The sound of May: frogs in rice paddies; the ubiquity of drinks vending machines; the scrupulousness with which Japanese pedestrians wait for the green traffic signal, even in the absence of any traffic.

This will be my last journal entry - for a while at least. I am unhappy with my life here, and writing about it isn't going to make things any better. The only thing I can do now to make things better is to leave. I may be able to find the courage to do this soon, or I may simply continue in my passivity and wait for things to take their natural ( Read more... )

When I arrived at Cogne, I thought I might still have time to scramble up one of the nearby peaks, so I quickly put up my tent and headed out onto the trail. But as I was watching the clouds started crawling up the mountainside like giant slugs, and within a few minutes the thunder was echoing up and down the valley. I spent the rest of the ( Read more... )

There are storms forecast for tomorrow, so it looks like I may be spending the afternoon gazing out the window of cosy cafe in Cogne instead of heading straight up to the Laghi di Lussert. With any luck they'll be finished by the time I want to pitch my tent. The rest of the week's forecasts are looking all right for the moment, so I'm still ( Read more... )

I arrived safely at Valdellatorre after a tense bus ride to Stansted (traffic was so bad the the driver asked for help from a local to find an alternative route out of Cambridge - but once we hit the motorway things were fine and I still made it to checkin with 15 minutes to spare). Mara picked me up from the airport, and I'll be spending the next ( Read more... )

This thought makes me far happier than it has any right to. But then after that it will only be another three years until I leave Cambridge for good. I've been a good mood again for the past few days, despite having objectively calculated tha my life here is really pretty bad after all. My project is pretending to work for the moment - I finally ( Read more... )

The concert last Saturday went off well enough, but like most of the choir, I had never really got around to liking the piece (Tippet's A Child of our Time). I spent most of the day organising the post-concert party ( Read more... )

Things I like:
Singing: 3 hours/week
Cooking and eating at home: 8 hours/week
Spending time with Chinese friends: 2 hours/week
Studying Chinese etc.: 12 hours/week
Walking/riding in pleasant places: 1 hour/week

Things I dislike Being in the lab: 45 hours/week ( Read more... )

The academic year at Cambridge ended today. I didn't really notice until I got sick of the noise from Sidney Susex again and came to the Jesus library. The night was warm, the moon gibbous, and tents and undergrads were sprawled across the college lawns.

I went and discussed my issues with Yunus and had a crash course in four hundred years of inner Asian history - with this background the whole thing is starting to make a bit more sense, and I think I can surreptitiously work some of it into the translation to make it coherent ( Read more... )