Well done Edinburgh!

Well, I made it home on Saturday as planned, only slightly later. The luggage transport belt inside the airport terminal in Edinburgh had snapped, and they didn't seem to have a back-up system at all. We were all asked to deposit our luggage at the outsize baggage desk (basically: chuck it on the heap) and it would all be taken care of manually. Of course, if they wouldn't make one big heap but already do some sorting as the bags come in, that would have been a lot easier.

Getting to Edinburgh airport two hours before departure time seems to be a good idea anyway, given the time everything takes there. Queue at check-in only took twenty minutes but the whole queuing and x-ray procedure takes ages. Why they don't just open all x-ray terminals, I have no idea. It took about an hour.

Once in the airplane, we were first told that we were waiting for the bags for a maximum of 15 minutes, then that we would leave in five minutes regardless of whether we had luggage or not, 15 minutes later we were told we were going to leave in five minutes and now half the bags were on the plane, the other half wasn't, and another 15 minutes later we finally left. With all the bags, only they never actually announced that. I found out because the people next to me had to get a connection to Budapest and were slightly panicking.

Anyway, so we left 55 minutes late. The rest all went quite smoothly. The food was even quite nice.

At home now. Very windy.

Therapy failed...

Sorry to have to disappoint AL, but retail therapy didn’t work. Maybe I’m just not good at retail therapy. I’m very bad at buying things. I must have seen at least five different pairs of shoes that I wanted to buy (some of them affordable even) and all sorts of other cool clothes, but I didn’t buy them because I somehow doubted I actually needed them. I know that is sort of the whole point of retail therapy – buying stuff you don’t actually need but that’s good to have anyway – but I’m just incapable of doing that.

So I spent three and a half hours going up and down Princes Street, and I came back with one DVD. Well, one three-DVD set. Second season of Shameless. Good stuff.

Needed it too. Doing retail therapy on your own is not fun, if all the other people are doing retail therapy in pairs. And then going into the EUSA shop in Potterow on my way back was a bad idea too. A: they didn’t have chocolate chip muffins anymore, or the Guardian, and B: there are just some people you don’t want to see with someone else. (Skidedanskere!)

So watched three episodes of Shameless from my bed with my big fluffy toy dog. And tonight we’re invited over at LG’s to watch Much ado about nothing. Am debating whether or not to take the big fluffy toy dog with me. It may not be allowed to leave LG’s again, that’s the problem.

And breathe out...

Yay, Easter break! Well, I’m taking it anyway. Version 1.0 of the presentation is finished and with no one else in the office, it’s not exactly the most motivating place to work, so I’m leaving it at version 1.0. Nothing left to do, except send some e-mails out about the Postgraduate Conference, so I’ll go to the office in a bit to do that, bring home my laptop and then really start my Easter break.

After that I’m taking AL’s advice and am going into town for some retail therapy. There’s some stuff I need to buy for people back home, and I might just treat myself to something although I have no idea yet to what.

Went to the cinema with the NS bunch yesterday, to see Ice Age 2: The meltdown. I had forgotten about the little squirrel. And about the tiger actually as well. All I remembered was the mammoth and the sloth. It was an okay movie. Afterwards back to AF’s for tea and pecan pie. Was nice. But slightly too late maybe.

Nice to know

So some time in February VP said it was better to just stay friends, ‘because I was only getting so worked up about the whole thing.’ Of course by then it was already crystal clear that the whole thing was never going to happen anyway, and there was no doubt my feelings were never in the picture... but it was a nice illusion.

So today I learned that I was only told this after VP had secured non-single status for himself. Or perhaps slightly prior, that I was an obstacle that needed cleared before he could do so. Illusion shattered.

With all the commitment issues playing in this moment’s relationships, and me lending an ear to everyone (MG, WG and VP over the course of three days!), surely that whole relationship thing is an overrated institution that we could easily do without. Not worth the bother and the mental torment it causes.

Now if I keep telling myself this, I might start to feel better...

