dubious.biz(ness)

Term time is nearly upon me. I think there is some amount of universality in the pressure of exams in Cambridge. Most of my friends save a few have been working throughout the break on studying for the exams which start in about 5 weeks, right after my birthday.

Revision like this has two outcomes: first you are confronted with your own weaknesses. The stress of thinking that an entire year will be determined by four three-hour exams which can only be considered damn near impossible is very imposing. Revising for this long and this early really twists your mind into thinking about the things you can’t do. For example: I am awesome at set theory. I can kick the ass of set theory any day. Yet in number theory (which is also under the broad umbrella of “Discrete Maths”) I seem to be totally inept, I understand all the material but I cannot solve the problems for the life of me. I have made the excuse out loud that “I’m just not the type of person who can solve them” but you can imagine how dissatisfying it is to say that you are not the type of person who can solve a particular sort of problem. I also realize that while I can work non-stop for hours I am still have the same (life-long) problem of inertia. I don’t call it this as a crutch or an excuse, but just as I am not the sort of person who can look at a number theory problem and solve it immediately, I have a hard time starting to work get working. These weaknesses are annoying, particularly when you feel stressed and realize that you will continue to feel stressed until the end of term.

The other outcome is the realization that you will not be able to ace the exams. Thus far I don’t know of anyone who is confident they will do well. Exams are set in with questions that seem designed to test not only your knowledge but your ability to deal with lack of knowledge in some sort of stress test. To put it another way, there is literally no way to anticipate every topic that might appear on the exam and to prepare yourself for them. Previous years’ exam papers are all published online, and this is both a blessing and a curse, like eating the apple and being kicked out of the Garden of Eden, knowledge is a bitter fruit. Without these papers one might live in bliss thinking that by just reviewing the lecturer’s provided notes and doing all the work required of you, you would be prepared. Unfortunately this isn’t the case.

But I think we’re all in the same boat to some extent and I can only hope that working hard has prepared me for the exams. If this amount of preparation doesn’t get me through the exams, I probably don’t belong here anyway.

Recently I got called back and had another interview with the NGO that I had been interviewed with. Apparently the situation is this: Engineers Without Borders funds three places each year via grants and handles the interviews for those places with the assistance of the NGO itself (EWB being a funding organization for other NGOs not actually doing any development work itself).

So I got a call back about two weeks ago and had a second interview for the NGO about an hour ago. I felt very happy with the first interview, but it was obvious then that my dedication to the cause was being called into question. This interview was quite different. First of all none of the people from the first interview were there: one of them was an EWB person, one was a volunteer from EWB last year, and works for the NGO and is in Ghana on a project.

This interview was a lot more high-level on the project and less about development. I was very happy with this, it suited my strengths better. Of course being a second interview but being with different people I had the ability to anticipate the questions a bit better. The main questions were if you were going to take a team of three to Ghana for three months what would you do to prepare? And specifically about the email service: what problems do you see and how would you address them? That’s my alley, planning purely theoretically ventures and telling people what’s wrong with something.

The development questions went something like what do you see as ICTs role in development, and I gave basically the same answer, because quite frankly I still am not convinced that you are going to solve world hunger by giving people computers. But somehow it sounded more positive this time. The most suprisng thing overall was the total lack of questions about my history and background. Not only did they not ask about my work experience in any detail, they didn’t really ask about anything, like “tell me about a time when blah blah blah”.

So I think that the interview went very well, considering this is the second time I’ve been interviewed obviously I’m not a total idiot. They are supposed to get back to me by the end of the week with their answer so we’ll see.

While pouring over notes I find this gem of a citation: Implementing lazy functional languages on stock hardware: The spineless tagless G-machine, Peyton Jones, S. L. (1992). cite

The Spineless Tagless G-machine

The Spineless Tagless G-machine

The Spineless Tagless G-machine

How awesome.

Trying to find the elusive paper yields an even better one: Putting the Spine back in the Spineless Tagless G-machine: An Implementation of Resumable Blackholes, Reid, A. (1999). cite

From now on, I will refer to my computer by its new name, the Spineless Tagless G-machine. Or G-machine for short. I’m going to get it airbrushed on to the back for some majesty. Too much revision makes Kenny a bit crazy.

