I am back.

Welcome to another essay post-op, in which I talk about all manner of thing in an attempt to ‘write off some steam’ after having spent the last nine hours (the past week and a half, really) finishing up some assignment required of me by my excellent course here at Bradford. In this case, that assignment being my dissertation proposal. It is 2:30 a.m., so certainly not as bad as it could have been. I say that, but I don’t want you to get the impression that I’m alright with this sort of behavior. Having to finish an essay in the wee hours of the deadline day constitutes a failure of sorts for me, or at least it is an indication that something has gone wrong. That said, from about noon yesterday there was really no doubt in my mind that I’d get it done in fairly good time (again, the meaning of ‘good time’ having been revised relative to the time remaining), the only question was one of quality. On that count, I’m not sure. I’ve never submitted a dissertation proposal before. I don’t think it was very good, but I also don’t think it was very, very bad. Ultimately it’s rather inconsequential as it only counts for 15% of the overall dissertation mark, so all I need is a decent mark, and more importantly I allegedly still have a lot of leeway to change my question and even my topic should I so desire. Which I will, I’m sure of it. In the end, I was forced to write this proposal more to what I’d read (which was far-reaching at the expense of depth) rather than to what I precisely wanted. Which would have been difficult in any case because I could not for the life of my figure out what I wanted to write about!

(I should warn you, since I haven’t done these in a while, that they tend to be fairly messy, even messier than my other posts on this site; partially because of the hour, more because I’m letting out an excess. But I write them because I like reading them later, and again much later.)

This assignment was a real challenge because it was a collision of often conflicting desires. It is the first step of the long-revered dissertation; it is a big deal. I want to do something sensational, though the rational voice in my head, and most lecturers advise against such fantasies. I at least want to do something interesting to read by someone who knows a lot and reads a lot and generally doesn’t expect much from undergraduate dissertations. So that puts pressure on myself, as I generally do, only this time it’s more.

It’s also hard because Bradford, or the Peace Studies Department rather, is quite alternative. Alternative, and broad. We have studied so much; I have studied so much in my first two years. To try to do something encapsulating all of that would be impossible; to do something representing a lot of that would also be impossible; I must resign myself to not covering some, even many, things that I am very interested in and somewhat knowledgeable about. 

Probably due to the alternative nature of the course, towards the end of my second year I was leaning towards doing a dissertation on peacebuilding and reconstruction. But then I went away to France and got a decent, if decidedly more mainstream, year of education. Which put me more onto politics and mainstream international relations, and getting into American talk shows certainly didn’t hurt that (probably because it was an election year). So I came back from France in a more mainstream frame of mind, and now I find myself doing a dissertation proposal about US diplomacy and recent wars in the Middle East.

But I hate feeling like I’m being mainstream, or safe, or boring. So I’m trying to wrench a mainstream topic in an unconventional direction, which is a bad thing to do on the night before the proposal is due. To be honest I wouldn’t be able to say exactly where the proposal I handed in, or will hand in in some hours would fall on the spectrum, nor can I say where my final dissertation will fall. We’ll see.

So there were a lot of warring desires that went into my preparation for this dissertation proposal, and it didn’t help that everything I read became my new big interest – there came a point where I just had to force myself to stop reading and start writing, which doesn’t mean my knowledge was good enough to start writing, only that time constraints demanded it.

Never mind. I did alright, I think, and it’ll be interesting to see what I get for it. Take tomorrow- er, today, off, then refocus and do more reading while I don’t have to be writing much.

Take today off, that is, until 3 pm. I’ll hand in the two copies well before then, prepare myself for my radio show, go on at 3, rock out (jazz out) till 5, then send an email to my Security module group about meeting the following day, then make my presentation about my year abroad, also for the following day. Easy stuff, though. And then when I give my presentation I receive my awards for submissions in the study abroad competitions, so I can finally buy some proper football kit and maybe some more thin ties.

It’s funny, I don’t get to dress up very much and yet when I have some money to spend on clothing, what I want to spend it on most is formal wear. So I have to compromise and find something that can double as casual wear without looking too pretentious. I do need some new shoes as well. I sound awfully first world right now.