Ideology

Mainly for MG but others can enjoy too... Sixteen possible definitions of ideology:

• the process of production of meanings, signs and values in social life;
• a body of ideas characteristic of a particular social group or class;
• ideas which help to legitimate a dominant political power;
• false ideas which help to legitimate a dominant political power;
• systematically distorted communication;
• that which offers a position for a subject;
• forms of thought motivated by social interests;
• identity thinking;
• socially necessary illusion;
• the conjecture of discourse and power;
• the medium in which conscious social actors make sense of their world;
• action-oriented sets of beliefs;
• the confusion of linguistic and phenomenal reality;
• semiotic closure;
• the indispensable medium in which individuals live out their relations to a social structure;
• the process whereby social life is converted to a natural reality.

From Terry Eagleton, Ideology: an introduction (London: Verso, 1991), p. 1-3. Here quoted from Rosina Lippi-Green, Language ideology and language change in Early Modern German: a sociolinguistic study of the consonantal system of Nuremberg (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1994), p.7.

Window

Beautiful weather yesterday, and seeing as we seem to have a little visitor of the mousey persuasion, it seemed time for some good old spring cleaning. This involved cleaning the windows, also from the outside. Our living room window tilted inside out so it was very convenient to clean. Then it was my bedroom window’s turn to be cleaned. This one refused to be tilted properly, but got severely dislocated and ended up about a foot outside the window frame. Still on the hinges though. MG and I must have spent at least half an hour, if not 45 minutes, on trying to forcibly get the window back in place. Success in the end. The rest of the windows were cleaned from the outside by jumping up and down to reach the top of the window. We’re ground floor, officially, but we’re about three steps from ground level, so just enough for me not to be able to reach the top of the window when just standing.

Also did some work yesterday. The East German Marxist linguistics that haunts my Sorbian research reached new heights with this quote from Heinz Schuster-Šewc, ‘Sprache und ethnische Formation in der Entwicklung des Sorbishen’, Zeitschrift für Slawistik 4 (1959), 577–595:

Überhaupt ist es falsch, bei der Beurteilung des Selbständigkeitsgrades einer Sprache bzw. des Verwandtschaftsverhältnisses einzelner Dialekte von der Existenz sogenannter “Ursprachen” auszugehen. Die marxistische Lehre von der Gesellschaft lehrt uns, daß es in der Geschichte derartige “Ursprachen” und “Urvölker” niemals gegeben hat. Die grundlegende gesellschaftliche Einheit in der Urgemeinschaft war der Stamm mit den ihm untergeordneten Sippen. Jeder Stamm bildete auch in sprachlicher Hinsicht eine Einheit. Die weitere Entwicklung in der Urgesellschaft wird charakterisiert durch den Zerfall und die ständig fortlaufende Teilung der Stämme. Im Rahmen des Bevölkerungszuwachses und der territorialen Ausbreitung der Stämme zerfällt ein Stamm nach dem andern in kleinere Teile, aus denen sich im weiteren Verlauf der Entwicklung selbst wieder Stämme bilden. Zusammen mit dem Zerfall der Stammeseinheit zerfällt natürlich auch die Stammessprache, und es entstehen neue verwandte Stammessprachen. (p. 587–588)

Maybe it’s just me, but I really don’t see much of a difference between evil capitalist linguistics and Marxist linguistics. I wonder if Schuster-Šewc did...

Also thanks to LF for not changing over important things like music license and PA insurance. I got a call from the insurance company on Friday: ‘Your insurance runs out at midnight tonight. Why didn’t you renew your policy?’ Eh... because I didn’t know we had to? An update on the 60th Anniversary Preparations would also be good...

And then there was one...

Yesterday we had a farewell party for CB. She will leave for California next week, and then I’ll be the only person from our M.Sc. course left in Edinburgh. LG had organized a surprise party and CB only started to suspect something when four people suddenly turned up at the same time. It was a bit weird that CB was thrown a NS party even though work had prevented her from going to dancing ever since this summer. Also there weren’t any people from her church. Which was probably a good idea, given MG and JB’s ideas about religion and book-inspired bigotedness. I’m sure the church people will throw her a party as well.

