Careful, she bites!

Some days you just wonder why you bothered opening your eyes at all. Today I'm having one of those days. It actually started yesterday already. The day had started well enough, despite some lack of sleep, as I had just had a great weekend with friends. Then the trouble started. Just as they were about to leave, the landlord unexpectedly showed up giving us a rather inquisitive, disgruntled look. Sure enough, in the evening I received an email sternly reprimanding me about having allowed multiple guests to stay over at the premises. Now, there are no consequences or anything but that email was a non-too-subtle reminder that at the moment I am living at the mercy of others. It put me in a foul mood for the rest of the evening.

Sometimes a good night's sleep can have a soothing, tempering effect but not today. I must have gotten out the wrong side of the bed this morning or something because my spirits had dipped below freezing point. I'm usually already fairly slow in the morning but today I was moving at the speed of a slug. I finally managed to drag myself out of the house, much later than usual, only to find that my bus was nowhere in sight. Of course when at last a bus appeared it was completely packed. I had to squeeze my way in, nuzzling my face into somebody's smelly armpit. I think the bus driver must have been in an equally bad mood because about halfway along my route he suddenly decided to dangerously cut off another driver who reacted in predictable fashion. The two men clambered out of their vehicles and entered into a display of verbal abuse. As they did not appear to be coming to a quick resolution of their dispute I, like most other passengers, got off the bus and continued my way on foot. If at this point I had been a cartoon character, you would have seen a dark black thunder cloud suspended over my head! Even without the cloud though, it must have been obvious to the unsuspecting passersby that I was in no mood to be messed with as people arched their way around me at a safe distance. Naturally I was late for class so I had to slide into one of the few available seats left in the front, in the immediate line of sight of the lecturer, making me the obvious target when he marked out some 'volunteers' for a class presentation. Things have just kept piling up all day. They are all small, little things that on a good day wouldn't bother me at all but today my tolerance threshold is alarmingly low.

I don't know when I will finally manage to snap out of this grump but I reckon it won't be today anymore. If you happen to be unfortunate enough to encounter me on the street this afternoon on my way home: better beware. You'll have no trouble recognizing me. I'm the girl who looks like she is ready to bite your head off should you look at her the wrong way!

Hello World!

A few minutes ago I pushed the button; hit submit and sent myself off into the world. What I have sent out is my very first real job application.

It's quite ridiculous come to think of it. Here I am, 28 years old, and I have never seriously applied for a job in my life. Academics is a funny place to be in in that respect. Everything is done so much more informally. I remember when I was looking for a Ph.D. position I sent one single e-mail, casually enquiring about the possibility of joining that group. A few weeks later I was sitting in the office of the man who would end up being my supervisor, feeling absurdly overdressed in my skirt suit and high heels. We had a chat, I was dragged around the labs and that was essentially it. Sure, for correct form he asked my undergrad supervisor for some references and I did give him some rudimentary C.V. but there were no tough questions, no formal assessments. My next job was thrown my way by the Institute Director who was looking for somebody with a scientific background but with an interest in management. As there are remarkably few of those people around -wonder why- and he knew about my plans for the future, the job was mine for the taking.

This position I applied for now is at one of the big consultancy firms and things couldn't be more different. I uploaded my details online and it will end up at the desk of somebody whose name I don't even know. Should it kindle an interest on their behalf, I expect there will be a long trail of tests and interviews ahead of me. I'm not overly fussed about it. It will be interesting to see what my chances are, particularly since the job description asks for somebody with more experience than I actually have, but I won't be terribly upset if they show no interest. Of course I'd prefer not to be rejected but I have to be realistic about my odds. Even if they would offer me the job, however, I'm not convinced I would take it. The job description was rather vague and I am not at all sure it is what I am looking for but you can't win unless you compete, right?

We'll see what happens but at least the wheels have been set in motion. Hopefully in the next few weeks and months I'll find some more job opportunities. It's time for me to get out there and start facing the scary 'real' world!

Going political, just this one time...

