Centrifugal force

One of my teachers at high school once told me that she used to buy paprikas when they were just getting on the market in the Netherlands, somewhen in the 50s. At one point her neighbour, seeing this, also bought some. The next time they met, the neighbour asked my teacher what it was she did with these strange vegetables: the ones she had bought were completely empty!

I was reminded of this anecdote the other day by one that is even funnier, related to me by that same Sam Simpson (who seems to be one of those people organising and taking part in things - in other words, who are the life and breath of any larger company or institution). A month ago or so, after the freshmen had just arrived at this university, one of them came to the porter's lodge out of breath and in a panic: his clothes had been stolen from the washing machine in the university's laundromat, which was now completely empty! Upon going with him to take a look, the porter discovered the washer merrily spinning and asked the student why he thought that his clothes weren't there. After the missing clothes had been miraculously recovered, he proceeded to give a lecture on the effects of the centrifugal force...

After another busy but for blogging purposes uneventful day, getting ready to go to the biweekly Friday session of BM! I went to the Glasshouse once more, for an early dinner at 16:45. I met the "gang" there, quite accidentally though I later discovered there had been some twittering; we had a Grolsch (none of your alien ales), I had a World Dish of the Day, and off I went to the Bar Convent. They were instead off to see Gravity, which is just out here now. Turns out some of them have heard of the games club but none of them have been there. One lecturer from the HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) group, +Christopher Power, is into HeroClix (which I only know by reputation).

Of the games I played I only want to mention Trans Europa, an obvious variation on Trans America which is very familiar to at least some of my readers (actually it's really the same game with a different board); and Marrakech, which I have sung praises of in a previous post but failed to take a picture of as my phone was out of power. I lost dismally (I'm in charge of the yellow carpets in the picture) but I stick to my opinion: this is such a wonderfully original game!

The club closes at 21:00 (rules of the convent I think); which is an odd hour since it leaves a lot of the evening blank, as it were. I went to see if there was still a movie to be caught at the Cityscreen. Unfortunately there was only the aforementioned Gravity, which I liked but not enough to want to see it again already. I then hunted down Thirteen Thirty-One, one of the locations of the Aesthetica Short Film Festival (ASFF) I have vowed not to miss; however, after having found it decided I wan't in the mood after all and proceeded home. I ended up spending some of the blank evening at the laundromat, so exchanging today's time for tomorrow, and incidentally coming back full circle to the start of this post.

Mr. Health and Ms. Safety

(It isn't, really)

Fear is a bad counsellor, the saying goes. I do not think that piece of conventional wisdom has stopped many people from being influenced by their fears, taking unnecessary precautions, refraining from doing something they would love to do if it weren't for fear of something bad happening. Don't go into the woods tonight!

Fear of being held responsible for mishaps triggers particularly stupid reactions from all kinds of official institutions. Example: the Dutch government spent about 340 million Euro taking measures against the fearsome Mexican flu that was all set to invade us a couple of years ago, to make sure no-one could accuse them of being ill-prepared. I remember we all got extra cleansing fluid and paper towels at the university (which I still occasionally use for cleaning my whiteboard, recouping a fraction of the lost millions). Eventually it transpired that the skeptics were right: the yearly recurring influenza epidemic is about four times as deadly. Next time the government will react in the exact same way.

Lock the fire doors??

In England, the department of Fear is ruled by Mr. Health and Ms. Safety, and the chief technique in their repertoire is to put out warning signs. Any hot water tap warns that the water might be hot, any fire door (of which there are many) is labelled with the caution to keep it closed at all times - sometimes even locked, which is beyond my understanding. Fire is in any case much more on the mind of the English than it is of the Dutch: the fire alarm is tested weekly, next Monday there will be an inspection in my studio, the key card to my studio warns of fire. Twice I have been chased out of an English hotel room because of a spurious fire alarm, outside England this has never happened to me. If I don't get enough sleep due to a fire alarm and cause a traffic accident the next day... no, the discussion is hopeless. You can never move in the direction of abandoning safety measures once they are in place.