Yes, I have a radio show! You can listen to it, wherever you are in the world, if you have an internet connection, which, if you’re reading this, I assume you do. Gotcha! Just go to ramair.co.uk and click listen at whatever the equivalent of 3-5 pm GMT on Tuesdays is for you. I do jazz. All manner of jazz. It is seriously a great way to chill out from studying, an activity tomorrow’s show will embody perfectly. Since I didn’t have time this week to prepare a representative selection from a certain era, as I’ve been promising I’ll do, that plan will be delayed at least one week, but I think you’ll enjoy my fusion. I love me some jazz fusion.

There’s plenty else I could say, about how I haven’t made a YouTube video in ages and really need to get back on that but this year is busier than I expected, or about another deadline I have next week that won’t be easy either, or about how much I enjoyed watching Ender’s Game and kind of cried through the end of it, and how I want to explain its brilliance to all who don’t understand, and then use it as part of my series on why I am probably a dictator at heart (it’s not a light piece), but I will leave all that for another day. Against my better judgment, I am going to break into my celebratory caramel dip (and delicious quadruple chocolate cookies, a birthday present from a friend) tonight, not tomorrow, while watching an episode of Suits. Tempted to watch a full-blown movie, but that’d be a bit much. I do, after all, need to wake up to turn in my assignment. Not quite off the hook yet.

I hope you all have had as wonderful a night as I, though hopefully a more restful one, and that you are always diligent in what you know you should do, and that you keep thinking critically about things, and that you write me every once in a while.

Good night. Sorry if there are any typos in this.

Bon Voyage

[Today’s entry is slightly shorter than the others, mainly because I didn’t write enough down on the actual day and now, three weeks later, I don’t remember squat, but also partially because I did less on this day. Took it easy after all the effort; relaxed in the afternoon, did some reading. In a way, what I’m doing in these first few weeks in France – reading and writing – is what I should’ve been doing all summer. Ah well, as one high school English teacher used to say, ‘Better late than dead’. The quotes that stick in our heads, eh? But my activity today, or lack thereof, should explain the format; most of this is thoughts I had at various points throughout the day.]

You know, it is a fight to go out – to go out again today, trying to get this paperwork done, encountering numerous obstacles. I have to will myself into doing it some more and not just staying in this room. Again, I’m sure there are countless exchange students, new missionaries, and others the world over who’ve been experiencing those feelings for decades. I can now relate to them firsthand, a skill that will certainly not remain unused throughout the rest of my life.

I went this morning to try again for my student card. Yes, I know they told me Friday, but that seems like a very long time from now, and if the disorganisation thus far is any indication, not everything they say is written in stone. Sure enough, this time the guy, though he laughed slightly when he saw me, told me jeudi, quatorze-heure. Thursday at 2 p.m. That’s tomorrow. Boom. Persistence.

Speaking of persistence, I also went to the international office to see if the woman had sent our papers back to Bradford that would release our funding. She hadn’t and asked me to come back tomorrow. I highly doubt she will have done it by tomorrow, but I’ll keep coming back. I’ll be the very essence of graciousness each time, but I’ll keep coming back. That’s my plan.

[Whatever you think of that plan, I didn’t actually go back until more than two weeks later.]

Right before I went into the office I ran into a group of French-speaking ERASMUS students and the French girl helping them asked if I needed to go down and do the payment for my student card along with them. She asked in French! And she didn’t recognise me as one of the English speakers, so she asked it at full speed! And I understood! I didn’t know how to respond in French, so I said, ‘Yesterday’ in English, but I understood the question! I will get this.

Went shopping after that; had to withdraw some more money from overseas, hopefully this’ll be the last time.

*     *     *

I was just thinking about when we arrived at Toulouse-Blagnac airport. We swept out of there so quickly – waiting for our suitcases at baggage claim was by far the most time-consuming. The immigration officers or whatever they’re called asked us no questions, they simply (for me) turned to the French visa in my passport and stamped it. Coming to the UK the first time I had to produce my CAS letter, possibly other documents, and they asked me questions. I thought that the laidback-ness of our arrival in France boded well for the registration process and all other formalities awaiting us. It did not, it was a severe anomaly.

