riding high

There was a time when this blog was losing readers by the handfuls.  The numbers still haven't recovered.  I wrote about cycling twice a day, telling stories of me on the bike and in front of the TV.  Cycling was big in my life.  I rode hard, I rode often, and I watched the epic battles fought in the professional circuit.  I picked heroes for inspiration, amazement and awe.

In 2007, in my memory anyway, I went to see the Tour at the Col de la Croix de Fer, raced the Maratona dles Dolomites, almost dying on the Giau in the process, and put my Cannondale away, missing the bin only for faintness of heart.  Then I moved to London, and nothing was as it had been.

There was no riding apart from the daily commute, no terrain that could tempt me away from the city.  And there was increasing evidence that doping was endemic in professional cycling and that there was no interest whatsoever to change that and clean things up.  I left the world of cycling.

While I was in London, the Tour started in Hyde Park, the Olympics road race passed through my borough, and a couple of Englishmen won successive Tours, creating a hype for the sport that's only topped by that around tennis.  (Some guy won a tournament he had failed to do so for years.)  I didn't notice any of this more than in passing.  I couldn't care less.

Also during my years in London, Lance Armstrong, seven-time dominator of the tour, finally confessed that his doping efforts were as world-class as his efforts in the saddle.  His confession made a splash that even I couldn't ignore but only served to increase my emotional distance.

Professional cycling has been rotten for a long time.  Everyone took drugs, at one point or another, and most probably did it with as much diligence as they followed their training regimens.  (Laurent Fignon says in his autobiography that "We didn't feel like we were cheating: each of us settled matters with his own conscience.  And in any case, everyone did it.")

I don't have much of an issue with doping itself.  Doping might make you a better racer, but it doesn't make cycling easy.  It's never the best doper who wins but the best racer (who dopes).  Lance won seven Tours because he was the hardest ass in the peloton.  I wouldn't have wanted to train with him for even a day.  I would have cried after ten minutes.  His name might have been purged from the palmares, but he will forever remain the best cyclist of his generation.

What I have an issue with is the hypocrisy, the false profession of surprise whenever things come to light that were supposed to remain secret forever, and the piecemeal admissions of guilt, only when it can't possibly be denied any longer.  Last week, a French Senate inquiry revealed the names of dozens of riders with fishy blood values, calling some confirmed doping offenders.  Erik Zabel's was one of them – six years after his tearful admission that he had tried blood doping once but it hadn't worked for him.

Like Lance, Erik was a great cyclist.  Doping didn't make it easy for him to win stages or suffer through the Alps.  You only have to watch Hell on Wheels to see that for yourself.  Eight years later – and knowing the outcome – it's still gripping entertainment.

But I'm having none of it because the duplicity of the whole business is just too much for me.  With cycling booming in the UK at the moment and RideLondon, a festival with 27000 participants, sucking in converts left and right (and clogging the entire city this weekend), I just wanted to remind myself of this – even at the risk of losing a few more readers.

letter of reference

Typing away last night it struck me how futile a letter of reference is despite its ubiquity early in scientific careers.  A former student had asked me to provide one for him, which I was only happy to do, especially since (1) the student was really good and (2) I had already written a letter for him a while back for a different but related opportunity.

This time it was for a degree program at a prestigious university.  I had to log on to a website provided by a third party, enter my personal details and upload a letter.  There was no information on the nature of the program, nor on the qualities sought in applicants.  No preselection of candidates took place before letters of reference were requested.  It was rather absurd and a massive waste of time.

The administrators of the academic program were in effect leaving it to me to select criteria by which to judge a candidate.  They should of course have created a shortlist of promising candidates first and then contacted only their referees and asked specific questions.  That way much tedious work could have been avoided, and the letters of reference would have been meaningful.

But meaning is not what is expected of them.  Generic letters of reference serve nothing but administrative (and possible legal) purposes.  Before I was allowed to continue my employment at Imperial in July, in the same environment and, disappointingly, at the same salary despite changing focus from research to management, the procurement of letters of reference was of the greatest concern.

To the box-tickers in HR it was irrelevant that I was the only candidate for a job designed to run for three months only, a job created to keep essential instruments and procedures going while a new manager was being recruited after the sudden departure of the previous holder of the post.

There were procedures to follow, and it didn't matter that I had already worked for the hiring manager in the past and, temporarily, in that function.  Specific qualities and past achievements were irrelevant.  Instead, two other professors' time was wasted.  They had to copy and paste empty phrases that were then dutifully filed with the recruitment paper trail.  I doubt any of it was read.

The student who had asked me for a letter of reference was acutely aware of the dual gravity and pointlessness of it, and helpfully provided me with keywords without which a letter wouldn't be complete.  No one would want to pursue higher education without "scientific curiosity, passion, determination and persistence".  The student went as far as to suggest entire phrases that he felt would make him stand out.

