera, popping the hot-air balloon of pompousness.

The Prime Minister followed the same logic in his announcement of the Olympic countdown, though in the opposite order. Once he had got the self-deprecation out of the way, he said excitedly that "we're in this good position of facilities being completed a year in advance. We are in the position to test and make sure everything is pitch-perfect." Nice – with one caveat: It wouldn't be very British if it actually turned out to be pitch-perfect.

one year

2011-07-31T23:11:00.003+01:00

The other day, a momentous mark was passed. In just about a year, another Olympic Games will be kicked off. Speeches were held and banners unfurled, and the Prime Minister was interviewed by a newspaper. I don't know much about the progress of the Games. Most of the action happens at the other end of town and I'm pretty certain that July next year I won't notice any commotion or disruption, or even a departure from the ordinary.

This was quite different ten years ago when Olympics came to my hometown for the first time. Back then I lived in Salt Lake City, studying at the University of Utah. Light rail was courageously introduced to Salt Lake Valley, Salt Lake 2002 schlock filled the stores, and the Olympic Village rose on campus. My daily life wasn't disturbed but excitement grew nevertheless, mostly concerning the question of how the Mormon establishment would handle the sudden massive influx of boisterous infidels.

To everyone's surprise and delight, the Mormons lay quiet when the Games came around. Where before you couldn't get a half a pint of beer without filling in a four-page membership application to a private club, people were now spilling Bud on Main Street as they sauntered from the Gallivan Center to the Medals Plaza, a full plastic cup in each hand. I didn't recognize my city of four years, but the liveliness wasn't to last. When the flame had been put out, the fire within died and the Zion Curtain fell back upon the state.

In London, such ups and downs won't happen. The Olympics might be big - and politicians and the media promote them as much as possible - but they're just another thing happening in this most happening of cities. Overall, the week before the Olympics will be just like a week of the Olympics: Transport is crazy, tourists wait on the wrong side of the escalators and clog Oxford Street, fifty concerts and exhibitions take place every day, be it Olympic or not.

Things look a bit different to those living in and around Stratford, site of the Olympic Stadium and Village and of a park of new venues. When I, rather optimistically, wanted to check out the area late in 2009, I found my progress blocked by vast construction nearing completion. Now, the Olympic Park and all venues have been finished, and, rather incongruously, a gigantic mall is ready to be handed over to the eager consumers of what by many measures is a deprived area of London. Take the DLR to Stratford, and the contrast to five years ago is just as big as the contrast between Mormon and Olympic Utah.

I personally, however, don't need the Olympics in London and don't care about them. I haven't applied for tickets (You can't simply buy them.) or signed up as volunteer. One year from now, I'll go through my city much as I do now, mouth agape and eyes in wonder, in awe of the diversity, pumped by the energy, intoxicated with culture and deliriously happy to live here.

raving lunatics

2011-07-29T21:57:00.004+01:00

It's been a few days since the last post. I could mention, by way of excuse, that I've been working a lot. Taken four proteins from cloning to crystallization in ten mad days. Those in the know might argues that that's next to impossible. The sequencing alone takes two days, after all. I might retort, in the hope that not everyone reads this line, that I've just applied for another batch of jobs and exaggerate my workload in the lab ever so slightly to impress the HR departments that spent half of their time on the internet these days, trying to dig up dirt, incrimination and scandal on social networking and photo sharing sites. As my face is notably absent from those ventures, I must get exposure otherwise. Where was I?

Right, it's been a few days, and not just any few days. It's been a few days of extraordinary madness, a week for the history books, and if not that, then at least a ball for the disgruntled and grumpy, whose ranks I join tonight, for no other reason that to add a post to this languishing collection.

Last weekend, a devil worshiper with a confused mind of epic proportions ripped a hole into the streets of Oslo and then slaughtered five dozen kids on a heretofore peaceful island. As the police force's helicopter pilots were on vacation, no one got to the massacre until the devil worshiper had run out of bullets. The Norwegian prime minister, an unemotional character by all accounts, admonishes his shocked compatriots to keep their spirit of tolerance.

Who's more dangerous, I wonder, I gasp, I gape? I'm speechless at such delusion and even the mocking written word fails me temporarily. A week later, words have come back to me, but I'm still stupefied. How can one advocate tolerance, unquestioning accepting in other words, of a mass murderer, of his actions and beliefs? Tolerance is always the easy escape for the weak. Tolerance never solves conflicts and only delays escalations. If you need a catchword for community cohesion and an inclusive society, try respect. Argue all you feel necessary with those you don't agree with, never tolerate opinions you find intolerable, but always do it with respect. If someone had engaged with the devil worshiper instead of tolerating his ranting and muttering, he might have blown up earlier and in a much less destructive way.

It is a deplorable sign of the times that Norwegian politicians aren't the only ones who've been abandoned by their senses. The UK Foreign Secretary, for example, has swapped the inhabitants of the Libyan embassy in London as if they were on an assured shorthold tenancy lease that had run out. Everyone agrees that Gaddafi is an asshole, a tyrant, a criminal and a menace, but that's not a recent development. He took control of Libya when the Foreign Secretary was in primary school.

In recent months, when new-found courage and the desire for freedom burned hot in North Africa, the opposition in Libya, whose sheer existence came as a surprise to most, became emboldened and took up arms. Now, in the middle of a civil war, where enough loyalists support the old dictator to prevent him from toppling like Mubarak or Ben Ali, the UK delegitimizes a regime that has been illegitimate for too long – only to replace it with another that has never been democratically legitimized. The people's will (as in the people of Libya) has never been expressed. Yet the UK and the rest of the EU scheme much like the US has done in Afghanistan. As painfully as it was acquired, the knowledge that one ragtag group of militants is just as bad as the next seems to have been forgotten already, or at least ignored for the moment.

Talking about ragtag militants and raving lunatics, what is going on in Somalia? I see pictures of children will bellies bloated to bursting from starvation (kwashiorkor, did you know?), I see dusty plains devoid of vegetation, I see desperate families fleeing a hostile land on their bare teeth. Aid organizations exhort us to give: These people need food. That goes without saying, but they've been needing food for decades because they have never had what they need most, a competent government that can organize life and build a functioning society. A government that builds infrastructure, educates its citizens and brings the modern agriculture to those who farm the land.

Instead, what Somalis have is tribal warfare and al-Shabab bandits, marauding insurgents on horseback, their piously betoweled heads belying their barbaric actions (devil worshipers, again). When concerted international aid efforts got underway to parachute tons of food onto the parched plains, the shababs flatly denied the need, professing to see a mild drought where everyone else has a hard time comprehending the extent of the famine. Were Somalia not a worthless bit of geography in the poker of international politics and weren't the US and Europe already overstretched to breaking, another regime change-inducing aerial campaign wouldn't be far off, but it's hard to see how the people could benefit.

Tonight's mad dash around the globe is almost over. Only one stop remains. I wouldn't go so far as to call it the maddest of all (though history might prove me wrong – knock on wood it doesn't), but it's certainly up there. In the US Congress, stubborn and inflexible parties of various affiliations continue to argue – eminently reasonably in their own eyes – about how to spend a certain amount of money (aka the budget) while only spending a smaller amount of money (aka the debt ceiling). If that were possible, I would live in a grandiose loft in Kensington and have dinner at Joël Robuchon's every night.

There's much whining, especially in high finance, about the end of the world in four days' time. I don't believe that the world cares much if the US doesn't pay interest on its debts for a month, but you never know. Financial markets have been spooked by lesser things (for example the possible default of a southern European country that's as insignificant as its history is glorious), and acted irrationally more often than not. So if the world really ends, remember that there's a summer weekend before that. Go out and enjoy!

essentials

2011-07-21T23:37:00.006+01:00

Yesterday I got back home in the middle of the night, tired and sweaty after a long day at work that was followed by drinks in a couple of pubs. In the hall of my building noticed bright red fire extinguishers and shiny escape route signs that I hadn't seen before. Someone must have stapled them to the walls while I was out. Nice, I thought, now I know which way to run when a fire licks at my life. Front door, in case you were wondering.

Then I got into my flat and – at the risk of giving out too much information – went straight to the loo for important business. When I was done, I realized that there was no water. The cistern emptied itself with a tired gurgle and the tap was dry. I don't buy water bottles in the store and I don't have a pitcher in the fridge. There wasn't any water in the house, but I was thirsty from drinking too much and needed a shower.

It is in situations like these that one realizes what's truly important in life. Water is prime among those things, but it's so taken for granted in our world of ignorant affluence that the shock is almost physical when there isn't any. If the boiler breaks and there's no hot water and no heat, so what? It's not the end of the world. If a fuse blows and the lights go out and the radio, one quickly adjusts. Trains and buses are essential but delayed and canceled almost daily. Newspapers come and go. But stop the flow of water for five minutes and utter misery sets in.

I was miserable, thirstier by the minute and stinkier and sweatier now that I knew I couldn't clean my hands and face. Discomfort grew quickly. I couldn't even brush my teeth. Out on a limb, I called Thames Water, my supplier, and was more than a bit surprised when someone picked up, an actual person. He didn't know why I didn't have water. I had paid my bill and no disruption, excessive leakage or broken pipe had been reported in my area. He said he'd send an emergency responder before 4:10. It was shortly after midnight at that time and it didn't really occur to me that he was talking about the same night.

I went out to buy some water. Luckily, the nearest 24-hour convenience store is only two minutes up the road. I got a 5-liter jug for two quid, imported for my convenience from Turkey, and started contemplating the post I would surely commit to my blog in due course. It would focus on the frequently neglected importance of water, the privileged life we lead with cold, clean water always gushing from the tap, and the economics of drilling a well in Anatolia and then shipping tons of water to rainy England for good profit. I got back to my flat, washed my hands and face in a teapot and brushed my teeth. Happiness and comfort restored, I went to bed, deferring all worries until the next morning.

Literally five minutes later – I hadn't even decided which eye to close first – the harsh rattle of my doorbell jolted me to my feet. From the window I saw a white Thames Water van and a person with a poker to check the water supply. To say I was speechless wouldn't do it justice. I was stupefied. How do you achieve a twenty-minute response time in a city of eight million? At half past midnight?

The Thames Water person didn't think much of it. She just did her job, uncovering the underground meter cave and braving spiders and unknown critters of the night to realize that there wasn't anything wrong. "It's inside your property", she said. "You need to get a plumber." Then she came inside and checked the pipes and the valves. All was fine, but there was still no water. The only thing left was the stopcock outside my flat, high up on the wall and hard to reach. When she fiddled with it, my toilet's cistern started noisily refilling, easily the most beautiful sound of the week.

It could be argued that I could have checked (and fixed) this myself, but one of the prerogatives of renting is an utter lack of responsibility. Something breaks? Let someone else take care of it. Make a call and the problem will be fixed. That sounds good in theory and gives me profound peace of mind, but in the middle of a duh!-situation, it risks making me look like a complete fool. The Thames water woman was happy to help and didn't see it this way. We both agreed that the fool was the person that had closed the stopcock in the first place, in all likelihood the person that also installed the fire safety equipment, though why one action would lead to the other will forever remain a mystery.

consequences

2011-07-10T10:30:00.003+01:00

It has never happened before that my concerns were answered that quickly and that decisively. On Wednesday night I wrote concerning the phone hacking scandal that has embroiled the British media that "the true scandal is that the News of the World is still in business". Less than 24 hours, action had been taken and the News's demise had been announced. The last issue came out this morning. Tomorrow, 200 journalists, editors and assorted staff are looking for a new job.

On the one hand, I'm happy with the outcome, happy that the only possible course of action has been taken. No matter what the current staff claim, the News was not a good newspaper in the classical sense. Its contributions to the exposure of economic and political misbehavior of national significance and the checking and balancing of government were minimal.

On the other hand, people will suffer that had nothing to do with the phone hacking scandal. When that was initially revealed, many on the News's payroll were replaced and the paper got a new editor-in-chief. It also got a new face, claim its supporters, and had nothing to do with the lurid tabloid of yore, but its scoops that went national tell a different story.

Most notably, there were the sex parties of Max Mosely, then the boss of FIA, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile. Hookers engaged in bondage and S&M were first spread out in the privacy of his basement bedroom and then on the front page of the News of the World. News? Who cares? Which healthy, sane person anyway?

The present News of the World was by no stretch of the imagination a paragon of journalistic integrity and moral virtue. But it might have just been a collateral victim of the crisis it caused. It is worth noting that more than two-and-a-half million people bought the paper up until last week, unfazed by scandal, and many will do so today in the hope of getting a piece of history.

The News didn't close because it failed commercially. It was closed down by its proprietor, News International, in a highly cynical move calculated to have no negative consequences. The main reason is the attempt to save the long-planned and highly contentious bid for the broadcaster BSkyB. No matter that the News of the World was the most profitable paper in News International's UK portfolio, TV is apparently where the real money is. (And here I was thinking that the internet age had started and group viewing was out.) But with every new revelation regarding the News's phone hacking, public opinion and increasingly politicians turned against News International and the proposed takeover looked ever more likely to be blocked at the last minute. The News was sacrificed for damage control. It had become a liability to the larger business strategy but also threatened to taint its sister papers, most notably The Times. The gap left by in the publishing landscape will in time be filled by another, very similar title from the same company, probably by expanding The Sun to a seven-day schedule. The direct financial loss for News International will probably be small.

The loss for the employees that lost their job will be bigger, at least until they are absorbed in the Sun on Sunday. But I'm wondering, if you're creating not only a successful newspaper but one whose readership is higher than any other papers' in the UK, and you lose the support of your owner, why don't you just continue anyway? Find cheap office space somewhere in an unfashionable part of London, buy a few computers, call the advertisers that used to love you and get them to recommit, and put together the first issue of The New News. Then email it to a press, distribute the product and see what happens.

That's how capitalism should work, anyway. Selling a product that people want to buy should be good business. But something's wrong with capitalism. When a profitable newspapers goes under but failed businesses like banks, airlines and car manufacturers are kept alive by generous government handouts, something's seriously wrong. Capitalism is broken. There's a lot to say about this, more than fits into this post. And it will take more than 24 hours to say it, and especially to fix.

scandalous

2011-07-06T20:06:00.005+01:00

A scandal has gripped the UK. This wouldn't be news because the British dig scandals and there's one every other day, but this one is different. It's not a proper scandal. There are no drunk models, snorted lines, exposed boobs or corrupt politicians. The scandal is an anti-scandal by all accounts but it has grabbed everyone's attention. Let me elaborate.

The British print media are revered and reviled at the same time. At one end of the spectrum is The Guardian, the vanguard of serious journalism, a quality daily with few equals anywhere in the world. The Financial Times is another beacon of quality and seriousness, lean and focused as only a single-topic daily can be. The Times and The Independent aren't too bad either but have been slipping in recent years. They suffer, respectively, from an unqualified owner (Murdoch) and editorial bias that leans just a bit too far for my taste. These four are the only newspapers that I buy from time to time.

At the other end of the spectrum are The Sun, The Daily Mail and other members of the yellow press, simplistic rags with big headlines and few content, notorious for sensational stories, boobs on page 3 and celebrity gossip. They are populist in their editorial opinion and identifiably politically aligned. It's probably a bit harsh to say that they are the newspapers for those who can't read, but I wouldn't touch them even if they were free. (I've bought the Mail once when it was bundled with The Graduate but tossed it unread.) These newspapers are so bad it's hard to believe.

But it's not only that they are bad, it's also their entire business model that's questionable. They specialize in digging up embarrassing stories and exposing the private lives of anyone from celebrities to the unsuspecting granny next door. People love them. Their readership is huge. And no one asks how they get the material they then sensationalize.

No one asks but the truth came to light anyway. Over the last few years, the Sunday-only News of the World has been in deep trouble for hacking into cell phone mailboxes of various celebrities and royals. There was a police investigation (which might or might not have been obstructed), an editor resigned (and became the prime minister's communications director later), apologies were muttered. The public professed to be appalled but continued to buy the newspaper. Circulation remained at about 2.6 million copies. What the News was caught doing was illegal but seemed a sensible way of getting information from reclusive people, information that the public was keen on getting.

This week a twist was added to a saga that has been going since at least 2007. The Guardian reported that the News hacked into the mailbox of a missing girl that was later found to be murdered and into the mailboxes of relatives of some of the victims of the terror attacks on London's tube and buses six years ago. Tears flow, the public is horrified, politicians speak out against disgraceful actions, and advertisers end their contracts with the paper, but all I can see is stinking hypocrisy.

Everyone should know how tabloids work. No one should be surprised that they act unethically by default. Virtue is not their creed and journalism not exactly what they do. If you want to get worked up about something, why not target the more than two million freaks that buy this rag, thus perpetuating their strategy. It's their readers that call for ever more lurid and sensationalist stories.

Don't misinterpret my ranting. What the newspaper did was and is wrong and despicable, but it's systemically wrong and isn't any wronger now. Tabloid journalism is the scandal, not a particular hacked mailbox, and Prime Minister David Cameron's outrage that, "We are no longer talking about politicians and celebrities, we are talking about murder victims, potentially terrorist victims, having their phones hacked into." is misguided. This is not the scandal.

Phone hacking is illegal, even when it targets celebrities and politicians. The problem is that it makes good business sense for a tabloid. The incentives are high and potential punishment is low. If there is agreement in society that what has happened isn't acceptable, the laws that exist have to be enforced, and the penalties need to be increased. It's not enough that an editor is sacked while the company behind him rambles on. The true scandal is that the News of the World is still in business.

probing strides

2011-07-05T22:16:00.005+01:00

The events described in the previous post happened a week ago. The time stamp tells it all. But I was traveling without a computer and wrote things down on paper the night after the trip, copying them to digital only yesterday. I got to the airport with no time to spare but made it through security without delay and got to the departure area just on time. Maybe all the construction at Gatwick is actually improving things. Maybe the recession is still working its magic, holding the number of travelers down.

There had been no reason to rush anyway. The strike of lightning that had incapacitated the railroads hadn't passed the airport by without effect. Here, some essential equipment in the tower was knocked out, and no planes were starting and landing for a while. That was before I arrived but I could see the aftermath. My flight was delayed by an hour and a half. I was lucky. The Easyjet flight to Rome, originally scheduled to depart at 3:50pm, was "boarding at 22:00". An even earlier Ryanair flight was only offering "more information at 19:00". What a way to start a vacation.

I wasn't going on vacation, though. I was on my way to a job interview, and it was a big one. It was a job I really wanted, a job that I was well qualified for but in rather short supply of experience. Continuing where a master of the trade might bow out was a scary prospect, but I drew confidence and strength from the fact that I had been invited to the interview, making it past the application stage with ease.

Ease had withdrawn when I started preparing for the talk I was asked to give. The scientific part was easy, but what about my vision? I cooked something up and put it in what I hoped were convincing words, which I then spoke onto a dictaphone, to be replayed and worked with on the trip. I don't memorize my presentations but, like all scientists, speak freely, aided only by the cues on the slides, and like to know roughly where I'm going. I like to think of creative transitions and clever phrasings in advance.

The best implementation of this strategy was my thesis defense. After a nervous first few minutes, I got into a zone. I had two strands of thought unfold in parallel in my mind. I knew what I was saying and where I had to point to make my point, but I also knew, unambiguously and without thinking, what I was going to say a minute or so later. It was like being able to see into the future. I knew what the next slide would be and how I would introduce it – while I was explaining the current slide.

But preparing the presentation was for later, for when I had relaxed in my seat on the plane. I would go through the recording again, searching for inconsistencies while at the same time internalizing the flow of the logic. Right now I was too distracted with continuously updated information and quadrophonic announcements. I took the stack of scientific papers I had printed and tried to get acquainted with the interviewers' work – in between nervous glances to the screens, distractions by restless passengers and finally the walk to the gate and the boarding stampede.