Ms. Safety's partner, Mr. Health, also frequently puts in an appearance. Every Tuesday at the department there are home-baked cakes, very good ones too; but you can only contribute if you list the health threats from the ingredients. Is there sugar? artificial colouring? nuts? Put up a warning sign! And yes, of course it all makes sense: how has the world managed to do without this life-saving information for so long? All the toilets are plastered with advice on how to catch, bin and kill those nasty germs that jump at us whenever we open that door. The power is in your hands! Use that force!

All of which really makes me wonder about the state of the cooker hood in my studio apartment. I have occasionally used the inbuilt light, and now also the extractor when frying my eggs (again today, less oil as per expert advice, yummy!) and each time noticed that the switches were sticky and greasy to the touch. Reaching higher, my fingers encountered a layer of grease surely indicating that this device had never been cleaned in its lifetime. Is that healthy? Is that safe? Aren't kitchens the most frequent sources of fire in the house, and aren't greasy cooker hoods among the best ways to aggravate and spread such fires?

Today the heating at the university was scheduled to undergo maintenance (sounds better than repair, but I don't think maintenance is typically done on a regular weekday) so I decided to work at home, and during a break I took the opportunity to make a little project out of the cleaning of the cooker hood. I had already armed myself with several types of cleaning fluids and cloths at an earlier visit to the supermarket, this was the moment to show how good a househusband I am.

Not the official colour of a bike chain

Cleaning something that is extremely dirty is a very satisfying activity, if it succeeds. It took me an hour, part of a bottle of dishwasher and almost half a bottle of all-purpose cleaner, but the cooker hood looks as good as new! What was brown is now white, and to my surprise the frosted glass covering is now clear glass. Victory!

Flushed with success, I didn't stop there and also cleaned and lubricated my bike once more. The paths and byways of York have the tendency to stay very wet and muddy even though the weather has been rather good on the average. In consequence, my adventures in reaching the York Maze had left the bike covered with mud, which due to the exposed chain was noticeably affecting it. All taken care of now. At the Sport Village this evening I parked my bike next to one of the exact same type, at which point I had the opportunity to see what happens if you do not care about the Health and Safety of your vehicle. May mine last for at least three more months, and may no further parts get stolen!

Thriller night

If it sounds like I'm doing nothing but going out, attending parties and shows: that's what it feels like, too. Tonight was the last of the shows I booked, but this weekend there's the Short Film Festival, distributed over 15 or so venues throughout York: that definitely looks worth a prolonged visit. After that it gets dark in my agenda - high time to stick my nose in the next "what's on in York".

On the assumption that it is more interesting to hear about my night-time experiences than about my daylight hours (and in the certain knowledge that they are more interesting to write about too) I will jump to 19:00 when it was time to go to Thriller Live, two and a half hours of Michael Jackson songs. I've been to the We Will Rock You musical and we all know Mama Mia, celebrating Queen and Abba, respectively, but this was billed as a concert, though taking place on stage, in the Grand Opera House York (not to be confused with the York Theatre Royal).

The weather was not the best: type 14 rain, light but dense, falling thick enough to get me quite wet in the less than ten minutes it took to get there. The next disappointment was my seat: as you can see on the photo, the ceiling, being the underside of the next higher balcony (or Grand Circle in theatre jargon) is quite low, hiding the top few meters of the stage. Fortunately all of the action remained just in view, at least when seated; only some of the light effects were lost.

I'm glad to say that was all that was negative about the experience. I have always liked the MJ beat, and the performance was excellent. "Concert" does not cover it, I think more than half the attraction is the dancing: atlethic, immaculately executed, sharp and hot. The troupe counted 15 in total, five of which were also singers. The visual feast was further enhanced by the wonderful wardrobes, diverse and quickly changed to fit the mood of the songs. The only part that didn't work for me was where they tried to depict MJ as a warrior for peace in line with Martin Luther King, Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon: I don't buy that at all, his music was great but the artist was the commercial type, with a very sad personal story. But oh my, what wonderful songs does he have to his credit!

