Sunday, March 9, 2014

Week 7: Too much fun leads to the plague

I last wrote last Monday afternoon- I was feeling tired just thinking about the 2 weeks that laid ahead, and I made the very wise and sad decision to not go hear my friends' band play that Monday night... that is, I thought I made that decision until Louis called and said he'd be walking by my place on his way into town and I needed to get myself up and go support my friends... and he was right.  The show was absolutely amazing- I certainly have some talented friends and hearing folk/bluegrassy music was enough to make things feel a bit like home... or even like back in Philly at Fiume on a Thursday night with the live banjo.  Anyway, the Infamous Flapjack Affair was awesome and I look forward to hearing a bit more of their awesome music while in Oxford. 





After the show all of NSEP hung around chatting and enjoying the pub.  Eventually we decided to go dance.... what happened to my quiet night in?  I could have not gone... I know, I know, but whenever faced with that dilemma, I always tell myself that this is likely my "last hoorah" as a student... when staying out all night and dancing until my feet hurt will be acceptable on a regular basis.  We headed to Thirst... we being me, Louis, Dennis, Rob, Rob's friend from rugby- Sam, Daniel, and Astrid.  Somehow, we ended up staying until they closed at 3AM.  My night SHOULD have ended there.... but did it?  No.  That would be way too sensible.  Instead, Rob, Sam and I headed to get chips with cheese (aka cheese fries) and we ate them in Rob and Sam's kitchen while listening to music and debating financial responsibility and education, social welfare programs, and other nerdy things that it clearly makes tons of sense to have intense conversations about in the middle of the night.  I got in about 5:30AM Tuesday morning, and had to be up by 9 for a 10AM meeting with a professor.  

I made my meeting- a bit sleepy but well dressed and prepared and no worse for the wear.  The meeting was about my "extended essay" for my elective, which is on Global Environmental Change and Food Security.  I came prepared with 2 topics to propose, 1. If dual purpose cattle breeds are a way forward to consolidate the production of meat and milk/can they meet demand and 2. How in the American food system excess supply is simply used to create demand... not at all a "typical" capitalist system... in particular examining how the dairy industry makes deals for things like "cheese stuffed pizza crust" or the pork industry is behind the return of the "McRib".  The professor, John Ingram, was very complimentary of my short essays and told me that I should write on whatever I wanted and just keep doing what I was doing (a good feeling!) but he seemed more excited about the second topic so I think that's the direction I'll go.  To be honest, I was more excited about that topic as well, mostly because I came across it when writing my senior thesis but never had a chance to explore it beyond a brief sentence that it was possibly happening in my final paper. 

From my meeting, I headed to science and politics where we worked more on our controversy maps and tried (unsuccessfully) to learn to use GEPHI.  To be honest, I just paused to google what gephi even is, and supposedly it's an open source network analysis and visualization software.  Basically, it makes really confusing looking maps of things that don't really need to be confusing.  We opted to not use gephi and to map things ourselves and we've come up with some pretty cool data.  Cato did a particularly comprehensive (and pretty!) map and I've included a picture of it so maybe this whole "mapping" thing makes more sense... we also have maps of which users are editing relevant wikipedia pages the most, what websites pop up the most with various search terms, etc. 


After class I walked to grab a sandwich with Cody and then we headed to Linacre to meet Juliana, Daniel and Lea for our upcoming presentation for Corporate Environmental Management.  The presentation is on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and examining 3 questions from multiple perspectives.  The questions are:  Why did it happen?  Who is to blame?  What should companies do in the future (to prevent things like this/to better manage risk)?  The class got divided into groups and each group was assigned one of the following roles: BP Management, Contractors (Halliburton and Transocean), BP workers, the Feds, Gulf coast community members, and investors.  I'm an investor.  

We were given total control over our angle and how we choose to address these issues which in a way was quite nice but in another way left us a bit lost.  A retired BP executive will be in the room and will be allowed to ask questions and give feedback which is incredibly intimidating... I feel like BP employees lived and breathed this disaster for years and we've had about 2 weeks to prepare.  The only rules are that we are presenting in the present day, we aren't pretending that this is back right after the spill and that each group presents for ten minutes and then opens the floor to questions for 10 minutes.  

Our group decided that we didn't want to take the expected route and be run of the mill investors.  Instead, we decided that we'd be BlackRock, the largest asset management firm in the world.  BlackRock was (and still is) one of BP's largest investors and at the time of the spill owned over 5% of the company.  I think it's a fun angle to take and we've gone all out, adopting the names of actual executives (and editing them to be gender appropriate).  We've even had a bit of fun with that at the end of our very serious presentation with the following slide: 


After ironing out some details I headed home with very good intentions of doing laundry.  Louis called to see what I was doing and see if I wanted to hang out and when I said I couldn't because of laundry he made the point that one's day should never, ever be scheduled around or dictated by something like laundry.  And he had a point.  I ditched my laundry and instead headed to meet him at the Pitt Rivers Museum.  It holds the anthropological and archeological finds of the University and is attached to the Museum of Natural History.  This means that I got to see dinosaurs, diamonds/gems, shrunken heads, totem poles, and everything inbetween.  It was actually a really nice way to spend the afternoon.  Afterwards, we decided we wanted tea, but we also wanted to enjoy the gorgeous sunshine, so we just wandered Oxford following any street that would keep us in or lead us to sunshine.  It was nice to amble and chat with no real destination.  We ended up outside the Ashmolean where we lounged in the sun talking until it started to get chilly and we decided we actually did want tea.  We grabbed tea at Turl Street Kitchen and then headed back to mine to make curry for dinner.  We finally parted ways after dinner to get some work done.... but I never did get around to laundry :) 

Wednesday I slept in (much needed) and then met back up with my BP/BlackRock group to prepare for our "rehearsal" of the presentation to the two class TAs.  We finished the powerpoint, ran through the script and then went in to give the practice run.  It went well, they were complimentary of how polished we were, but they had some things that they wanted to see tweaked.  After the meeting we headed back to another room in the department to refocus the presentation and make some changes.  It was a productive meeting and afterwards, I headed to eat a very late (4pm) lunch at Greens with Brittany.  We had a long chat about housing and life and then Brittany headed off and I stayed to do a bit of work.  I ran into Rob briefly before I left and then cycled home to finally do that laundry.  

