Beer containers

Spot the Eagle

Having a sixpack is not quite the same as having a beer belly. You might think that, with one being out of reach at my age, I might as well go for the other: but no, as one astute reader of this blog already noticed, I am in denial and desperately reaching.

All this had the effect that I couldn't straighten my arms this morning without a serious effort and disregard of aching muscles. So much so, in fact, that I seriously considered cancelling today's episode of the Body Pump madness.

Before I could do so, however, I had to get to work. There are essentially two routes from my appartment buiding, on the old Heslington West campus, to the Computer Science department, on the new Heslington East campus. It's less than 10 minutes by bike from one to the other, a nice distance during which to wake up properly; a bit shorter than what I have to cover in Twente, in fact. However, very much unlike what I am used to is the traffic. Especially between 8:00 and 9:00 all of Yorkshire is trying to get into York and vice versa, and they all want to use the two roads I have at my disposal. It's so bad that you sometimes have to wait for minutes to even cross the street. Fortunately one of the available routes consists of left turns only, sparing me any street-crossing, so that's the one I'm converging towards. (It might also be slightly shorter.)

This contrasts sharply with the scene greeting me when I enter the office. There is sort of a front-office (protected from the evil outside world by a beeping door) which seats 8 PhD students, with less space per person than our MSc students have; behind those are proper offices for the permanent staff: Louis, Dimitris, Radu and Richard, each with another beeping door all of their own. I do not think I have yet seen more than 4 PhDs there at any given time, and I must say I can't blame them: the working conditions are far from ideal, and where we in Twente are discouraging working from home, the circumstances here justify another attitude.


I am privileged to have the use of Richard's proper office, and this instead is very quiet. There I am, hard away at this activity we call research: staring at the screen most of the time, picking up a piece of paper now and again (I am a firm disbeliever in the paperless office), and going outside only for a cup of coffee or a bathroom visit. Since it turns out the group has no collective lunch tradition, I've started preparing sandwiches in the apartment and bringing them with me. From time to time the light switches itself off, maybe there is a sensor with timer and my typing away at the keyboard doesn't register as movement.

All of which is enough explanation, I think, of why at the end of the day I decided to brave my aching arms and pump once more. As I had hoped, rather than making things worse this actually loosened me up.

For the evening I had planned another trip to the cinema, preceded by dinner there. This York Cityscreen is actually a restaurant-cum-bar-cum-cinema, not unlike Fellini's in Enschede. From the outside it is a very glass affair hanging out over the Ooze, pardon, Ouse. We actually visited this place when I was here with Elise in May this year. I couldn't have imagined then that I would be frequenting it just half a year later.

Dinner was Portobello mushroom, with, yes, a beer; the movie was Le Week-End. Judging from the information I can find, this is not even planned to be released in the Netherlands, which is really a pity. It is a beautiful, sharply observant and intermittently funny movie, about an elderly couple who just about have had it with one another, but wake up to this fact only during their 30th wedding anniversary in Paris. Jim Broadbent plays the part of the husband, which was a little bit too much like his role in Cloud Atlas to put that completely out of my mind.

After that, it was too late and I was too tired to write up all of the above straight away; which, my dear readers, is why you are updated a day late. Of course, it is flattering that you noticed ;-)