/travel/oxford/Moving, Switzerland, and more..
Hey all,
(First, I ..uhh..managed to..err.. forget to add a bunch of extended
family to my original email list, mostly 'cause I don't think of them as
emaily-types still. They've grown up so much. ;-) 'pologies to them.
You can see all of my previous emails at this web address:
Now, to clear a few things up, since some of my friends seem to have confusion about this point, Switzerland and Sweden are different countries. Yes, they both start with "Sw". Sweden is known for its socialism, blonds, and mass-produced furniture. It's also cold. It's one of those three fingers up there, along with Norway and Finland. It has a blue flag with a yellow cross.
Switzerland on the other hand, is known for its neutrality, wealth, cows, yodelling, the red cross, chocolate, crepes, army knives, and other things. It has a white flag with a red cross. I was in Geneva for four days, which is a city known for its convention on the treatment of POWs, and for (according to caroline) being the most expensive city in Europe. It sites on the Rhone.
The trip out was interesting -- caught a bus shortly before 2am to the airport. Hung around in the airport from four to five am when the checkins opened. Checked in, got on the flight. Not much sleep involved in the whole process. Got there and went to the tourist info place, then to a natural history museum and to our hostel for a nap. Museum was okay, but nothing great. Lots of life-size animal representations that were very realistic looking. Hostel was very nice and clean and spiff, and not too expensive at 28CHF (CHF = Swiss Franc, where CH = Confederatio Helvetica, the historical latin name for switzerland or something along those lines. A CHF is roughly equal to a CAD.) per person per night.
Didn't go out that night since Caroline and I were both very tired. The next day (I might have this out of order.) we went to the Red Cross museum. It was really really good -- the red cross is a phenomenal organization. They take their neutrality very seriously. They have a long wall where they list each disease, natural disaster and war that they have been at to help people out. I went eagerly to the end of the wall to see if they had yet listed the current war in iraq. They didn't, and in fact had a little note at the end saying that they intentionally left several years after a conflict before listing it to let the history settle and see it from a more disinterested perspective.
I was generally impressed with Swiss culture. Very polite and friendly. Pedestrians have proper right of way, unlike here in Oxford. Their toilets were the best I've seen so far -- less water usage than Canadian toilets, but less suckiness than british toilets. :-) Taps were well designed, showers were well designed, lockers for food in and out of the fridge, generally well designed city. They're also rich..the average Genevan resident makes $46000. (That's resident, not money-earner. So all the children making no money are compensated for.) And they seem pretty happy about it, so in conclusion, money buys happiness. ;-) It was not as expensive as I expected, though. I guess Oxford is pretty high up in expensive-cities-in-europe, so it didn't hurt too bad.
I didn't find the city all that pretty, but part of that was because I didn't think it was all that old. I find older buildings to be more attractive, but even much of the 16th and 17th century buildings looked modern to me, made with bland concrete rather than bricks or stone, which was interesting. The old town was neat, but not as neat as Edinburgh or Cardiff. I'm now officially a snob about this, I guess. ;-)
I tried to visit the UN European headquarters, but they don't allow visitors at this time of year, which was too bad. I made a quick visit to a ceramics and glass museum, which was neat and described some of the history of pottery and stuff. I also visited a primitive art museum, which had stuff from african and some south pacific island nations. It was neat, and some of it was well over 1000 years old, which is cool. I also went to CERN (Conseil European pour la Recherche Nucleaire, which translates to Europeon Council of Nuclear Research, but actually they don't do that anymore, so now CERN stands for European Laboratory for Particle Physics.) They have a big particle accelerator where they smash things into each other really really fast. It was neat to.
The point is that Geneva has a truckload of museums. Those are the ones I went to, but there are over a hundred in total.
Caroline and I also went on a boat cruise around the lake. It was good, and cheap.
We went up a great big cathedral, which gave us a great view of the mountains that the city is nestled in.
The nightlife was poor -- there weren't very many clubs or bars, and a lot of them seemed to be strip joints, which I opted out of. Didn't really end up going out in the evenings at all, which was disappointing, but the hostel showed movies that were alright.
I also had really good freshly made crepes with cheese and spinach. And on the last morning in the airport, I bought a little pastry and a bottle of lemony water for 7.90CHF. Ouch.
I've also moved house, so my old phone number and address are no longer valid. Let me know if you want it. My new place is much nicer, though a little farther from things like groceries, work, and the center of town.
Work is quite good. Starting to really wrap up now, and I think I'm on track to finish the big task that I bit off. Everything else is going well.
It's 12:30 now, and for whatever reason I'm still at work, so I gotta fly.