Didn’t I do the same thing at christmas with yoga booty ballet? Good thing I don’t get these things tatooed on me.

I have just listened, several times, to an incredible speech by an old Canadian broadcaster, Gordon Sinclair. The speech was broadcasted in 1973 at a low point in America’s economy and in the final year of the Vietnam war. Follow the link to read the text or listen to the speech.

Some sentimental Americans may think that this speech is equally applicable today as it was 33 years ago. With patriotic lines spoken by a foreigner about how throughout the 20th century we have assisted the countries of the world in times of crisis and how we, despite the apathy of the rest of the world, have always succeeded in caring for ourselves with time and money left over for others as well. Our technology put men on the moon while others can claim only a small market.

The fact of the matter is that our ability to assist the rest of the world fallen to nearly zero as has our interest in the rest of the world’s troubles. Perhaps the words of Sinclair came true, that we have finally started to “thumb [our] noses at the lands that are gloating over [our] present troubles.” But 33 years later we need the rest of the world and the rest of the world needs us. Again in the past year we have been offered very little aid for the disasters around America, and again in the past year we have been engaged in dubious foreign policy and warmongering.

The difference is that while the rest of the world responded to disasters like the Pakistani earthquake, the southeast Asian tsunami and the London underground bombings we treated them as cable news fodder with only an overture of sympathy from Americans until the cameras turned off. Americans began to treat the rest of the world’s pain and suffering as eye candy about fifteen years ago and we haven’t looked back since. Both Bush governments have considered foreign aid a secondary priority to foreign policy and have expected to join a coalition, not create one as a prerequisite for US dollars.

Politically we cannot ignore tragedy while we seek to influence global climate, particularly when Americans are at what is perhaps the lowest world opinion ever. Our last politically successful military campaign was the Cold War and by definition we won by stalemate. Every conflict we have entered since: Iraq, Haiti, Rwanda, Somalia, Yugoslavia, and Iraq, have been at best a mixed outcome and at worst a debacle. The reality of foreign policy is that helping people is more valuable than killing people.

But the rest of the world has grown stronger, thanks in no small part to the strength of the United States’s economy and technology and our willingness to bring the rest of the world along. The arguments given in Sinclair’s editorial no longer apply though. We are not world leaders in most categories. Other countries have launched space shots while our space program has stifled. And like our space program our technological innovations have held steady while other nations have shot forward. We are no longer in the position of world leader in economic strength or technological superiority. The best cars are made outside our shores, aircraft and weapons are manufactured throughout the world, we are losing our IT edge to agile Asian nations, our manufacturing base disappeared long ago and is now heavily contended amongst perhaps ten players.

In short we are an empire in decline, an empire that must make a choice to return to our strengths and bring ourselves and the rest of the world forward, and reestablish our position as a leader or resign ourselves to being one of a hundred countries with an agenda and no ability to influence. By returning to our strengths we cannot refocus our energies on “home” despite the pandering needs of political parties. We must embrace the world and integrate them further into America.

This means refocusing money currently funneled into self-centered bureaucratic behemoth of the “Department of Homeland Security” into both domestic education and foreign aid and development. It means holding Social Security steady and transitioning to a privatized system that will allow the welfare institutions we created survive past the lifetimes of the current recipients. It means working in Europe, Asia, and Africa to reestablish ourselves as the most trustworthy and giving nation in the world. It means in some respects a return to roots.

But it also means dropping some nasty baggage. We cannot presume that we can import most of our goods while exporting little more than the strength of our currency (which is of course questionable and at this point significantly tied to the strength of our creditors’ economies as well). But we cannot simply tariff Chinese goods creating a bizarre circle of revenue. We first must attend to our own budget and become again a responsible debtor. In America’s current position to maintain growth we will have to look forward to new technology and new opportunity, there is no way to extract decade by decade growth similar to what we have seen with anything less.

