Cathedral Lights Plus HMS Pinafore

Tonight I went to a performance of HMS Pinafore and Trial by Jury with some friends, but first we stopped by the ruined cathedral. The St Andrews Festival is this weekend, so there's a bunch of events like a light show on the cathedral's walls. I believe tonight's show was about the church's history in Scotland. We didn't pay admission to go see the show, but I took a few pictures from a distance.

By the way, HMS Pinafore and Trial by Jury were awesome. I had seen HMS Pinafore about 10 years ago, but I didn't remember much. "When I Was a Lad" was hilarious, especially the lines:

Now landsmen all, whoever you may be,

If you want to rise to the top of the tree,

If your soul isn't fettered to an office stool,

Be careful to be guided by this golden rule--

Stick close to your desks and never go to sea,

And you all may be rulers of the Queen's Navee!

Whenever I think about HMS Pinafore, I think about The West Wing and Ainsley Hays. She was a staunch Republican whose office was in the basement near the furnace because the Democrats hated her. She references HMS Pinafore, and here are the clips: Pinafore 1, Pinafore 2. I also love the scene where she meets the President.

If only money solved all problems

RJ Matson, The New York Observer and Roll Call

I want a suit like that.

Forgive me because I normally don't get political on my blog, but here we go...

On October 30, Vice President Biden said that 640,329 jobs had been created or saved because of the $787,000,000,000 stimulus package. Unfortunately, that number is inaccurate. Earl Devaney from the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board said that there are lots of irregularities so that the number may be more or less than 600k. Such irregularities include spending $1.2 million in Utah's 4th congressional district. Utah only has 3 congressional districts. More than 58,000 jobs have been "created/saved" because of money spent even though no money has actually been spent on those projects.

My biggest problem isn't the irregularities. I expect irregularities in government, especially when tracking $787 billion package. My biggest problem is that VP Biden was proud to report 640,329 jobs had been created because the government had allocated $787 billion for stimulus. That's about $1.2 million of allocated money per job. According to recover.gov, $141.33 billion has actually been spent. That means the government has actually spent more than $220,000 per job created. In Mississippi, the government has spent $904.8 million, or about $263,000 per job. Of course, this is assuming the recover.gov's numbers are accurate, which is doubtful.

I understand the multiplier effect that says when stimulus money is given to one person he/she will spend that money elsewhere in the economy. Thus, the economy gets stimulated. Unfortunately, I strongly doubt the multiplier effect has had much effect because we have a 10.2% unemployment rate. Since we started recording this data 6 decades ago, the highest unemployment rate we've recorded was 10.8% in 1982. Today, 15.7 million people are looking for jobs but can't find them. 5.6 million are in long-term unemployment (have been looking for jobs for more than 6 months). 27 million are underemployed. Since December 2007, the number of unemployed has increased by 8.2 million. We've lost 5.3% of non-farm payroll jobs.

And Obama's administration is dubiously boasting that the government has saved 0.6 million jobs after a $787 billion stimulus?

Meanwhile, the deficit is about 10% of our GDP when it should be around 3%. Bush didn't help, but Obama isn't cleaning up the mess. I understand that stimulus can help the economy, but we have to eventually pay off this debt. Maybe in this globalized economy the old forms of stimulating the national economy don't work anymore; we spend too much of our money on imports so that the domestic economy doesn't get stimulated. I also wonder if the US should have let the present economy go a little more south so that we wouldn't stifle our future economy with enormous debt.

Here are some links to the articles I used: NYT (11/6/09), NYT Economix (11/6/09), CNN (11/6/09), NYT (11/16/09), CNN a (11/17/09), CNN b (11/17/09), Bureau of Labor Statistics (11/6/09).

Eric Allie, Chicago

Expatriate Thanksgiving: we can cook a dang good turkey

A group of us who have been doing pub quizzes together for the past few weeks got together along with some classmates and their friends for an expatriate thanksgiving . I was in charge of the turkey. I've never cooked a turkey. When I lived in France a couple years ago, I carved a turkey but didn't cook it (actually, it was a chicken because we couldn't find the real thing, but the girls who bought it swore it was a turkey). At church last Sunday I met a lady who knew about American Thanksgiving this upcoming Thursday, and she asked me if I was going to celebrate. When I told her I was in charge of the turkey but didn't know where I could buy one (I've learned that not all countries have turkeys in the grocery store around Thanksgiving time... go figure), all the older ladies at the table told me what I needed to do. One even offered a pan to cook it in. I didn't need the pan, but I did learn that I needed to buy the turkey ASAP so that it would defrost in time. After I bought the turkey, a couple friends took it from me because I didn't have room in my fridge to put it. Besides, we were having Thanksgiving at their place. They defrosted it for a couple days, and the last day they soaked it in a bucket with water, salt, honey, and pepper. They read about it on the internet. Thursday morning I went over to start cooking it, and I spread melted butter mixed with chicken bullion all over the outside and inside the turkey. I read about doing that on the internet. We cooked it for 3 hours, 18 minutes because that's what the packaging said to do. Also, we covered it with foil except for the last thirty minutes so that it would stay moist. In the end, it was a delicious- I'd say it was one of the better turkeys I've had. The meat was so moist that when I carved it, everything fell apart. I tried to get some good turkey legs, but the meat wouldn't stick to the bone as I cut it away. Cooking the turkey had been a team effort, and we doubted whether or not it would be edible in the end. But the three men in the group did surprisingly well.