I also got told off for omitting to mention the curry night that LG organized on Monday. Fourteen NS people in an Indian restaurant. Indian hot is slightly different from Indonesian hot, I learned, and also the Indian idea about a one-person portion of rice was slightly different from what many were used to. (And I had agreed to share it as well.) I also didn’t mention that LG, SB and AF came over afterwards to watch the DVD for Wallace & Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit which I was force-lent by HO. It was hilarious. I like cartoons that have multiple layers so that they’re funny at many different levels.

I am meeting AMcM today at two. Slight clash with the DELS dry-runs but the people who are speaking there didn’t exactly seem to mind that the head of department had other engagements...

Also mustn’t forget to burn MM a copy of Holst’s Planet Suite.

More updates needed

There just isn’t enough time to experience all these things and write about them as well. And then they went and stole an hour away from us, so that was not very fair either. Oh well, I guess it’s really only borrowed and we’ll get it back some time in October.

The Highland Ball in St. Andrews was very nice, although I’m not exactly sure we got the right amount of money from everyone and into the Celtic Soc money box. I’ve concocted a little plan to make this all more streamlined next year. And days later I got my term as NS secretary prolonged by another year. Of course, immediately afterwards, ye shitte hitteth ye fanne. There was no hall for Step Class on Monday (which was because originally we didn’t plan on having classes in the last week of term so we didn’t book rooms). It also turned out we didn’t have a room for Bob and Dem Class, and even worse... when I got to the Pleasance to sort everything out, they asked me why NS didn’t turn up at the Pleasance room booking for next year... Eh... because we were never told it was on?

Then I had to find Mrs Wilson to organize Kirk o’ Field for Tuesday night. Mr Wilson, who wants nothing to do with the bookings and won’t touch the diary with a barge pole, said Mrs Wilson would be at Kirk o’ Field because it was Friendly Club. That sounds dodgy – and it was. Of course when I arrived there, everything was locked. Mr Wilson assured me that Friendly Club was 12 to 2 (although they might have pushed it back half an hour, ‘you never know with these women’). It actually starts at 1.30, so what Mrs Wilson gets up to in that hour and a half (or more: she was late for Friendly Club as well!) I have no idea. Average age there is 95, and I was told that Scottish Country Dancing is a very good pastime, especially since Scotland did so well in swimming in the Commonwealth Games. I have been known to make some weird connections in my mind, but this one is beyond me.

After that, things cooled down a bit. Dancing on Thursday was alright, although Panda is getting increasingly annoying. Feet not happy on Friday, and was dreading having to dance all weekend. MG’s party was nice. The next evening, Dunedin Assembly. Went there with GH, CA and AL. (Also found out that JB had a nasty encounter with a bunch of neds. Kill all neds. Also the ones that LC needs for her Ph.D. research, I don’t care. Neds that pipe, now that’s a paradox!) The Dunedin dance was absolutely fantastic, I had lots of fun and dances lots of great dances. Also found out that the person I thought was MG wasn’t. She was actually F (don’t know her last name). I did think she was at Dunedin a lot for someone who lives in Co. Cork...

After party at KG and AG was nice as well, they have a nice flat. Talked to J and C from Aberdeen. C is the American guy who always gets lost in dances and has the most magnificent facial expressions when he finally grasps what to do. Except he isn’t American, he’s from rural Aberdeenshire, grew up speaking unintelligible Doric and now suddenly he speaks flawless General American. Ph.D. subject in sociolinguistics in the making...

Then Sunday a Vicky League. The crowd was actually alright, they were predominantly European and therefore used to our oompa-oompa beat, rather than the Asians we normally have who just don’t seem to have a feel for Scottish music. I think we should dance a bit more and be more enthusiastic, but then again: HD took away our country dem slots and there’s only a certain amount of enthusiasm you can convey for the Military Two-Step.

Sunday and Monday also spent marking EL1 assignments. The assignment was scandalously easy, and everyone got very high marks. I guess LvB wants as many people as possible to get exemptions from the exam so that there are fewer exams to mark later on. I gained numerous interesting insights into the History of the English Language, which I shall collate into a separate blog entry at some point in the near future.

Not sure if I’m meeting AMcM today at 2pm or tomorrow at 2pm.

And Terttu Nevalainen is a woman. Nice one to find out before doing a presentation...