[This is the other complaint I referred to earlier that you are meant to take with a grain of salt. It’s not so bad, and like I said then, they gave us mini-fridges! Means I don’t even have to go to the kitchen and risk running into a French person when I wanna munch. That was a joke. I am practicing my French by speaking to French people, yes I am.]

But I’m not just tired of all these formalities, I’m tired of complaining about them, so for both my sake and yours I hope they pass quickly so I can go on to telling all of you about my lectures, my interactions with French cultures, my hilarious language goofs (for that I need to be far more daring – I promised myself I would be), and the people I meet. I’m sure they will; the first few days always seem the longest and hardest. But telling myself that doesn’t help as much as I want it to.

*     *     *

I guess one thing that makes it hard is feeling like a burden, what with not being able to speak even a minimal level of French. If anyone told me I was a burden on the system, I would angrily retort that the system is a burden on me, and that would be true. But I still feel like a burden, coming into their country and expecting them to, at least somewhat, condescend to my level. I need to at least repay them for that kindness.

What also came to me today is that the reason I’m so frustrated with the language barrier is not just that I can’t communicate, but that I can’t express myself. Language has so much to do with how I convey my identity and persona to others that, excluding that, I feel so little. They don’t know me. I don’t fully exist. Now, part of that is valid, and useful to know about myself, but it’s not alright that I am so focused on me and my conveyance of myself. I should be about actions, not words and impressions.

*     *     *

In the distance I see a plane rising into the sky (my window faces the airport, though I can’t see it). Do I wish I were on it?

[Perhaps I should interject that the reason this question comes quickly to my mind whenever I see a plane in the sky is that several years ago, after having been asked at numerous points through my life what I considered home to be, I came up with the following definition: home is where you can look up at a plane in the sky and not wish you were on it. So now I, unbidden, perform that test quite often.]

No. I’ll stick this out a little longer (by a little longer, I of course mean the entire year). I just need to find something to sustain me here, like City Vaults Sunday night jazz in Bradford.

Another reason I don’t wish I were on that plane is that landing in Toulouse on Sunday was the second time in my life I have felt a searing pain in my head during a plane’s descent, and when I say searing, I mean searing. As in it feels like something behind my left eye is growing and trying to escape. My eyeball starts watering and seems about to pop out, every nerve around it is on fire, little pinpricks on my forehead feel like needles stabbing from the inside out, and generally I get the impression my left brain lobe wants to get as far away from my right as possible. It’s awful.

I don’t like to complain about pain, I mean, I am male. I wasn’t even going to write about this originally, but as I’ve been flying all my life and this has only started happening in the past few years, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little worried. The first time was on a flight from Japan to the US last summer. Same sensation. I looked it up a few days after arriving, and at least I’m not the only one who’s experienced it (one of the joys of the internet). Apparently it’s caused by fluid filling some chamber in the head at high altitude, and then expanding as the atmospheric pressure builds. I’ve had some trouble off and on with nosebleeds in my life, and those are always from the left nostril, so some of my piping back there must be wonky. But since I didn’t feel it on my flight back to the UK, I thought (hoped) it was a one-off. Seems it wasn’t. I’ll have to do some more research, especially on potential remedies.

Because it’s not just about being able to comfortably use the fastest form of transportation currently available to mankind. It’s not just that I enjoy flying and want to continue to enjoy it. Flying, for me, is much more than those things; it is far more sentimental.

No, I don’t have childhood ambitions to be a bird or Superman that I’m secretly clinging to (though some of you might take issue with the latter claim). But I have been flying longer than I can remember. I’ve lived in a lot of different places, and airplanes have taken me between almost all of those places. You could say that the cabin of a jumbo jet has been a relatively constant physical location (with irony as my elixir) throughout my life, something I cannot say for any house in which I’ve lived. So air travel is a glue that holds all my life experiences together. After long periods without it, I miss flying like I imagine other people miss their hometown. As for the place I sometimes call my hometown, Yokohama, well, yes, I love it there, but I love it because it’s cool. I probably have stronger feelings for Tokyo and my high school, but Yokohama is cooler so I call it my hometown. I’m not sure that’s completely legit.