While carving the turkey, I accidently splattered

turkey juices all over my pants.

It didn't look very flattering.

Turkey post-carving- yum yum.

Booyah- Touchdown- we make miracles happen

Others brought the stuffing, wine, a rice-cheese dish,

apple pie, a sweet strawberry dish, gravy, etc.

The Raisin

Instead of explaining a tradition that I don't really understand, I just stole this description of The Raisin from Spiegel:

"Raisin Weekend," the crazed, carnavalesque kickoff to St. Andrew's academic year, may indeed at one time have had something to do with raisins. The origins of Raisin Weekend remain shrouded in mystery, an obscurity all too appropriate for a festival whose very tradition is rooted in mocking tradition. For a university sometimes accused of having built a reputation for stuffy poshness -- its most famous recent alumnus is Prince William -- Raisin Weekend promises the ultimate retort, styling itself as a wild, bachannalic rite of passage for baffled first-year students.

At the heart of this initiation process is the "academic family," an organ which, far from serving any scholastic purpose, functions like a cruel caricature of the "buddy systems" favored by less imaginative institutions. Each first-year student assumes for the duration of festivities the title of "academic child." He or she is then joined to both an "academic mother" and an "academic father" chosen from later years. These figures serve as their child's spiritual -- and quite often carnal -- tutors for the rest of the boozy ordeal.

The duties of the academic mother, according to a special Raisin Weekend guide written by the university's student union, begin with throwing her children a "tea party" on Sunday afternoon, with "the tea often being replaced by alcohol." Mothers are instructed to "ply (their) kids with party food, making sure they have eaten something" before everyone moves on to the father's party. Mothers are also required to dress up their children in outrageous costumes and to wrap them in "raisin strings," which are simply threads attached to some chosen object deemed both "fun" and "representative" of the child in question.

Academic fathers are charged with chaperoning their children throughout the night's parties. In return for this "paternal" stewardship, academic children are supposed to bestow gifts upon their fathers. Traditionally, children were supposed to gift their fathers with a pound of raisins, but in recent times a bottle of wine has been the custom.

In gratitude for the gift, fathers award their children with "Raisin Receipts." These are no ordinary records of transaction. Most academic fathers choose to print their receipts -- really just a scribbled latin phrase -- onto large and hulking objects. As the student union guide advises fathers, "the receipt can take any form you choose -- from an abandoned piece of furniture to a stuffed animal."

On Monday, comes the climax. Child and parent alike congregate in the quadrangle of St. Salvator's College where they then participate in the largest out-door shaving cream fight on the planet. Academic children come in costume and must bring their unwieldy "receipts" along with them.

Here's another article with more pictures.

I do not have an academic family and did not participate in the famous foam fight because I am a postgrad, and mostly undergrad freshers participate. A few postgrad friends participated, and I would have enjoyed doing a little bit if I didn't have two 5,000 word essays due this week (I just turned the last one in earlier today, hence why I waited so long to blog about The Raisin). The weekend here was crazy, though. My neighbors had a loud party Sunday afternoon in their backyard while I was finishing my first essay. Police were everywhere, too. It was cool getting to see the foam fight. I got as close as I could without getting attacked with shaving cream. Fortunately, I only got a little on my backpack. That was easy to clean up before I had to go to class.

This is the famous "PH" in front of St Salvator's Quad.

The Catholics burned Patrick Hamilton at the stake here

during the reformation.

Any student who steps on the "PH" will fail all their classes

unless they do the "May Dip" and swim in the North Sea on May 1.

The academic children were corralled in such a way that they

had to walk pass the PH and have trouble avoiding it.

The Raisin at St Salvator's Quad

You may ask yourself, "Is he wearing tight red fishnet pantyhose?"

Yes, he is.

I ran into a few postgrad friends who participated.

Because of all the foam, I didn't recognize them at first.

Gotta love the sombrero.

The guy in this picture, who I don't know, asked me to

take this picture. He was supposed to find me on

facebook so that he could get it from me, but he still

hasn't gotten in touch.

The Lichen Strikes Back

This week I barricaded myself in my room so that I could write my essay arguing that history tends to make conflicts worse, not better. Fortunately, I'm almost finished and only need to make some revisions tomorrow. I haven't written an essay in 2 years, so I had some trouble getting back into a groove. I had a lot of difficulty starting the essay, and I'll have to rewrite some of the first few pages tomorrow.