Every once in a while you may read a book that grabs you by the throat; a story that stays with you long after you have put the book down. About three years ago I read such a book. In English it was published under the title “Until death do us part” (published in Dutch as “Woede in mijn hart”) and it is an autobiography written by the Colombian former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt. I don’t remember any more why I bought this particular book. I probably just picked it up as part of my regular dose of Waterstone’s, but it has been one of the most powerful stories I have ever read. I must profess my political ignorance as until I read this book I had never heard of Ingrid Betancourt. This is perhaps all the more shameful because at that time she had already been in the hands of the Colombian guerrilla movement FARC for almost two years.

Today, 23 February 2007, it is exactly 5 years ago that Ingrid Betancourt and her campaign manager Clara Rojas were kidnapped. The last proof of life their families received dates back to 2003 when the FARC released a video tape with a powerful speech made by Ingrid Betancourt. Since then there has been nothing to tell whether they are dead or alive.

Those of you who know me know that I don’t really ‘do’ heroes and I certainly am not inclined to any hero worshipping. This woman’s story, however, has deeply moved and inspired me. At serious risk to her own life she tried to take on a deeply corrupt political system to fight for democracy, stability and peace. The Colombian government that came into power shortly after her disappearance has thus far refused talks with the FARC stating they will not negotiate with terrorists. The FARC in turn continues to drag civilians into this armed conflict. At present it is uncertain if and when this conflict will ever be resolved or what the outcome will be for the hundreds of hostages.

I believe the story of Ingrid Betancourt is one worth being told and I strongly urge you to read this book. It provides a detailed insight into the political situation in Colombia in particular and the American politics in the region in general. If you are interested and want to know more, a good place to start is at http://www.betancourt.info/indexEng.htm

Better late than never

O, irony of ironies!

Five years I have spent mastering the skills of scientific research. Stacks of articles have I read, dissected, interpreted and paraphrased. I have slowly but steadily unravelled the intricacies of the Web of Knowledge. Through endless sessions of trial and error I have conquered Reference Manager. Statistical analysis was never quite within my reach and was largely restricted to 'guesstimates' of reliability intervals but other data sets were subjected to rigorous fitting sessions. Like a blind person I have been feeling my way through the scientific maze. It must have borne some fruit for after seemingly endless years I emerged into the light clutching my thesis, filled with graphs, data and references.

Today I had my first lecture in "Methods of Enquiry".

Exploring the territory

Today it was lovely weather here. A nice bleak wintry sun but with a chill in the air that left me in two minds as to whether or not I should wear my gloves and scarf or not. You can feel spring is around the corner but at the same time winter has not quite passed. It's my favourite kind of weather. It definitely seemed a shame to waste such a day indoors so I chose to explore the urban jungle of London a bit.

I've been living in this city for almost five months now and it's shocking how little of it I have seen so far. Every day I travel from my house to College and back but, with the exception of some of the more obvious hot spots, I have hardly seen a thing. Most tourists know London better than I do. Today was therefore I good opportunity to make my acquaintance with the city and what better way to do this than to go for a walk? Wearing my scarf, though not the gloves and with the A-Z street map safely tucked away in my bag I set out for a walk along the river bank. I actually love strolling along the water. I believe no city should be allowed to be called a city unless it has a proper river running through! It's not that the Thames embankment is all that beautiful, parts of it are even downright ugly or filthy, but it still gives the city a certain character. However, after some point the riverside had nothing more to offer than yet more luxurious but utterly soulless apartment blocks so I abandoned the river and continued my random walk into the neighbourhood. The advantage of having no fixed destination is that you can't get lost on your way there. As I am one of those people who have absolutely no sense of direction whatsoever that is a considerable bonus. The downside of course is that you don't always end up at those places which are most interesting or aesthetically pleasing.

I now know that what on the map looked like a nice park in reality is not much more than a large open space of grass and mud, that Wimbledon is a fairly pretty yet mostly boring residential area and that some parts of Wandsworth are a tad grotty. None of what I saw today has any touristic value and I very much doubt I will go out of my way to visit these places again but at least I can now colour in another little piece of my blank mental map of London. For my next trip I might consider some more picturesque places though.

It's not easy being green

My mail box is being flooded at the moment with messages from British Airways and Easyjet, promising to take me to Paris, Vienna or Madrid for 30 pounds or less. This barrage of emails has most likely been triggered by the fact that I have in the past few months been utilising their services on a regular basis. This coming week I’ll be crossing the Channel for the seventh time since last October and more trips are bound to follow.