Cheers, Rob
-- : Rob Ewaschuk : University of Waterloo : Computer Science (4A) : : www.studentforce.ca : Currently on co-op at www.decisionsoft.co.uk :
New Albums from the Gallery
/travel/oxford/Magna Carta, stonehenge, and pronunciation
Hi everybody,
(If you read nothing else, and you will or could be in waterloo on May 9th, skip to the last paragraph)
I've just returned from a quick day-trip to Salisbury and Stonehenge. Stonehenge was really impressive, and quite cool. You can't go right up to it, but you can still go quite close. The stones are huge, and 1/3 of them is underground. It's a really neat place, and I'd like to visit it again sometime after its initial impression has settled in.
Salisbury has a huge cathedral with a great big spire. One of my workmates is from there, and purports that it was one of the tallest structures in the modern world until the eiffel tower, but I'm sceptical. It's certainly big, and beautiful. There're hundreds of statues embedded in the wall.
The highlight of the cathedral for me was the Magna Carta, and agreement between some wealthy rebellious barons and the King of the day (1215) that was probably the first Rights document in human history. This was particularly interesting 'cause I just took PHIL328 -- Human Rights, and learned all about that sort of stuff. Really neat to have seen it. Too bad I can't read latin. It was very well preserved, and the writing was still very clear and crisp. It was written on vellum, and 40 copies were made by hand and distributed through England. Only 4 remain, and that one is apparently the most legible and well-preserved.
I also met up with my distant -- my mother's father's father's father is her mother's father's father's father (I think) -- cousin Laura Lyon, and went out for coffee. My parents are coming to england around Easter, and then we're going to go to the south of England to spend easter with them and their family. My mom's been spending hours on the internet digging up genealogy stuff, like a real techno-wiz. :-)
My evil roommate moved out, to be replaced with another chap I haven't really interacted with yet. Yaku, my recently-moved-in Japanese roommate and I are continuing to get along very well. He's going to teach me to count to ten so I don't look so dumb in my Karate classes (which are also going acceptably well.)
I'm hopefully going to Ireland at the end of April, and Switzerland at the beginning of April. I'm also moving in a week or so - if any of you want my new address/phone number let me know. I'll probably include it in my next mass-email, but I dont' have it right now.
Caroline has more photos, which is good because I haven't really been taking any. I need to pick up some batteries for my camera so I can take some photos of my own. :-) Her photos can be found at: http://www.student.math.uwaterloo.ca/~crioux/photos/angleterre.html
Amusing pronunciation: They pronounce 'urinal' yer-eye-null, emphasis on the eye. (But they pronounce urine as we do) ... those silly brits. :-)
I feel the end coming near now...Things are starting to wrap up a little bit. Trying to make sure I don't feel like I failed to get anything done that I wanted to do while I was here, but there's so much to see and do it's tough. I'd like to get up to scotland again, but I just don't see that as a likely thing to happen.
Work good. Big project I have to finish before the end, which is getting a bit too close for comfort, but I'm sure I'll be okay. I hope. :-)
(READ THIS) For those of you in or possibly in or near Waterloo, there will be a gathering on the evening of Friday, May 9th at my place at 97 Columbia St. W. Come one, come all. Chill and relax before classes get heavy. More details will come closer to the day, but keep your calendars clear, because the "short notice" excuse just won't pass this time. Neither is being in Toronto working, Alex, Julie, Jill (?) and probably others. :-)
Cheers from England, Rob
PS: If you haven't checked out uwstudent.org since the software change, you should. It's much bettah.
PPS: Feel free to drop me a line about how you're doing, or how interested you are in all the mass emails I send out, or whatnot. I like getting scads of email. It makes my monday mornings that much more bearable. :-) (Actually I like Monday mornings fine, but social cliches are fun.)
-- : Rob Ewaschuk : University of Waterloo : Computer Science (4A) : : www.studentforce.ca : Currently on co-op at www.decisionsoft.co.uk :
/travel/oxford/Scotland and Oxford and Hadrian and Karate and ...
Hey everybody,
I think I fell behind on my emails, after hitting a nice biweekly pace. I've added a few more people to the list -- as always, let me know if you don't want these mass mailings (I really should set up a mailing list so people can unsubscribe themselves, but that's pretty technical. ;-) )
Let's see. I guess the biggest thing was my trip to Edinburgh with Caroline and Aleem, the other UW co-op here. It was really great, and the first time that I really felt fascinated by where I was. Oxford and London are both nice, but Edinburgh was totally gripping. Our hostel was a little bit gritty, but reasonably pleasant. We all tried some Vegan "haggis" that seemed to be fairly popular. There was a really neat walking tour of some 16th c. (I think) housing built into a bridge from when Edinburgh was booming and they needed all the space they could get. The tour was a little bit cheesy, telling this and that ghost story, but being down in those dank dark grimey rooms was really cool. The edinburgh castle was also really neat -- I didn't realize it, but the Scottish Crown Jewels were there, which we got to see, and a properly old 12th c. (I think) church that was still standing.