I was trying to guess which song they would end with: you want to send the audience home on a high note, so it would have to be one of the favourites. My guess was either Billy Jean or Thriller, and that seemed borne out when those were performed in succession at the end (dancing zombies, we were back at Halloween!), but they were followed up by Bad - at which point unfortunately the audience was encouraged to stand up and clap in time with the music, meaning that now I really saw only the lower half of the action. That was bad. (Sorry for the lame pun, I couldn't resist.)

Headlight

Also bad was the fact that afterwards I found that I now have no headlight at all any more: someone had decided his need was greater than mine. It was indeed an easily detachable little lamp, the idea being that I could take it off whenever I would park the bike somewhere. Yeah right, I can't even remember to switch it off, forget about taking it off. What tickles me most is that I had just put in new batteries (as I promised my mom). I'm now considering to go back to the original meaning of the work "headlight" and use the headlamp that I actually took with me to York. Lots of advantages really: it could never be stolen, I could hardly forget to switch it off, and it always points to where I'm looking. I'm going to try it out for sure.

Mensiversary

To celebrate the conclusion of my first month in York, they organised a big fireworks display. Now that's what I call a friendly and considerate gesture!

I celebrated New Year's Eve in England once, when I stayed with Elise at my parents' place, who at that time were living in Comberton near Cambridge. For the occasion I had bought one piece of fireworks, which was not easy to find at that. At the turning of the year, the entire village was dark, there was no one on the street. We did light our hard-won piece, but after it had gone poof! ten seconds later, we concluded that this was sad rather than festive.

Instead, the English choose to have their fireworks on Guy Fawkes' Day, and since I certainly did not want to miss out on this event I had booked a ticket at the York Maze. While doing so and looking into the background a bit, I discovered some facts interesting enough to share with you: 1. Fawkes was actually born in York, so they burn him here with a vengeance; and 2. Fawkes fought on the side of the Spanish during the 80 years' war against the Dutch, so he really was a bad guy. Let him burn!

Buying fireworks around November V? No problem at all!

Before I started off to the event this evening, my "landlord" dropped by to retrieve some large cardboard boxes that he needed to send milk powder to China. A bit thoughtlessly I asked him if he planned to go and see any of the many fireworks, at which he smiled a bit and made it politely clear that he did not think this worth his while. I could see his point of course, I would not go out of my way to buy Gouda cheese here.

Getting to the York Maze, which is some way outside York but on the same side as the university, turned out to be harder than I thought. The route I had planned went via Sunday's golf course, I imagined this was a good moment to explore the bridleway: but after a few kilometers in the pitch dark - the second set of batteries in my bike's headlight is running out because I keep forgetting to switch the thing off - the road just ended. That was rather unexpected, but a quick check on my phone confirmed that, indeed, there might be a footpath leading on but no more than that. So there was nothing for it but to turn back on my track and try another road.

Would you believe that the exact same thing happened to me again? The road just ended in the middle of nowhere! Looking at the map I now think there is a military airfield in that direction, that must be the reason you can't go that way. Still it is strange that the roads just peter out, without proper warning.

I almost gave up on the whole thing, but not quite. Though I had surely missed the lighting of the bonfire (GFD is in that sense a mixture of New Year's Eve and Eastern, at least as celebrated in the east of the Netherlands) there were still 40 minutes left to the start of the fireworks, which should be enough to get there via the highway. Indeed that turned out to be the case, though this was along a road eminently unsuitable for bikes, I felt very uncomfortable with my meagre lights.

As the hour of 20:00 got closer, more amd more cars were parked on the side of the road, clearly with the idea of enjoying the show from there: and indeed this was a good place for it, in the open and the dark, clear skies, good views. All around you could see rockets going up, in isolation or in concert.

Bonfire with fireworks behind it

The York Maze was very lively, with merry-go-rounds, food stalls, a playground for children (of which there were plenty), a rousing announcer, and eventually a rather good fireworks show, lasting about a quarter of an hour. I'm glad I decided to persevere.

Obviously there is also a maze, I suspect of the maize variety, but I didn't check it out - probably would have been closed anyway - instead preferring to hurry back home straight away, ahead of the masses insofar possible. That worked out well, but I definitely intend to install my next set of batteries tomorrow.