This means a return to free investment in R&D, both to private corporations and academic institutions. In the cold war this money was funnelled via the Department of Defense, but the new model at the Department of Homeland Security has narrowed the investment to strategically important ventures (read antiterrorist) with no consideration for blue sky projects. The money which previously funded these one in a million chances now is funnelled into megafirms like SAIC, Baker-Hughes, Fluor, CSC, and who can forget Halliburton. This sort of private investment in the defense sector is simply unhealthy. Absolutely no one benefits from creating a massive debt and investing into war making privateers except those directly involved with that company. These giants aren’t stupid and realize their massive economies of scale by keeping absolutely everything in house. Except of course pensions, health care, and benefits for their private contractor employees.

So, Americans, Americans that Gordon Sinclair spoke of, where have you gone? My hopes for my plan are nearly nonexistent. Americans have a terminal case of tunnel vision, we are complacent and we do not realize neither the position we were in at one time nor the position that we are in now. We are on the edge of collapse and yet we are gambling as if we can teeter on the edge longer than current first world powers in Europe and Japan.

Without a strategy looking past the next election, without a visionary, without a party interested in America more than itself we are destined for a descent into indentured service and we will serve the countries who once looked to us for aid and support, for whom we were once the stable hand which guided them to economic and political stability. The dollars we are creating out of thin air aren’t being wisely spent to say little of the dollars we actually have. We need new Americans, the Americans of which Sinclair fondly spoke, and we need them now.

As a warning dear reader, this is a long one. It also skirts what I actually did today so perhaps a welcome change. I didn’t finish it until I got back to Cambridge, but I have no more stories to tell and despite the title, I find this story a fitting end to the trip, so I don’t think I’ll write more.

Well what I should be filling you in on, and I’m sure you’re desperately interested in hearing about, is today’s day at the Carmargue. The Carmargue is in the Rhone delta which has been desalinated and drained from its natural marshland state to make rice fields, a wildlife preserve, and a generally unfrench place in Provence. It’s due south of Arles and a perfect way so spend a Sunday when all of Arles is closed. But I won’t tell you that because far more interesting things happened around this time so I’ll recount those (boring) stories later on.

I went back to the hostel on Saturday night and arrived at the doorstep at… 22:45. Amazingly, the stupid thing had already closed, who knows why. So I sat outside in the mild Arles night for about 30 minutes hoping for some chance that a worker would come out or a guest with a key would arrive. I was visited by no such luck, so I returned to the city center and started to hunt for hotels which would accept a tired traveller at nearly midnight. After using the full extent of my french to drunk kids at an impressive (and depressingly good) rave in the center of town I was recommended that I ask someone else, at which point they went back to merrymaking and I went to consult my guidebook. Phones in France don’t accept coins (only cards) so I was forced to walk from locked hotel to locked hotel in search of a free room.

Finally I stumbled upon an open door, apparently left open by an somewhat flamboyant and somewhat absentminded night manager who spoke perfect English. He gave me a very good deal on a room for two nights and so I officially decided to stay another night in Arles at this point. I went to bed, but without my actual bags which were in a locker in the youth hostel out of my reach.

So the next morning after taking breakfast I walked down to the youth hostel to collect my bags and found not much to my surprise that the door was again locked. Fortunately with much noise and banging I was able to summon a lazy and annoying rude garçon to give me back my bags. As I left I happened to meet a guy I had talked to in the Nimes hostel, Arata. He was pushing his bike which had acquired a puncture back into the hostel. I stopped him to say hello and ask where he had rented the bike, but it turns out that it was his own. The lazy hostel clerk pointed out that you could not rent a bike in Arles on a Sunday. Arata said he was going to the Carmargue and would rent a bike there (which is possible on a Sunday) and I decided to join him.

So a chain of interesting happenings led me to a curious companion for the final day. We went down to Ste Marie de la Mer and rented two cycles, cycled around a large part of the Carmargue seeing the natural habitat of tourists riding the supposedly wild (or as Arata was fond of saying savages) white horses and supposedly wild black bulls peacefully grazing in well fenced fields. More interesting were the strange looking Carmarguoise houses, the flamingos, and happy tourists.