On the plane I immersed myself in my talk. I was singularly focused, my brain burning towards the one goal of the trip, and as it sometimes happens when I think very hard of something very specific, something entirely unconnected jumped up and took advantage of my elevated state of mind. I figured out, just like that, without thinking about it, why two of the workstations in the lab had stubbornly resisted being upgraded. I had troubleshot the problem all week – to absolutely no effect. I knew what wasn't the problem – everything I could think of – but I couldn't think of the problem. And now, the solution stood before me as if it had been written down by someone who knew what he was doing. There wasn't a question or a doubt. It was absolute clarity – and so much more convincing than what I was listening to through a monaural earpiece.

It got late and my work pace slowed. We approached our destination and landed at an airport that seemed to have closed for the night already. There wasn't anyone at the counter that normally sells tickets for the necessary shuttle to the town I was going to, and no one else was waiting curbside, but the coach showed up on time, the driver took my money, and an hour later I lay in my hotel bed, phrases, arguments and metaphors still buzzing my head.

The interview went well. It was tougher on the interviewers than on us three interviewees because presentations, panel discussions and one-on-ones were held in parallel without overlap. The interviewers were thus busy from 9 to 7, while we candidates had occasional coffee breaks and even time for a walk around the block. I learned that the job is even better than I thought and that my chances are even slimmer. The talk was ok, but I'm not sure my vision was entirely convincing. All that remains to do now is keep my fingers crossed.

strange strikes

2011-06-29T22:30:00.003+01:00

Last night it happened again; London was struck. It is not exactly a rare occurrence but the response is always an explosion of complete confusion and chaos, as if the world, to everyone's utter surprise, had decided to end. Last night, there was weather. Nothing out of the ordinary, really, nothing catastrophic, no typhoon or tornado, no celestial avalanche or once-in-a-century flooding, just weather: a change of atmospheric conditions, a disturbance of generally calm patterns. Things were different from the days before, catching meteorologists off-guard and triggering a chain reaction of pandemonium that radiated outward from London with every person on the move, a particle-wave of interference in everyone's daily routine. Last night, it rained.

Rain, every well-informed tourist who has never set foot in the city will tell you, is London's default weather. In the absence of a forecast to the contrary, wet clouds hang low over the Tower. You shouldn't go sightseeing without an umbrella. This is as simple as it is wrong. The last twenty years have been good with the city. Global warming has pumped up the days of sunshine and cut down on the rain. London is no desert, but it's far from the damp cold misery it used to be. The Met Office even declared a drought earlier this year. Still, sometimes it rains.

Yesterday was such a day. The rain fell fast and hard in the afternoon and there was lightning – not a mad storm but considerable atmospheric activity. Nevertheless, when I embarked on my way to the airport, things had calmed down already. It was the time to go home from work and the usual hordes did, picking up, at the entrance of their tube station, a free newspaper that they would then be unable to unfold and read in the packed train. The streets were almost dry.

At Victoria Station, throngs were crowding the main hall as they always are, throngs of people staring at the big screens with all departure information except the platforms. Their commuter trains depart the same time every day, yet leaving the platforms unchanged and putting them into the timetable is too much to ask of National Rail. That's why the main hall always looks like a teachers' union demonstration. In irregular intervals groups dash off towards the trains as if retirement at 50 waited there.

I waited for the train to Gatwick to be ennobled with the whereabouts of its departure, but all I got was the cancellation of the train to Brighton, due to depart a few minutes before mine and to go in the same direction. Then everything happened at once. Crisp announcements of delays, more cancellations and rerouting filled the air, all united by an excuse that turned heads. Lightning had struck a set of points near Gatwick.

The English don't do indignation or anger – unless they're part of a teachers' union demonstration. There's no point. They've seen it all before. They might not have heard the lightning strike excuse – who would think of that anyway? – but they know that when there's rain, when there's weather, when it's not a mellow 20C and cloudy, things will go wrong, and creative excuses are cooked up with more energy than good and lasting solutions.

The day before the light-enhanced downpour, the temperature had exceeded 30C, leading to transportation mayhem much worse than what was going on right now. Dozens of trains got stuck and thousands of passengers spent hours locked in boiling carriages – unless they managed to break a door and walk home. One of the excuses that was produced to (successfully) prevent the media from commenting on incompetence and criminal neglect was sagging overhead lines. Your high-school physics teacher told you that metal expands when heated. Public-relations officers at the railroads tell you that the line has nowhere to go but down. Engineers in France, Germany and Japan shake their heads in disbelief. And prospective passengers stand patiently, waiting for the chaos to be resolved.

I had no time to wait. My flight's scheduled departure was less than an hour away. I went over to the Gatwick Express platforms, a place I normally stay away from. The Express is twice as expensive as the regular train and doesn't stop en route to the airport, thus saving all of five minutes. That's not worth my money, but it looked as if the Express were the only train still running.

A conductor shooed me on as I approached. "Get on quick. We're about to depart." Just the right words, but spoken in vain. Desperate travelers hung to doors much like fare-dodgers do in India. There was no way in, and the train got moving without me. The doors closed only with difficulty. I would have let panic take over at this point had I had any hope that this would help. Instead, I followed the swarm of fellow travelers to the platform where the next train to Gatwick was announced. This changed a minute later to a train to Croydon (not good), then to one to Brighton without stopping (not good either) and finally reverted to the first option, but with some added stops on the way. The doors opened against the assault of the crowd and the carriages quickly filled. I was flushed in and then, a little while later, taken away as the train left the station where confusion still reigned. I had fifty minutes left.

linked out

2011-06-25T20:24:00.004+01:00

Today is a day that should have been a while ago. Almost a year back I was for the first time seriously contemplating the course of action I took today. Back then, I was dithering, reconsidering and eventually failing to pull through. Today, with unlikely decisiveness, I did what needed doing. With just a few clicks, I deleted me LinkedIn account. With even fewer clicks – though they were preceded by an internet search and followed by a bit of typing – I bailed from Facebook. I'm not socially networked anymore.

That I had been at all is something I can't convincingly explain. It's not exactly my nature to follow the herd. Friendster passed me by unnoticed. I was never on MySpace or the virtual kindergarten playground. I had repeatedly refused membership at Hi5, despite invitations from people I strongly cared about. Then, four years ago and out of nowhere, I got sucked into Facebook. A couple of years later, I linked myself in without anyone's prompting me, but I never fully understood what the buzz was about.

A year ago, when I didn't find the strength to go all the way, I trimmed my friends list to people I would call good friends in real life. The next morning, I had an email in my inbox from an acquaintance asking me why I had defriended her. "Did I offend you with something I said?" she asked. With mumbled apologies, I added her back and stumbled on.

Yesterday, I read in the paper that there is now in London a company that offers social networking concierge services. Not quite knowing what that's supposed to mean, I read on. Turns out that – who'd have thought? – advertising your holiday abroad to the whole world is not a good idea, especially if you have a house full of nice things. The company thus proposes to post engineered updates to clients' profiles in an attempt to confuse and deter burglars.

Think about this for a minute. The concern is that too much information exposes your privacy. Instead of stopping the flood of updates, you add to it. How about just cutting it? Because if you mix fake and real updates, how are your friends gonna know? And if they already know, you don't need to post at all. (This all is besides the dubious value of posting an invented piano lesson in your living room while you also upload photos of yourself on the beach in Ibiza.)

The story is unrelated to my situation. I kept a tight lid on my bucket of friends and I always updated my privacy settings to the strictest possible value whenever Facebook diluted their standards again. But it made me stop and question the status quo, and I realized what a pile of crap Facebook and LinkedIn are. I'm so glad I'm out.

quick drinks

2011-06-22T20:53:00.001+01:00

The thing I'm going to miss when I'm not in London anymore is pub nights. There's no other place like the UK for going for drinks and then going home and the evening has barely started. It makes for a surreal experience in the middle of the week, as if reality were something of someone else's concern.

Never mind workdays starting at ten, the lab always takes off to the pub shortly after five. Today's a beautiful day, the sun is still high and shining strongly. I'm a bit late to leave the lab because I'm discussing a structure with a collaborator, but when I get to the Builder's Arms, the pub is still deserted. We're occupying the first-floor seating, enjoying ales and assorted soft drinks.

I grab an IPA for me and refills for the fastest drinkers and join the conversation. Over the next three hours, drinks will be replenished several times and food will arrive. The Builder's Arms is no gastro-pub but they cook up decent chow. I'm having a cassoulet that gets me into a decidedly French mood. My first ale is horrible, as ales are supposed to be, but even worse. The next drink is a Sierra Nevada, also called an ale but of industrial heritage and an altogether different beast.

When I walk home, not the first one out the door but leaving a good-sized group behind, the sun is getting ready to set. The light has red-shifted and every illuminated brick wall radiates love. It is barely nine o'clock, and I get home earlier than I have the two days before when I stayed working late. I pick up speed on the twenty-minute walk, hoping to sweat out the alcohol to make room for a few more hours of work at home. I've got a presentation to prepare and a structure to sort out.

It doesn't quite work out. A certain dizziness obscures my brain, and back home the sofa feels more appropriate than the desk chair. As the laptop works equally in either location, I just sink down and get on with it. The Beatles are on the stereo; the shops below are still busy with custom. The night hasn't started yet.

good deal

2011-06-19T19:54:00.004+01:00

"Fifty quid", my friend said when he had come to the conclusion that he wanted to sell. "It's yours for fifty quid."

The quid is a curious creature. No one knows how it made it into the English language. Hateful of the letter s, it objects to being followed by one, or preceded. There's not much it does; mostly is just sits there, impassively, in the place of a pound or of pounds, giving meaning to numbers.

"Two hundred quid", I said. "There's no way you're getting away with less. I've seen auctions on ebay start at that. I'll pay you two hundred."

Bargaining is an essential component of successful business transactions. Fuller, Smith & Turner wants to buy Capital Pub Company, a rival chain, and submits an offer of 175p per share. Capital deems the offer without merit, tears it up and flushes it down the toilet. The bargaining has started. Fuller makes an improved bid of 200p, which is rejected again, but in the near future the two will meet at a point where both are happy.

In the interaction with my friend, something similar is happening. "This is ridiculous", my friend says. "It's a good camera, but it's been used. Give me a hundred if you must."

Shops in the West have done away with bargaining for convenience and speed, and to be able to advertise not only the quality of an product but also the price, thus highlighting value. In the Arab world, however, bargaining is still part of the everyday fabric of life. You check out the shops at the bazaar and peruse the wares on display, feeling their quality and comparing. You might ask the shopkeeper for an opinion and he'll dish it out with flourish. When you find something you like you ask for the price, thus indicating that you're going to buy it. After inspired haggling, you and the shopkeeper will shake hands over a deal gone well.

My friend is no Arab, and neither am I. Bargaining is not engrained in our culture, and an observer would be baffled by our interaction. But however we're approaching it, our intention is orthodox. We want to arrive at a price that we're both happy with. "Hundred fifty is my last offer", I say, following the established protocol to the letter, even if not in spirit.

Despite my inexperience, I can sense that we're getting somewhere. I have never bargained before, though I came close once. It was in a carpet shot in Tunisia where, over two glasses of mint tea, I felt baby lamb carpet with my hands and eyes. So soft, so beautiful! But I didn't need one and I didn't want to buy one. Without asking for a price and certainly without making an offer, I walked out of the shop, empty-handed but happy. The shopkeeper waved at me without ill feeling.

This time around, I want the deal. I'm looking for a compact camera, for something to replace my heavy SLR when I travel light. My friend's Canon fits the bill and has proven its worth on recent extended trips with some spectacular shots. I realize that what I and my friend want is not that far apart.

"A hundred and twenty, can we agree on that?" my friend suggest after some hesitation. "I fear I'm overcharging you, that you're going to regret it, but if you insist, if you really want it..." His voice trails off. Our eyes meet. There are two nods.

world news

2011-06-17T21:32:00.007+01:00

Pizza from the oven, a beer from the fridge, dinner is ready, the TV is on, the world is on flames. Prices rising, crisis peaking, higher and sharper every night. The beer tastes good. The crust of the pizza is crisp and the prosciutto juicy. A masterpiece.

For four months now, the people of Libya have been fighting their leader, their father, their ersatz god, their oppressor and tyrant. For four months they have been crying for freedom and dying for it. The world has been watching with interest at first, then they sent in forces that operate almost unknown.

On TV, what few pictures there are, I see sweaty faces, veins bulging from screaming, fear in eyes but also hope and and promise, exhaustion and determination. Tomorrow might be, tomorrow must be, tomorrow will be a better day, they seem to be saying, and they keep saying it, day upon day.

But I also see a stalemate that not even low-flying attack choppers can break. Is it a revolution if internal dissent is so sparse that a regime hangs on without troubles even when bombarded by a willing coalition of substantial military firepower? Do I do the rebels injustice when I ask how much they represent the people? Where are the people in Tripoli? Where are the people where it matters? And why is the West incapable of decisive action?

Why did they/we choose to intervene in the first place? A brutal dictator slaughtering dissidents doesn't normally raise eyebrows. But the exuberance of a new world order in North Africa led the West into a quick quagmire. I'm not denying the freedom fighters support, but I wonder why they among many deserving parties got it.

On 30 Sept 2009, I drove a rattling Kia north from the town of Hama, Syria. In a country of eternal history, where 3000-year-old walls are a matter of fact, Hama comes as a shock. The only old buildings are a lonely mosque and the palace of the former Ottoman governor. Everything else dates from the last 30 years. It's not that Hama isn't an old city. It counts among those with longest continuous habitation. But of its glory not much remains.

Hama has risen from the ruins of total devastation after President Assad punished an Islamist uprising in the town with heavy artillery and airborne shelling, killing a reported 30,000 and displacing many more. The day after the destruction of the city was like the day before. Life in Syria continued, and questions were not allowed.

I turned the Kia off the main highway at Maraat al-Numaan, an insignificant patch of dusty sprawl halfway between Hama and Aleppo. There was little grass and not much prosperity, just five roads to dubious destinations. I didn't even stop for gas (later regretted) and drove on towards excitement and adventure.

Yesterday I read that President Assad, son of the same and just as bad, has ordered his army to focus the guns of its tanks on Maraat al-Numaan where anti-government demonstrations have apparently been staged. With the world watching, history is repeating itself. People will be killed for the vanity and anxiety of a hapless ruler, people whose only crime has been to question authority.

It's not the brutality of the regime that shocks me – it's a brutal regime, after all – but the silence of the watching world. Is it stunned surprise? Is it helplessness? Is it the painful realization that the defenders of freedom are stretched too thin? It's all of the above, probably, and it's certainly shameful. The free world gobbles pizza and beer instead of fighting for our values.

checkmate

2011-06-12T17:41:00.004+01:00

An urge overcame me the other day to play chess again. It came out of nowhere, surprised me a bit. I play on and off on Yahoo! but don't get much pleasure out of it. Nothing compared to the times when I was a kid and played every weekend.

I was never a very good player, and my buddies weren't very good either. I never won an individual title of any sort, nor did my friends – except on the county level where someone had to win, and we traded honors. But we were all decent players and we congealed into a powerful team over the years.

You might not think of chess of a team sport – if you think of chess as a sport at all – but it is. Both. Even though every player plays his or her own game in a team event, it's a team sport because the presence of the other player spurs you on. The knowledge that your game matters for the team is a powerful driving force.

We always knew we were in it together. It was never about individual glory. This is probably why we, as a team, played much better than our individual ratings would have predicted. We exhausted ourselves to many narrow wins that let us forget the few big losses against teams that were clearly better. For four years ours was among the six best kids' teams in the country, without title hopes but consistently up there with the best.

The golden days ended when I turned fifteen. There were are other things on my mind, on all of our minds. Also, some friends moved and some found their passion elsewhere. We tried to keep the spirit on weekends during games but the fire was gone. It was a halfhearted effort. Yet it took until I left for college that I dropped the game entirely.

I had initially scheduled my weekend trips home to coincide with the men's team games. It was tradition, and it was good fun – being with the guys that I had known for a decade. But classical chess games can take up to six hours, and when the team plays you don't leave before the last game is over. There wasn't much more to Sundays than chess and the trip back to college. It was too much.

And so I haven't played in fifteen years, except online every rare now and then.

Yesterday, I played in the Golders Green rapidplay tournament, a North London institution, six games of half an hour per player. For an event with such tradition and popularity – running for over twenty years, the monthly tournament attracts up to 100 players – the event is extremely low-key and familial. It is held in a simple church hall filled with two dozen benches with boards and clocks. Volunteers sell refreshments, much of it homemade. Games are paired according to the organizer's famous hand shuffle algorithm as soon as a round's results trickle in. There's no computer. The only bit of technology is an online entry form. But it exists only to make it easy for the organizer to set up the first game of the day. You don't have to pay when you register, or even before you play your first game. Pay when it's convenient – but before you leave!

There were four subgroups: cracks, muppets, and two intermediate groups. I wasn't quite sure where to put myself but excluded the first two. At the risk of sandbagging, I chose the lower intermediate group. It was a good match. I played six good games, without being overpowered or overpowering, with some spirited attacks and some good strategies, and without serious blunders except the one to end the last game. I hardly remember opening moves but got out well in each game. In the end, I won some and I lost some, and I enjoyed the day a lot.

It wasn't so much the joy of playing, though that was real enough. The most amazing thing was the focus that a serious game of chess forces on the mind. I had forgotten about this, completely lost it. Throughout the six games, for a total of more than five hours, I didn't have a stray thought. It was amazing. There were only knights, pawns and queens, weak points, open files, and the ticking of the clock. I was in the game, calculating variations, conceiving strategies, balancing attack and defense, totally zoning.

I also completely exhausted myself mentally. On the tube on the way home, too wasted and worked up to read, I imagined how it would be to have that kind of steel determination at work. An ambitious thought – imagine what you could achieve – but I couldn't survive it for more than two days. Better play chess once a month and be dizzy for an hour afterwards.

close to home

2011-06-08T22:08:00.005+01:00

The trip wasn't over last night when I made it onto the bus that took us out to the plane. Though it was the middle of the night and there was no one around, the jet wasn't parked by the gate. It took us a good ten minutes to make our way out to hangar 2 where we had to wait some more before we were allowed to board.

The flight arrived at Heathrow at half past midnight, just in time to miss the last tube into town. By 12:45, I stood at the central bus station, waiting for the night bus, which was just around the corner, the first bit of luck on the trip. Less than an hour later I got off at Olympia and took the home stretch down North End Road in the darkness of what appeared to be a peaceful night.

Appearances can be deceiving. Very near my home, too close for comfort, a man was stabbed to death on a little patch of grass. I saw the police cordon and a solitary officer this morning on my way to work, but the night before I saw and heard nothing. The scary thing is that the crime happened only minutes and meters from where I was walking.

From the Evening Standard

worn out

2011-06-08T21:43:00.006+01:00

Despite the delay, almost two hours by now, agony hasn't set it. Not even pain. The suffering is still at a level where it could easily be mistaken for tranquility. People are sitting peacefully, calmly passing time, looking left and right for encouragement and shreds of information. But periodic announcements, mumbled and muffled, don't shed light. Weary individuals congeal into a community of confusion.

A flight to London is announced for Gate A12. Heads turn, soliloquacious murmurs turn into muttered questions, just loud enough to be accidentally overheard by the nearest neighbor, just in case that person is interested in an exchange of words, in bits of conversation to break the tedium, to rupture the cocoon of lonesome travel. What did it say? Is it for us? Did you hear that? Should we go over there? The announcement was only a short burst of noise, all but inaudible over the soft chatter of tired travelers that's amplified by the low ceiling. A group of return missionaries of an evangelical sect on their way back to Denver have gathered in a far corner, their palaver a constant company of the passing minutes. At least they're not singing hymns. Then a reply from my neighbor: "They're not exactly trying to be clear."