I didn’t use to be a very frequent flyer. During my Ph.D. time I didn’t take that many vacations and even when I did go abroad, it didn’t always involve flying. Nowadays from this island I have very little choice in my means of transportation. Yes, of course there are trains from London to Amsterdam. There are, however, some compelling reasons for me not to use these. For starters, the train is a lot more expensive. The ticket I have booked for my flight this week cost me ₤59 inclusive of taxes. The train would have cost me about three times as much. Then there is the time consideration. Even if you add the travel to and from the airport, the check-in time and the time spent at security and customs to the total flight time, it should under normal circumstances not take longer than 4 to 5 hours for me to get door-to-door. The train journey from London to Amsterdam, on the other hand, takes on average about 7 hours. With flying being my fastest, easiest and cheapest option it seems the logical choice to make. It is, however, not a guilt-free choice.

In my daily life I try to make my small contribution to helping the environment. I don’t drive a car, I turn off the lights whenever I leave a room -sometimes even when there is still somebody in it; force of habit- and I try to recycle as much as possible. The flying, however, trivialises these well-intended efforts. To merely offset the carbon emissions from my seven Channel crossings I should be planting no fewer than 4 trees! I could of course choose not to fly so often but phone, email and chat just aren’t proper substitutes for the pleasure of personal interaction. I try to appease my conscience the same way everybody else does: 'hey, that plane would be flying anyway, be it with or without me, so I might as well be on it'. It doesn't take a genius to see the flaws in that logic.

Both the UK and Dutch governments have in recent months expressed their intent to raise airport taxes as part of their new green policies. On pure principle grounds I can not be against this. I do firmly believe it is time we start taking more serious action to protect our environment and discouraging flying is a sensible place to start. At the same time, as a consumer I am naturally not too happy about the fact that the price for my tickets will go up. But as long as I could feel confident that this extra money will indeed be spent for 'green' purposes, it is a sacrifice I would be willing to make. As always the devil is in the details and I am enough of a cynic to have my doubts on whether this really is what my money will end up funding. For once I really do hope I will be proven wrong and that each and every single penny of that money goes where it belongs.

Whatever will happen, there is still the damage that has already been done to atone for. Well, I guess I better start taking action then. It seems I have some trees to plant.

A cry for help

This may well be the last message you'll ever receive from me...

The country is under siege. Nobody knows what tomorrow will bring; the enemy is amongst us! Our radios tell us not to leave the safe confines of our houses. Mothers are advised to keep their sons and daughters at home. Those who must go out do so at their own risk. 'Bring food and blankets with you if you must venture outside', they tell us. 'Arm yourself with a shovel and be prepared for the worst'. Trains have been halted, airplanes have been grounded, society has grinded to a shrieking halt.

I don't know if I will be able to finish writing you this message. We might loose power soon. I call out to those who can hear me: come and rescue us! They say this night the white demon will strike again and once again take us into its paralysing grip. Its crimes will not go unnoticed as it leaves its visible tracks wherever it goes. Faceless though it may be, it answers to a name... it is called 1.5 inches of snow.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6338151.stm

The illusion of cheap

This Friday it's rent day again and so I just transferred a substantial amount of money into my landlord's account. Ouch, that really hurt! For the umpteenth time since I moved to London my account balance is flashing at me in big red numbers. It's an unfortunate combination to be unemployed, enrolled in a scandalously expensive school and living in the most expensive city in Europe (well, not counting Moscow apparently). I won't scare you with the exact amount of rent I pay for my room in this house that I'm sharing with 4 others, but suffice it to say there is a reason they tend to quote rent prices per week rather than per month in this town.