Enzjdee

Brilliant weather today, though cold: there was frost on the fields. In any case, it was Monday, so back to the grind.

Progress at work is slow. Before I came here and settled in a bit I imagined I would be working most evenings and weekends for want of anything else to do. Nothing could be further from the truth. This night is the scheduled outing of the EngD students to which I have invited myself through the intervention of Adolfo and Sam.

The Engineering Doctorate is a degree awarded to research done in collaboration with industry. The EngD (pronounced enzjdee) students are actually employed at some company, and obtain their degree at the university in part time, in the course of four years (the regular PhD takes 3 years in the UK, rather than the standard 4 years in the Netherlands). They have a course programme at the university consisting of 120 European Credits' worth of studying. That's two full years; I don't quite understand how this is possible given that it is a part-time thing and they also have to do research/development work to earn them their degree. Maybe the latter is supposed to be on company time.

Proof: He's alive!

It was a mixed and lively assembly, employed at diverse locations though the UK - about half of them live elsewhere and are here this week for course work. We went to a bar and (Indian) restaurant within 100 meters of the Barbican where I attended the Remembrance Festival on Sunday. Among other things, I got confirmation of my hypothesis that the bike trail from the university to the center is indeed a converted railroad track. I also picked up some more tips about where to go to enjoy the night life in York. I have to be well-prepared to show Elise around, she's planning to come over for a weekend mid-December, so I guess I am forced to check out the Evil Eye and the Trembling Madness one of these days.

I was also briefly in touch with Floris, if only because he wanted to know the wifi password at home. I forgot to ask him how he is doing with his exams, of which he had one on Friday and several more this week. Rather unlikely that I would have received a reply anyway...

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme

I did look up whether you can fry eggs in olive oil (what do I know after all?); the consensus is that you can do this in whatever kind of fat or oil you like. Before carrying out the experiment, however, I felt that I had to deserve this treat, so I decided to go for a run first - it being sunny, though very windy.

What is more, in the spirit of experimentation I decided to try out a new route. This was only partially successful, as after faithfully following one of the ubiquitous Public Footpaths, I landed in a field from which there was no discernible exit. I was convinced that I had not missed a sign. After walking the edge of the field I found a gap that had definitely been used before by humans, though equally certainly it was not an official path. I don't know how this right-of-way thing works, if a gap like this stays in existence for a hundred years, is it then an official footpath?

I was not yet entirely out of the woods, as the grounds I had now entered very clearly belonged to a golf club. In England these tend to be a bit more commonplace than in the Netherlands, but still I did not feel comfortable at the thought of irate golf players and golf balls zooming past my head, snitch style - as happened to my father once when we were walking in Scotland, though not on purpose I am sure. I kept very carefully to the rough and out of the way of groups of golfers until I found the exit. The club stems from 1906, which lends it a respectable age - quite a bit older yet than the Golfclub Driene in Hengelo, which has been in existence since 1926 and is said to be one of the oldest in the Netherlands. However, there is an public road across, not just a footpath but a bridleway no less, so I might do some more exploring, making sure to keep to the tarmac.

After geting home safely, I broke my fast very pleasurably on my well-deserved eggs. Of course I have an electric hub which takes forever to heat up and longer yet to cool down, and is far from horizontal to boot, but I managed this simplest of dishes all the same. Next time I will use less oil.

At this point I was faced with a dilemma. I had felt, and the weather service confirmed, that it was really very windy, not good cycling weather. There were also some showers predicted for the middle of the day. Reason enough to look for some other way to spend the day and still see something more of the surroundings of York. In the meanwhile I had a boundary condition: I have booked a ticket for the Festival of Remembrance,  a concert which was scheduled to start at 19:00, so whatever I planned to do had to take that into account.

At this moment any British reader of this blog will have picked up on that word "remembrance", and started wondering what I thought I would be doing there. Bear with me. For the others, I'll keep you in suspense for another 7 hours of my time.