And so the announcement, joyful but misleading – it wasn't for us, and maybe we had all misheard – causes no commotion, no stowing of belongings, no frantic grabbing of bags. There is no hectic rush; no one starts it, and everyone is happy not to follow. No one leaves his seat in waste of precious energy. Who knows how long the night will be? People tilted their heads with a hope they didn't really believe in and listened with forbearing. Now they slump back into their chairs and withdraw into their books, iPods, Kindles and newspapers, escaping into separate worlds where time doesn't stand still and life isn't suspended. And so the common wait continues almost unnoticed, and ignorant apathy is the defining condition rather than resignation. It has been so long already that no one feels energetic enough to resign. We just sit stoically on our seats doing what we've done over the course of the previous three hours – nothing.

A woman stretches out in exhaustion, turning three molded chairs, each seat an empty hollow, into a bench that can't possibly be comfortable. But her body is so tired it couldn't care less about comfort. Next to me, a Pakistani fellow starts a solitary fight. Exploding in wanton optimism, he starts filling in his UK landing card. It doesn't seem justified to me, given that we haven't left yet, that there isn't even a sign we will anytime soon. "You're sure you're not tempting fate?" I ask.

When I had made it across security, one of the first to do so because I was at the airport early, a great orange sunset spread under boiling clouds beyond the runway. The wet tarmac glistened brilliantly as it reflected the last rays of the sun. The beauty wasn't static. Flashes of lighting whipped low above the horizon and thunder rumbled on. A great show, but it didn't look good for a timely departure. "Due to the current weather situation, we are experiencing delays in take-off and landing," chirped the PA system without the least concern.

I logged off and dove into East of Eden, losing myself in the beauty of Steinbeck's gentle prose. At some point, the chain-link curtain around the duty-free shop to the left was noisily pulled back. Enough travelers had gathered to justify commercial activity. But duty-free is only a marketing term in Europe. Duty and taxes must be paid within the EU. You might as well buy the booze on sale in your local grocery store.

Three chapters down, the announcement that weather-related restrictions had been lifted at the airport passes without direct consequences for our trip. Words don't have the power to cut through the universal listlessness. Either there's a plane ready for us to board or there isn't. There isn't, but there's another announcement, louder this time, seemingly urgent and relevant: "We should be in the air in 20 minutes." But we're still at the gate, and the gate is still closed. Boarding hasn't started yet, and there's no apology.

Two rows down a toddler tirelessly attacks his dad's smart phone. The abused instrument reciprocates, to general consternation, with irritating sounds of exuberant farm animals, spring action and cartoon escapes. Acoustic torture rises above the carpet-bombing of bad smell. It was the warmest day of the year before the storm and is pretty hot even after it. The airport tries to be green and lets its air-conditioning run at half load, barely keeping the temperature in check. Sweat pours from faces and soaks into shirts and blouses. It isn't pretty.

By the time the boarding call came, it was so late that the lights in the main part of the airport had already been turned off. Activity had come to a halt. We were the only ones around, left like lost luggage. Blank eyes stared into infinity as a queue formed at the jet bridge. Mentally asleep I crossed the gate to the stairs down, so wasted that I didn't even realize that the agent who checked and tore my boarding pass handed me back the wrong end, the longer stub. He comes clambering behind me and catches me before I enter the bus to the plane.

shit

2011-05-30T09:35:00.009+01:00

The other day, an explosive thunderstorm hit London. I saw lightning for the first time since moving here. Rain pelted from clouds that were driven across the sky by a powerful storm. One minute the sky was blue and innocent, the next it was black and ferocious. It went back and forth throughout the afternoon.

A few hapless trees were uprooted, but overall the effect on the city was beneficial. The air was washed clean; pollen and dust were gone. The parks, deprived of water after the driest spring in a century, were eager to soak up the moisture. Front- and backyards appreciated the downpour as well, though there aren't that many of them. Most space adjoining houses is radically paved over. There is not much green outside designated parks, and nothing for the water to go but the sewers.

This is a big problem. Like most infrastructure in London, the sewage system is proverbially English: cute-looking in an industrial-heritage-museum kind of way but far from meeting the demands of the present. Built for a slow-moving city of three million, it must now handle the waste of seven million, each of whom statistically ingests over 3000 calories a day and drinks half a pint a night. Just like the underground, the sewage system works beyond capacity. On a good day, it does so in an English way: dutifully and without much grumbling.

When a storm goes down over London and dark clouds unload torrents, the situation changes. As such a large proportion of the ground is sealed with concrete, there's nowhere for the water to go but the sewers that are already bulging. To keep them from exploding in residential neighborhoods, Thames Water, the local utility, opens so-called combined sewer overflows (CSOs) and discharges hectoliters of untreated sewage straight into the river. This happens approximately 50 times a year. The most recent storm caused, according to Thames Water, 130,000 tons of dilute fecal matter to enter the river in my borough alone.

You would imagine that people are up in arms about this. After all, people are always up in arms about something, especially those with properties by the water. On this issue, curiously, they focus their energies elsewhere. While Thames Water is promoting an audacious £4b plan to build the Tideway Tunnel, a massive upgrade to the Victorian sewer system that would reliably take care of fecal overflow, a mob of angry residents don't see farther than their neighborhood park where they don't want construction. (*)

How can the temporary blight of a park that's used by hundreds stand up to a permanent condition afflicting millions? How can a gang of narrow-minded locals suffering from delusions of grandeur impose their parochialism on society? As the Total Perspective Vortex isn't available to give them a sense of proportion, the next best thing is a competing interest group, equally vociferous. I'm not kidding you, this oligocentric nimbyism riles me so much that I'm tempted to form a Don't shit in my river pressure group to antagonize them and restore some balance and sense.

It might be a vain fight. In my borough, the concerned residents are whipped on by the local government that starts a new reactionary petition whenever existing plans are modified to deal with residents' concerns. It's pathetic, counterproductive and a huge waste of money.

The council points out that the Thames is a pretty clean river. This is true, and it wasn't always so. On Sunday I went to the Wellcome Collection for their latest exhibition, Dirt, which charts the attitudes towards cleanliness and dirt from obsessed Holland of the 1700 through England and Germany to the current misery of Indian streetside loos. Like every Wellcome exhibition, this one was fascinating and edifying and managed to be tasteful despite the grim subject matter.

One of the rooms focused on London's sewers. I learned that the biggest deterioration of Thames water quality didn't come about when the industrial revolution got into full swing. Instead, the rapid urbanization that went along with it and the collateral population growth of London put a massive strain on the town's old sewer system. In 1815, an engineer came up with a simple solution: Just let everything empty straight into the river.

So much filth started flowing into the Thames that Parliament considered moving upriver one particularly stinky summer, the infamous Big Stink of 1858. Those plans were abandoned. Instead, the sewer system that's still serving the capital today was built, with collection and treatment facilities, and water quality slowly improved. These days, the Thames is clean enough for sea horses to gallop in the estuary and the occasional whale to cruise the waters.

Nevertheless, the fact that raw sewage regularly flows into the Thames can't be without consequences. Rowers regularly encounter turds and breathe the smell that once almost uprooted Parliament. A recent report demonstrates that WHO guidelines for the quality of recreationally used waterways are frequently breached in London and that there is "evidence of an elevated risk to the health of recreational users of the upper tideway for 2 - 4 days after CSO discharge events." Enough of this shit already, I say.

(*) It would of course be a better solution, cheaper and much better looking at the same time, to require homeowners to put lawns into their yards to break up the near universal sealing of soil (if that's the technical term?). But can you imagine the opposition to that?

little differences

2011-05-26T09:14:00.005+01:00

A good ten days ago I described a day hot on the metaphorical heels of the detained Chinese artactivist Ai Weiwei. Without my knowing it at the time, the story had already become bigger news in London than a few posters printed by a gallery and letters high up on a museum. Dai Qingli from the Chinese embassy had written a long letter to the Economist to complain about the unfair treatment China was receiving once again in an ignorant and arrogant West, about unacceptable interference with internal affairs and blatant disrespect for China's "judicial sovereignty". The usual, in other words.

I was curious nevertheless about what his complaints were in details, especially after the recent privacy/secrecy fiasco in the UK, in the light of which you wouldn't exactly be surprised if outside commentators saw it fit to ridicule judicial handling of the situation and generalize to a corrupt legal system – basically what Western commentators have done vis-à-vis China.

Before anything else, Dai Qingli makes efforts to dispel the idea that China is unfree and dissenting opinions are not tolerated. Ai Weiwei, she notes, was allowed to exhibit, to be interviewed and to express his opinion on Twitter. But does that prove anything? Twitter is banned in China, the interviews were given to Western journalists and the exhibitions held abroad. The average Chinese citizen was zealously protected from Mr Ai's opinion. His blog, which was widely read in China, was shut down two years ago – when it became too daring, one can assume.

Now, as I've mentioned above and in a previous post, the free expression of opinion is not total even in exemplary Western democracies. But what about the way the arrest was handled? Ms Dai – who could be anyone, from embassy cleaner to ambassador; it is never mentioned – goes on to say that "China is ruled by law, not by man" and that "the rights and freedoms of Chinese citizens are protected by law". From when it happened, the official line was that Mr Ai's arrest was not a political matter. Dai Qingli elaborates that "Mr Ai is now under investigation for suspected economic crimes".

At this point I thought for a moment that Ms Dai had made a telling mistake and revealed how rotten China really is. Surely any suspected crimes should be investigated before arrests are made or immediately thereafter. Surely no one should be locked up without charges for weeks, even months. Then I thought again and realized that in Guantánamo, hundreds have lost years of their lives, locked away without trial, without charges, on the pretext of suspected terrorist activities, inclinations or sympathies. What is the difference?

I'm not going to defend China's actions. Western activists, commentators and politicians are right in criticizing China for what happened. They are morally obliged, as human beings, to press China to release Ai Weiwei or, if he has broken the law, charge him. But their case would be so much stronger if they made similar efforts towards stopping corresponding abuses in the West. Being a famous artist doesn't make Ai Weiwei any more deserving of fair treatment than anyone else.

contempt and law

2011-05-23T23:50:00.012+01:00

Over the last few days, a curious row has raged in the UK, in artful innuendo and allusion until very recently. It concerns the topic of superinjunctions, legal tools to silence the media that are available to those who can afford them. They are basically the biggest gun in the battle between privacy and freedom of speech. What's going on?

In a society that values freedom of speech, information should flow freely and it's hard to see how superinjunctions are anything but pathetic gagging orders. The case of Trafigura, a scandal-prone privately held company notorious for dumping toxic waste in the murky waters of a Third World country when disposing of it properly was too expensive, illustrates this powerfully. Trafigura didn't think it was in its best business interests if the world knew about the story, and tried to suppress press reports and stories. They failed, as they should have.

A different perspective is afforded by the ongoing case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn. This man is far from a saint by even the most relaxed standards, but at this point he is still legally innocent. And yet, with reports of his arrest on TV the same night and media pressure and unsavory stories from his past, he had to resign both as IMF boss and as French presidential hopeful. Is this a fair price to pay for openness? What if he turns out to be innocent after all?

Superinjunctions were designed as an instrument to deal with such cases. They are granted by a judge in certain extraordinary cases and are designed to prevent information on some sensitive matters from spreading. They do this by cloaking everything in total secrecy, but they do it extremely poorly. The person or company that applied for the injunction must not be named, nor must it be mentioned that a superinjunction against that person exists. For this to work, everybody obviously needs to know who the person behind the superinjunction is, lest one spills the beans by accident. And yet, there are apparently a few dozen superinjunctions in force that no one knows about. What a nonsense!

A week ago or so the fact that public figures have apparently been granted these injunctions rather frivolously, to prevent the press from disseminating information they considered detrimental to their public image, sex stories, infidelities and the like. I couldn't care less and I didn't follow the debate, but it didn't go away. In particular, a footballer stood out in his Quixotic fight for anonymity.

Ryan Giggs, a 37-year-old Man United first teamer for twenty years, a wholesome player if there ever was one, squeaky-clean and scandal-free, had allegedly dug into the inflated boobs of a B-list celebrity and then done things with her that no one needs to know about, except maybe his wife. But does a lapse in moral judgment deserve a court order to be kept private? The answer must be yes because an injunction was granted.

Being English law, the injunction applies only to England. Being established law, it applies to print and broadcast media. Blogs and social media exposed Giggs long ago. Newspapers never failed to mention that in their stories. It was a bizarre situation, but it turned truly farcical when the Sunday Herald showed a thinly disguised picture of Ryan Giggs on its website. The English media were still not allowed to name names and now also prevented from specifying the latest hole in the cover. They were restricted to mentioning "a Scottish Sunday paper". Everyone else put Imogen Thomas into the Twitter search box and got overwhelmed by the facts. When Giggs went after Twitter, anonymously, to force the company to reveal the user who had first leaked his name, even I couldn't help checking out who was the nitwit at the center of this absurdity.

Despite all this, the injunction remains in place as of tonight, and naming Ryan Giggs puts me in contempt of court, a serious legal matter. A much more serious matter, however, is that the law is in contempt of common sense and in urgent need of reform (as is libel law, a related issue). Maybe energies can focused on something productive now?

sunny amblings

2011-05-21T19:56:00.010+01:00

After two days out in the open, the Marqués de Caranó is a different beast. Uncorked but recapped, half empty but brimming with the magic of oxygen, the wine has recovered all the attributes the marketing specialist had promised on the label. It's richly flavored and full-bodied, with cherry and raspberry fruit flavors combining with gentle spicy notes. For me, flavors are generally described on a sliding scale from yuck to yum, but I agree with the gist of label note. The wine tastes good.

I spent the day out in the sun today, without a plan and for the most part without an idea of what my next step would be. I set out with one goal only, getting a roll or orange recycling bags from the library, and drifted from there. Fulham Road is really nice, full of little shops, restaurants and cafés. I should come here more often. At some point I got to Putney Bridge where the goosenecks of the Thames and relative geography conspired to confuse me. When I run I come from upriver and turn around at the bridge. Today I walked and I approached the bridge from downriver.

In Putney I hopped on the bus to go to Richmond, a lovely place to be out when the sun is out as well, with wide walks on both sides of the Thames, riverside pubs and picnic sites, exuding an inexplicable charm that even I can't resist.

On the bus I rediscovered purpose, lost since I finished my recycling bag mission a good hour earlier. I would go to Ham, I decided, a town near Richmond that's home to the Backhaus, the best German bakery in London, London being defined in this case as everything inside the perimeter of the M25 motorway, no matter what the actual place names are.

Ham is near Richmond was the only thing I knew when I got off the bus, but London is my oyster and with a recently recharged Oyster Card I knew I could get there in a hop. Nearly every bus stop in London displays two big maps: a local area map covering the surrounding half mile at Streetview detail and an octopus tangle of bus lines running from the dozen closest stops.

Getting to Ham was easy, slaloming through green neighborhoods of substantial wealth and along parks and commons. I just sat there; the driver did all the work. Next to Ham Common, I got off. There was no bakery within sight but a small German grocery store with a few remaining baked goods. (It was Saturday afternoon and they were about to close.) I got this and that and went back to the Common for a picnic. It was a quintessentially English experience, never mind the Bionade in my hand.

The Common is triangular but the action happens in a wide linden-lined avenue that runs through it. At one end is a pond with geese and ducks and a little island just for looks. There are willows around it and park benches with plaques dedicated to John, my grandfather who loved to sit here. The linden trees and the pond surround a cricket pitch where a dozen figures clad in white were engaged in Imperial leisure. Around the game, locals had assembled like an audience. They had got drinks from the pubs around the green or brought hampers from home. Groups of friends and solitary revelers were sitting on the grass, eating, drinking, reading, chatting. And thought it looked from a distance as if they were watching the game, they weren't. The game went on in the background, for hours, like cricket games do. Members of the non-watching audience would glance up from their conversations and meals and books every half hour or so, deriving reassurance from the fact that the game was still going on. If cricket is played, life must be good.

It was indeed, and not just in Ham. I walked down the river towards Richmond, passing the locks at Teddington and then the column that marks the point where the Environment Agency hands over responsibility for the Thames to the Port of London Authority. I was now walking along a tidal river. An hour later in Richmond I came across another common, the Richmond Green. The scene at Ham Common was repeated and amplified, so much that I must admit that the previous paragraph was not an accurate description but a collage of both commons, the linden trees taken from Ham and the spectators from Richmond. (Cricket was played on both commons.) The sun was still high up when I got onto a District line train back to West Kensington.

own space

2011-05-19T20:48:00.009+01:00

I'm sitting on my dining table, sipping on a Marqués de Caranó Gran Reserva 2001 and wonder whether anyone has missed the oenophilic intros? When I lived in Grenoble, when I didn't have a dinner without a glass of red wine for a solid two years running, it was pretty much de rigueur to start a post with a reference to a current or imagined red delight in my glass. To me as a writer it was very interesting to see in how many different ways stories could evolve that all started from the same liquid premise.

In a very similar way, I'm curious to see where this post is going to go. Some things have happened; they deserve mentioning. Surprising connections have been imagined; they have an equally prominent place here. Nothing is as the readers' eyes see it. Or is it? Ask me – it's my blog.

The other day I got a letter from Morgans, the trading name of Morgan Management, as the fineprint helpfully informs. I was advised of an upcoming property inspection sometime during the next months. That's how vague the letter was. It would take place "during the course of the next month", the letter said, expecting that I'd happily give up any claim to privacy during that period.

I don't. I've argued my case before. I don't appreciate the possibility of someone walking into my flat while I'm taking a shower or practicing a post-modern dance routing in the nude down my endless corridor. This time, this wasn't even my greatest concern. I was much more preoccupied with the sudden name change of the company that I'm dealing with. How does Kingstar turn into Morgan, with a new telephone number but the same old address? Am I under the spell of a tax-evading letterbox company?

I called to find out. There wasn't much to it. One is the rental agent, the other the management company, but the operate from the same offices. This resolved, I found myself absorbed in an animated discussion with a telephone wallah who was not in the least sympathetic to my situation. She reminded me that I was in breach of contract for having changed the locks but couldn't be bothered to schedule an appointment for the inspection. The letter said that "we do not propose that any specific arrangements be made in advance", and there was no way for me to convince her otherwise. It mattered not a bit that they would again be in breach of contract if they tried to enter my flat without my explicit consent.

Tomorrow I might call the company enlisted to execute the inspections. From their website (They do have one!), they seem to be more legit than Morgans/Kingstar. I can't see they would do their business in disregard of the law. But tonight I don't much care. The Marqués de Caranó is far from the best wine I've had. But it put me out of my mind and into the right mood to enjoy the four CDs I've recently purchased, four CDs that, as a set, would expand almost anyone's collection.

Fondo by Vieux Farka Touré
Juno Soundtrack
The Division Bell by Pink Floyd
Quatour pour la fin de temps by Messiaen

too personal

2011-05-17T20:55:00.004+01:00

I had just got home, taken off my bicycle helmet and dropped my backpack when my doorbell rang. This is not a common occurrence. These days, most people call instead of ringing, maybe because they can do that from half a block away and thus won't have to wait for me to come down to open the door for them.

The only people that use the doorbell are EDF agents reading the meters and assorted parcel services delivering shipments. Sometimes Jehovah's witnesses come by, promising paradise or warning of doom. As I've never let them in, I don't know which it is. The other class of itinerant proselytizers, my Mormon coreligionists, have never stopped by, and overall, my doorbell doesn't get much exercise.

That's why I was so surprised when I heard the bell this evening. I opened the door and let a woman with a clipboard into the corridor. With a mild Slavic inflection, she explained her presence. "Your postcode has been selected for a post-census survey. Would you mind answering some questions for me. It will only take five minutes."