When I got tired writing the essay, I'd stare out my window and the garden in our backyard. Since no one has weeded this garden or trimmed the bushes in years, this "garden" is more like an overgrown jungle. It's really unfortunate, but postgrad students have a hard enough time keeping a kitchen clean far less planting and pruning roses or ivy. It's also kinda cool because it makes the backyard feel more rustic.

While staring out the window, I noticed something odd. Directly in front of my window is the roof to the common room downstairs, and green lichen covers the roof. I would think that plants growing on a roof would be bad for the building's structure. Maybe our backyard jungle is starting to consume my flat. Maybe I should have been writing an essay instead of staring out my window.

When the Brits say "respectable," what do they mean?

I'm annoyed with all the online dating service advertisements on facebook. Since my relationship status is "single," there is always at least one of these ads on the side of the page. I usually click the 'x' so that the ads will go away, and facebook is supposed to keep track of what I'm not interested in. Unfortunately, fb keeps putting more and more of these ads up.

Tonight I was about to remove this ad when I saw something odd. I'm not entirely accustomed the the differences between American and British English, but I don't think the word "respectable" properly describes how the girl presents herself. Back home "respectable" girls don't put pictures like that on the internet. Her shorts barely cover up her underwear, and I don't expect to see that top in church on Sunday. When I think of "respectable," I think of turtlenecks.

There's only one caveat I'd suggest: since the edges of the photo are curved, it looks like someone took the picture through a peephole. If a creepster secretly took this photo, then I could understand. She was an innocent girl in the bathroom looking in the mirror. But then that makes me wonder who is running the online dating service, and what does it mean by "good guy?" "Good guys needed to save this girl from her stalker neighbor?" I wouldn't mind being her hero, so maybe I should look into this.

Le Fiasco: I thought there was no smoking on this train

After having breakfast with Matthias (a good friend from Germany who worked with me at Lycée Jean Giraudoux in Châteauroux) last Saturday morning, I left for Charles de Gaulle airport on an RER train. I had more than a couple hours before I could check in and even longer before we would start boarding. When we were no longer underground, I noticed an odor and thin, gray smoke in my car. Since we were now above ground, I thought, "Hmm... we must have passed someone burning leaves or trash." A couple minutes later I realized that the smoke and smell were still in the car as if it was traveling with us. When we stopped at the next stop, Stade de France, we all got off and waited to see what would happen. Since it was probably a small electrical fire, the smoke stopped once the train stopped. The conductor wouldn't move the train out of the way until the firefighters made certain everything was ok, so we had to wait. Another northbound RER train stopped at the other platform, but it was wasn't going to CDG. I thought the next train headed to the airport could use this platform since all northbound RER trains used the same rail lines in this section of track, but the French thought differently. A few hundred yards away the next CDG-bound train sat on the tracks even though the other platform was empty. We all stared at it. Every few minutes I'd glance at my watch and think, "Ok. I have an hour and fifteen minutes before I HAVE to check in." "Ok. Now I have an hour." "Shit. I only have thirty minutes." Eventually, the "pompiers" arrived and said the fire was gone (if the fire was still there, the whole station would have been gone), and the conductor finally moved the train. The next train slowly rolled into the station. That trip to the airport went slowly for me. I felt like we spent way too long at every stop, and several of us kept glancing at our watches with frustrated faces. When we arrived at the airport, I had five minutes to get to the checkin counter. Charles de Gaulle is a complicated airport with inadequate signs, so I ran past the hallway I was supposed to go through and became frustrated when I came to the end of the terminal and realized I had to run back to the other side. When I finally found the checkin counter, a couple other passengers who had been on my train were begging the EasyJet employees to let us on the plane. They rolled their eyes in true Parisian style and stopped closing down their stations. I took a deep breath after they took my luggage and walked casually to the gate mentioned on my ticket. Every gate has its own security check instead of having just one for the terminal, so I stood in line in front of Gate 24's x-ray machine with my computer, shoes, belt, cell phone, and loose change in plastic trays. After putting everything into the machine, I gave my ticket to the security agent. He said, "This is Gate 24." "I know." "You're going to Edinburgh." "Yes." "You're at the wrong gate." "But the ticket says Gate 24." "The ticket is wrong." I had to scramble to get my stuff back from the x-ray machine, tie my shoes, buckle my belt, and shove my computer back into my book bag. Eventually, I found the right gate, but security there wanted to check my bag to see if I had put a water bottle into my book bag (which I hadn't). As I stood in line to board the plane, I wiped sweat from my face with my scarf and wished I had worn summer clothes instead. A pretty French girl who had run with me from the RER train for a little while smiled, "Tu est arrivé." "Oui, finalement."