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Interesting things I've run across...
Mar. 7th, 2003 04:19 pmSo at this point, I'm in Houston, and everything's alright, as far as everything can be alright, with the only small problem being that my phone's all out of juice, and the charger's back at the 211. That's not too bad -- in a coupla days, I'll be back at the 211. I'm currently hanging out in Esther's room, with eowyn plugged into the wall where Esther's machine (Tania -- apparently Macs get capitalized :) ) normally gets plugged in.
So I showed up last night without any real hitches in transit -- I showed up in Atlanta very slightly later than I'd expected (traffic was pretty well stopped for about a half hour, for no super-clear reason, but other than that... nothing too bad) but then made it through the airport with no hassles at all. My plane was about 20 minutes late, which didn't cause headaches for anybody except Esther's friend Steve, who was kind enough to pick me up as he was dropping off somebody else... so Esther was there at the gate, waiting for me :) Yay! We made Steve a bit late for a meeting, sadly. Sorry, Steve!
Ah, and something that very much needs to be recorded for posterity: one of the stewardesses on the flight, she refers to the Cups and Remaining Service Items as "rubbish" ... I asked her why this was. That's a fairly uncomon word in US English, these days -- who says "rubbish"? She responded that she'd much rather say "Do you have any rubbish?" than "Your trash?" or "Your wife's trash?" I thought this was hilarious, and said so :) English isn't super-good at distinguishing between contractions of "to be" and posessive forms, apparently :) Glory glory.
"... I meant, 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you'! "
Lewis Carroll rocks the universe. I just finished Through the Looking Glass on the plane.
Today before breakfast I headed off to go and run 'round the lovely Rice campus -- my original plan was to do a pair of loops 'round the campus, but I ended up, about two-thirds of the way 'round the first loop, finding the track. *laughs* Well, you know what happens when I find a track. It was nice and open, easy to see, and not locked up behind barbed wire, hedges, and padlocks. I ended up doing some 100m repeats, just to see how it would feel (and I suppose, on an animist sort of level, so as to say hello to the unfamiliar track)... also on the track at that point, were some long, tall, muscular-and-fast looking young women -- pretty clearly very strong hurdlers, if you can imagine a classic hurdler build. I asked them what events they were training for, and (no big surprise) they were getting ready for the 400m hurdles. What was slightly more surprising, was that they were professionals, with sponsorships from Nike and Asics, getting ready for upcoming track circuit meets and the Olympics.
It's odd -- you don't often just randomly run into Olympic hurdlers. They were really nice, and the one I spoke with told me her name, asked some stuff about me, and asked to be prayed for. I feel kinda silly -- forgot her name. :-\ Ah well. I so completely need to get a corporate sponsorship and start in on the European track circuit. *laughs* Alright, corporate world, I'm ready! Brooks? New Balance? Red Hat? Silk? Send me an email...
So this afternoon, we headed off for lunch, and then went to Esther's RELI class -- it's about the scriptures in the different Western monotheistic faiths, and today, the professor was talking about the distinction/relationship between oral tradition and written scripture in Judaism. It was pretty cool... know I've got a better idea about Pharisees and the scribes their different traditions, how they relate to the more new-school rabbis, who was doing what when... I took notes, but I think they're in her backpack at this point.
Rice is so amazing... it seems just like an endlessly more friendly place. She's currently taking an exam -- and these are, by and large... take-home. *blinks* It's such a foreign concept for me, coming from a place where the students are treated with such disdain, such a complete lack of trust. We check ID cards at the door, yell at people to take off their hats -- because, what, do they have swap() written on the inside of their baseball caps? How's that going to help? Here, they don't waste a class period on giving a test.
Really the only thing I've noticed about Riee that seems less than cool is their campus network -- Tech's OIT seems rather more sane. We can ssh in from the outside world without generating skeys, and nobody bursts veins if you run an nmap. Aside from that... the food's tasty, the campus police will come and jump your car if it needs jumping, there are medics who'll come and take a look at you if you get sick, the rooms are nice, the campus is beautiful, people study hard (and study philosophy and astronomy and physics and chemical engineering, and...) ... Techies, I think we need to either transfer en masse, or make it generally known how Tech culture (or maybe just the administration) doesn't seem to care much about the students feeling comfortable or cared-about.
Ah, and some guys who're mostly gone for Spring Break at this point (but a bunch of nice guys, friends of Esther's who live down the hall) are letting me stay on their futon. Very convenient acommodations. I'm well pleased.