Just this afternoon, I had a conversation about the census. With the problems various government agencies have had keeping confidential information confidential, it should have been a no-brainer to return the form anonymously, never mind the legal obligation to the contrary. But when I filled the damn thing in, I chickened out and used my real name. I must have had negative brain activity, and I've been banging my head against walls ever since.

With purple-and-white questionnaire in my face, I saw a faint light of hope that I could correct my earlier lapse, but no such luck. The woman was going through a subset of the census question in some sort of control experiment. Matching the answers from people that were asked twice would give the Office for National Statistics a measure of the overall accuracy of the exercise. And so I answered questions regarding my age and professional and cohabitation status again.

Eventually, inevitably, the question of first name, last name came up. There was a short pause. I'm not a particularly confrontational person, but if I can avoid making the same mistake twice, I will insist on it. I explained my position to the poor woman. The I asked her why the name was necessary in the first place. Besides "most popular boys' names" rankings, no useful statistics can be derived from it.

I didn't want to give the poor woman a hard time. She was just doing her job, earning a little on the side in tough times. I recalled her saying that the post-census survey was voluntary. While I was contemplating pulling out after already spending five minutes on it, she relented. "Can you at least give me your initials?" I happily did so and a moment later we parted, both content.

The initial blunder remains, and my exposure to bureaucratic incompetence, but there's no point bewailing it. I went back up, cooked some stew in honor of our Queen's visit to Ireland, and popped in a CD while I ate. Then the telephone rang.

Weiwei day

2011-05-14T22:13:00.006+01:00

Every winter, Tate Modern hands control over its Turbine Hall, London's largest enclosed exhibition space at a bit more than 100,000 cubic meters, to a single artist. That person is invited to do with the space/fill it as he or she sees fit. Not much is off-limit, not even structural damage to the building itself, as Doris Salcedo demonstrated.

The eleventh Turbine Hall commission was announced last fall. It fell to Ai Weiwei, a Chinese artist that I was not only unfamiliar with but had in fact never heard of before. That doesn't mean much. Last year's black box of perceived infinity was by an artist I didn’t know, and it was brilliant.

I'm not sure this year's commission deserved the same praise. The far quarter of the Turbine Hall's floor space was covered ankle-deep in one hundred million porcelain replicas of sunflower seeds, seemingly identical but in fact all unique because they were painted by hand in small workshops. The material accompanying the installation talked loftily about the analogies to the artist's homeland: the millions in blue identikit Mao suits, with identical hair and, to Western eyes, faces are all individuals.

I didn't think much of the curator's philosophizing, and I didn't think much of the installation. Had I visited during the opening weekend, my verdict might have been different. People were allowed onto the bed of sunflower seeds and invited to touch the art and play with it and to hang out and chill, as if it were the gravelly seaside at Brighton. Then fine dust was noticed, produced by the continuous grinding of pebble against pebble under people's feet, and Health and Safety cordoned off the area. Visitors were restricted to contemplate a deserted beach, too far away to discern differences among the seeds or even recognize them as such.

After my visit, I still didn't know much about Ai Weiwei. He is Chinese and a successful public figure with a large audience in the West. Surely he must be a poodle or a parrot of the regime. The authorities wouldn't allow otherwise... I should have known better. A year ago, the New Yorker profiled Ai Weiwei in a thoughtful and rather prescient piece ("he could end up in jail"). Who is this guy?

Throughout his artistic career, Ai Weiwei has been fighting the system from within, challenging state control of the arts and tirelessly demanding political democracy. He's conflated his life and his activism into one big piece of art, with his blog (shut down by the authorities but recently published in English translation) and nearly continuous Twitter posts relating every minute of his existence.

Using whatever measure of transparency exists in China, he exposed the corruption and hypocrisy of the system, most notably the failings surrounding the Sichuan earthquake. In a country of one-party rule, he became a one-man opposition party that relentlessly tested and pushed the limits of civic possibility. To put it succinctly, he was a major pain in the ass of the Chinese so-called Communist Party.

On 3 April, the Party struck back. Ai Weiwei was detained without charges and hasn't been seen since. Nor has there been any information on his whereabouts or the reasons for his disappearance. In all likelihood, he's waterboarding in some detention center in the far corner of China to pay for his impertinence and self-confident individuality.

There have been protests, from governments and NGOs, but the art world has been curiously slow to react. I read an article the other day that put the inaction down to envy at his popularity, but I can't believe that. As such, I'm glad that a few signs of hope have appeared in London this weekend and I decided to see them one by one.

I started out at Lisson Gallery near Edgware Road, two exhibition spaces filled with sculpture and video that still can't convince me of Ai Weiwei's artistic merit (detached from his political existence). One of the outside walls was plastered with posters quoting Ai Weiwei. They go a long way to explaining why Ai Weiwei is behind bars (or worse). One says, "Liberty is about our rights to question everything". Indeed.

Visitors were encouraged to sign a petition calling for the artist's release and to take copies of the posters home with them. The opportunity to have your picture taken, in front of the gallery and with a "Free Ai Weiwei" sign in your hand, was apparently restricted to the opening night of the exhibition, for which I was one day late.

From Edgware Road I went to Trafalgar Square and walked down the Strand. On the right side is Somerset House. Its courtyard was adorned with twelve enormous Ai Weiwei bronzes, recreations of zodiac sculptures that once been part of a fountain at an imperial retreat in Beijing. Given that the courtyard at Somerset House is one big fountain itself, the heads were a good match. But there was no Free-Ai-Weiwei activism.

My last stop of the day was Tate Modern. The sunflower seeds had all been packed up in the enormous bags they had come in, ready to be – what? Sent back to China and dumped on Tienanmen Square? Made to disappear in the North Sea? Auctioned off at Sotheby's? Nobody knows.

In response to Ai Weiwei's arrest, huge letters have been affixed to the outside of the former power station, calling for his release. With all I've read and learned, and in ignorance of the official charges, I'm happy to join the chorus: Release Ai Weiwei!

simple pleasure

2011-05-13T23:01:00.004+01:00

Four weeks ago, I retired from running. This is not exactly newsworthy; I've mentioned it plenty of times and you are justified in flinching in exasperation at the repetition. But I find it necessary to remind myself every now and then because in spite of my natural predisposition for laziness, sitting on a sofa doing nothing doesn't come easy to me.

Maybe I'm still traumatized by my most realistically frightening Halloween experience, which shook me to the core a good ten years ago. I had dressed up as some sort of Mexican fat bastard with 48"-waist corduroys and a XXXL flannel shirt stuffed to bursting with pillows from assorted sofas. I had a shapely but gigantic belly and a straw hat, and I was incapacitated.

I found it hard to squeeze behind the wheel of my little Passat to go to the party and couldn't bend down to tie my own shoe laces. Worse, I couldn't even see my shoes. I resolved, there and then, that I would never allow myself to become debilitatingly fat. With that in mind, my retirement from running might indeed look shaky.

However, I also retired, a good year ago now, from football. This was not caused by being sick of the sport. On the contrary, I loved every second and played with a passion, but I had sprained my ankle one too many times. The London Marathon was looming up ahead and I knew I wouldn't be able to achieve a decent time without training uninterrupted by ankle injuries. Football needed to go.

Now I don't have to train anymore. I'm retired from running, after all. Announcing a comeback of Jordanesque proportions, I booked a spot on the pitch this afternoon. I had only running shorts and a cycling vest, but what does clothing matter with feet enshrouded in a pair of Nike Ronaldinho trainers, one of the best shoe purchases I've ever made (and they weren't even on sale)?

Never mind the dry sunny spring, we're playing indoors and every game is a cardiac chase of red-zone intervals. After three minutes, I was dead exhausted, out of breath and black stars dancing in my eyes, and had to take goalie for a while to recover. Then I scored a few goals and it was like always, exploding back and forth and left and right, trying to keep up with the other players and the ball.

I can hardly believe that I gave this divine pleasure up for running. What was I thinking? Apart from bombing down the Wasatch Crest Trail to Big Water on a fully, there's nothing that can compete in hilarious fun with an insanely frantic hour on the hardwood floor of a gym chasing a bouncy ball like a 16-year-old.

That's all it takes.

another race

2011-05-08T20:16:00.006+01:00

This morning, my sister ran her first race in eternities. There were times, back in middle school when mud was still sticky and rain fell in sheets throughout spring, when she ran cross-country on occasion. There were regular meets between the schools in our town and she was up there with the best. Maybe I'm imagining this. Sometimes I remember that I was up there with the best too, but that I'm imagining for sure.

This post is not about me because my sister ran a 10k this morning. The race was held on the day of, and as part of, the Oberelbe-Marathon, which I would call my favorite marathon, if such a thing could exist. But only a pathologically twisted individual would combine the words favorite and marathon. I, in contrast, like refer to it as a particularly benign form of self-inflicted torture that leads to something slightly less than absolutely misery.

My sister ran the mini-marathon, a peaceful stroll of 3.7 km, last year and did well. Then she decided to do better, and more, the following year, and got somewhat serious about it, taking to the woods where she lives and tracking herself, time and distance. She could have taken her iPhone and asked Apple for the data, but they might have refused (proprietary brand management assets or some such thing). Instead, she takes the epitome of geek, a stopwatch that talks to the stars (or at least satellites).

My sister ran a 10k this morning and ate the competition like a grilled sausage. My sister is a vegetarian, but she knows when to compromise her principles. Coming third out of nowhere is such an occasion. Another is a good sausage, a bratwurst cooked up in Thuringia from fine pork, spices and shredded hoofs and heels. She probably ate that during the stroll through town on the day before the race.

With her time she narrowly beat the target I had pulled out of my head (yes!) the night before, a round number that sounded plausible though not exactly trivial to achieve. I'm delighted – and at the same time twitchy. I feel an itch in my left leg. Stories of racing, especially close to home, always give me a kick. Should I maybe not have retired after all? But this post is not about me.

halfway around

2011-05-05T23:51:00.004+01:00

There are many ways of traveling. One can rent a car and explore, drifting from place to place with scant regard for plans or timelines. One can be holed up in a city and discover the place on foot. One can also hike out into the wilderness, pitching a tent in a different spot every night. One can take the backpack to civilization and weave through the urban fabric of a region or a country by coach, railroad or minibus. Or one can put basecamp in a comfortable hotel and explore the surrounding areas in an out-and-back fashion by whatever means of transportation is convenient.

Paul Theroux has probably done all of the above, but his favorite mode of travel is the railroad. He once remarked that "I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it." In the early 70s, his love for track-bound travel resulted in a pan-Eurasian grand tour, published a few years later as The Great Railway Bazaar.

This book made his name, but it's far from his only one. I encountered him first in The Kingdom by the Sea, a similar grand tour, albeit on a smaller scale, of the United Kingdom, mostly conducted by coach and on foot because National Rail doesn't cover all the coastline of Great Britain, let alone the surrounding islands.

I was enchanted by the way Theroux lets every place, journey or way station, no matter how dull or drab, come alive, mostly by letting the people he encounters speak. Not only this, he gives them all names, as if he knew them personally. I thought this was a gimmick until a friend from Scotland recognized the guy who used to drive him to school every morning.

The other day, I finished The Pillars of Hercules, the account of yet another grand tour. The book chronicles Theroux's first foray into the Mediterranean. The author, who hadn't before been to Spain, Egypt or Morocco, sets out to travel from Gibraltar, the northern Pillar of Hercules, to Ceuta, a possible southern one. Across the Strait of Gibraltar, this would take an hour on the ferry but the long way, along the Spanish, French, Italian, Balkan, Greek, Turkish, Levantine and North African coasts and across a few islands on the way, it takes a good year and a half.

The first third, by distance, of the trip is vintage Theroux: acute observations, dry wit, occasional benevolent condescension, precise descriptions, and interactions with nearly everyone encountered on the way. Spain gives way to France; Monaco is left for Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily; the east coast of Italy is traded for the Balkans. The pages fly effortlessly, but three fifth in, the troubles start.

The mid-nineties, when the trip was undertaken, weren't a good time for traveling around the Mediterranean. Serbs, Croats and Bosnians were at each other's necks, Israel was shelling Lebanon and occupied Gaza, fundamentalists slit thousands of throats in Algeria, terrorists bombed Egypt, Kurds fought back in Turkey, and Albania was completely disintegrating as a country. Lots of places weren't safe and the narrative ends.

After a summer at home, recovering his spirits and waiting for the return of the low season, Theroux continues but he changes pace. The coastal railroad makes way for cruise ships and ferries, a substitution that completely changes the character of the book – because it changes the character of the traveling. Instead of visiting places that take his momentary fancy and talking to locals, Theroux gets comfortable on a big boat and studies the characters around him.

This is not exploring anymore or even traveling, it's cruising. Taking the easy way out of a tight spot is one way of looking at it. More generous would be to grant that Theroux made the most out of a bad situation. The most is not the best, however. The best would have been to finish the manuscript after the chapter on Albania and abandon the conceit of circumnavigating the Mediterranean. The title would have to be changed and an overarching story invented, but the 300-page book would have been a good one.

Instead, the book switches from the desolation and poverty of Albania on one page to a roster of dignitaries and aging bigwigs floating blissfully on a luxury cruise ship on the next. The disparity threw me off balance and made me doubt I was still reading the same book. But I was, and the struggle continues for another 200 pages, painfully disjointed in scope from their predecessors. Not much happens on the ships or ferries and landfall is rare. Few places are mentioned and even less of their local color is captured.

Conversations with fellow passengers and musings on traveling and travel writing must suffice. Theroux is aware that he's shortchanging the reader, but his repeated excuses for taking the cruise ship in the first place and his professed desire to get off it feel dishonest and are tiring. ("My idea was to find a way of going back to Greece and Turkey, not do a hatchet job on a hip-load of cruise passengers, supine on the sun deck, reading Danielle Clancy and Clive Grisham ...")

The outing to Malta with his co-cruisers is a travesty. Like a package tourist, Theroux skims over the highlights, "giving [the island] a good five hours of thorough scrutiny." Greece, which Theroux dislikes enormously, is given equally short shrift, though its coast is nearly unlimited. Turkey is nothing more than a few days in Istanbul and a day-long bus ride to Syria. At the end of the book, nearing Morocco, traveling has become an afterthought and the writing positively self-infatuated.

There are some gems among the gloom, though it would be better had they been allowed to stand on their own in a separate little book. Theroux's been traveling for decades, and his skill and experience can be studied more easily when he doesn't dazzle with crisp description of improbably encounters. There's much to learn for aspiring travel writers, either spelled out on the pages or poorly hidden between the lines. For example, Theroux "makes notes" where everyone else would just take them, just as a serious photographer makes his photos and doesn't just take them.

He considers the correctness of the facts he reports the prime criterion of the value of his writing. Indeed, in travel writing "all that matters is that the facts are generally true, so that a historian, some Fernand Braudel of the futures, will be able to use your book as a source for, say, the condition of Albania and 1994." That's stated explicitly. But between the lines I read that accurate facts must go along with skillful presentation. The context must be drawn broadly and clearly, by the rearrangement of encounters, by the introduction of characters that show certain details more convincingly, and by creative chronology. Artistic license allows for that; a good book calls for it.

The Pillars of Hercules is not a good book, but if it were torn apart at page 300, it would be two good though incomplete books: a third of a travelogue around the Mediterranean and an involuntary travel writing tutorial. They don't go too well together but are worth reading individually. The second "book" might just give the tools and motivation to attempt completion of the trip that Theroux failed in. And with some luck (and the persistent courage of the peoples of Libya and Syria), the time might soon come when such a feat will be possible.

too good

2011-05-03T23:53:00.005+01:00

I've just come back from two weeks in Portugal and Spain, getting soaked by violent showers at first but finishing by soaking up the sun. I ate great food for pennies, drank fresh green wine and heavy port, visited place I've never been to and learned new things. More about this later when I've had time to go through my notebook and align my observations.

By a curious set of coincidences, chance encounters I can't recall anymore, I also came across some music I thought intriguing. It was snippets of news from the in-flight magazine and mini-reviews in Galician newspapers, tantalizing but cryptic and absolutely silent. As soon as I got home I did what I usually do when I happen upon new music: I fired up Spotify to hear what I had only been imagining.

Spotify was a godsend when it was launched, an eye-opener, a miracle almost. Its database contains more songs than the hard disk of even the most avid file sharer, ready for streaming at a moment's notice. When I signed up two-and-a-half years ago, I could listen to pretty much any piece of music, legally and for free. It was great for discovering the unknown, an infinite aural treasure chest.

The service was financed by advertisements that broke albums into annoyingly small fragments. The alternative was to pay for a subscription or, more parsimoniously, a day-pass. Provide an unlimited CD collection and you're almost guaranteed to have a happy party. I liked nearly every aspect of Spotify, and I was sure it wouldn't last.

Ads that I don't act on or even listen to can't pay for unlimited music. It was clear to me that the free Spotify accounts were only teasers to get people hooked, make them take immediate music for granted, to suck them into paying five or ten pounds a month for a convenience they wouldn't want to miss.

I knew I wouldn't want to pay for a music subscription, ever. I want to buy music that I can listen to even when the hot music service of the moment (Napster, anyone?) is long forgotten. CDs are my media of choice. But before I place an order, I want to know what I get, and Spotify was great for that.

Back from Spain, I fired up Spotify and was asked, more in-your-face than usually, to purchase a Premium subscription. If not, I would not be able to listen to a song more than five times, and my monthly access would be curtailed at 10 hours. These are serious restrictions, and they render Spotify useless as a personal and personalizable radio. Nevertheless, I stuck with my Free account, which should still be good for test-listening to new music.

Except it might not. Over the last few months, I had already realized a progressive decline in the availability of songs and albums, a thinning of the collection, a rise of songs in pale grey, playable only with a paying subscription. Is it bye-bye Spotify?

Probably, and I'm not surprised. The free service was always too good to be true. But for the moment, things are still all right. The three new released I had been interested in were all available. I've started listening to Sidi Touré and the Orchestre Poly-Rythmo and, with no connection at all, the Beastie Boys. No decision yet on a purchase, but if I part with my money it will be one-off for a lasting value and not the intangibility of a subscription.

retirement

2011-04-17T18:21:00.006+01:00

After boring you almost to death with word of my running exploits, recently in ever-increasing succession, I feel obliged to write about race day itself, though I would much rather just lie on my sofa and do nothing.

Kick-off was at 9:45, a time I was comfortable with. I got up at 7, had porridge and tea, and then jogged (to kickstart my metabolism) to the tube and changed to the train at Waterloo East. The crowds were already there. I managed to squeeze into the first departing train but being crammed in like a sardine for twenty minutes wasn't pleasant. The ride took longer than expected because of frequent stops between stations, presumable to wait for the train ahead to disgorge its millipedal load.

The crowds continued at Blackheath where a colorful stream surged in the general direction of the three starts. The Blue Start was a modern incarnation of a wild-west wagon fort, surrounded by twenty identical 18-wheelers that would later transport 20000 kit bags to the finish. As I am good for my age, I had what almost felt like a VIP starting area. Only 1500 people and one truck.

What began at the start gun can only be called a stampede. The road was hardly wide enough to hold all the runners that were jostling for position, passing each other, cutting left and right for water and often no reason at all. Three miles in, the course descended from the heath to the Thames, but there were so many runners I couldn't let it rip as I normally would on a downhill. Throughout the race, the crowd didn't thin appreciably. If anything, it got worse towards the end when people were delirious or surging or stopping. The running of the bulls in Pamplona can't be much different, except it's over after a few manic minutes.

I was running with a friend and tried to settle into an easy pace. Our goal was to get a negative split, that is running the second half faster than the first. The rational behind this is that if you start too fast, you run out of glycogen and fall off a cliff later. It almost worked for me.