In all likelihood, all other applicants will do the same.  If they choose their referees wisely, the letters will blend seamlessly into an ocean of vacuousness.  Doing without them entirely would have the same effect but save a lot of time writing and, just possibly, reading.

arrival

The journey to Brussels that formed the basis of the previous post was only the first in a long succession of train rides over the last week.  Right after my accidental but not entirely unpleasant stopover in the Belgian capital – three days before the abdication of one king and the coronation of another – I took an ICE to Cologne and a Swiss-liveried EC to Hamburg.  It was deep night already when I hopped onto the last train of the day, a regional service to Kiel, nearly in Denmark and at the heart of sailing in the Baltic Sea.

Over the next few days, I bounced to Hamburg and back and then to Hamburg again and took the ICE down to Munich.  Germans like to think of their country as at the forefront of railroad technology and comfort.  The future happens here, goes the dogma, which has somehow spread far beyond national borders.  Foreigners marvel how German trains are wicked fast and always on time.

Going from Hamburg to Munich I realized for the first time how wrong this is.  The distance is less than 500 miles.  Germany is a small country, yet my train took six hours.  The same distance between Paris and Marseille takes half the time.  Sevilla to Madrid tops out at 200 miles per hour.  When I got on the train, the fastest service possible, there was another one on the opposite platform with a more indirect route that would reach Munich after eight hours.

The reason for the sluggishness is twofold.  Firstly, the nominally fast trains have to share the tracks with regional trains on many routes, which severely curtails the achievable top speed.  Secondly, the trains stop. all. the. time.  Every little town with a politician of some import bargains for regular high-speed access in return for land for the railroad.

Still, it could be worse.  This morning's journey started almost stillborn.  The ICE I was supposed to take to Nuremberg turned out not to stop there at all.  I realized this at the last moment and, well-deserved luck, was shooed two platforms down to another train going in the same direction and stopping where I needed to change.  All looked good until I got on the train that was to take me to Dresden, four hours through the green hills of rural Germany, with few towns but lots of unassuming natural beauty.

The train was a Diesel-powered anachronism, as noisy as an airplane, its engines screaming in pain on every incline.  It was small, crowded and about as comfortable as the tube out to Heathrow.  I was shocked speechless.  Lenin had electrified the railroads in his first five-year plan.  How come in 2013 we're still rattling on by noisily burning Diesel?  The low ticket price had surprised me initially.  Now I know the reason – and also what to avoid when traveling between my sister's and my parents'.  An intercity coach would be more comfortable that what I was on.

But in the end – after a cumulative 27 hours on rails, through bits of England, France and Belgium and the four corners of Germany – I got home, and what can be sweeter than that?

stopover

The trip didn't start particularly auspiciously.  Sitting in the departure hall at St. Pancras, crammed in with hundreds of travelers on their ways to Brussels or Paris, I broke with convention and didn't get a coffee and a muffin from Caffè Nero.  I was too tired after four hours of sleep and couldn’t bother to get up.  Earlier, a failing alarm had almost foiled my travel plans entirely, though in fairness I have to say that it wasn't technically the alarm that had failed but my skill setting it.  Thinking that 5:05 might be a bit too late, I had changed it to 5:55.  Luckily, my phone had bailed me out.

On the train, a faded first-generation Eurostar, things started to look up.  Last week's Economist was free, and a lovely breakfast brought to the seat.  "Pain au chocolat?", the steward asked, and later, "Encore un café, monsieur?"  I said yes to all questions, not realizing that the service personnel were lulling me into a false sense of security.  We reached Brussels 20 minutes late.

I missed my connection by two minutes, seeing the tail end of a bright white ICE leaving the station as I clambered off the train.  A service person quickly printed out alternative arrangements.  The next train to Germany was leaving in four hours.  It didn't upset me in the least.

I could have questioned the point of promoting a pan-European railway network when one provider doesn't take another's delays into account.  I could have complained that trains shouldn't be late in the first place if railroads want to compete with air travel.  I could have doubted the wisdom of running trains between Belgium and Germany every four hours only.

In the end, I did none of this.  I didn't see it as a four-hour delay as much as a break in a journey that was too long to take in one go.  I locked up my luggage and stepped out of the station, ready to see the city like a tourist leaving his hotel after a leisurely breakfast.

It was 11 o'clock and noticeably cooler than in London a few hours earlier.  Out of nowhere, I had been given three and a half hours to spend in a city I'd never seen.  I was quite pleased already.  Then I realized I might be able to claim compensation for the delay.  In effect, I might be getting paid to see Brussels.

