Bristol, England: Veni, Vidi, Percucurri?

A map of my 5 or so mile run through Clifton to Westbury Park and back.

Not quite the same ring as the old Julius Caesar quote, but a nice long run in the sun in England is as close to a conquest as I’m going to get these days.

I’m settling back into my old digs, Hodgkin House, quite well. It’s an international postgraduate student house, so as before I expect to meet plenty of really incredible, really interesting, dedicated, and intelligent people. Already I’ve met a few and had some interesting conversations. I met Srijit from Bangalore, India. His family moved there  from Kerala where they speak Malayalam. But in Bangalore, they speak Kannada, which is loosely related to Malayalam, but Srijit said he can only somewhat understand it and cannot make himself understood. This just underscores stories and experiences of the amazing diversity of India.

And I met Jose. Judging from his accent and football (soccer) jersey I was guessing he was from Spain, so when I asked and he answered “Catalunya” I responded, “Ah, yes, in northern Spain.”

“No. Not Spain; Catalunya!” He shot back with a big smile, and then explained the tyranny and conquest of Catalunya by the Spanish and the fact that one day Catalunya would be it’s own nation again, he hopes.

Wow. Having several Spanish friends, having traveled there, and remembering the E.T.A. bombing campaign of not so long ago, I was well-aware of the Basque separatist sentiments, but this was the first I had heard of Catalunyian separatism.

I stumbled across our kitchen cleaner, a nice and very chatty Thai woman who I have always gotten along with. I had thought she was gone for some reason, but no. Long story short, she’s widowed now, has plenty of money, loves her job and the ‘family’ of the house staff and students, and takes groups of students out to a great Thai restaurant from time to time. A student just happened to cancel the day I ran into her, so I was whisked off to a huge, 2-hour, 4-course Thai lunch (/dinner as I didn’t eat again that day).

I’ve met a few others as well, and no doubt will meet countless more. The house can hold around 50 students, and, being summer, there’s a fair amount of shuffle and short-term people coming and going. Plus there are old friends to see, professors, classmates, and more (and if that means you, you know who you are, come visit!). They’re doing a ‘big dinner’, sending off a Belgian girl, in about an hour. But it’s 7:30 now and I’m already well beyond my jet-lagged average of crashing out in the mid-afternoon for a ‘nap’ only to wake up 7 or 8 hours later. So I’ll play it low-key tonight, hoping to sleep from about 8 until… We’ll see.

But the real reason I’m here is to finish up my PhD, which I’m already happily cranking away on again.

Good health. Good people. Good work. I foresee a very good year.


PS. any typos or nonsensical drivel in the above: jet-lag.