The crowds that make running a steady pace nearly impossible are reflected on either side of the course. People line the streets densely packed, and they are loud. Running across Tower Bridge with thousands cheering was a special experience. Over the last five miles along the Victoria Embankment I felt like a racer on the last stage of the Tour de France, hammering up and down the Champs Elysées. The noise was deafening.

By that time I was already on my last legs. A mile or two earlier, I had suffered intense stitches and had to slow down to regain my breathing and drive the pain away. Now I was being rushed along by the frenzied excitement all around. It was madness. Turning the corner by Buckingham Palace, I knew I couldn't go much farther. I had no eyes to check whether our fair Queen was standing on her balcony, waving benevolently to the crazies below. She probably did. Such an event doesn't take place every day after all.

I crossed the finish line after 2:59:11 according to the chip on my shoe. The official clock, much to my dismay, passed the three-hour mark a few seconds earlier, in defiance of my final sprint that only served to drive up the goo and water I had ingested over the course of the race and splash it on the ground before my feet in fitful convulsions. Seeing this, the Queen turned in disgust and retired to her drawing room.

It was at the finish that the disadvantages of running among 35000 became obvious. There were no showers; how could there be in St. James's Park? Getting the kit bag from the truck took a good fifteen minutes of being jammed in among the sweat and smell of hundreds who had finished at the same time. There was no more support, no water, no food. The race was over, and good-bye. The Oberelbemarathon is certainly a much nicer experience in that regard, as would be any small, well-organized race.

Just a nick under three hours wasn't what I had imagined at the outset of the season, but preparations weren't optimal, and I can see the positive side of today's race. Last year's sub-three-hour finish was clearly not a fluke. There's nothing more to say now. From this afternoon, I'm officially a retired runner. No more of this nonsense for me.

race ready

2011-04-16T22:40:00.003+01:00

The London Marathon is less than twelve hours away. I feel well prepared, though certainly not optimally so. I've trained with verve and dedication, and I've eaten tons of pasta over the last three days. All is ready.

I took the kit out a while ago, to be ready tomorrow morning. Once again I'm struck by what a low-key operation running is. It doesn't take much. There is almost no technical equipment, nothing that can break. Shoes wear out after a year or two but the rest is practically eternal.

Here is all I need, spiraling clockwise:

My number starts with a three. I hope my finish time won't.
I'm wearing the same shorts and vest as last year and as the year before. How anyone would set out without a full zipper is beyond me.
Compression socks rule! Your grandma wears them because they fight varicose veins. I love them because they keep shin splints in check and my calves from flopping all over the place.
The same shoes that caused my feet great suffering last year, but they have improved since – and are 60 grams lighter than the ones I bought earlier this year.
A watch for split times. I know my body well enough not to need a heart rate monitor.
A Livestrong wristband won't make me faster but might remind me in the toughest part that there is such a thing as iron will, which I will then deplore not having.
The chip, tied to the laces of the right shoe, will time my race.
Three Clif Shots to boost my effort. The last one has caffeine.
The kit bag will hold all the stuff I'm not taking on the race, like warm clothes and a water bottle, while it's shuttled to the finish area.
Lucozade gave me a pace band. I must finish each mile in 6:52.

taking a ride

2011-04-16T22:08:00.002+01:00

Last night after work, after a day spent in front of the computer, fixing crucial details in an important document and sending dozens of emails in rapid succession, always to the same three people, I dove into the London Underground system for a ride on the tube then another on the tube and then, at Canning Town, one on the DLR.

The DLR is not part of the Underground system, though it is integrated with it. The acronym stands for a number of competing three-letter monikers that all mean the same thing. I use Dockland Light Rail, and I always get a kick out of riding it, not the least because it features in the clearest memories I have of my first trip to London, back in 1993 when our high school tutor group went there by coach and ferry. This was before the advent of budget airlines.

Reading up on London before going, I became fascinated with the Docklands, back then a nascent office development with an attitude. While only a few skyscrapers had been completed, the scope of the project was stunning. The idea was to transform docks and wharves that had fallen into disuse and decrepitude into shining beacons of successful capitalism. One fabulously long-lived but recently failed moneymaking machine, the Port of London, was supposed to be replaced with another, an extension of the City that had prospered since the 80s.

Back then, the few towers stood like searchlights. The development was confined to the area around Canary Wharf. I took the DLR from Bank and was immediately catapulted into the future of ambitious science fiction movies. The train skirred silently into motion. There was no driver; the thing seemed to move on its own volition. After a minuted in the dark, we had tunneled out of Bank and glided (so disappointed that the past of glide is not glid) along elevated tracks, towards an artificial landscape of vertical glass and steel. Sitting in the first car, I could see the synthetic panorama in all its glory.

The illusion of timelessness persisted once I got off and explored. There was no one there, no people on the sidewalks, no cars in the streets. The docks were silent; there was no activity. The whole area looked like one big movie set, illusory, unreal. There was no dust or dirt anywhere. I kept looking for the shrink wrap on the buildings.

Almost twenty years later, the Docklands have grown beyond anyone’s dreams. There are headquarters of financial institutions and square miles of office buildings, but also thousands of apartments. People live and work there, but it still looks and feels like a project, clinical, lifeless. Signs of the past abound and are often craftily incorporated into new structure, but there is no sense of historic continuity. Roaming the area on a sunny day is pleasant enough, but I couldn’t see myself living there.

Last night, I stayed on the DLR for two stops only. I got of at the ExCel, a huge conference center right at the end of the City Airport runway. While propeller planes were taking to the skies noisily, I followed the crowds into the ExCel, which feels a bit like an airport itself. A few minutes down the main avenue, there was a big entrance to the left, decked out in red, screaming Virgin London Marathon 2011. I had come to pick up my number and chip.

bikes matter

2011-04-13T21:22:00.007+01:00

Given that I've been a cycling nut for the better part of two decades, it might come as a surprise that I haven't owned more than six bicycles. It started in primary school when I got a compact blue single-speed that was foldable. I never folded it, but I rode it everywhere in the environs of our town and took it with me when I went away for high-school. There, it disappeared.

That didn't matter because I had already got a proper cycle, a single-speed again, but larger. Continually upgraded, the bike morphed into a tourer that took me to Hungary one summer and to the western edge of France the next. When I left for college, it disappeared.

That didn't matter because I had splurged on a proper road bike, a budget-price Cannondale with more drool than the tag justified: Clipless pedals, oversized aluminum frame, integrated shifters. I rode it in the hills around college and discovered the Tour on TV. When I crossed an ocean to go to grad school, I had to leave it behind.

That didn't matter because Utah was made for off-roading. I bought a proper mountain bike, another stellar bargain, and went head first down the Roller Coaster and the Bobsled. A year later I had swallowed so much dust that I brought my road bike to Utah for more civilized fun and promptly had it stolen outside Orson Spencer Hall.

That didn't matter because I found a replacement that exceeded the original in all aspects save the label on the frame (which was the same) at a bike swap a few months later. For the next five years I ripped myself to pieces with these two rides. When I went to Grenoble, they came with me despite the hassle, but the mountain bike was quickly stolen from my basement.

That didn't matter because in Grenoble the road bike ruled supreme, conquering the steeps up and down. For riding around town I got a vomit-green Motobecane that was older than me and in worse shape. Its feeble breaks promised prospective thieves certain death at the next intersection. The bike was so fragile that I abandoned it in front of the train station when I left for London.

That didn't matter because by that time the second Cannondale had neared the end of its life. It couldn't serve a higher purpose than commuter beater and took me to work almost daily, with a creaking bottom bracket and a whining chain. Battered from years of faithful service, it wasn't not a looker anymore.

It wouldn't matter if the bike died on me because there are Boris bikes all over town, sturdy cycles that are rentable by the hour upon insertion of a electronic key, perfect for a quick hop. The convenience is priceless and renting free if the bike is returned within the first half hour. I've been making good use of them already.

The other day, I found my account suspended. The telephone wallah told me of an incomplete journey. My last bike return hadn't registered. The bike was missing, and now it counted stolen. I was concerned about the financial ramifications. After all, I had responsibility for the bike.

"That doesn't matter", I was assured. "There are still a few problems with the system and we believe you didn't take the bike. We'll reenable your account and let you continue as before. We want users to benefit from the system and enjoy the bikes."

As I rode home from work today, my head bent forward to get the horizontal sun of a late afternoon out of my face, I contemplated the odd collection of bikes in my life. There was no rhyme and only the faintest reason, a succession powered by chance. Over the years, there was only one thing that never changed: When I have a bike, not much else matters.

dodgy dealings

2011-04-11T21:44:00.005+01:00

It's sixteen months now that I've been living in my present apartment. The memory of the old place faded quickly. The new one was nicer in most regards. There are the little issues that are inevitable in England – the windows don't seal, the plumbing works on hope, the kitchen is ancient – but apart from that my apartment is nice and I feel at home.

Despite this generally positive situation, the odd dark cloud here and there has kept me cautious from the beginning. The agency that mediated the transaction operated from the back room of a terrace in Paddington. The emailed me the tenancy agreement once it was signed all around but never a hard copy. They also never emailed me proof that they had payed the deposit into the government-backed deposit protection scheme. Nothing to get worked up about, I think, but something a diligent agency would take care of.

The landlord is another issue. It's not a person but an obscure company by the name of Kingstar (UK) Ltd. According to the internet, they don't exist. According to the address and Streetview, they're someone's home office effort. None of this mattered initially. The hallway and stairs of our building are being cleaned weekly, and problems with the flat are being dealt with quickly. When my sink didn't drain, a geriatric handyman arrived the next day to botch it back together, doing the plumbing equivalent of painting the damage over to make it go away.

All was good, but one day I came home to find my door locked. I never lock it. It snaps shut by itself which is good enough for me. I called the landlord and was told the rent collector, on his way to the flat above, must have entered by accident. Why there is the need for a rent collector in the 21st century is a different issue, and why I have to write a physical check every four weeks yet another, but back then at the phone, there was only room for my exasperation at, first, someone unlawfully entering my flat and, second, the person I was talking to not being particularly contrite or apologetic. It almost sounded as if this were the way things were done. I told her this was not the way things are done, and please tell the rent collector.

I have no proof the rent collector ever returned, but when I had boiler issues earlier this year, when the heating failed or the hot water and sometimes both for no obvious reason, I called the guy in charge of the building, then called him again and, when nothing happened, again, leaving messages on voicemails and being cold. When I finally got hold of him, he told me he had checked the boiler and it was ok.

Maybe the boiler was – it keeps acting up but can usually be tricked into producing hot water to fill the bath or the radiators – but entering my flat without my permission most certainly wasn't. I told the guys in anger but he did what felt, through the telephone, like waving me off. That's when I changed the lock.

On Friday I got a letter from my landlord, telling me (quite correctly, it must be admitted) that I am in breach of contract for having changed the locks and relating, with perfect nonchalance, the third attempt at trespassing. Worse yet, the letter concluded with eastern promises of forcing my locks and breaking into my flat.

I was speechless for a while, but not hopping mad with anger. I felt reassured in my decision to change the locks, which I'm pretty confident they wouldn't dare to break. Trespassing might only be a civil offense without serious consequences, but breaking a lock to enter a flat someone else lawfully occupies is criminal damage. Just to make sure (which I'm not entirely, to be honest) the landlord understands the situation, I sent the following letter back:

I would like to draw your attention to the tenancy agreement, in particular clause 4 where it clearly states the following: “The landlord agrees with the Tenant that the Tenant paying the Rent and performing the obligations on the part of the Tenant may quietly possess and enjoy the Premises during the Tenancy without any lawful interruption from the Landlord or any person claiming under or in trust for the Landlord.”

Over the course of my tenancy, I have noticed two instances when persons working for you broke the law and trespassed onto the premises I’m renting. I alerted you to each infringement (rent collector and Xxx checking the boiler) and asked you to desist. You have failed to do so and admit in your latest letter that you consider trespassing your prerogative. It is not; it is a civil offense. Breaking the lock, as you threaten, would be criminal damage and a matter for the police.

I will not tolerate continued violation of the privacy of my home and will only restore the original lock once you’ve assured me in writing that you will refrain from further trespassing. Should you need access, please call me at xxxxx xxxxxx to make an appointment. Unless I’m out of town, I am generally available at a day’s notice.

I hope the tenancy will continue in mutual agreement and respect.

The aggressiveness has been toned down considerably since the first draft, but I think the message still comes across forcefully. Fingers crossed that it registers.

buying books

2011-04-10T23:03:00.004+01:00

There used to be an obscure bookstore behind Oxford Street, not too far from the Photographers' Gallery, that sold books in almost as many languages as there are versions of Wikipedia. Grant & Cutler was the name of the place. It was a bookstore of the old school, with high rows of shelves standing so close together that there wasn't room for one person to browse and another to pass by. There weren't any comfy chairs and there wasn't an espresso bar. There was no room for such decadence. The shop, only slightly less cavernous than the subterranean infinity of Sam Weller's on Salt Lake City's Main Street, was filled to the brim with books. The selection was split halfway between learning (textbooks, dictionaries and exercise books) and application (literature) of several dozen languages.

I went to Grant & Cutler today to see if they had a guidebook on Galicia in any language I am familiar with, (Nothing has been written on the northwestern corner of Spain in English in recent years), but I was to be disappointed. The bookshop had closed, a sign of the times perhaps. Unable to compete with the infinite shelves of amazon.com, most bookshops are struggling for survival these days. Some have given up already, even chains. Those that still operate tend to be sad places, oozing an atmosphere of impending doom with their few customers and infrequently ringing tills, with customers walking out with a thin volume or a greeting card or a diode reading light to give as a gift.

Going into bookshops depresses me. The palpable feeling of desperation mixes with my guilt at not shopping more at bookshops and amplifies it. I love reading and I love books, but I don't buy many new books and thus contribute to the eventual extinction of bookstores. It makes me sad to imagine a world without bookstores. It would be a poorer world no doubt, but I see it as inevitable. The truth is that between used-book shops and amazon.com, I don't need anything else for my literary needs.

In Grant & Cutler's window hung a sign that informed the potential customer and any idling passer-by that the store had found a new home inside the warm bosom of Foyles, the grandmother of London bookstores. Over its 100 years, Foyles worked hard at developing a reputation as the biggest independent bookseller in Britain and the most exasperating. There was not much commercial drive and disentanglable chaos on the shelves. Marcel Proust's 3,000-page A la Recherche du Temps Perdu was apparently filed under Short Stories. It was a very British oddity, but also a disaster.

About ten years ago, things started to change. Foyles became like other stores: brightly lit, modern, with electronic indexing and books in the right categories and sorted by author. Customers could grab a book off a shelf and pay for it on a till. It might sound obvious, but for Foyles this was a revolution.

After strolling through Soho, mostly on east-west running streets and always on the sunny side, I made it to Cambridge Circus and from there up Charing Cross Road. Foyles was open for business and looked inviting. The foreign-language section was enormous. Later, I would find a guidebook to Northern Spain in the travel section, but for now I was glued to Borges in a bit of a turn of events.

The other day, going out for the last long run before the marathon, I wasn't quite sure of what to put onto my Sansa. On a hunch, I went to the iTunes Store, searched for the New Yorker and subscribed to their fiction podcast. Among the episodes I downloaded and then listened to on an easy run along the Thames was Borges's The Gospel According to Mark, which I picked primarily because I love Paul Theroux, who was reading the story.

I had no idea what I was in for. The story is absolutely brilliant. So much is said in these few paragraphs that it's hard to imagine cutting even a single word and retaining the full meaning. The story is so tightly composed and yet feels so effortless. Here was something I absolutely would have to read, and read again.

So it came to pass that I found myself kneeling in front of one of many shelves filled with Spanish-language books recently acquired from Grant & Cutler (the books, not the shelves), going through Borges story collections one by one. The selection was wide and each table of contents long, but I wasn't successful. I might have missed it, but maybe it wasn't there. In any case, I left the store without a Borges. At least I bought the guidebook, but when I later found El Evangelio según Marcos online, I pounded another nail into the coffin of conventional book selling.

name recognition

2011-04-07T23:56:00.004+01:00

Scientists are often considered to be less materialistic than average, and that's probably true. Given the poor pay relative to their qualifications, they couldn't possibly find satisfaction otherwise. If scientists chased after the latest trends out on the high street or coveted penthouse apartments in fashionable neighborhoods, they would set themselves up for disappointment.

It seems, though, that most scientists couldn't care less. It starts with fashion, which is all but absent from a laboratory environment where decade-old freebie t-shirts and faded trousers rule, and ends with transportation. Banged-up beaters and tired bicycles are better rides to work than the latest convertible, and they're ridden proudly and with conviction. For most it's a happy marriage between convenience and necessity.

As such science is an odd place is this world. A paper in Evolution and Human Behavior (certainly not among my daily reads, but The Economist ran a story on it), currently in the final stages of being published, makes the case that outward displays of status carry tangible benefits. The experiments all boiled down to having subjects wear certain clothes and scoring volunteers' or the general public's reaction to them.

There were three kinds of clothes: Plain, unlabeled clothes as a negative control; clothes conspicuously displaying a label that doesn't carry much weight in the battle royal of sartorial uptightness, Slazenger in that case; and obvious designer clothes, Lacoste or Hilfiger, which are considered highly desirable. That's what the authors claim, anyway. I wouldn't know; I'm a scientist.

Except I do have opinion, a highly favorable opinion, as it happens, of the firm Lacoste. I admire them for their skillful playing of the game. They're in a way the Apple of apparel, making products that are defined more than anything by their instantly recognizable logo. But Lacoste pushes marketing even further than Apple. There isn't much of a product to support the logo. In the most extreme case, a white t-shirt from a discount mill is turned from a penny item to a £40 fashion statement solely by the sketchy application of an embroidered alligator. The wealth creation is phenomenal. It's a brilliant corporate strategy – as long as people buy into it.

It turns out, and that is what the paper mentioned above shows, that people have good reason to buy into it. The paper's abstract summarizes the findings: "The present data suggest that luxury consumption can be a profitable social strategy because conspicuous displays of luxury qualify as a costly signaling trait that elicits status-dependent favorable treatment in human social interactions." In other words, there are tangible benefits in showing that one spends freely, at least on fashion.

In one of the experiments, the same research assistant would go collect donations for a charity on consecutive evenings, dressed differently each time. The takings were substantially higher when the person was wearing a Lacoste shirt. In another experiment, when two groups of volunteers rated mock job interviews of the same person, they judged the candidate much higher when he was wearing a belogoed shirt, and considered him deserving of a higher salary.

That's something to keep in mind for the next job interview but needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Volunteers can be forgiven for being blinded by a reptile. HR professionals are expected to cut deeper. In any case, it's questionable that this strategy would pay off in a scientific setting where people interviewing in suits attract doubtful glances.

However, scientists have their own status symbols, nearly as arbitrary is fashion labels. As I've described in an earlier post, where one's research is published matters at least as much as what that research is. The journals effectively act as logos sticking on published papers. If your work has the approval of a prestigious journal, it is considered of high quality and will help you greatly on the way to an academic position or to have a grant application reviewed favorably.

To give Lacoste full credit, the probably pick a cloth supplier of better than rock-bottom quality, to sustain the illusion that the logo justifies the price. This doesn't end the analogy to scientific publishing. Next to a considerable amount of bogus papers, the biggest splashes and the most stunning breakthroughs tend to carry the imprimatur of the most prestigious journals. In either case, it is advisable to study the underlying quality.

sudden death

2011-03-31T23:18:00.006+01:00

Just about three weeks ago, I was happily going about my business, doing work on the MacBook Pro that was forced upon me when I joined Imperial. I had actually resisted the temptation for a few months, but when the lights went out on my Thinkpad (i.e. the VGA output died and I couldn't connect to my external screen anymore), I made the jump. Much to my surprise, I've been quite satisfied – a big change from my earlier, exasperating experience with a true lemon. I came to like my Mac so much that I recommended it to others.