Getting to the center of town from the station takes a short walk through a colorful neighborhood with a distinctly Moroccan influence.  There were mint tea houses, the patisserie Marrakesh, and a travel agent offering direct services to Kenitra and Meknes, but also a Greek Orthodox church, a business sign in Hebrew that I couldn't decipher and, most hilariously, a Chicken Cottage.  On the left was the Zuid Paleis, a great warehouse/market monolith from the 19th century, and on the right the office of BXL Laïque, an organization providing a nebulous "service of moral assistance".

The heart of the city is Grand Place, the great market of yore and an ensemble of such stupefying outrage that it's impossible to describe.  Lining its four sides are palaces to mercantile success and institutions of civic pride, their architecture wildly over the top in every single case.  Bread Hall is all gothic arches and columns; Brewers' House has gold-leaf decorations.  The façade of city hall is saturated with hundreds of sandstone statues, all in their own ornate alcoves.  Over everything dances a mosaic of a million tiny shadows.  It's totally bonkers.

The streets leading to Grand Place are called Butter St. and Herring St., but these days, the trade is in other flavors.  There might be luxury watches and lace curtains and tourist trinkets, but the vast majority of shops sell artisanal chocolate.  For variety of vice, there are dark beer halls in rich Belle Époque decoration.

One ring removed from Grand Place are tourist trap restaurants with picture menus in four languages.  Confronted with those and local favorites Quick Burger and Hector the Hen, I walked on until I found a small restaurant with tables underneath a vast sycamore tree and a lunch menu for locals.  Lounge music wafted over from the cocktail bar at the corner that had diversified into the lunch business.  A cast-iron spiral staircase led to the first floor where a stage with big speakers and a drum kit hinted at what happens at night.

In the distance beckoned the cathedral, but time wasn't in my favor.  I rose from my table and, entirely by chance, soon found myself next to the Little Pisser, a fountain replenished by a bronze cherub's renal effluent.  It's become a symbol of the city, adored similarly by locals and tourists.  For all the fame, it's disappointingly small.  I continued on my way back to the station and was soon enough on another train and off to other adventures.

haircut

For the last three years, I've got my hair cut not only in the same barbershop just across the street, but also by the same barber, a kid from Egypt in his early 20s.  He's friendly, always waving from behind the picture window of his shop when I walk by.  He's also not very good.

My hair doesn't deserve much attention.  There's not much left of if and what's there doesn't have to impress lucrative clients or a judge on a desperate case.  The only point of cutting it is getting it shorter.  This is always achieved.  But within days, ragged edges grow from my scalp like the Alps folding at a billion times their rate.  The generated crags and crenellations are sharp enough to cut the teeth in my comb, and my head looks badly out of shape, one step away from people throwing me coins.

Nevertheless, I keep returning to the barbershop.  As any barbershop should be, it is a hub of the community.  It's situated at the entrance to a mini-mall with a Russian café, a discount jeweler and a mobile phone repair shop.  The last business is just a guess.  I've never entered the mall.  But I know that neighbors enter the barbershop all the time for chats, tea or simply a change of scenery.

Tonight, there was no tea.  But a man came in borrow a razor.  He gave himself a quick shave on the spot and left a minute later.  Another took a spray bottle off a shelf and squirted instantly vaporizing water over his head, the only permissible relief during Ramadan, which has been sizzling in London as if this were the Gulf.

Neither interruption distracted me from the second aim of my visit – to find out what's going on in Egypt.  I've had sought out conversations before but was always left disappointed by the paucity of words we had in common.  It wasn't as if this guy updated me on community gossip, as a barber should.  He just cut my hair.

But tonight he engaged more.  The topic was evidently dear to his heart.  He opened up and let the words flow, getting increasingly agitated.  I heard about army and people and politicians and corruption, but sadly these keywords weren't imbued with meaning or opinion intelligible to me.  Without a sense of grammar and proper use of vocabulary, most of his articulations remained noise to me, an indecipherable stream of consciousness.

As for the first aim, my hair took a beating in the process.  It was clipped even more scraggily than last time, fault lines zig-zaging above my ears.  It was also clipped very short, a great comfort with the heat showing no sign of letting up.  I know I'll be back in a few weeks' time.

end and beginning

Yesterday was my last day at work.  That had been the plan for a long time.  I was looking forward to saying good-bye, moving on, taking a new position with new challenges and giving my life the kick in the right direction that it has been waiting for.

As befits a last day, there were leaving-dos and words of farewell.  There were also unexpected good-luck and we'll-miss-you gestures that were as simple as they were touching.  On Thursday, the group went for drinks till late (by London working-day standards).  Yesterday, we had lunch together.  I enjoyed both a lot, particularly so since they were rather undeserved.

While I've talked about leaving London for about two years now, I'm not actually doing it.  I'm staying here, at least for the moment.  I've found a new job, but it's not exactly adventurously novel.  It's what I've been doing for the last half year besides my research.  Now I'll do it full time, leaving research to play a distant second fiddle, at least until it get the facility I'll be in charge of running smoothly.