Eurovision

I didn’t know the Eurovision Song Contest was open to non-earthlings. Apparently membership of the Federation is enough... Silly Finns. Slightly less absurd, but still with questionable earthly origins, is Iceland’s entry. The Germans are coming with a band called Texas Lightning (‘It’s not a joke, it’s country’) which I haven’t heard but I fear is going to be country and western. Yeee-hah!

A blog entry is long overdue. A short overview of the past month consists primarily of first-year essays, my own research, baking bread, taking regular baths, going with NS to see ハウルの動く城 and staying single.

I’ve been contemplating to do something with AudioScrobbler, which automagically seems to send your ‘last played’ songs from iTunes to your blog, but I haven’t been able to figure out just quite how it works. Ecclectic collection as ever though, including Spetakkel, Мумий Тролль, Runrig and 박정현.

Tonight Highland Ball in St. Andrews. For which I really should start getting ready. Bus leaving at 5.15, and still need to take a shower, shave, etcetera.

Procrastination

Somehow, chatting on Skype with JM in Cambodia damaged my productivity and during two and a half hours of morning in the office, all I did was three pages (not even!) on the Lutheranian Reformation and the beginnings of the literary development with the Sorbs of Lusatia. Which is really interesting but it being in German doesn't help.

Things

AL thinks I should update, so here goes.

Lots of things have been happening, but then again, not really. Sounds paradoxical, but that’s how it feels. There’s disagreement over a complaint letter to EUSA about the ceilidh fiasco, we moved AF’s belongings up four flights of stairs in Tesco carrier bags (skip!), and the joint New Scotland and Dunedin team won the display at the Newcastle Festival. Probably because I was injured and couldn’t participate.

I had an ‘aargh!’ session at Language in Context on Wednesday, and it seems like they didn’t understand why I needed to go ‘aargh!’. I have my topic, I have my case studies, I have my hypotheses, I have my methodology, I have an idea of my sources – what was I complaining about... I guess I needed people to tell me what I needed not to focus on. Fair enough.

The Olympics have started and so far have been going relatively to my liking. Generally the nice people win, the not-so-nice people don’t. I got a wireless card for my laptop, not quite with the purpose of being able to watch the NOS’s live streams in the office, but it’s a nice extra. It has the nasty habit of kicking me off a couple of times during the day but I can deal with that.

In between all of that I’ve been trying to sort out this humongous feelings thing. The whole MG and TT thing may not have helped much in that department, there’s been a lot of theory input that I’m not sure about. MG’s theory about liking being a spontaneous feeling but loving being a conscious act may be supported by the θ-roles required by the Faroese verbs dáma and elska, but I’m not sure it is that simple. Then there’s the thing MG said to me a couple of weeks ago: I deserve someone who’s going to make me the centre of his universe. Yay! I would like to be the centre of someone’s universe. But doesn’t that implicate that I have to make that someone the centre of my universe? I don’t know that I have the attention span to do that. I guess that’s what MG means by loving being a conscious act. On the whole, I’m a bit worried about the whole idea of ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country’. I’m not confident I will be able to do enough.

On a more abstract level, I just don’t know what all these things that I feel mean. (How MM’s quote that hangs over my desk as a reminder to not just take any explanation for given, gets additional meaning here...) But maybe I shouldn’t want meaning and should just go with what I feel. But will I ever get past dáma then?

WB left a copy of the novella Brokeback Mountain on his desk in the office, so I read that during ice prep breaks on Sunday. After the movie hype, I found it a bit disappointing. I guess if you expect a lot you let yourself no other option than to be disappointed. I think the biggest downpoint was that the whole thing again started with sex. Oh, it’s cold, well sod those sheep and come into my sleeping bag, they shag. I just don’t have that drive and constantly getting messages of physically initiated relationships makes me feel inadequate. I liked Willem Melchior’s De onhuwbaren so much better. Sure, there was this physical side there as well, but it was much more about the emotional and mental side. Of course it is also ten times as long as Brokeback Mountain so more space, my expectations weren’t as high, I gave it my full attention and was probably in a better mood when I read it. Gosh, it sounds like I hated Brokeback Mountain. I don’t... It just doesn’t portray my feelings. (The movie’s got Heath Ledger in, so possibly better than the book.)