On the way back (it's about an eight hour drive, which of course most people here think is nuts to pull on a weekend) we stopped by Hadrian's wall. It was built by the Romans to "define their borders" with the bit of northern england that was held by the Scots (I guess it was the scots. :-) ) It was about 8 feet wide, and the ruins are maybe 4 feet tall in some places, but it was about 14 feet tall, with turrets and milecastles every (roman) mile for about 150 miles, I think. (We guessed it by looking at the map, but I can't remember the exact bit.) The stones from it have mostly been turned into houses and barns so there isn't a whole lot left. Again, very cool.
The scottish countryside is really appealing to me, with great big sheep-covered rolling hills. It was a really pleasant drive, and it was really fun trying to run up the hill on to of which was the bit of Hadrian's wall that we went to see. (In the interest of speaking better english, I'm currently trying to stop ending my sentences a preposition with.)
Last weekend I didn't do much I don't think. Nothing memorable, apparently. :-) Oh yeah. I went with my co-workers for dinner friday, and then went out with them for a bit as they all got drunk, when I suddenly remembered I really don't like that scene, and so I up and left.
Yesterday I saw _The Good Thief_, which was a pretty decent movie. A little bit cheesy, but alright. Seem to be a lot of heist movies lately. Then I went to a club that had really good fun music and a really nice atmosphere, which was good 'cause I haven't found places to go yet, really. This morning I went to a karate lesson, which I think I'm going to start taking a couple times a week. The attitude there was really cool -- I was the only totally new person, but it scaled from me all the way up to black-belts, and they managed to teach everyone at once. The memberships are a bit expensive, but it was really good exercise and something I've wanted to do for a while, so I think I'll sign up.
I finished reading _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_ and it held up well to the end. I'm now well into _Catch 22_, and enjoying it a lot. It's a pleasant read, and quite funny.
I've been spending a lot of time working on a student news site at UW (cleverly called uwstudent.org), getting them ready to change from their own home-rolled software to something a little more powerful and flexible. Taken more time than I expected.
One of my housemates moved out, the pleasant chinese guy (there's also an unpleasant chinese guy, and he's still there. ;-) ), and a 37 (I think) year old japanese guy moved in. He seems quite nice, and we connected fairly quickly. His english is about as good as my french, I think.
I'm going to be taking a political science course next term, with an eye to doing a masters degree in psci, since all of the courses I looked at looked really interesting to me. That's a good sign, since I have to start thinking about such things soon. ;-)
Work fine. Getting into the part of the term where the end is too far but the beginning is too far as well. That's the part where I start to really want to get back to school, so it's good. :-)
Going to Switzerland at the beginning of April -- don't know if I mentioned that before. Also going to try to make it to either Denmark or Ireland.
Enjoying myself here, but looking forward to being back in Canada and seeing everyone again!
Cheers, Rob
-- : Rob Ewaschuk : University of Waterloo : Computer Science (4A) : : www.studentforce.ca : Currently on co-op at www.decisionsoft.co.uk :
/travel/oxford/It's that time again...
..another oxfordian e-mail from Rob!
Things continue to go well here. Yesterday, I went with Caroline and a guy from work and some of his friends to take part in the big No War on Iraq rally in London. I don't think I've ever seen so many people. A lot of funny placards too. "Bombing for Peace is like Shagging for Virginity" was probably my favourite. Honourable mention goes to "The only Bush is my own." One of my co-worker's friends brought a giant pair of underpants that read "Pants to War" (translating roughly to war sucks, but made amusing by the pants/underwear connection.) It was very peaceful, though Hyde Park took quite a beating under all those (around 1.5 million, depending who you believe) feet. At the end of the day, after some 7 hours on our feet, we grabbed some tea ($2) and snacks in London and headed home on the bus. All in all, quite enjoyable. I was wearing my Canada toque that I got for Christmas, and ended up meeting a girl from Regina because of it. (Just for the record, I was only half-heartedly there to protest a war on Iraq...I think certain aspects of military enforcement are justified, with the support of the U.N.)