Now the situation has changed again, drastically. It started a week ago when I found myself without a working computer but a pet cemetery of three nearly useless Macs. A colleague preparing to leave the lab had entrusted me with his dying iBook. Hours later he also bequeathed his wife's PowerBook G4 upon me. This machine still looks great and works passably but carries the heavy burden of old age. My own Mac was aging rather gracefully and worked flawlessly, but then one day when I came back from a run in the park, it had fallen into a coma and wouldn't wake up. It booted neither from the hard disk nor a stick nor from the DVD. (Thanks to a missing mechanical ejector, the DVD remains trapped to this day.)

Luck had it that another colleague had left the lab a while ago, leaving his Mac behind. After sitting idly in a drawer for a good year, it now came to my rescue. The new computer is a simple MacBook compared to my old MacBook Pro, but it's newer and the specs are very similar. I was excited to make the transfer, primarily to get a working computer but also to see if the highly regarded Time Machine would copy my data, applications and settings as promised.

Time Machine is Apple's back-up solution. It works quietly in the background and backs up changes pretty much as they happen. (My computer's death entailed no loss of data.) I had restored files before without problems, but an entire hard disk transfer is a different game. In the end, after less than an hours of churning, the new computer looked and felt as the old one had. The only problem was related to Adobe's requirement to deactivate Creative Suite on one computer before transfering it onto another – which is impossible when the one computer is not working anymore. I couldn't be bothered to deal with Adobe customer service and reinstalled/upgraded the suite.

The similarities between my old Mac and the new one are vast, a sign of the frightening homogeneity of the Apple universe. Most differences that I see have to do with what Apple would undoubtedly (and misguidedly) call technical progress between different generations of their notebook families.

Before I start moaning, I admit that some progress is real. There is the kind that's standard everywhere else but which Apple's marketing department nevertheless manages to introduce as brilliant innovations. The MacBook, for example, has now reached the level of upgradability of my 12-year-old Sony Vaio: The hard drive can be removed at the simple flick of a mechanical lever. No tools required. Having changed hard drives in my MacBook Pro (21 screws) and, surely the worst box imaginable, the dying iBook (about 35 bolts, and 40 steps before you even see the drive), I can say that this will make a difference.

Some other changes are for the better as well. The computer is smaller and weighs less than the clunky Pro. It feels much more solid too – the unibody is structurally sound. The rest, however, are changes that cause me to wail and complain: Why, oh why, must a computer be so rubbish?

Take the screen. It's covered with a glaring coating that causes one to see with more clarity the things that go on behind one's back than those on the screen. That's probably a lifesaver for those working incognito for the CIA or undercover for the London Met, but why is there no civilian version where one can focus on the screen without distraction? Distinguishing between background reflections and details on the screen is no easy job and quickly gets extremely annoying.

Besides being as reflective as a supermodel's bathroom mirror, the screen is also smaller than the Pro's. This comes with the laptop's smaller size and weight, but why does the frame around the screen take up nearly an inch in all directions? A sizable chunk of the MacBook's footprint goes to waste this way.

The keyboard isn't much better. It was shit on the Pro, at least when compared to its counterpart on the ThinkPad, the epitome of ergonomics. The keyboard on the MacBook doesn't even deserve its name. They keys form one flat, featureless and feedback-free surface that's not unlike the onscreen typing aid on an iPad (for which the MacBook must thus be a stepping stone – the devious work of Apple marketing, no doubt). Great for updating your twitter feed, I'm told, but useless for work.

Despite these shortcomings, the keyboard marks in one important aspect a significant advance over the Pro's: You can identify the keys, black with white labels. The Pro's keys were silver, the labels translucent white, and they would fade into each other at the slightest bit of light shining from an angle.

The touchpad is truly abysmal. It's horrible. It's the worst thing I've ever laid my hands on. It's bigger than an iPod Touch's screen and as much in the way as an iPod Touch would be, were it lying on the MacBook when you're trying to type. It's inevitable to touch the touchpad by accident. There is software that deals with this, but at the expense of functionality in the bottom part of the touchpad, as I discovered when I tried to carefully move a label in Illustrator. (As it happens so often, a frustrated engineer has come up with a simple solution that I'm going to give a try.)

Apple also managed to completely fuck up one of the touchpad's essential capabilities. Double-tap-and-drag lets me move windows, extend selections or highlights, and change the volume. On every other laptop in the world, I release the drag by briefly removing my finger from the touchpad. When I put it back, I move the pointer, it's job of dragging done, where it needs to go next. On the Mac, the dragging is sticky for a second or so, and when I move the pointer to its next appointment, the window or the highlight come along. Bloody hell, and there's no way to fix this.

Over the last ten years, Apple has worked hard to improve their computers, shedding, successively and bravely, a crap CPU (PowerPC), an atrocious operating system (OS 9), ridiculous hardware (an upside-down glowing apple on early PowerBooks), and stone-age peripherals (one-button mouse), and making them useful tools. At this point, I'm happy with the cumulative benefits of Apple hard- and software. To me, the Mac presents the best of the two worlds of Linux and Windows, and I can do most aspects of my work with the machine on my lap. (For hardcore computing there's a cluster in the basement.)

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that this development will last. It seems to me as if laptops, arguably Apple's greatest strength over the last decade or so, are not getting much attention anymore. The company's focus seem to lie on the various iPods (iPod Phone, iPod Giga ...) and on entertainment at the expense of productivity. Mac desktops, those fearsome beasts, are already critically endangered.

Then there is the question of durability. My MacBook Pro died without suffering injury or external trauma after just 40 months. Obsolescence cycles are notoriously short at Apple. This keeps profitability high and cult followers blissful. But it's not something I would buy into, and I'm not sure I can still recommend Apple hardware to my friends.

willing it

2011-03-29T22:12:00.006+01:00

The season started well. I've mentioned it before. I'm not gonna bore you with heroics, but I did my share of training in January and February and I could feel it. The Roding Valley half marathon marked the end of the first half of the preparation for London. I struggled mentally in a strong field but finished with a new personal best – and a surge (wind to 6:25, and you'll see). I was buoyantly optimistic at this point.

Things turned sour shortly thereafter. Three weeks ago, I sprained my ankle badly doing nothing more than walk through a genteel borough of northern London. A dint in the pavement twisted my foot underneath me and took me out for almost a week. One weekend of no training – no big deal maybe overall. When I had sufficiently recovered I went for a long one by the Thames. After two hours, my knee started pinching and I hobbling. I tried a recovery run the day after, but couldn't do more than slow intervals interspersed with breaks spent massaging my knee in the hope of dulling the pain.

I took it easy the week after that, going out for very controlled lunchtime runs only. My knee didn't seem to mind and I grew great hopes for the weekend, last weekend. On Saturday morning I woke up with a throat as if the Libyan civil war were taking place in there, heat, dryness and all. I had to decant a small bottle of fish oil into my pipes before I could swallow again. (It's always the oil, by the way.) My memory is dim but I recall that the sore throat quickly developed into a full-fledged cold, with a congested nose, puffy eyes, a dry cough and hardly enough energy to breathe. The weekend passed my by. I didn't go outside.

Three immobile weekends in a row are not the best preparation for anything unless the competition is for couch potato of the year. As I'm also not in town and my trainers this coming weekend, drastic measures needed to be taken. Yesterday, I was still a wreck, but today I could feel the cold on the wane. My fortune cookie said, Make it or break it, my colleague advised to drive the bastard out, and I went back to the park this evening – against better judgment and any sort of common sense.

The first lap was a hard: slow progress, lack of hydration despite gallons of water over the last few days, mucus – I'll spare you the details. For all the suffering, I knew one lap wouldn't do, and that's where it gets interesting. As I soldiered past the Albert Memorial to start the second lap, I could feel my body change. I picked up speed, breathed more freely, felt better. In the battle between me and my body, a winner was being declared.

I have my work lined up for this week, two big laps tomorrow night and three on Thursday, and then a recovery run on Friday before I head out to the airport. But even if things won't go fully according to plan, I'll rest assured in the knowledge that I can will myself into a decent run if I really have to. And if nothing more, London will be a decent run.

census day

2011-03-27T12:49:00.005+01:00

About a week ago, I found a large envelope in purple and white in my mail, sent by the Office for National Statistics. It was the 2011 census for England and Wales. My response was not simply requested, it was required by law. Strong words, but what is the census?

Turns out our Queen counts her subjects (and the scum that floats about the nation) every ten years in a massive statistical effort that goes back to 1801, a 210-year tradition of comprehensive data gleaning that was disrupted only once, in 1941, when the United Kingdom needed more for its survival and prosperity than numbers. These days, when wars are fought elsewhere and battles are distant, the numbers are back, which is why I have a 32-page booklet with lots of blank fields lying on the table in front of me.

Before I get to answer the questions, I have what the creators of the census think are my questions answered. And so it says that "taking part in the census is very important and it's also compulsory." There are rewards for compliance and fines for defiance. The fines can reach £1000. The rewards are less tangible. Information gathered in the census "is used to help plan and fund services for your community – services like transport, education and health," proclaims the form.

Since the Wall fell in '89, I don't have issues with authority, and I'd be perfectly happy to complete the census questionnaire in all honesty, but there are some details that bug me. First is the painful self-conscious seriousness of the undertaking. The questionnaire is mailed to all addresses in England and Wales that the government can get a hold of including holiday homes. Consequently, the first question of "Who usually lives here?" has the option "No one", which should be the end but isn't. You still have to go and fill in five questions regarding overnight visitors and the type of home.

Then there is the intrusiveness. The census asks for my name, address and date of birth. The last two bits of data I'm happy to divulge. After all knowing where people live and what the age distribution in the country is is the whole point of the census. But why the full name? I can see now benefit to that. It's not as if the driver is going to greet me by name the next time I catch the bus. So I'm still torn between filling this in and using the pseudonym the form was sent to, The Occupier.

What I will fill in for sure is the question regarding religious affiliation (the only voluntary question). I'll reveal (and you're the first to find out) that I belong to the country's fourth biggest religion, which, as the 2001 census told us, is Jediism, with 0.7% of population claiming adherence. That's more than there are Sikhs, Buddhists and Jews. Hindus and Muslims are not much ahead, and with all the media coverage the Jediism phenomenon has triggered in the run-up to the census, it might very well overtake these two.

After name, address and religion, only one mystery remains. This is questions 17. The questionnaire informs unapologetically that "This question is intentionally left blank." In the Principality of Wales, which shares the census form with England, questions 17 is used to ask about the respondent's proficiency of Welsh. Couldn't the makers have come up with question specific to England, like "Which country to do you prefer to kick England out of the World Cup next time around?" or, relevant for those living in London, "Have you ever met an English person?" Alas, there is only a gaping hole where there should be another intrusive question.

Today is the 27th of March, census day. I've ticked my boxes, declared my affiliations and revealed more personal information than I've handed over to Google over the years. From Google I get email, a blog, a search engine and a photo database for my mom. From the government I get a health service, public transport, road works, street lights and crime prevention in the right places. All things considered, it might not be a bad deal.

bit of science

2011-03-21T21:12:00.004Z

Today, Prof. Leslie Vosshall from the Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior at Rockefeller University stopped by Imperial to give a talk on mosquitoes, sweat and smell. It wasn't the first time that mosquitoes had taken center stage. There is in fact a solid research effort going on in house. The world's first transgenic malaria mosquito was created at Imperial and work is underway to genetically manipulate mosquitoes to render them immune to the parasite that causes malaria in humans. It's science fiction stuff.

Leslie Vosshall's talk was more exploration than science fiction. She discovered the receptors that allow insects to react to smell and taste (A member of the same family of receptors is responsive to UV radiation – these bugs can smell light.) and is now working to design inhibitors to confuse insects or maybe even actively repel them. The gold standard in insect repellents is DEET, which does the job but you need a lot and apply it frequently. Her inhibitors, pharmaceuticals with a new career perspective, aren't quite up to the task yet but show promise.

Repelling insects is only one side of the story. The other is the question of how insects identify their victims. It turns out that they are very picky. They don't just bite anyone. He or she has to smell good from a distance and then taste good when the insect's proboscis scans the human surface it has landed on.

Back in the fall of 2000, when I traveled Mexico's Pacific coast with my sister, I realized this clearly. After seeing the spectacular little island of Mexcaltitán – two pairs of parallel roads that intersected at a square half a meter higher than the surrounding sea – we drove to San Blas to spend the night. According to my Moon Guide, San Blas was the gateway to tropical mangrove marshes, tunnels of lush vegetation alive with orchids, egrets, turtles and fish. This we wanted to see the next day, but first we had to survive another dweller of the mangroves, the invisible biting gnat that comes out at night in large swarms and terrorizes the town.

For the sake of scientific accuracy, it's worth mentioning that the guidebook's gnats were in fact Phlebotomus, sandflies also known as jejenes. Neither gnats nor sandflies are mosquitoes, but the bites hurt the same and the physiology is probably similar given that all three of them are diptera, insects with two pairs of wings.

We went to bed with apprehension. The room in the little guest house we were staying at were grouped around a central courtyard and open to most of the elements. The windows didn't close properly – nor would we have wanted to close them given the heat that burned through the night. There was no air conditioning and the ceiling fan whirled only feebly.

The next morning I awoke, stretched myself, rolled from one side to the other and patted my arms to check for damage. There was nothing. I woke my sister; the jungle beckoned: "I don't know what they're talking about. There's no mosquitoes here." "Oh, shut up," she replied with suffering in her voice. "I'm bitten to pieces." The mosquitoes has feasted on her all night, while I got away unscathed.

How to explain that? That's something Leslie Vosshall is also interested in. What constitutes the smells they're attracted to? Epidermal bacteria, body odor, components of the sweat? If you're in New York, give them a ring and they'll let you stick a hand into a long tubular contraption full of mosquitoes. With this, they'll count the percentage of bugs that find you attractive. I'd love to give it a try – in the hope of setting a new global low and help science in the process.

silence

2011-03-16T20:57:00.006Z

I'm not of the loquacious kind. Late last night it occurred to me that I had published five posts to this blog in as many days. That was it, I thought, 'nuff said, that's it for a while. There's no need to apply a tourniquet to my neck; the excessive verbal efflux can be stemmed in other ways: Football in the pub, a night at the symphony, the movies at home, a book. But when I got home tonight, I couldn't resist yet another story.

In my mailbox I found the 2011 London Marathon race info, a fat magazine of nearly 200 pages full of advertisement, charity shout-outs, last-minute getting-ready frenzy and, go figure, race info. The thing couldn't have come at a better time.

Race info + kit

For the past week, I've been laboring with a sprained ankle. When it happened, late last Thursday, I feared I'd have to cancel London. That's how bad the pain was. The next morning, the ankle felt better but didn't look good, swollen to the size of a small grapefruit. I took it easy on the weekend, applying bandages and unguent and resting. The ankle slowly improved.

The swelling was still there this morning, but I couldn't wait any longer. I thought I'd test my ankle in the park, reasoning that the forward-rolling motion of running wouldn't interfere in the least with the healing of a laterally injured tendon.

I did one lap around the perimeter, a meager four miles, slowly. It wasn't quite all right, but it didn't hurt too much, and it didn't feel worse after the run than before. I had lunch at my desk with a strategically placed bag of lab ice on my left foot just in case. When I got up to go back to the bench an hour or so later, the swelling was completely, and miraculously, gone.

London will take place with me. The pack I got today reminded me that only one month of preparation remains. It offers helpful advice of how to make the most of it, noting that it's almost time to taper and decrease the effort, so as to focus all energy on the big day. Having done hardly any sustained running so far, I'll have to push a bit harder. I'll have to go out this weekend for at least four hours and probably again the next one. There won't be any time for gratuitous blogging for a while.

radio math

2011-03-15T23:14:00.003Z

This morning I learned that there is such a thing as Radio 7. My dial only goes to 4. My dial, truth be told, is permanently stuck to 4. I listen to nothing else. BBC Radio 4 used to wake me up in the morning and fill me with a sleepy hour of news, hard-hitting interviews and pithy weather reports. Now that the relentless buzzer has taken over the unenviable task of annoying me out of bed, the radio only comes on in the kitchen, but the program is the same. For the rest of the day, I don't do radio.

Radio 7 is broadcast digitally. I doubt that any of my radios receive it. The same holds true for 6 Music, which was at the center of an internet storm a year ago when the BBC proposed to shut it down because of general austerity and a particular lack of audience. The digital radio world is filled with any number of obscure broadcasters that don't reach more than a handful of listeners. 6 Music made headline news when a strong online campaign managed to save it. Being a 4 person, I have yet to listen to it.

It wasn't quite true when I said earlier that I don't do radio for the rest of the day. Sometimes at night I turn it on when I prepare dinner. Tonight, a familiar voice was on the air, but one that didn't quite fit. Garrison Keillor had left the quiet life of Lake Wobegon behind to be interviewed on Front Row. He presented his first collection of poetry, published as a book and read out by the author himself.

The interview is vintage Keillor, a rambling contemplation on poetry, life, love, and the non-existing significance of the number 77. The words are carefully chosen to sound as if they had spontaneously popped up. The elocution is soothing, almost sedative. This is not a good show to listen to when you're driving – it nearly put the interviewer to sleep – but it's great for relaxing after a day at work.

At the end of the broadcast the presenter let it be known that Garrison Keillor's radio show can be heard on Radio 7, which, I forgot to mention earlier, is to be renamed Radio 4 Extra. That's what the news was about this morning. I can't see how it would matter to me.

positive for a change

2011-03-14T19:12:00.003Z

I have a category for posts called collected moanings. Stuff that aggravates me gets dumped there from time to time. I'm mellow for the most part, but I've had my moments. There was the time when rental car agencies, online auction houses and credit card companies were trying to rope me in with the long lasso of customer fraud. Curiously, there isn't a category for the opposite. What if something positive happened? Well, it did today, and that reminded me that some other issues need setting straight as well.

What happened today is that I got an email from Delta notifying me that mileage expiration would henceforth be a thing of the past. Whatever the small print, I'm delighted. In my six years in Salt Lake City, a Delta hub, I've acquired plenty of miles, but since leaving the US, I haven't added to them. Once, only weeks before losing them, I had to buy a silly game for my iPod through the Delta SkyMiles website, investing three bucks to reset the countdown on my balance. Now, the countdown itself is a thing of the past. Thank you, Delta.

The two things that need to be setting straight concern Santander and eBay. Santander had charged me late fees and interested when their system failed to debit my current account with the outstanding balance. Phone calls got me nowhere, but in response to a physical letter, everything was sorted out. I received a response that had been signed by a human being and some remuneration. I still use the card.

eBay really frightened me with their handling of what was an obviously fraudulent user. I had paid for goods I never received, but the auction had disappeared online and it felt as if eBay were stonewalling the issue. This farce lasted a few more days but in the end I was refunded and there was no loss. I have since used eBay again, grudgingly.

Taking about grudges, Hertz couldn't even be bothered to respond to the letter I sent them complaining about the many disappointing rentals I had got through them last year. I was under the impression that if you want to make it absolutely clear to a company that you care, you should write and old-fashioned letter. Maybe that's not true anymore. Or maybe Hertz is just absolute rubbish. But saying this would be a bit too negative for this post.

bastards

2011-03-13T13:55:00.004Z

The UK Hot 40 is blaring from a flat-screen TV whose frame is still covered in shrink wrap. Enrique Iglesias just took a big tumble down to position 27. I'm surprised there is still a channel out there showing music videos. I didn't know, to be honest, that there were still music videos to be broadcast. But what surprises me even more is that Enrique’s song – title, lyrics and all – was washed clean before being aired in the UK.