I had a Skype chat with JM this morning. Don’t remember exactly what she said but it supported me a lot in what I was thinking. I need to figure out what I want to happen, and then try to make it happen. (JA told me something along those lines last year with the whole DJ thing, and it isn’t as easy as it sounds.)

Jag hoppas att du havt något att läsa... men nu måste du tillbaka till ditt arbete! :)

Quotes

From Alexander McCall Smith’s The Sunday Philosophy Club, translation by Annemieke Oltheten — chapter 4, p. 49.

Het was misschien eenvoudiger, peinsde ze, om jezelf niet toe te staan verliefd op iemand te worden; om gewoon alleen te blijven, immuun voor pijn die jou door een ander wordt aangedaan. Er waren een heleboel van zulke mensen die tevreden leken met hun leven – of misschien toch niet? Ze vroeg zich af hoeveel van deze mensen vrijwillig alleen leefden, en hoeveel er alleen waren omdat er nooit iemand in hun leven was gekomen die hen van hun eenzaamheid af had geholpen. Er was een verschil tussen een berustende acceptatie van een eenzaam leven, en een bewuste keuze om alleen te blijven.

The (tacky 1980s) chorus from Freiheit’s Keeping the dream alive (1989).

The hopes we had were much too high,
Way out of reach but we had to try.
No need to hide, no need to run,
’Cause all the answers come one by one.
The game will never be over
Because we’re keeping the dream alive.

Time flies...

...when you’re having fun. Seeing as a week has gone by since the last update you’d think time had flown, and maybe it has. Or maybe I’ve just been too busy and too preoccupied with other things to notice that time hasn’t exactly been flying at all.

Some time ago I read on the news that the past week would have seen the most depressing day of the year. (I can’t find the original article but this’ll do.) Not sure if this psychologist guy picked the right day, but it’s certainly been the right week. Drama for me over the weekend, not a weekend filled with happiness either for MG. MvD said she didn’t have a good weekend. ZB topped the list with a dead cat, another cat diagnosed with aids (no shit) and her granddad in hospital. LG was buried in work for all of the week. And finally, AL needed support on Thursday because her boyfriend had fired a range of clichés at her. It wasn’t her, it was him – she deserved to be with someone who could spend more time with her, etcetera.

I think AL summed up the situation quite nicely. ‘It was nice, I liked nice, I want nice.’ Although I’m sure she experienced a more intense degree of niceness, I can totally relate to that. Big bits of what didn’t happen in the end were nice, I liked nice and I’m sorry nice didn’t happen. I’m glad we’re still okay together though.

I managed to get out of the Newcastle Festival dem. I didn’t want to be in it in the first place, but JF seems to have problems interpreting negation particles in his own native language, so suddenly I was on the dem team for both New Scotland and Dunedin. Then came Dunedin on the Wednesday night and a most painful experience dancing Bubbles in the Pond with RW. Her diagnosis was shinsplints, and the only remedy is rest. So I didn’t dance on Thursday, and also at the Annual on Saturday I only did four dances. Garry Strathspey (with GD) was maybe not the best choice, seeing as it was a strathspey and involved Highland Scottische setting. Ouch. The two fast dances I did – Kelpie (with YK) and Fiona’s Party (with AL) – were easier to stomach (or shin, whatever), and waltzing with MM resulted in dizziness rather than sore shins and ankles. Anyway, injury is a good enough reason not to have to commit to the Newcastle Dem. And incidentally, it also gives me a lot of sorely needed spare time!

My dad’s in hospital after falling in the bathroom. Apparently he damaged a disk. My mom says I needn’t worry. So I won’t. But it adds to the most fantastic week ever...