We walked down the beach as well which was a big tick on the list of Important Things to do on the trip (it seems I always do this at the close of a trip) and returned by bus back to Arles.

I was a bit concerned that Arata’s spending habits wouldn’t match my own so we decided to dine at a reasonably priced restaurant. There, amazingly, sat the beautiful girl from the night before. I should explain.

This girl, almost certainly native French arrived at the restaurant I was in the night before. I would certainly not say that she was stunningly gorgeous but she was beautiful, she looked soft and feminine but also purposeful. Je ne sais quoi, but this girl had something. She was in her twenties, had the classic french rounded face, lithe body, dark hair and fair skin. She had reserved a table at the restaurant and sat down essentially across from me. The room contained only seven tables and had gone from being empty when I arrived to nearly full when she arrived.

We did not make eye contact immediately but glanced between our places, I felt my eyes drawn to her table, in a room with every table filled with two or more guests, there is perhaps an almost fraternal feel to two single diners sitting alone in such close quarters. However, I would not say that my attention was fraternal, she had my interest, and nearly immediately she had removed a palm from her impressively large handbag. Then out came a moleskine carnet, then a guidebook. I laughed quietly because opposite my place at the table were already arrayed these objects of my own.

The guidebook indicated she was a traveller but the carnet was more interesting, and the palm even more still. I had the carnet to entertain myself by writing notes and journal entries, presumably she did the same? And the palm was there for audio recordings (though I took none) and SMS, but hers was likely for normal palm things like schedule. She had the only reserved table in the small restaurant, so she would seem to be quite organized.

At this point, it became obvious that between the juggling these objects she was looking at me. She had nothing to do yet as she hadn’t been served her first course, and I was in my main course so I could easily watch her without attracting attention by looking up after taking a bite. It was at this point our eyes met fast without locking. Politeness dictated both of us to look away and for some time we went through this cycle, I would look at her, she would look at me, we would look away, then she would look back, and so on.

It became a game to me after I finished my meal, I think, perhaps one I engaged in too eagerly. In my mind I explored the limits of my french which would seem a large barrier to attempting to say anything to a beautiful woman in what was presumably her home country. So I sat and continued to play eye tag with this girl, then at one point, just as my dessert was arriving, neither she nor I looked away. Oh la la la la la la. She smiled slightly with closed lips, then I cracked and looked down, smirking into my wine. The game was had turned the corner and I didn’t dare to look up again but watched her from my periphery as I ate my dessert as slowly as humanly possible.

It wasn’t until I finished that I worked up the courage to attempt another volley. I didn’t mention this but she also had the exact same meal as I did up to this point, mussels as a first course and pork loin as the main, a strange coincidence considering the size and variety of the menu. It wasn’t until my dessert was cleared and I was offered coffee that she looked my way, while I was ordering from the waiter. I saw her but knew that to look at me as I ordered would indicate that the stakes should be lowered. I waited for another opportune moment and attempted again to watch her and wait for her to look back when our eyes met again and we entered the same cycle.

As my meal had nearly entered its third hour, I realized that the bill was necessary, so for a moment the cycle was broken as I paid, this is when she looked at me again and didn’t look away. At this point the tension between us had become more than palpable, it was now at a boiling point, a beast in its own regard. Accidentally I looked her way and again, and for the last time, our eyes met. I knew that this was an ill-fated encounter as it was, that I would have no way in this small but crowded restaurant where every conversation was within earshot and with par minimum French of even saying more than hello. This time I must have expressed my full range in less than a few seconds, her eyes were soft and round and held steady, then broke away and back to her wine.

I immediately was compelled by embarrassment and slight nervousness to leave. I couldn’t think of anything else to do and had stayed far too long already. So, I stood straight away and left. As I passed I had only one thing I could imagine doing knowing that even it was romantically lame. I looked down at her palm and carnet as I walked by, afraid to look at her face again, and I said au revoir, then stamped down the staircase to the ground floor.