Yesterday was my last day at work, but I'm not leaving.  On Monday, I'll be in a different lab but still at the same university.  I will be a different building but on the same floor as before and won't have to change my routine much.  I'll still press 5 in the elevator.  I'll even keep my old desk, in case I crave the company of so many years, and my locker, and I'll keep playing football with the same guys.

Not much is changing, in other words, but I feel a profound sadness, the sadness I've experienced many times before.  It is unquestionably the sadness of leaving, though it obviously can't be.  I can only interpret it as the sadness of not leaving, a much deeper pain because it doesn't come with the excitement of the new and the realization of dreams.

Monday will be my first day at work.  I will be doing a job that I've convinced myself over the years is the right kind of job for me, a job that matches my skills and inclinations and the visions that I have of myself much better than the slog of research.  It's a job where I can make a real difference quickly, sort things out and make my mark.  The alarm will sound sweet on Monday.

recorded and live

A few years back, for my birthday or Christmas, my mom gave me a CD from the small French alpha label.  About the music she said "this is da bomb" (not her actual words) and that the CD had got rave reviews.  The man in the record store had also highly recommended it.  Plus, it had a cello on it and "you still like cello, don't you?"

I do like the cello but it took me a long time getting into the music.  It just didn't make any sense.  All of it was composed by Gabriel Fauré, but there were too many bits, and it all blended into a mush of medium grey.  There were two sonatas and a trio, interspersed without apparent justification with a handful of disconnected short pieces.

One reason I kept playing the CD is that it was recorded at MC2, the Maison de la Culture de Grenoble.  It is to my great regret that I never once attended a performance there when I lived in Grenoble.  I can't really explain why, except to say that it was a bit out of the way from where I lived and getting there would have taken two buses.  Getting back at night after a show would have been even more complicated.  With the recording, I can at least imagine being there.

Another reason I kept playing the CD is the clarinet in the last piece.  With time, this Trio in D minor (for piano, cello and clarinet) crystallized in my ears as the high point of the CD, rising above the rest, distinct, recognizable, and a pleasure to listen to again and again.  Have I mentioned that I like the clarinet?

This morning, I went to Wigmore Hall for yet another of their Sunday morning coffee concerts.  The clarinet trio that I've grown so fond of was on the program, performed by the same three musicians that play on my CD.  It was wonderful to hear the music unconstrained by poor speakers and a small room.  Let me try a few inept words of description:  Over three movements, the anguish of the clarinet and the serenity of the cello were distilled to their essence.  The last few bars created a heavenly clarity, an intense sense of peace that filled the hall and seemingly the entire world.  I was rapt.

Then the audience, excited way beyond their age, burst into wild applause.  A few curtain calls later, the performers sat down for an encore, a bit of Beethoven, lighthearted, joyous and in stark contrast to the tranquility that still lingered in my ears and mind.  I wished they hadn't done it.  I wished they had let me leave with the echo of Fauré.  Much like a coffee after a perfect meal, Beethoven spoiled the mood and the magic was gone.  Good thing I have the CD to return to.

matters

After the knife scare of ten day ago, I'm glad to report that things didn't turn out too bad. Garrad was back in his shop a few days later, almost as if nothing had happened. Something terrible had of course happened, and it was impossible to deny it. From what I could gather, the attacker had been caught but then quickly released. He was apparently mentally unstable, though I can't say how that's a justification for anything.

In my conversations with him, Garrad saw the positive side to this mess and appreciated the fact that nothing serious had happened to him. Notwithstanding the stitches he got and the scars he will keep, he was lucky. Physically, he'll be fine. Mentally, he seems to have suffered more. He keeps talking about moving on, about closing shop and leaving North End Road.

I can't blame him. You're rather exposed in a brightly lit internet café that's open late. But I don't think the street or the neighborhood is all that bad. London has much dodgier parts. What happened here was a freak incident that's by no means representative of the area. But if you're on the receiving end of casual violence, this matters little.

This post could end here, but speaking on the subject of what matters, I have to share an article I saw in the Daily Telegraph today (and don't ask how I came across it). The Telegraph is the newspaper for tweed-and-corduroy conservatives of a certain age. It's not a newspaper I ever buy. Yet the article that caught my eye is absolutely brilliant, not so much for its content, which is just a rehash of what's been published elsewhere but for its clever use of stock photographs.

The previously published information appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the U.S.A., a science weekly of considerable esteem, and concerned the correlation between male attractiveness and penile length. This is your tax money at work. The conclusion: Size matters. This is what the Telegraph highlights. But whose idea was it to illustrate the point with Condi's fierce face and a gesture that must surely be fortuitous?