Just a few weeks ago, I heard the same song in France – where people are apparently expected to be ignorant of foreign lyrics or not liable to be offended by the inanities of pop music – as Tonight (I'm fuckin' you). In the UK, it's lovin'. Says the same thing, but sounds better, you might say, but then why not say it in the first place?

Yesterday, Intermountain Healthcare rejected an email response I had sent to a friend working there because of the word bastard, which my friend had used to describe the guy who had stolen his mountain bike that was locked inside his garage. I had unwittingly quoted it in my reply and was advised that the offending word needed to be removed before the email could be delivered. I have to say I was aghast.

You've got no mail!

I'm using Gmail as my email provider, so maybe I shouldn't make a big fuss. Google scans my emails already and places content-related advertisements next to them if I open them on gmail.com. Intermountain Healthcare is probably within its legal rights to do the same. But it would be good fun to indignantly complain to them for not protecting me from abuse by their employees. Since they're already scanning email traffic, they might as well do it properly – and piss off those staff that don't subscribe to tight-assed Mormon restrictions on speech.

Writing this I'm sitting, you might have already guessed, in a coffee shop, leisurely, with nothing to do and my legs up. Outside the window, the detritus of the street is blowing by. The bus shelter forms a meeting point of sorts for the down-and-out. I'm in an area that's famous with Imperial students for its unique combination of proximity to college and affordable prices. North End Road is nevertheless not a place of urban hipness, and there is nothing collegiate about it. On the contrary, the cheapness of the area attracts the kinds of people you'd be reluctant to meet during the day and afraid to run into at night. People don't hang out here.

However, mildly out of place opposite West Kensington tube station, is the coffee shop where I'm presently enjoying a steaming cappuccino and free wireless internet. I've come for inspiration. Sometimes, the lowlife in the street spills into the coffee shop. The homeless scour the tables for muffins left behind half-eaten, the delusional engage in high-pitched diatribes against invisible forces, and yobs from the estate down the road warm up for a night of turf war. There are stories in all of this, no doubt, but today is a calm day. People come and go, but they look like you and me and behave the same, civilized, boring.

The locale used to be part of the fast-expanding Coffee Republic chain before it overheated and went into administration about two years ago. Creative debt and ownership reshuffling led to the emergence of a leaner chain that includes an improbable fully branded hotel lobby outlet in the Quality Crown Hotel on Cromwell Road. The branch in North End Road was sold but retained, beside the name, all original features and looks and feels as before. It is now called Coffee 4 U and is run, like each one of the newsagents, off-licenses, internet cafes and grocery stores up and down the street, by a family of hardworking immigrants, each trying to make its fortune in a bold economic struggle.

When I ordered my coffee, the resemblance in the foreign faces behind the counter was uncanny. The oldest son mans the till, while the youngest gets his first idea of business just by soaking things up – when he's not distracted by his matchbox cars, his games-enabled telephone, or the TV blaring the UK Hot 40. Wholesome Adele is on top of the charts for the third week in a row.

sofa

2011-03-12T12:56:00.003Z

Lying on my sofa with my left foot, still swollen but not hurting, high and tightly wrapped in an elastic stocking, I wonder what I can do with the opportunity of an entirely wasted day. Rest is my motto today, a motto that suffered a difficult birth because I was out for victuals this morning and also searching for something to read with breakfast.

My grocer had heaps of papers with pictures and reports about yesterday's earthquake, but this was not what I was after. For breaking news, for the addictive but futile immediacy that goes stale after an hour, I turn to the radio or the internet. Traditional printed media I value for altogether different reasons. I look for profound analysis and contentious but well-argued opinion, pieces that surprise and challenge me.

One of the great strengths of newspapers is static content. Once it's printed, it can't be changed. It's on the table before me and defies me to read it, whether I’m interested or not, whether I agree or not. I can't navigate from it at the click of a link and I can't ask a search engine or a feed aggregator to take me to sites that I know I'll agree with. So tend to skip the current-events coverage and be ambushed by the unexpected.

There's no better provider of the unexpected than The New Yorker. If the name weren't so fitting for a magazine devoted primarily to the goings-on in the Big Apple, The Non-Sequitur would be even better. Its assays seem to sprout out of nowhere – you can imagine the hard work it takes to give them this appearance – and cover every topic of interest, however obscure, under the sun. No two issues are alike, always creatively novel and delightfully insightful.

Printed it is thus nearly perfect and far superior to The New Yorker's annoying website that blinks with dynamically updated content and dishes out inconsequential blog noise of the kind that already pollutes the internet wherever one looks. So it came to pass that I spend a good hour this morning ambling through a surprisingly primaveral Fulham, giving my ankle more of a workout than I had intended for the entire weekend, hopping from newsagent to newsagent and searching through their shelves. No one stocked my favorite printed fix. I returned with yogurt but otherwise empty-handed, to a sofa that had almost given up on me already. But now it's my home for the rest of the weekend.

good, considering

2011-03-11T23:11:00.005Z

Last night, I made my way up north in search of the flat of a friend who had left London only hours earlier. We had been colleagues for the last four years, my desk next to his and my bench just opposite his ever since my arrival at Imperial. Now he and his little family were moving back to the country they call home, closing the doors on an eight-year stretch of their lives.

On the night of their departure, literally minutes before a minicab was about to pick them up and take them to Heathrow, my friend had called me in the lab to ask if I wanted to take his PowerBook G4. Not being up to speed with ancient Apple hardware, I had no clear idea of what he was talking about, but I said yes anyway. Another toy maybe, or an addition to my growing collection of vintage notebooks.

With an Evening Standard in my hand and a podcast in my ear, I made my way up the Northern line, clear instructions hastily scribbled onto a scrap of paper. I was to get off at Highgate and walk east into the unknown, but I traveled in a dreamworld of my own acoustic and visual stimuli and only realized when I had exited through the ticket gates that I was in Archway, not Highgate.

To me, there's no difference. I had never been up there and couldn't tell one from the other, Karl Marx's grave notwithstanding. But I had to get to my friend's flat. Refusing to spend another quid and a half for one tube stop, I started walking along the main road, passing by some rather derelict stretches but never unsure of my way. Thank goodness for clear area maps in virtually every bus shelter in town. Twenty minutes later I was where I should have been just about twenty minutes earlier.

I turned right and dove into a deeply residential neighborhood of considerable appeal. There were some houses that wouldn't be out of place in continental Europe and big-windowed and modernist apartment buildings. It was very quiet. It was also very dark, and on a side street a block from my friend's former flat, I stepped into a inconspicuous hole and twisted my ankle with a violence that brought me to my knees.

Twisting my ankle is nothing new to me. In college I once crossed a pedestrian bridge in wild pursuit of bus letting off passengers underneath. I made the bus, but only after slipping off the last three or four steps of the bridge. For the next ten minutes on the bus, the pain in my ankle receded and every time I thought the pain was gone, it receded more, like some inverse monopedal orgasm. It was the strangest feeling.

A sprained ankle was the reason for my retiring from leisurely indoor football a good eight months ago. With the London marathon coming up, I didn't want to risk another injury that would keep me off the streets and off-course for another sub-three-hour finish. The season had started rather well. In January and February, I had run more than in the preceding years and built up a good form. The first benchmark of the year, the Roding Valley half marathon, had gone quite well – surprisingly well even, considering how slow I had felt running it. The next test was supposed to be the Finchley 20-mile race this weekend.

As I sat on a sidewalk in Crouch End, whimpering into the night, the irony of the injury was hard to take. I hadn't taken any risks, but my ankle had already swollen to a degree to purge any thoughts of running from my brain, not only for this weekend, but also for the foreseeable future. The marathon seemed out of the question. I didn't even feel like walking. And yet I had to continue my strange journey, picking up a tiny silver notebook from a neighbor and hobbling back to the tube station, no eyes for architecture this time.

This morning, I slowly woke to the relentless buzz of my alarm. I had slept well; there was no pain throbbing through my ankle. It was still swollen and it hurt when I got up and put weight on it, but it felt much better than it had the night before, and infinitely better than after that fateful football game eight months ago. There is no way I'm going to run Finchley, but maybe London isn't out of the question after all.

I turned the radio on in time for the seven-o'clock news. The devastating earthquake in Japan was all there was; the tsunami had just rolled in, flattening the land and washing everything in its path away. The catastrophe was far, half a world away, but for me it struck home. The friend who had left London last night was flying back to Japan, scheduled to arrive shortly after the earthquake had struck.

My friend is ok. He sent me an email earlier today, telling me how they had learned of the earthquake while on their final descent into Narita, how they had circled uncertainly for an hour and then been diverted to another airport where they could land safely. Their nightmare wasn't over – they weren't allowed to leave the cabin for another six hours, turning their flight into an epic 20-hour ordeal – but he and his family are doing all right. Things are good, considering the situation.

Japanese 12-inch PowerBook G4

high impact

2011-03-08T09:15:00.006Z

In an opinion piece entitled Science and finance: same symptoms, same dangers?, published in EMBO Reports nearly a year ago, Laurent Ségalat, a principal investigator at the CNRS Center for Molecular and Cellular Genetics in Lyon, describes modern science as dangerously analogous to high finance. Once one comes to terms with the obvious shortcomings of the simile – scientists don't do business lunches at Michelin-starred restaurants or buy a new Maserati just because the color of the old one went out of fashion – the essay proves enjoyable and highly instructive. To summarize it in one phrase, the finance analogy is based on the observation that publications accumulate at ever increasing speed, much as if they were part of a gigantic Ponzi scheme of knowledge.

To critically assess the current situation, one has to keep in mind that the point of science is to gain knowledge about the system under study and then, and this is crucial, to disseminate this knowledge freely, thus contributing to understanding and progress. Experiments, study, discussions and hypotheses are the essence of science. Results form the basis of further experiments; every answer spawns ten new questions that dig deeper into the system. The publication of results is necessary to spread the knowledge, and as long as a publication is properly indexed and freely available, the results and discussions in it contribute to the increase in human knowledge. In the traditional view of science, any publication is judged by how much it pushes the boundaries of knowledge and facilitates continued work down the road. This is not how it is these days, though.

In scientific publishing there is a clearly established and viciously defended hierarchy, as defined by the average number of citations papers in a given journal get. As science builds upon earlier findings – scientists really do stand on the shoulders of giants – these earlier findings are cited and acknowledged in a list of references at the end of each paper. The most influential papers are cited most frequently and rack up the highest citation score. The average citation score for all papers published in a journal in a given year is called the impact factor. The higher it is, the more prestigious and authoritative a journal is considered. The published papers inherit that prestige and a positive feedback loop ensures that papers in the most prestigious journals are cited most often. By being published there, they carry authority. Thus, the higher the impact factor of a journal, the more desirable publishing in it is and the more manuscripts are submitted to it by scientists wishing to benefit from the prestige of the journal. The higher the impact factor, the more ruthlessly the editor has to weed out the submissions.

In the life sciences, three journals are considered to stand above the rest. Getting published in one or more of them is prerequisite for a good job and an accelerating career. It's also key to being taken seriously by peers. Papers published in the top journals count for more than papers published in lower-key journals. This is of course profoundly irrational and contradicts science as it should be. As mentioned above, papers must eventually be judged by the significance of the results they present, by the impact they make on science. The experiment whether publication in a top journal predicts high impact is impossible to do. After all, one can't just publish the same paper twice in journals of vastly differing repute without anyone being aware of it; or observe parallel realities in which the paper has been published in either one or the other journal. But it's easy to argue, at least retrospectively, that the scientific content or the quality of the work are independent of where a paper is published.

One could make the reverse argument – and this is indeed made by those in the publishing industry – that the top three journals attract the strongest submissions, and that the best of these submissions are chosen for publication. It's a bold argument to make given the abundance of manuscripts and the dense content of scientific publications. How could one possibly identify the best before their impact on their fields becomes clear? But much like commodities futures traders in the City, journal editors claim to have the ability to make predictive bets that will bear out. This is preposterous in both cases. In addition, the vagaries of fashion change what's hot and important from year to year, and editors always prefer articles that make a journal appear at the cutting edge of science as perceived by the scientific public.

Another problem is that the pressure to publish in top journals (for job, promotion and respect) and, more fundamentally, the pressure to publish first – because in the sciences, second winner is really first loser – can lead to hasty experiments and overblown conclusions. By some estimate, up to a quarter of all papers published in the big three eventually turn out to be wrong. By the time they are put right, these papers will have left a mark on scientific thinking that’s hard to erase because their readers have considered these papers more significant than they were by virtue of their place of publication.

Are scientists so stupid that they cannot see when something is wrong? Well it's not the case anymore – if it ever was – that any experiment is immediately repeated and verified by other researchers working in the same field. It wouldn't be possible, given the complexity of method and apparatus. Published results and, to a lesser extent, conclusions are important guides for the design of new experiments. They are always taken with a grain of salt, but a basis of trust in the quality of publications and in their veracity underlies all scientific work.

Ségalat calls flawed, incorrect and redundant papers the toxic assets of science and is rather concerned about their spread, and it is true that they have unhealthy effects on science and scientists. Publication of results that later turn out not to be true is a costly mistake, mostly in terms of time and effort wasted. It's costly to those who try in vain to repeat earlier experiments and to those whose experimental designs are based upon flawed premises derived from earlier conclusions. Until earlier flaws are exposed in follow-up papers, progress in a certain field of science will be held back for months, maybe years.

Between each of the steps in the path of warped scientific inquiry are long delays. Experiments need doing, and doing again; results need interpretation and writing up. Papers need reviewing and publishing, then reading. Experiments and resulting conclusions need independent verification, and repeating if doubts arise. A refutation of an earlier claim isn't straightforward or obvious, but relatively easy compared to the struggle to get the refutation published. The whole process can takes years, especially if the initial result was published in a prestigious journal or received enthusiastically and quickly accepted into the scientific canon. In this case, editors may categorically block submission and even if that first hurdle is surmounted, reviewers will want to see extra-rigorous proof. Unfair as it is, it's harder to right a wrong than to get something wrong accepted.

The current approach is potentially lethal to young scientist on their way into the profession. Graduate students and fresh Ph.D.s alike have only a short period of time to complete their projects and build a career that is defined by a paper trail of high-impact publications. There is no time to squander opportunities. Working on a project that turns out to be based on misinterpreted evidence, years are easily wasted and a nascent career is potentially wrecked.

At the heart of this problem is the artificial and misleading authority of the impact factor. If science weren't so focused on it and would instead concentrate on publishing results without discrimination and haste but with care and thought, knowledge would probably accumulate faster and more smoothly. I already get email reminders of new papers on all topics I'm interested in, as indexed in a public repository of science that comprises the vast majority of scientific publications. I don't really need to know what journal they're in. A quick glance through the abstracts tells me if I should invest the time reading them. Some community ranking, on a paper by paper basis, would let the important papers stand out, not the lucky ones. Flawed papers would be exposed and marked quickly, with no need for a drawn-out and contentious retraction process. Science could progress on merit alone.

a stroll

2011-02-28T23:14:00.003Z

If I had to pick one area in London for a mainstream afternoon out, for something easy and unchallengingly pleasant that can be quite exciting if one is in the right state of mind, I'd go for the area between Long Acre and the Seven Dials. Without attractions or landmarks, the humble backside of Covent Garden, far removed from the glitter of the Royal Opera House or the Savoy, is nevertheless perfect for yuppies and unadventurous tourists on the look for something special.

Over the last few years, the area has become a tightly focused shopping hot spot. There are the ubiquitous corporate monsters like Banana Republic or H&M, but they're rather small and certainly not dominant because the interesting places are interspersed between them. There's a tiny cupcake baker whose display window is filled with pieces of pop-art colored way beyond the imagination of any rainbow. Next door to a dark hole tastefully decorated in velvet, latex and leather, is the boutique of an independent designer of retro fashion. There are the esoterica of Neal Street and the coffee at Monmouth. And on the other end is Stanfords, where I started out my ambling.

Stanfords is a travel bookstore of some renown. They used to be the first stop for adventurers off into the unknown. In a time before the internet and instant information, they were in the know - and they could provide at short notice a map of nearly any place on earth. Today, the store is much more conventional, but still sharply focused. Three vast floors house unimaginable quantities of travel writing, guidebooks, phase books and maps.

Out in the streets, it's a pleasant walk. There's hardly any traffic and the few cars that bravely venture among the pedestrians are clearly at a disadvantage. The buildings lining the streets are four-story warehouses for the most part, survivors of the late 19th century, when commerce meant bringing the world to England. Now they stand tastefully refurbished. Of their erstwhile purpose, only the brick-chic of their facades and the odd third-floor hoist remain. On the ground level are now restaurants and retailers and higher up expensive penthouse apartments.

Near Cambridge Circus is one of very few branches of Fopp, a Scottish music retailer with a story to tell. From humble origins on a street market in Glasgow a national chain rose in the 90s that deluded itself into thinking it could take on the giants of the trade. The rise was fast, the success vertiginous but the whole operation unsustainable. It was a time of violent upheaval in the recorded music business and probably a time a good as any to overthrow the status quo, but Fopp didn't do business much different from any of its competitors. Except they overreached, overstretched and broke. They went out of business even before Zavvi, the national number two, folded a couple of Christmases back. (HMV, the number one, is still hanging on, but only just if the ringing of their tills is any indicator.)

Fopp went bust and most of its stores closed, but the brand remained and found new life with a new owner. It has now been reinvented as a purveyor of lifestyle through music, much as Puma is a purveyor of lifestyle through sporting goods. Both seem to be doing all right. Every time I set foot in it, the Fopp is heaving. The store isn’t particularly large but the shelves form a dense maze that’s nearly impossible to navigate. Anyone stopped for browsing forms an obstacle that’s hard to circumnavigate. Disks are piled on every available surface.

At prices of a permanent going-out-of-business sale, with DVDs starting from two pounds and CDs from three, it’s hard to see who’s making any money, but somehow it works – or it wouldn’t continue. Are the invidious forces of cross-promotion at work? I don't see it. But free, and also nearly free, can be highly profitable, if Chris Anderson is to be believed. Wired editor and previously bestselling author of The Long Tail, he also authored Free, a book about the economics of not charging. I had download the audio version of this book a while ago (legally for free – how could it be any other way?) and starting listening to it on my walk to work the other day. Halfway though, it still couldn't see where Fopp's profits were coming from. With a book and two CDs, I left the store.

Across Shaftesbury Av is a rare treat in London – a good coffee shop that's not crowded. Big windows face the street, and a raised gallery of tables and seats give a great view of the bustle outside. The coffee is good and the pastries, well, you don’t expect much of pastries in London, do you? They even advertise wireless, another rarity in this city, believe it or not, but it’s not working for me. I pulled out my little Eee, just to test it, but there was no connection. As there’s also no CD drive in my netbook, I can’t check out the music I just bought a few minutes ago. But it's getting dark and I'm on my way home anyway. It was a pleasant afternoon.

beer at home

2011-02-23T22:20:00.004Z

Manchester played Marseille tonight, Champions League. I thought I'd watch the game and went to my local pub. The Goose is just across the street, a true neighborhood pub without pretensions or frivolous aspirations. It sells pints for about two quid and big meals for a fiver. Most food is reheated, but some of the specials are tasty and everything is incredibly good value. The game wasn't any good, though, and I had all the time in the world to contemplate the pub in the context of contemporary British society.

The Goose is the kind of place where, if you enter with a weary look on your face and two Tesco bags full of unknown items in your hands and take a seat near the fire to warm up from a longish walk through the biting cold because the appointment you've come for is still a few minutes off and you don't want to wait outside, people will approach you with genuine concern in the eyes, asking whether you're all right and could they buy you a drink. Maybe they assume you carry all your possessions in these two bags and want to do their share to help you through tough times. Maybe they do this to all stranger because it's that kind of place. In any case, you sit down and feel at home already, the desire to make it to your planned destination and get on with cooking, dinner and a movie dissipating with every breath you take of the stale air. It doesn't smell all that bad, considering the pub is carpeted throughout.