Scarborough

Scarborough beach

On the list of places that my colleagues thought I absolutely had to see was the town of Whitby, in the Yorkshire Moors to the northeast. There are supposed to be fabulous walks there, and a famous bike trail to Scarborough running over an abandoned and dug-up railroad track (poetically called the "cinder track", national cycle route no. 1). Whitby turned out to be impossible to reach by train and be back in time, but Scarborough is less than an hour from York, with a regular though not too frequent service (every two hours). A bonus was that the weather was supposed to be better there: same wind but no showers. So off to Scarborough I went, planning to walk north a bit along the coastal footpath, and then south again along this bike trail.

I had no idea what to expect. In fact I did not even know before this that Scarborough is a coastal town. But there it was, spectacular cliffs, ruin of an old castle, sandy beaches (as a Dutchman you expect nothing else but I've come to realise this is a rarity in England); obviously no beach fun in November but prettily coloured beach houses. I think the epithet "fair" is fair.

The Cinder Track

It was a nice walk. I could see that the coast gets wilder up north, where Whitby must lie, but also on this stretch the sun, sky, rolling hills, cliffs and North Sea made for a memorable view. My only problem was to decide when to turn off the coast and start back again. Here I misjudged, as I often do, in favour of a slightly longer route that would allow me to see just a little bit more. The trouble lies in the world "slightly": when this turns out to be three quarters of an hour, then catching a train suddenly changes from easy to almost impossible. Getting the next connection would mean arriving at the concert about 5 minutes in advance, not desirable.

Volkswagen Station

The railroad track-turned-bike trail is certainly worthwhile, I look forward to trying it out in its entirety. Getting an early train to Whitby should do the trick, but I would have to plan this well in advance. As a bicyclist you are not often blessed with such a level and straight track, with sturdy overpasses and tunnels at many road crossings. There is something very appropriate about one iron horse making way for another. Having seen this, I am now actually convinced that some of the bike paths in York are also converted railroad tracks: a lot of those, built in the railroad heydays of the 19th century, were abandoned in the 1960s in a move popularly called the "Beeching Axe" which did away with 50% of all stations (!) in Great Britain (Beeching being the name of the person responsible for this plan).

Catching the train was very very tight. I saw a sign saying 6,5 miles to Scarborough when I had less than an hour left, which would be impossible to make so I suspended my belief in the sign. My smartphone GPS came in handy here to estimate the remaining distance. At some point I had half an hour left and decided that there was nothing for it but to jog the rest of the way, so that is what I did. I must have looked rather ridiculous; but no matter, I made the train with 2 minutes to spare!

Remembrance

A few weeks ago, when I was still worried that I would be sitting alone in my room evening after evening with nothing to do, I went through a leaflet called "what's on in York" or the like and picked out some events that looked worthwhile. One of them was this Festival of Remembrance, which offered a military band and several choirs. I did not bother to find out the background and booked a ticket online.

When I arrived at the York Barbican where this was going to take place, after having eaten something and exchanged some articles of clothing for dryer ones (which was absolutely necessary even after one hour of train), I felt distinctly underdressed, underage and out of my depth. Most of the audience were silver-haired insofar they were haired at all, and dressed as for an opening night, which I had not expected given the modest ticket prices and the local choirs advertised. More worrying yet were the sharply uniformed representatives of the military, present in impressive numbers, medals and all. Most worrying of all were the little British flags that a lot of the audience, old and young, were carrying around. Belatedly I started realising that this unusual word "remembrance" might stand for an unusual occasion, and from there to the realisation that this might well have to do with commemorating the World Wars was not such a big leap.

The all-knowing internet quickly confirmed this. The Dutch have no First World War to commemorate, having been neutral; and I remember that Geert Mak in his book My Father's Century points out how much this sets us apart, without us even realising it, from almost the entire rest of Europe, where it has often left much deeper (even though less recent) scars than the Second. This is certainly true of England, where the Great War will forever refer to WW1. And so it is that the day of remembrance, which for the Dutch is determined by the end of WW2, here is determined by the end of WW1, nominally on the 11th of November. No doubt scheduling issues have led to this concert being early.

Anyone?