*blinks* ... is there anything else I meant to yammer about? ... maybe I'll think of something later. Hope everybody's having a nice break :) I'll be back in Atlanta on Sunday.
So I showed up last night without any real hitches in transit -- I showed up in Atlanta very slightly later than I'd expected (traffic was pretty well stopped for about a half hour, for no super-clear reason, but other than that... nothing too bad) but then made it through the airport with no hassles at all. My plane was about 20 minutes late, which didn't cause headaches for anybody except Esther's friend Steve, who was kind enough to pick me up as he was dropping off somebody else... so Esther was there at the gate, waiting for me :) Yay! We made Steve a bit late for a meeting, sadly. Sorry, Steve!
Ah, and something that very much needs to be recorded for posterity: one of the stewardesses on the flight, she refers to the Cups and Remaining Service Items as "rubbish" ... I asked her why this was. That's a fairly uncomon word in US English, these days -- who says "rubbish"? She responded that she'd much rather say "Do you have any rubbish?" than "Your trash?" or "Your wife's trash?" I thought this was hilarious, and said so :) English isn't super-good at distinguishing between contractions of "to be" and posessive forms, apparently :) Glory glory.
"... I meant, 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you'! "
Lewis Carroll rocks the universe. I just finished Through the Looking Glass on the plane.
Today before breakfast I headed off to go and run 'round the lovely Rice campus -- my original plan was to do a pair of loops 'round the campus, but I ended up, about two-thirds of the way 'round the first loop, finding the track. *laughs* Well, you know what happens when I find a track. It was nice and open, easy to see, and not locked up behind barbed wire, hedges, and padlocks. I ended up doing some 100m repeats, just to see how it would feel (and I suppose, on an animist sort of level, so as to say hello to the unfamiliar track)... also on the track at that point, were some long, tall, muscular-and-fast looking young women -- pretty clearly very strong hurdlers, if you can imagine a classic hurdler build. I asked them what events they were training for, and (no big surprise) they were getting ready for the 400m hurdles. What was slightly more surprising, was that they were professionals, with sponsorships from Nike and Asics, getting ready for upcoming track circuit meets and the Olympics.
It's odd -- you don't often just randomly run into Olympic hurdlers. They were really nice, and the one I spoke with told me her name, asked some stuff about me, and asked to be prayed for. I feel kinda silly -- forgot her name. :-\ Ah well. I so completely need to get a corporate sponsorship and start in on the European track circuit. *laughs* Alright, corporate world, I'm ready! Brooks? New Balance? Red Hat? Silk? Send me an email...
So this afternoon, we headed off for lunch, and then went to Esther's RELI class -- it's about the scriptures in the different Western monotheistic faiths, and today, the professor was talking about the distinction/relationship between oral tradition and written scripture in Judaism. It was pretty cool... know I've got a better idea about Pharisees and the scribes their different traditions, how they relate to the more new-school rabbis, who was doing what when... I took notes, but I think they're in her backpack at this point.
Rice is so amazing... it seems just like an endlessly more friendly place. She's currently taking an exam -- and these are, by and large... take-home. *blinks* It's such a foreign concept for me, coming from a place where the students are treated with such disdain, such a complete lack of trust. We check ID cards at the door, yell at people to take off their hats -- because, what, do they have swap() written on the inside of their baseball caps? How's that going to help? Here, they don't waste a class period on giving a test.
Really the only thing I've noticed about Riee that seems less than cool is their campus network -- Tech's OIT seems rather more sane. We can ssh in from the outside world without generating skeys, and nobody bursts veins if you run an nmap. Aside from that... the food's tasty, the campus police will come and jump your car if it needs jumping, there are medics who'll come and take a look at you if you get sick, the rooms are nice, the campus is beautiful, people study hard (and study philosophy and astronomy and physics and chemical engineering, and...) ... Techies, I think we need to either transfer en masse, or make it generally known how Tech culture (or maybe just the administration) doesn't seem to care much about the students feeling comfortable or cared-about.
Ah, and some guys who're mostly gone for Spring Break at this point (but a bunch of nice guys, friends of Esther's who live down the hall) are letting me stay on their futon. Very convenient acommodations. I'm well pleased.
*blinks* ... is there anything else I meant to yammer about? ... maybe I'll think of something later. Hope everybody's having a nice break :) I'll be back in Atlanta on Sunday.