So yeah, the only really good thing to come out of last week – apart from still being good friends with VP – is... Swedish sociolinguistics! (Warning: messy story coming up, but it makes sense in the end.) WB is doing this course called ‘English Language, Society and Culture’ and they were talking about language planning. Homework for that course, at least for the undergrads, was to read a random book on language planning from the library. WB picked a book by Wardhaugh (1987), Languages in competition. Sounded interesting, so yes it is now on my desk but still on his loan. But anyway, I decided to take a look at that particular shelfmark in the library and found a book called Språkbyte och språkbevarande (by Hyltenstam & Stroud, 1991). It is genuinely the best introduction to language shift I’ve read so far, and not coloured by irritating RLS stuff like Fishman’s books. They also mentioned a model for describing language shift that no one’s picked up before. Quite possibly because it was developed in a Swedish study of the Swedish-to-Finnish language shift in Finland (Tandefelt, Mellan två språk, 1988). Took out that book as well, but I haven’t gotten to the chapter on the model yet. (Reading several books at once to maintain sanity.)

Oh, I also got an e-mail from CT. I lost his e-mail address before so it’s nice to hear from him again. Quite a typical style, very enjoyable. Apparently he sees a future for a Tocharian rap group. Must remember to send a more lengthy e-mail back in the very near future.

Zieleroerselen

(Use Babelfish for a vague idea and a good laugh at the pitiful standards of computer translation.)

Ik ben aan’t bijkomen van de wervelwind aan emoties van de afgelopen week. Wat er nou precies gebeurd is, weet ik niet; wat ik ervan vind weet ik al helemaal niet. Het begon allemaal in de nacht van zaterdag op zondag vorige week, toen ik op MSN zat met VP. Op een gegeven moment kwam het hoge woord er dan uit: ik vond hem eigenlijk best wel leuk. Een echte uitspraak of dat wederzijds was kwam er niet, hij wilde me eerst beter leren kennen. Dat hebben we toen eerst maar afgesproken. Eng was het wel, want wat als ik nou de verkeerde keuze heb gemaakt? Hoe zeker was ik er nou van? En als het fout ging, hoeveel zou er dan kapot zijn?

Maandag dan samen geluncht en een beetje in de Meadows gekuierd. Ja, lief lachje en zeker knuffelbaar. Dinsdag na dem class vlug die kloterige cd-speler thuis afgeleverd en naar de Human Be-in gegaan, waar hij was met de mensen van de Asian Friends Society. Een beetje gemengde gevoelens hier. Hij was nog steeds zeker knuffelbaar maar dat initiatief moest wel van mij komen, denk ik. Jammer alleen dat er nogal veel in het Chinees gepraat werd. Maar goed, dat hoort er vast bij, dat is het doel van die hele Asian Friends Society. Op het Chinees praten na was dit toch wel een fijne ervaring, de enige domper was dat ik naar huis liep met iemand die blijkbaar ook in VP geïnteresseerd was.

Woensdag was er een vergadering van de organisatie van de Postgraduate Conference, waar VP ook bij was. Naderhand in het keukentje van 14BP nog wat gezeten, maar dat was weinig diepgaand. Ik denk dat ik toen op zoek was naar het gevoel van dinsdagavond, maar dat kon ik niet terugvinden. Wel MG op de hoogte gebracht, die nog in Amerika zat en die avond op het vliegtuig terug naar Schotland zou stappen. Na Dunedin vlug naar huis in de hoop dat er nog wat te MSN’en viel, maar hij was niet meer online.

Donderdag met de lunch in geuren en kleuren verteld aan MG wat er speelde, en ’s middags na een saai college afgedaald naar VP zijn kantoortje. En weer die gemengde gevoelens. De persoonlijke aandacht was fijn, de gesprekken over het werk lieten ook zien dat we genoeg dingen gemeenschappelijk hebben, maar toen hij minutenlang zijn Japans ging oefenen met een van de Japanners op zijn kantoor, was er toch weer de twijfel. Is dit onbeleefd? Zelfs als hij sorry zegt? Of was het positief en probeerde hij juist indruk te maken? Het engste was misschien nog wel dat er vlagen bij waren dat er geen vonken over sprongen. Hoort dat erbij, bij verliefd zijn? Periodes van warme wind die om je oren stormt afgewisseld met gevoelloze leegte? Hoe moet ik dat nou weten, ik heb dit toch ook nog nooit eerder gedaan... Toch ’s avonds bij New Scotland nog maar aan MG gevraagd, en die vond het geloof ik wel normaal.