All in all, an evening like this is quite an education. As a concert it was OK, more or less what you would expect from the Main St. Ladies Barbershop Singers, the Heavy Cavalry & Cambrai Band or the York Military Wives Choir. There was some parading at the beginning and the end, which I had also come to expect by then. There was some communcal singing of wartime songs, which was a surprise. I think I held my own, except for the White Cliffs of Dover which was new to me. Enthousiastic flag waving ensued at the performance of Rule Brittannia, confirming that the English are much more unashamedly patriottic than the Dutch. The biggest surprise was the religious service at the very end, up to and including the singing of hymns, which are fortunately slow and simple enough so you don't have to know them to be able to sing along.

Final thoughts of the day

This has become a long post, as befits a long day. Writing up my experiences is time-consuming but a very interesting exercise for myself: I have found out that it is a way of consolidating what I have seen and done. Impressions and thoughts are fleeting, but grab one before it is gone and write it down, and it becomes truth.

Another day in paradise

Niagara Falls

Surprise! When I woke up this morning it was already past 9:30. That's the first time I have overslept here in York. I suppose in a way this is a good sign, as it must mean that I am feeling comfortable here. It certainly also means that my conversion to English winter time is now complete.

Well, to be honest, yesterday's pints might have something to do with this; but at least there is no comparison with last week, though I imagine that some of my readers who noticed the prolonged absence of Friday's writeup might have thought so.

Since I still had some shopping to do and actually had intended to be at the Bar Convent from 10:00 onwards for another bout of board games, any plans I might have had of first catching up on my blog went straight out of the window. It takes me an hour on average to write one of these posts, no way that I would allow that time to come out of my game playing budget.

Clearly I am settling into a routine here. There are several sides to this. It saves me a lot of time for one thing: I no longer have to think hard about which type of bread or butter I want (literally!). On the other hand, I feel sort of obliged to keep trying out new things, to make the most of my stay here. Feeling adventurous, this morning I therefore bought English peanut butter (no Calvé to be found!) as well as eggs, to create some variety in my breakfast, and bananas next to the Cox apples I already sung my praises of. (Still no buttermilk though, witness of the fact that there are limits to my adventurousness.)

Actually baking eggs will have to wait a bit longer, until the time I have also remembered to buy oil or butter... although as I'm writing this I seem to remember having seen olive oil in one of the cupboards... and YES, it's there! Tomorrow, fried eggs and ham! Lovely! Let no one say that writing a blog serves no purpose!

In the end it was almost noon before I made it to Beyond Monopoly! The first game that was open for another player to join was in fact Kingdom Builder, which is funny because it was also the last game I played in Essen last Sunday. (Seems a lot longer ago than six days.) I can truthfully say I played this two times in a row! As far as I'm concerned, it's definitely a winner: quick, varied, nice game board, well-balanced.

I won't go though the whole list, but there were two new games I learned that are also keepers. The first was The Resistance, a Werewolves-or Saboteur-type game in which the players are divided into two groups, generically the good guys (the majority) and the bad guys (a minority). The bad guys know one another but the good guys are completely in the dark. The main purpose of the good guys is to find out who the bad guys are, in the course of the gameplay which slowly reveals information, not always easy to interpret; the purpose of the bad guys is obviously to sabotage this process. This involves a lot of argumentation and double-talk, good fun when done well, as it was today. The game is definitely better than either Werewolves or Saboteur. The second was Niagara, another complete original, in which canoers are travelling down and hopefully up the Niagara river gathering jewels; but the river actually flows (moving board!) and obviously the Falls are awaiting the unwary and those caught out by the weather...

After leaving I was really hungry and went home quickly for a routine soup. In contrast to yesterday, the prospect of spending a few quiet hours in my own small enclosure seemed attractive enough. Not to mention that I had two days' worth of experiences to put to (electronic) paper, plus the fact that, the weather willing, I still intend to make it to Selby by bike tomorrow. Sleeping away all those hours of daylight just won't do!

Seeing that it is already way past midnight, it is a good thing that my writing will have caught up with my actions by the time I reach the period ending this sentence, like so.