This story alone would have been good enough, this near romance in a quiet, beautiful town in Provence. However, it goes deeper, and from near romance into irony. The next day, the day that I went to Carmargue with Arata, we dined in a different restaurant, one a bit less pricy, but none the less well recommended. I feel completely embarrassed to say it, but at some point this beautiful girl again arrived and sat down. I was so engaged in the food and the conversation, grateful to have a companion during a somewhat quiet and lonely trip, that I didn’t notice her straight away. In fact, I didn’t notice her until we were nearly finished.

When I did I looked her way. She looked back at me as if she had been waiting for me to finally notice her. I blushed immediately but the dynamic completely wrong, I was with a conversant young student, we were being loud and speaking in English, the night had none of the nuance of the previous night, and none of the subtlety. Moreover, I have no idea when she arrived, but she was nearly matching us in course, so it must have been just after us. I felt like such a chump. To have engaged her again would have taken most of my concentration.

Feeling a serious deficit in having had my cards tipped as she had heard nearly everything we said, she now knew that I was definitely English speaking and if she recognized accents, American. I tried again to look her way casually and found her engrossed in her carnet, which made me even more curious. I placed one eye on her but I could tell already the moment was truly lost.

The night before was tainted by tonight and my failure to play again, I had no idea of her intentions in choosing the same restaurant as we did, but if it was anything to do with me, I had failed in my duties. Even if it wasn’t I had failed as I now had a companion and she again was alone. The complexity of the situation and a deep feeling of embarrassment caused me more than once to lose my place with Arata, then feeling doubly embarrassed. I decided then that last night was last night, and I would enjoy my new friend and would forfeit any chance at trying to speak to this beautiful girl. In retrospect, this was stupid, it would have been easy, if I had been able to swallow my pride, to find some pretense.

What’s more, this was my last night and left the kind of indelible impression of the place that would otherwise have been just beautiful. Arata was in danger of missing his hostel room like I was the night before, so we parted ways as quickly as possible. I returned to my room, sad to leave. Arles by night is weightless and light, just as it is by the day and the hotel sits between two massive roman ruins, an arena and an ampitheatre, and I looked into the unlit ampitheatre for a while before going inside the hotel, realizing what an amazing place I had found.

Last night was a bit crazy. Hostels run the gamut between crap places you put down your bags and mini towns that have their own culture and rules. Most, of course, are more like the former with crowds of students and losers who use the for cheap nights without care. The ridiculous curfews generally imposed seem to be easily skirted by regulars who know the staff. Those without curfews obviously just risk having to staff a quiet and empty hostel all night, so most do.

However, for completely incomprehensible reasons some hostels seem to attract the coolest, most interesting crowds albeit with a fair share of regular losers (who are also generally loser regulars as well). The hostel in Nimes, despite (or perhaps because) being a huge distance uphill and away from the center of the city, seems to attract a crowd of interesting people. Perhaps the existence of a real bar with people ready to get drunk on cheap liquor contributed, but there were two pairs of japanese who met at the hostel, both on different agendas, several native frenchie hostel hoppers (losers) who were there for their inability to speak anything but french and local color, some aussies, an kiwi, and myself. To top it all off, both the staff were english, happy to provide a bottle on the house, and both had started many, many summers ago as a summer job and never left.

This are all indications of an interesting night. I won’t bore you with the details of conversation, but a large part of the night was devoted to teaching swear words for genitalia and explaining the finer points of les filles japonaise. Finally, one of the loser regulars whom, like the rest of us was extremely intoxicated, offered his car to drive everyone into town to go to the disco. I wisely WISELY refused and was nearly dragged to the awaiting car by the japanese girls. The girls seemed to be far more interested in the french guys, but the numbers were in my favor with only two of french losers to four drunk girls, so I was probably deputized as honorary french in their eyes.

But, your faithful author resisted and watched the girls leave with heads out the windows like dogs lapping up Nimes’s night air. Today I did the things I was supposed to do yesterday, which again left me sitting in the train station during the afternoon slump so I again did not get to do what I intended today. The top of Nimes was reached and the “best preserved roman arena” was scaled, but very little of Arles was seen.