Last weekend, Caroline and I went into London as well. We saw Buckingham Palace from about 100 feet away. It was nice, but not all that impressive..being held so far by a giant wrought iron fence diminishes its glory. Westminster Abbey was more impressive, and hopefully we'll go in again and get a tour of the Abbey and parliament and such. We also finally made it to Trafalgar square, where we had intended on spending new years eve. We visited the Cabinet War Rooms, where Churchill and his cabinet did their planning during WWII. This was quite interesting, particularly contrasting the conserving attitude of the posters of the time with the American message of 'spending money helps fight terrorism.' I picked up a little poster that says "Dr. Carrot keeps you healthy" with a cartoony carrot dressed up as a doctor. It's funny. And we went to the National Gallery, but didn't have too long there. Hopefully we'll make it back there again.
The highlight and raison-d'etre of our visit to London was BodyWorlds(.com), an exhibit of plastinated bodies and body parts. It was the night before its final night in London, and we had to wait for about 90 minutes to get in. They had lungs and livers and full muscular, skeletal, digestive, etc. systems on display, sometimes showing how two systems fit together. We were very tired by the end where they talk about how it's all actually done, so I don't have a good grasp of it, but I gather it's some technique to preserve the bits of the body by turning them into plastic. In any case, they were real livers and stuff. They also showed foetuses (foeti?) and an 8-month-pregnant woman. The exhibit is quite controversial, and until I saw the baby-stuff I didn't really see why, but I can imagine that it bothers a lot of people. They had several deformed foetuses as well, including cleft palettes and siamese twins, and presumably non-deformed foetuses from about every week during the pregnancy, showing the normal progression. Moral qualms aside, it was certainly worth ($20) seeing, but I left wanting to be convinced that there was nothing underhanded there, particularly with the pregnant woman.
The Feds -- the U of W student union -- elections are over, with none of the team/party that I was a part of winning, except myself and Jesse Helmer who both got acclaimed (no one ran against us). The fact that our team-mates all lost is quite surprising to me, but that's the way it goes I guess.
In related school news, I'm probably going to run for Feds board of Directors, another elected position that I am eligible for since I'm a councillor. I'm also going to be on the board of uwstudent.org, a student-run media corporation for news at waterloo as the Technology Directory. Yay for titles.
Had my first bit of home-sickness in the last couple of weeks, particularly not being on campus for the height of the election. It's mostly passed now, but I think four months will be long enough.
Got a flat tire on my bike. Took it in to be repaired, 'cause I don't have any wrenches here...$26 for the tube and labour. Not too much more than in Canada.
Reading 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.' I encourage anyone who's been frustrated by the encroachment of technology on their lives to read it. It's a sort of modern philosophy interwoven with a (semi-?)fictional story to give concrete examples of thinking about technology via Motorcycle Maintenance. Any two-sentence summary doesn't do it justice, and it's really worth reading and thinking about.
Housing fine. Probably moving out for the last few weeks of the term once my contract is up. Work good. They gave me keys, so I can stay in the office late where there's free internet access.
Pictures online (courtesy of Caro -- thanks Caro!) at http://www.student.math.uwaterloo.ca/~crioux/photos/angleterre.html (that's the most recent page..hit 'moins' to see previous pages.)
As always, I hope all's going well for everyone, including without limitation midterms, election aftermath, travels, and work.
Cheers, Rob
-- : Rob Ewaschuk : University of Waterloo : Computer Science (4A) : : www.studentforce.ca : Currently on co-op at www.decisionsoft.co.uk :
/travel/oxford/More Oxford
H'lo Canada!
(I've added a few more people to the list. As always, let me know if you don't like these impersonal mass-emails. :-) )
Stuff continues to go well here. Today, I took _Catch 22_, _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_ and _Lolita_ from the liberry here to continue my spate of edification through literature. The tosser (that's british for 'bastard,' don'tchaknow. [well, not literally, but..]) that has _Godel, Escher, Bach_ didn't return it on time.
We went to Cardiff the weekend before last. I saw my very first castle, and we took a tour of these totally extravagantly decorated victorian rooms..Seemed to be a nice city, but we only had about 24 hours there since we had a ride in with my boss and that's all he was staying for. We also went to the welsh national museum, and paid for this star trek exhibit that turned out to be aimed at 12 year olds. Oh well. :-)
In a couple of weeks, we're going to Manchester & Liverpool and taking a day off work to do so. Not sure what other tourism is up our collective sleeves.
I have a new roommate, a chinese chap. Every morning he spends about 3 minutes horking up phlegm in the washroom. It's not really pleasant. He also smokes, and has loud guests over late which is annoying. But my housing is now tolerable enough, so I plan on staying there until the end, probably.