Vrijdag dan een eerste echte date. Of zoiets. Naar de film met een hele lading van zijn vrienden. Opdat het niet helemaal een uitwedstrijd zou zijn, heb ik MG en TtT ook meegevraagd. En dat MG mee was, was maar beter ook. Gedurende de hele film (en zo goed was de film nu ook weer niet) heeft hij niet één keer naar me gekeken, en de hele avond schonk hij meer aandacht aan zijn Chinees sprekende vrienden dan aan mij. Op zoek naar een pub of club om uit te gaan, zijn MG en ik er maar vlug tussenuit geknepen. (TtT was al weg.) Vanaf de bioscoop tot Chambers Street, waar we ons afscheidden van de groep, was het ook één en al Chinees wat de klok sloeg en was het tussen MG en mij vooral stil. Na Chambers Street heb ik de tranen nog tot het festivaltheater weten binnen te houden.

Pas binnen keihard janken. Maar waarom? Omdat de liefde niet wederzijds was? Omdat de liefde eigenlijk bij mijzelf ook niet aanwezig was en ik een stomme inschattingsfout had gemaakt? Omdat er aan de eenzaamheid geen einde kwam? Omdat ik dit hele verliefd zijn-gebeuren niet onder de knie heb? Omdat ik geen idee heb waarom ik hem nou eigenlijk leuk vond en wat ik nou eigenlijk van hem wilde? Alles. En niets. De leegte.

De volgende dag eerst niets aan mijn moeder verteld, maar er later toch maar een e-mail aan gewaagd. Het lieve antwoord dat daarop kwam is misschien nog het beste dat hieruit voort is gekomen.

Maar nog steeds is er dat verlangen. Naar de lieve lach, naar de genegenheid van dinsdagavond, naar het gevoel dat alleen zijn niet hoeft. Als ik dit alles rationaliseer, denk ik dat VP en ik allebei naar hetzelfde op zoek zijn, en dat we dat verward hebben met naar elkaar op zoek zijn? Niet iedereen past bij elkaar, en dat hebben we maar te accepteren. Vervelend is het wel, maar wat niet is, is niet. (En toch is-ie leuk.)

Nou is het oppassen dat ik de muren om me heen niet nog hoger en sterker opbouw, maar dat ik mensen toelaat. Ik ben benieuwd hoe dit afloopt.

(Misbruik van deze informatie zal leiden tot zwaar fysiek geweld.)

So...

At least the Annual crib books are going to look absolutely fantastic.

Weekend!

It’s unbelievable how quickly this week has gone by. Suddenly it was Friday already, and I don’t have the feeling I did anything near what I should have done in the course of a week. It seems like more people are having that feeling, so maybe it’s just the holidays that have messed up our ideas of what is a normal amount of work to do in a week?

I handed in a piece of work on Wednesday. It wasn’t anywhere near good, and there were a lot of gaps, but it was driving me crazy so I decided that handing in what I had was a better option than going crazy over trying to perfect it. LC was saying that it’s actually pretty normal to maybe not quite know what you’re doing and trying to find out which way to go. Meeting with AM next Thursday so we’ll see what we can come up with.

Honours courses are alright. Historical linguistics is nice but I’ve done it before, Linguistic reconstruction and language classification is interesting but maybe not particularly relevant and depending on the amount of work I’m supposed to do for it, I may not come to every class and only take the ones on contact. Another downside is that most of the courses seem to be turning into the DC show. Apart from the fact that I find his appearance and the sound of his voice extremely annoying, he constantly butts in with all these only distantly relevant comments. The undergrads may be impressed, but I wish he’d just shut his face and let AM and RC get on with their lectures.

Two great tutorials on Friday, especially the last one. The goal was to get some discussion going on what is a language, what is a dialect, how do you define them, etc. GT had dropped a bombshell in the lectures by saying that “English does not exist”. One girl was almost in tears, ‘cause if English doesn’t exist, how come she was studying English Language? So I went a bit ahead of schedule and explained that maybe there are no linguistic criteria to define English language, but there were social criteria and that was the whole point: English as a social construct.