The executive decision: Arles was the residence of Van Gogh during his most productive period, and I can understand why. The light in the evening is absolutely perfect and I could not ask for any more, so I will be staying in Arles and ditching Marseille, I’ll do it on a proper trip of Cote d’Azur. Since this is the only place in Provence I’m visiting, I want to do it right. Tomorrow I’m going to rent a bike and cycle into the Carmargue, something which was not originally on my itinerary, but so attractive that I cannot refuse.

Anyway, the hostel is closing soon so I need to return, tomorrow I will tell tonight’s story: two tables for one flirting by making suggesting gestures with their glasses while eating. Stay tuned…

After a fast paced first few days of travel, today was a bit of a letdown as I ended up spending most of the day arranging travel to here and there and not actually doing anything. I got to the train station today in time to miss the train to Nimes and had to wait an hour and a half for the next one. The train itself was very fast, about 30 minutes.

Then when I got there I had a huge snafu trying to find the youth hostel and ended up in the middle of nowhere and had to wait 30 minutes to get a bus back to the Nimes because the guide book suggests bus J when in fact bus I is the proper bus and both I and J have a stop named Stade de something, and the guidebook says take bus J to Stade. It turns out Stade stop on bus J is near a Carrefour. Stade on bus I is, unfortunately probably not much closer to the hostel, it was nearly a kilometer on foot to get there.

All this travel added together really made me feel like I was cheated out of a day in Nimes, so I don’t think I will end up Arles, I will just have to be more efficent. Of course all this sounds like bitching and there is more to do in Nimes than wait and get lost.

Nimes is nearly in Provence which means it has its fair share of roman ruins, notably a big roman arena, still functional, but undergoing renovation, a big roman temple to Diana, and some other classical looking building that sits opposite to the Caree d’Arts which seems to function as a perch for kissing teens.

In addition to this is the Caree d’Arts itself, which is a Norman Foster building opposite the old roman building. The interior of the building is impressive, particularly for a small town like Nimes. It houses in it a modern art museum whose permanent collection is a bit shabby (though to be honest my taste in modern art is not the average) but the current exhibition running was current, comprehensive, and impressive.

The arena is undergoing an renovation which has blighted the exterior with scaffolding, as is ye ole kissing perch. I didn’t actually have time to go into any of the buildings but I looked from the outside and will try to go tomorrow morning (particularly to the temple which the guidebook says offers excellent views of Nimes and the surrounding countryside).

Probably the highlight of the day was the restaurant I had lunch in, Le Mistral, which is staffed by a husband/wife team and cooked the most incredible capon. The food was incredible but perhaps better was the kind waiter who was friendly and insisted on translating the entire menu for me verbally. I was actually quite lucky to have gotten in there at all, normally they are open for lunch by reservation only.

For dinner, I attempted to have cassolet, a baked stew with beef and beans which is supposed to be Languedoc’s speciality. However I missed and ended up with cassolette, a baked bowl of fromage chevre which is interesting but not at all as I understood cassolet (and according to the menu une specialite de Nimes). I have had perhaps a kilo of chevre today and I hope to end my run of it tomorrow; if I were to think of a specialty of Nimes it is this cheese which seems to come in everything.

My stays at the hostels thus far have been problematic, last night the room smelled like an armpit and the two other french guys staying in the room were nice but a bit disaffected and wanted nothing more than to play this cassette of motown and sing in perfect mock english at the top of their lungs. In the middle of the night one of them decided to chat up some girl and was on his cell from 2am until his battery gave up (actually after that he turned put it into the charged and continued, but I finally was overcome with sleep again). This isn’t to say that hostels are crap but you do get what you pay for and at 10 euros having a bit of strange company is the norm.

Tomorrow (which is actually today as I complete this) I will tick off the few things in Nimes I haven’t done yet and move on to Arles. Last night I nearly ended up going clubbing with a bunch of japanese girls but I will tell that story tonight.