Cycling is going well -- I automatically go to the wrong ("left") side of the road now. They also flip the brakes here, so the front brakes are on the right. I figured that out before it was a big deal, but I still sometimes slam on the wrong brakes. Now I can't decide to flip them back or not. It's been snowing here a bit, which is unusual. Cold and not fun to cycle in, but not a big deal.
I also got paid, and refunded for my flights, so I have money again, which is nice, since I was borrowing money from Caroline to get along (My bank card didn't work when I got here. I think I said that in my last email. My pin was 7 digits, and it's only cool to have 4 digits.)
Food situation is getting better here...They have this stuff called "quorn" that's a delicious (non-vegan) vegetarian fake meat. It's delicious. Best meat-on-a-bun-type-product I've had in two years. It's made from some local fungus thing...mmm..fungus.
Work is goin well. My job is more interesting now. I have nothing further to add to that. :-)
Last but not least, I've been acclaimed as the Math/Co-op representative on Waterloo's student council...which is good, since it's really hard to campaign from here. It's a little too bad I'm not on campus this year for our Federation of Students election, since this is the first year that I really know all the players and have a good sense of what's going on. Well worth it, though. Maybe I'll run for a real position next year...
So, all's quite well and fairly interesting. Hope everything's going well for everybody across the pond!
Cheers, Rob
/travel/oxford/Oxford
Hi everybody!
First, you're on my oxford-list. If you don't give a rats ass about me being out of the country, let me know and I'll stop bugging you about it.
So, we got here, and everything went reasonably well. Our collective luggage was heavier and more of a pain than expected, and London was more expensive than I was braced for, so the first couple days were interesting.
Got here, and my landlord seemed a bit of an ass. My room is half the size he said (although not intolerably small, and not really smaller than I expected), the kitchen is sorta filthy, the front door lock has broken, the two house managers (for four tenants...weird) seem to be grumpy asses, the kitchen is under equipped (not even a decent knife), the gas stove is underlabelled, the shower sometimes goes cold (think I've figured that one out.) Anyway, it's really not that bad (really!) but I'm hoping to weasle out of the lease and end up living with one of the guys that works here at DecisionSoft. He's having troubles buying his new place (buyer for his current place bailed at the last minute) but hopefully that will all go through, and then I'll tell my landlord where he can go. :-P
Food here has been interesting..it's not as expensive as I was expecting. There's a "Tesco" right behind my house, and they have a "Tesco" line that's about like a decent in-store brand like Safeway or Master's Choice, and "Tesco Value," which is the most phenomenally cheap stuff you'll ever find. 12p (that's about 30 cents) for a kilo of flour, that sort of thing. Produce is less available, and lots of things are only in stock sometimes.
Work is alright. The first day, the whole street with the office was flooded. Luckily, two decisionsoft people thought of us co-ops, and were waiting by the puddle. Office was flooded for the first week, basically, and we moved back in on Friday. In the meantime, I was working at Andy's place -- he's the guy I'll hopefully move in with.
Done a bit of walking around Oxford -- it's a really nice city. All the buildings and stuff are stone, and old-looking. There's a gaggle of boys in choir-boy outfits that I walk by every day -- kind of strange traditional garb you don't see a whole lot of. I kind of want to take a picture, but I don't want to make a big spectacle of them. :-)
I'm in the running to be a Student Councillor (not counsellor, mind you.) with the UW Federation of Students, our student union. The campaigning should be interesting, being across the big pond and all.
Things are going generally well. I miss some Canadian things already -- the grocery stores here leave something to be desired -- but there're lots of distinctly Oxford/England things that I'm quite enjoying. While it takes a bit of getting used to, pedestrians have fairly little right of way here, but they have pedestrian-protectors half-way across the street all over the place, so it's not that hard to cross. I've bought a bike, but no lights, so I haven't been able to take it to work (it's dark by like 5pm here, just like saskatoon)...I just bought it this week, so I haven't ridden it at all yet. But the point is, it will be very fun and interesting navigating the roundabouts. :-) (Yes mom, I've bought a helmet..:-))
Anyway, I need to go some Quake (it's an official rule that work stops and Quake starts at 5:30 here, and it's 5:42..ack!) and then go to Caro's for dinner.
Hope all's well with all of you!
Cheers, (In Britain, "cheers" means "thanks"...I'm floored by how many words they use differently..not slang, just different words. Like kitchen paper instead of paper towels...I'm sure I'll import some back with me, for all of your amusement.) Rob