The other good bit was talking about prototypes. They had to define Cockney, also by social criteria. Once they’d been told they did not have to be politically correct, there was a nice list of words associated with Cockneys. East London, East Enders, Del Boy, dodgy deals from the back of a truck, Burbery, chavs, uneducated, male, Tottenham Hotspur fans, short-fused... Good thing there weren’t any Cockneys in the group. But I think all the things about social constructs, identity conveyed by language etc. hit home. Bounce!

I did forget to tell them about this essay writing course the university is having for undergrads. Unfortunately it’s only one day before the deadline for the EL1 essay, but I may tell them about it anyway. Somehow somewhere some of them seem to have picked up the idea that vomiting out a bit mush of long words is a good idea. That’s going to bite them in the back when I’m going to have to mark their essays.

Spent most of yesterday evening online chatting to VP, which was nice. Apparently my name in Cantonese is 嵐歌 which translates as ‘the song of the wind in the mountains’. Very poetic. I also got invited to go to the cinema on Sunday but unfortunately I can’t go because there is a NS committee meeting that night. Expletives suppressed.

Only nine weeks left as NS secretary. And after saving the Annual (I hope) earlier in the week, I also saved the Student Festival cèilidh. It seems like we’re now part of Rukkus which is some form of charities’ night in Teviot. I also hope that RK managed to get us involved in that cèilidh on the Society Oscars night, otherwise we (read: RK) will have upset a lot of people and gone to a lot of trouble for nothing. I wonder how heated the meeting tomorrow will be; that’ll kind of depend on the newlyweds’ attitudes to power and leadership. We don’t have MG there to be the counter-alpha female so we’re going to have to try to fend for ourselves....

Passed the test!

My EL1 marking got approved. A big sigh of relief, because I really wasn’t looking forward to spending another 20 hours reading bad English and overt lack of insight into the grammar of English. The one student I suspected of having copied pieces from a book – he suddenly changed register spectacularly – got away with it, as they haven’t had proper plagiarism warnings yet. Oh well...

New Scotland is slowly getting started again. BW’s class yesterday had no beginners, there were like seven old people. Dem class wasn’t much better and after having had to do BW’s class, I can’t say we were all too attentive or motivated. I managed to book AK for the Student Festival cèilidh. He’s upped his rates again, but it’s short notice so I decided we should go for it. Also called James Gillespies again, as I hadn’t heard from them. Turns out they’d sent a confirmation ages ago, that I didn’t receive. Good thing I called, ’cause they had us down for the wrong date! Major disaster narrowly avoided...

It’s lonely in the house without MG or TtT.

Back to work

Okay, I am recovering from the amazement at RK and AI’s wedding plans. This came as a massive surprise not just to me; disbelief seems to be the most common reaction among everyone I’ve been speaking to.

I finished the last bit of the EL1 marking. I still had some comments to write on some of the scripts. These were the first scripts I marked, when we were still told (erroneously) that we weren’t supposed to write on them. So I made little summarizing comments on a notepad while marking that I now copied onto the scripts. I think there may be some minor inconsistencies in the marking, but no more than two points and if need be I can take those two points away somewhere else...

Also been working a bit on a first write-up, but not very much has been happening on that front. I have lots of bits and pieces, but it’s yet to be transformed in a flowing story. The goal is to have it finished by the end of the week; with EL1 and some honours courses to do I’m not sure how viable that goal is, but we’re going to try.

I also seem to have acquired another flatmate in MG’s absence. TtT came yesterday morning and hasn’t left. It’s actually quite nice and we’re having a nice relaxed bit of Netherlands in Edinburgh.

Current reading: Wijdlopige, brede en waarachtige beschrijving van de ongelukkige reizen van het schip de Visstick en haar gezagvoerder Kapitein Iglo (‘Wide-ranging, broad and truthful description of the unfortunate travels of the ship the Fish Finger and her commander Captain Birdseye’) by, among others, Windig & De Jong of Heinz fame. It is as good as it sounds.

Oh my god...

AI proposed to RK on top of the Eiffel Tower!
Gasp.

The phatic function of communication

...is communicating for the sake of communication. Like when a child says, "Mum?" - "Yeah?" - "Nothing." The whole point of this is just to keep the channels of communication open. This is a phatic blog entry. Nothing happened that is noteworthy.