That London is an expensive city can't be a surprise to anyone. Living in it has had a weird effect on my personal perception of money though. When you go on holiday to a country with another currency you tend to look up the exchange rates beforehand. Once arrived you probably spend a good part of your vacation converting the prices of your souvenirs into more familiar currency. Moving to that country is a different matter I have found. The thing is that many costs are unavoidable anyway. You simply do need to buy groceries and you do have to pay that rent, there is nothing you can do about that. And so, after some time, you stop converting Pounds into Euros. After all, what would be the point? The thing is that by no longer converting them, in my mind's eye the two have become equivalent so I end up quite happily forking out 20 Pounds as if they were 20 Euros...and that's where the trouble begins! A few weeks ago, for instance, I was at this club with some of my flatmates and decided that I should treat myself to a special drink and I ordered a Mojito. This drink, consisting of some ordinary ice cubes, a bit of sugar, mint, lime and a fairly small amount of rum cost me the dear sum of ₤8.50! At that time, I didn't think much of it. Later on though, after the alcoholic haze had lifted, I started doing the math and realised I had just not only paid €13 for a single drink but that this in fact equated to 28 good old-fashioned guilders... Now that's one expensive drink! I don't know what you would pay for this same drink in a bar at the Leidseplein these days, it might not even be all that different, but my point is more that I have stopped REALISING how much money it really is.

This arithmetical self-delusion even goes as far as to have me believing things are cheaper over here than at home. At the moment 1 Pound more or less equals 1.5 Euros. Perhaps if the cost of living in Amsterdam or London would be about the same this ratio would be big enough to stand out. It would, for instance, be very clear that a ₤5 lunch is something very different from a €5 lunch. The thing is though, that because London is about 1.3 times more expensive than Amsterdam(1) the prices you see actually do look a lot like Euro prices. But just that little bit LOWER... and so the illusion is complete: London is cheaper! I guess that might help explain my current cash flow trouble.


(1) Look it up for yourself at http://www.mercerhr.com/pressrelease/details.jhtml?idContent=1142150)

To cycle or not to cycle...

Here's a riddle for you. It glows in the dark and rolls around the city in a funny hat and shorts. What is it? For anyone living in London this will be a no-brainer. For most dutch people , however, this may sound a bit mysterious. Well, let me solve the mystery for you guys: the correct answer is 'a London cyclist'. Every day on my way to College I get to enjoy the amazing spectacle of watching these borderline suicidal people working their way through traffic. By far most of them wear some sort of fluorescent yellow clothing of the kind that in the Netherlands only police men or road workers would dare to be seen in. The outfit is generally complemented with a sturdy biking helmet. The worst of them all though are the ones who, despite the fact that it is only February, go around treating the whole city to a glimpse of their milky white legs. Trust me, it isn't a pretty sight!

Cycling in London is on the rise and more and more people are abandoning the tube to pedal their way to work instead. One of the reasons that is frequently quoted for this is the London bombings of 7/7/2005. Ironically, people have traded in the very slim chance of getting blown to smithereens in the underground for the far more realistic chance of getting squashed above ground on the tremendously congested roads of London. Let me illustrate my point... In total the London bombings, which hit 3 tube trains and 1 bus, took the lives of 52 people. Two weeks later another 4 bombs were set off on the underground but this time the explosives did not fully detonate and nobody was seriously injured. Since then it has been quiet in those tunnels down below. So to sum it up: in the last 19 months 52 people have been killed by terrorist actions in public transport. The number of fatalities amongst cyclists, however, is far more alarming. According to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents here in the UK, in 2004 alone 134 cyclists were killed in traffic and many more were injured. As the number of cyclists has increased dramatically since then, it seems only fair to assume that so has the number of casualties. Mmm, you do the maths on that one and tell me what you would put your money on.

Getting run down by road raged bus drivers or cabbies is not the only danger faced by London cyclists. This morning I read in the Economist that apparently London has the most polluted air in all of Europe and that yearly about 1,000 people die from inhaling this toxic atmosphere. Small wonder so many cyclists around here wear these odd looking face masks that give me the creepy feeling I'm in Hong Kong during a SARS outbreak.

As a dutch girl who for years has braved the elements cycling to school, work or wherever, I have seriously considered getting a bike here too but with the odds so heavily stacked against me I have decided not to do it. The bus and the tube get me where I want to go just fine and my college is close by enough for me to walk, the British weather permitting. Fair enough, the public transport doesn't come cheap but what does in this town? I'd rather be poor but alive than sprawled out on the city pavement with a few extra pounds in my pocket...