Going back to the previous point, I suppose that the reason my definition of home is so useful for me is that it’s not merely asking if I wish I were in a different place, it is asking if the place I am in right now beats being on a plane, a wondrous long-haul plane flight, with all the home-ness I attach to that experience. To be told that I cannot, or probably shouldn’t, experience that anymore would be, in my mind, akin to someone who finds out that they, for whatever reason, cannot return to their home, though I don’t wish to trivialise those actually in such situations. I realise that my mentality, or perhaps sentimentality, rather, is born very much of first world privileges.

There’s more I could say about this, such as that one thing I like about being on a plane (long-haul, of course) is that for the duration of that journey, everyone is from the same place and they are going to the same place. There is none of this pesky, ‘Where are you from?’ business. And likely some of what I have said could be said in a better way. But I will do that at a later date, in a far more polished form. For now, these are some of the thoughts flitting through my head as I watch that jet (Airbus-made, perhaps?) climb away from Toulouse-Blagnac. If you’re a fellow TCK I would love to hear your thoughts on what I’ve said, or even if you’re not a TCK, I suppose.

That’s Wednesday.

Day 19: Lift-Off?

Today was the big day, the day to embark on our journey to London. Today was the to pierce the shroud of mystery and awe, to climb the holy mountain, to scale the walls of the techno-literati citadel. Today was the day Christmas break would truly begin, in true romantic Dickens-plus-modern-wonder style.

Today was the day…but today was the day we missed our bus.

It was my fault. Not completely, but mostly. It was certainly my fault that I left until this morning a few too many odds and ends to tie up, including failing to finish off my food and so making it into massive BLTs to take along. I tend to do that – leaving too many things until the last minute, I mean, although I do a fair share of massive BLT-making as well. Without fail, the final touches of any project take far longer than foreseen, at least for me, because I am that fatal combination of ambition, perfectionism, and optimism.

What wasn’t entirely my fault was that the Megabus ‘station’ (turning out to be an unmarked point on the side of the road) was waaay farther away than it looked like on Google Maps. We counted on fifteen, maybe thirty minutes to walk there from the uni. It ended up taking closer to an hour, and that was lugging our big bags, mine being an oversized carry-on with a bum wheel that would only degenerate over the duration of the trip – in several inches of snow. It was pretty yes, but the scenery didn’t do much to stop our hearts from sinking when we came to an intersection we figured to be about halfway and were faced with a massive hill.

At long last, and me starting to sweat under my ample clothing (including a newly purchased coat I was happy to find could double as an everyday winter coat and a snowboarding jacket, wasn’t too bulky, and came in my favourite colour), we arrive at the top of the hill only to find that we didn’t know which way to go. We’d expected to be at the bus stop by then, but after asking someone and walking on, actually had to walk fifteen more minutes down the road to a much larger intersection. It was at that intersection that we saw our Megabus pulling away. It had even been a few minutes late. It passed right in front of us.

Our slight worry turned to despair, even more so as we called and woke up a flatmate and got him to check the Megabus schedule online, only to find that there were no more buses that day. We began the long walk back.

Graciously, my fellow adventurer was still in good spirits, an attitude he continued to exhibit throughout the whole experience. I admire that. I have optimism, but the perfectionism can be pretty critical, especially when I know something is very much my fault. On the way back, knowing Bradford’s reputation and a story from our other flatmate that he’d heard what sounded like someone trying to break into the halls a few days previously, we joked about the chance of us getting back to find our rooms already burgled. Fortunately, these jokes did not materialise into a significant plot twist for this blog (sorry guys).

Also fortuitously, we were able to cancel our hostel reservations for that night, and purchase Megabus tickets for the next morning, same time. With nothing else to do, we crashed until that evening when we went out with some of the few students who were still in Bradford (well, I say that because that’s what it felt like, but what’s probably closer to the truth is that there were plenty of international students remaining, who might very well remain over the entire break, most of them being, for whatever reason, Chinese, but they kept to their own spaces so the campus felt deserted). I had a whiskey sour for the first time – nice. I had mulled wine for the first time – delicious. I finished some of the food I’d had nothing to do with.

Stark reality v. challenger’s spirit: one-nil.