The carpet is an indicator that you've entered a traditional pub of the authentic kind. This is not the kind that has been painstakingly refurbished to look like it did in 1757 when King George came by to have a pint, where the floorboards have been cut from railroad ties reclaimed from branch lines gone out of business in the early eighties, floorboards that are glossed every morning before the pub opens to give it that rustic feeling of a living past.

The Goose doesn't have a past to be proud of. It just is. But it is in the way it has always been. Nothing has been refurbished or dolled up. The fittings show their age and there's a patina of dried sweat and alcoholic vapor on the dark wood panels. The mirrors on the wall are dull in the corners not because some interior designer decided this little details would add quite a bit of atmosphere but because no one can be bothered to polish them. The Goose is old-school, in other words, and as such it is a rarity of the rarest kind.

Pubs are struggling in the UK. They're still at nearly every corner in every city and there's at least one in every village, but they're dying at an alarming rate. The Economist wrote an obituary in last year's Christmas issue, but that seems a bit premature to me. There are still more pubs than your liver and pancreas could ever want you to visit, but they feel the stiff wind of economic challenge. Most have responded by specializing, and pubs these days can be broadly divided in three categories.

Rather common is the historic pub, often with a blue English Heritage plaque outside and some claim to fame. There are a dozen oldest pubs in London, some where Shakespeare drank and others patronized by Cromwell. Often long on appearance and short on substance, especially in areas popular with tourists, they are wildly popular with tourists. They play to the hazy notions of Good Old England that feature in every guidebook to the country. I wouldn't go into a historic pub in central London but in smaller towns or in the countryside, they can be lovely.

A rather different kind of establishment are gastro-pubs. They arose in the 90s from the realization that beer alone doesn't balance the accounts. People who come for a pint and watch two hours of football aren't good business. So managers started to think about good food and created a refined dining experience that was unlike a restaurant's because the essence of the pub was retained. Gastro-pubs are expensive and don't have TVs. They are popular with yuppies and self-styled urbanists. I love the Havelock Tavern in Olympia and the Cumberland Arms up the road.

The rest of the pubs doesn't fit into either category. They're a place to meet friends and have a beer. Some are great at this and often heaving – standing room only near universities and office buildings – while others are drab: nondescript sports bars with more screens than patrons, wanna-be gastro-pubs with rotten food, and locals that don't succeed at their most important function of being a community hub.

Pubs have always been important for socializing. When industrialization and urbanization washed streams of impoverished peasants into anonymous cities, pubs became retreats from the crowding of tiny, squalid flats. To this day, people are vastly more likely to celebrate birthdays in a pub than invite friends into their homes, but they don't feel the need to go every night. Homes are bigger now and nicer and equipped with big-screen TVs and premium cable subscriptions. The off-license down the road supplies cheap beer, and all of a sudden, the pub loses appeal.

The Goose manages to hang on and stand out. The landlord has drawn ales all his life and knows the regulars by name. He was probably chosen to run the pub by local residents convinced of his upright character, as was tradition. The menu has been expanded over the years to go beyond steak-and-ale pie and fish and chips but has remained simple and affordable. The wall-to-wall carpet in bordeaux and beige makes it clear that this is a living-room. A clientèle of middle-aged locals knows that and comes back, night after night.

The game's over; there hasn't been a goal. I finish my drink, get up, nod a tentative good-bye and get out. Time to go to the bedroom.

getting closer

2011-02-20T15:13:00.005Z

This year has started well. I've gotten out – much more than last year. Looking over the numbers and calculating current totals and averages, I feel good. Lack of training won't be a valid excuse if I don't do well this year. In January, I ran 186 km, six per day, more than in the first two months of last year combined. It helped that there was no snow, hardly any rain and even some sun sometimes. It was never too cold for comfort.

And so I've built a solid base. Last week was the end of this first part of the season. A long run took my up the river to the area where the Thames Path peters out in the maze of proud industrial heritage at Brentford, and then back. An hour and forty-five minutes, a bit more than 20k, an endurance test for the traditional season opener at Roding Valley that's coming up next Sunday.

Earlier this week, I've changed gears. Long slow runs won't do anymore. Now speed needs to be built and toughness developed. On Wednesday, I did a serious interval session around the Round Pond at Kensington Gardens. I did ten laps of three quarters around at full speed and one quarter easy, basting my way through lunch walkers, gaping tourists and bird feeders, frantically flapping wings surrounding me like the applause of an enthusiastic audience. A helicopter hovered overhead, inexplicably. Every now and then, I couldn't avoid kicking a gluttonous pigeon that didn't get out of the way fast enough. Around the swans, more menacing than majestic from close up, I swerved widely. Their wrath is better avoided – as is the Queen's, whose property they are.

Today I got to the lab around lunchtime, out of opportunism rather than eagerness or even habit. I had a prep lined up that needed quick working, and on weekends most equipment sits unused and ready. I was by myself. While my protein contently eluted off a big column, I wanted to go to the park for another run, the last serious effort before next Sunday's half marathon. My resolve wasn't lacking, and yet I'm still sitting here. What happened?

Trying to get out of the building, all decked out for a good run, music in ear and laces tied, I couldn't. My swipe card didn't trigger the encouraging beep in the reader nor the expected action. The front door remained stubbornly looked. The guard on duty at the front desk would have let me out, but how could I have got back in? He would certainly not be in our building all Sunday.

I went back up to test some more readers, identifying more doors that used to be open to me but were now closed. Imperial's security, by the way, is onerously paranoid. Card readers are everywhere, making most of the university out of bounds to most people working or studying there. I work in Biochemistry, yet can't get into the Chemistry department, just across the hall, not even to lug up supplies that are delivered to the shared stockroom. Our lab has internal doors that are looked in the evenings and on weekends, for crying out loud. Google probably has laxer policies, and their headquarters is ten minutes from Apple. An open and collaborative academic environment this is not.

Anyway, I found a way in and around, mostly because all the swipe reader still accepted my card. Only the newfangled touch readers refused to cooperate. I even found a way in and out of the building – through the back door of the goods elevator. What I didn't manage was get into the neighboring building where the shower is housed. No shower, no run, obviously. And so I'm still here, sitting on my desk instead of having fun in the park, writing and working instead of running, and looking out of the window every once in a while.

It's a grim sight, by the way. The sky has liquefied. Clouds have merged into a dense soup and drawn close. Yahoo tells me that it's just about 40, but with not even a memory of the sun in the sky, without even a sky to be honest, it would feel much colder. I'm coming to see the defective card readers as an unexpected gift, an injection of joy against the gloominess outside. I would have liked to polish my early-season form ahead of next Sunday's race, but the pinnacle of the season, the London Marathon, is still two months away, and who wants to peak early?

steps on the way

2011-02-13T17:31:00.003Z

The other day, in a conversation that might have far-reaching consequences, I was asked, out of the blue, why I change topics so frequently when I write. I was perplexed as first; it hadn't occurred to me. But after a few moments of consideration, I had to agree. Sets of posts tend to come in bursts, dealing with issues that burn in me, issues that are irrepressibly on my mind. Once what needed telling has been told, I happily move on to the next obsession. In my opinion, this is how blogging should be. It's my blog and yet, I had to justify my actions. Not wanting to give the impression of being easily bored, scatter-brained (even constructively) or unsteady, I stammered about being interested in new things, always observing, questioning and analyzing. I doubt I sounded overly convincing.

The other night I finished reading Travels with Herodotus, the last book by the late Polish journalist, reporter, and traveler Ryszard Kapuściński, which was published in 2007, the year of his death. Ever since stepping outside the confines of the Iron Curtain in 1956, Kapuściński wrote copiously about different parts of the world. For years, he was the Polish Press Agency's only foreign correspondent. He was serious about news, diving into places of unrest with scant regard for personal safety. According to a review in Time (Time? Why Time? Since moving homes more than a year ago, I haven't been anywhere near this execrable magazine. But the linked piece gives a good introduction to the book and the man.), Kapuściński was "jailed 40 times, witnessed 27 coups and revolutions, survived four death sentences, contracted tuberculosis, cerebral malaria and blood poisoning, and was once doused with benzene and nearly set ablaze".

Having never read any Kapuściński, I was quite excited about the book, which fell into my hands at the Oxfam on Marylebone High Street a few weeks back, but I was disappointed. Instead of recapitulating his adventures across the world, Kapuściński travels back in time and reads Herodotus' The Histories, the world's first work of fictionalized non-fiction. He got a copy from his boss when he was sent on his first assignment and clearly loves the book. Throughout his career, he reads and rereads it. At the end of his life, he wants to share the love. So over the course of 300 pages he quotes extensively and ponders the implications. Places in Kapuściński's own travels are only ever mentioned in passing, without much depth or detail, and they don't come to life. I found it a rather dull read. (But you can judge for yourself: The New Yorker's abridged version of the first few chapters is freely available online.)

However, on the third to last page was the following remarkable paragraph describing Herodotus:

Creatures like him are insatiable, spongelike organisms, absorbing everything easily and just as easily parting with it. They do not keep anything inside for long, and because nature abhors a vacuum, they constantly need to ingest something new, replenish themselves, multiply, augment. Herodotus's mind is incapable of stopping at one event or one country. Something always propels him forward, drives him on without rest. A fact that he discovered and ascertained today no longer fascinates him tomorrow, and so he must walk (or ride) elsewhere, further away.

I'm no Herodotus, no full-time traveler, no writer, but I can see certain aspects of my own personality in this description. Had I finished the book a few days earlier than I did, I would have had a much better line of argument in the conversation mentioned above, only subtly different from what I had said and certainly related in spirit, but much clearer presented.

blessed day

2011-02-12T00:53:00.006Z

I'm going out on a limb here, but the connections in this little story are just too good to ignore. I hope not everything I write will be proven complete rubbish by people more knowledgeable than me. Here it goes.

One of the basic concepts of Arabic syntax is the idafa, which literally means addition but should rather be translated as genitive (or even possessive) construction. When, in a succession of two nouns, the first belongs to the second, only the second gets a definite article. The first one is formally indefinite but becomes definite by association. Whereas in English one says the book of the boy, in Arabic it literally translates to book the boy. Short and sweet, and not nearly as confusing as it sounds.

Let me try to elucidate the concept by contrasting it with similar but different constructs. Al-youm is the day, al being the definite article. Mubarak means blessed or the blessed one. You can probably guess where I'm headed, but indulge me kindly.

I can come up with four ways of combining these two words. Youm al-mubarak – the day of the blessed one. This is the idafa I mentioned earlier. If one strips the single definite article, one is left with youm mubarak – a blessed day. Nothing special here. Saturating the phrase with articles, one gets al-youm al-mubarak – the blessed day. Note the counterintuitive article duplication. The final permutation in this set is al-youm mubarak – the day is blessed. The verb to be is implied.

If you're really creative, you could come up with a fifth way of combining these two words, but only if I tell you that the second word in an idafa doesn't get a definite article if it's a word that just doesn't do articles. That's names for the most part. Youm Mubarak could thus also be the day of Mubarak. Except, today it wasn't. It's probably too early to count blessings but Mubarak's day it certainly wasn't.

For the last three weeks, I've been following the development in Egypt with amazement and incredulity. When Tunisians gave their dictator the boot, it was already beyond imagination. But who would have thought that the political system of the most populous Arabic country, a system tuned over decades for efficient oppression, would fall without much of a fight and despite unquestioning support from the US and European countries?

One person could have told us. Vaclav Havel, a Czech hero who went from dissident to president, once said that the power of the powerful derives from the resignation of the powerless. Oppression is a contract that requires both sides to stick to it. When the powerless rise up, there's no holding them back. All it takes is a change of the collective mind. In East Germany in 1989, the floodgates burst when people took to the streets with the simple slogan We are the people, which was deadly because the country was nominally a democracy.

In Egypt, the dynamics feel very similar. A large majority of the people had enough and wants change. A few pithy demands galvanized them. The state of emergency must go. Mubarak must go. After a few weeks of doing little more than courageously loitering on the impossible to pronounce Tahrir square, the people got what they wanted. Where they're going from now, where the country is headed, is anyone's guess. The idea of democracy is sailing joyfully at the moment, but the will of the people is not sufficient for that if the underpinnings haven't been developed, as Gaza has shown. Similarly and in contrast to what the US likes to think, free elections don't bring about democracy. On the contrary, free elections can only work when democratic structures are established, when speech and the press are free, when parties argue honestly, when losing is seen as a valid option.

Anyway, it's early days, and there's reason to be excited, enthusiastic even. The will of the people has rid two countries of grim autocrats. There are many more to go in the region, but for Tunisia (which faded from the headlines faster than it got in) and Egypt, the future looks auspicious. Today might turn out to be a blessed day after all. Youm mubarak.

characters

2011-02-04T23:46:00.003Z

Creative writing hinges on characters. Stories rise and fall with them. More than clarity of language, more than the fire of the plot, more than the description of the setting, it is the credibility of the characters that makes or breaks a story. There are some basic tenets of how to illustrate characters – by their own thoughts and words, in monolog and dialog; by the words of other characters; by objects and behaviors ascribed to the character; by conflict that arises; by plain narrative.

But the compelling drawing of a character is not only in direct words, and a character rests not only in what the writer consciously commits to paper. It is in innuendo and allusion, in possibilities of a future and in the imagination of a past. Most of that happens in the mind of the reader. It can be argued that the reader will only pick up what has been put before him, that he can only read what has existed in the writer's mind.

On the other hand, there's the concept of the death of the author, rather dear to me in its subversive logic. It is said that each piece of writing only comes into existence through the reader, that each reader turns a piece of writing into something highly individual, interpreting, judging, feeling. Each reader makes the material his own. This implied supremacy of the reader, at least what regards to the enjoying of a piece of writing, doesn't excuse the writer because only a successful writer can die. Only with successful writing is the reader willing, even enthusiastic, to take the piece beyond what's in the words.

Successful in this context means good, which takes us back to the first point: the character must be compelling. It must be consistent, even in its contradictions, and powerful, even when it is weak. It doesn't have to be comprehensive, but it has to be convincing. The reader likes, even demands, to imagine, to refine the character, to personalize it, to make it his own. If the character is convincing as a person, the reader is willing to accept flaws in its design, though the writer couldn't do worse than take this as an excuse for shortcuts.

No matter how one see's the position of the writer, the character in all its details must exist in the writer's imagination before the process of writing can begin. At the beginning of a novel, a scaffold is fine, a sketch of a person, the roughest of outlines, because as the plot advances, the blanks will be filled, the character be refined and the picture become more convincing.
In a short story, especially if it is only a few pages long, all the characters must be completely preformatted. There is no room for improvisation. They must have names and professions, builds, hair color and ages, histories, dreams and ambitions. They wear clothes that help define them, have quirks that give them sharpness and depth. Even if none of this is mentioned, even if the characters are nameless and poorly described, their names and descriptions must exist in the writer's conception.

The writer must know his characters inside out and identify with them. Even if action and reaction will only later convey characteristics, these characteristics must be established at the outset in the writer’s mind. Otherwise no believable character will result. The writer must care, from the beginning, even if he passionately loathes the character because otherwise, again, the character won't progress beyond one-dimensionality, contours and silhouettes.

Good writers are thus deeply compassionate, people's people if you will, or passionate misanthropes, noticing every annoying detail of a persona and building characters from that. If the writer's imagination isn't clear and concrete, the descriptions will ring hollow and fake and the suggested actions and behaviors lack in justification. The characters won't go beyond simple caricature and appear inconsistent, artificial, ridiculous.

For me, the creation of character is the biggest step to make in creative writing, the highest barrier to break. If find it frankly daunting. One cannot simply sit down and start writing, seeing in astonished disbelief how the story unfolds – as I frequently do on this blog. Instead, one has to have a plan, one needs to know the characters. On the blog I know the character as well. It is a version of me that I choose to project. A story is different.

I am not a dreamer, I don't concoct fantasy worlds from which I can pluck the most bizarre or most banal figures to turn into characters and populate stories with. So how do I do it? Creativity doesn't exist in a void. Nothing is new, nothing comes from nowhere. Everything is a permutation of something that was. I go through life with open eyes and ears, pick up oddities and conjecture background and dreams of people I encounter.

It's impossible that there wouldn't be enough material, but the next step is still hard, appearing insurmountably steep: Combining these fragments, these shreds of invention into composites that I can believe in and that I can then, in turn, ask the reader to believe. Three months ago, I suggested a tag for all writing that owed more to creative doodling than to the exploits of my public persona. This tag found use exactly five times and then disappeared, in line with my withering enthusiasm and confidence at the creative writing workshop.

Over the last few weeks, instruction has become much more structured than it was before, analyzing conflict and character in way that I outlined above. Thinking through this, as I've just done, fills me with a faint hope that I'll manage to finish a little story – it would be a first – by next week, as I promised Ronnie, the irrepressible teacher, who's quite a character himself.

morning news

2011-02-03T22:39:00.005Z

Every morning, Britain wakes up to Radio 4. The Today program features news read in soothing voices, hard-assed interviews and the world's most laconic weather forecasts ("the weather today, miserable"), never more than two adjectives and never a temperature. The show starts shortly after the Shipping Forecast (which deserves its own post for sure) and continues right until 9 when even the latest sleeper will have got up and put the kettle on for the morning tea.

According to the most recent audience figures, more than six million listeners tune into the Today program every morning at one point or another. That's about ten percent of the population, an incredible number for a radio show that doesn't feature music and isn't particularly funny. But it tells you what's going on in Britain and the world, and when the philosophico-religious Thought for the Day comes on, you know it's ten to eight and you'd better get up.

The main draw, though, must be the interviews. When John Humphrys goes after the prime minister or the shadow chancellor like a ferocious bulldog, biting though verbal stuffing for ten to twelve relentless minutes, the heart of anyone interested in the fine art of public discourse must soar. It soars even higher when the two jarring parties, sweating and exhausted, verbally shake hands after the duel: "Thank you for the interview, Prime Minister." – "Thanks for having me on the air, John."

John Humphrys was the subject of a recent interview himself and told about his hatred of alarms. He has to get up before 4am and has a battery of cheap beepers to force him out of bed, each one set to erupt a minute after the one before. Humphrys said that he always gets up at the first beep and angrily turns off all alarms before he can hear the second.

I found this story very inspiring and decided, a good two weeks ago, to give this technique a try. Up to then, I had got up to Radio 4, listening to current affairs, sports and news without much sense of time, usually getting up only an hour after the radio had come on in the first place. What a waste of time, I thought one night as I sat my alarm for 7:58. The next morning I surprised myself by leaping out of bed at the first buzz and being in the kitchen ready to hear the 8 o'clock news on the radio there, the kettle hissing in the background. I felt fresh, full of energy. Since then, this has become a habit. There was one lapse one day, but now I can't imagine it any other way. I even set the alarm progressively earlier.

This morning I was at the institute at 8. Red-and-white tape greeted me, strapped across the back entrance, blocking the door to the goods elevator. I thought of clambering over it but reason prevailed and I went to the main entrance. Same sight there, same tape, but also a guard, standing motionless. I approached with a question mark on my face. "The Biochemistry building is closed today. There has been major flooding overnight." He pointed up the glass façade, indicating faint streaks of water. "The pipe to one of the storage tanks on the roof burst, flooding the top three floors. You can't go inside."

I didn't have any urgent business inside, nor any reason to argue with the poor fellow standing in the cold squalls without much protection. I went to the Library café instead, in search of official word on the situation and feebly damning my poor luck for getting up so early. What were the options? After reading the first emails trickling in from frazzled building and facilities managers and an invigorating macchiato, there was nothing else to do but go back home. By the time I made it, the Today program was over.