I put my laundry in knowing that it would mean I was late for dance, but I decided I really wanted clean sheets.  I pulled my laundry out about 8:40, got it back to my room, put away and my sheets on my bed and was at dance by 9:05... only the gate into GTC was already locked for the night so I had to wait around for a member of the college to happen by and let me in.  By that time, I'd missed the dance lesson, but it was nice to hang out and talk and GTC had a formal dinner that night so there were a few familiar faces there for the special occasion, including Cato and her boyfriend Michael.  

Katherine, Brittany and I decided that we wanted to go dance so we decided to meet up with Louis and his housemates for electro-house night at the Cellar.  Dennis decided to join us and then Brittany realized she'd forgotten her key card to get back in her building and decided not to join us so she'd get back in time to have a housemate let her in.  I hate that Brittany didn't join us but the night was really fun.  For once, we didnt stay until a place closed, we just enjoyed some good music and a bit of dancing- I ran into a few friends from my college and it was just nice to have a low key but really fun night out.  Katherine and Dennis and I left around 2 and Dennis was nice enough to give me a backie home on his bike.  I had a sore throat when i went to bed but I had no idea what was awaiting me.  

I woke up Thursday feeling miserable.  My head was pounding, my throat felt raw and swollen, I was congested in my head/nose/chest, I was coughing and I had an earache.  To be clear, I had a single beer the night before so this was not a pounding head from that.  I knew I didn't really have a choice, I'd agreed to go look at a house for next year that Brittany is really excited about that was going to get rented quickly and we knew we needed to move fast.  I couldn't back out and I did want to see it so I gathered my strength for the 2.3 mile cycle to Brittany's (the place is close to where she lives now but across Oxford from where I am).  Oxford is quite flat, but I've noticed that cycling with a head wind takes substantially more effort and, of course, there was a head wind.  I knew I was sick because at one point during a slight incline I felt my legs turn to jello and had to stop.... and I've cycled this route before with no issues.  Still, I made it to Brittany's on time and we headed to look at the place- which Brittany had already seen but I had not.  

It's a nice place but it's kind of gross right now.  What I mean by that is that the house itself has a perfect set up for us (us being me, Brittany, Brittany's boyfriend Todd, and another girl, Merry).  It's 5 bedrooms and 2.5 baths- Brittany and Tom would use both downstairs bedrooms because those rooms are so small that there is no space for two people and a desk and clothes and they would have their own bathroom.  There is also a 1/2 bath on that floor for guests or just if someone needs the bathroom while others are showering, etc. Also on the downstairs in a nice sized kitchen (also where the washing machine is), a family/living room, and a huge garden/backyard area.  Upstairs there are 3 bedrooms and a bathroom- we'd use the 2 bigger rooms and then have a guest room/yoga space/office area.  BUT the people that live there now clearly don't really take care of the place.... it smelled like stale beer and when we opened one bedroom door I was about knocked over by the smell of weed.  But those are things that a deep cleaning will fix.  The house is also further out than I'd hoped, but it's in the direction I was hoping to live, down Cowley Road, which is more affordable with tons of international restaurants and cool bars with live music.  It's not "perfect" per se, but it is a great price, it allows pets (Brittany is trying to bring over her 2 dogs and I will live ANYWHERE to live with pets again), it's the side of town I wanted, and the layout and space is really ideal.  In other words, it's "as good as it gets" when looking for affordable student housing.  

After checking out the place Brittany let me drink water and gather my strength at her place.  We chatted for awhile and then I cycled into town (so much easier with the wind at my back), grabbed a sandwich, and then headed to a meeting for our upcoming Research Methods class on the non-human charisma of wine.  We didn't need long to polish up the presentation and so quickly headed back to my room to crash.  I took a long nap in hopes that I would wake up feeling better but no such luck.  And so that's pretty much where my week ends... since thursday afternoon I have been out of my room (read: bed) a total of 2 times:  I went to the doctor on Friday because Thursday night I started running a high fever and experiencing pretty severe earaches (the doctor did nothing... I have to say England has had the most frustrating health care system of anywhere I've been.... but before you hate on socialized health care... the Czech Republic, even with the language barrier, had the best!).  I also left my room today to go to the market/shop across the street to buy a few groceries and enjoy the beautiful 65 degree spring weather for all of 10 minutes (though I did have my window open all day!)    

This weekend has been pretty rough.  I've run a fever for a large part of it, coughed, and thought my ear drum would rupture like it did when I was a freshman in high school.  At one point, I debated going to the ER on Saturday afternoon because my ear hurt so bad.... I really just wanted to take something sharp and pop my eardrum myself so the pressure would just stop.  Clearly I would never actually do that, but I really was considering anything and everything.  I think I would have paid big bucks for some pain meds (real ones, not just tylenol and such) had someone had some.  Today has been less painful but I'm still feeling so gross at all my congestion is finally starting to drain.  Yuck. 

Today my BP group had a meeting since we present tomorrow, but I am still pretty ill so I attended via skype.  I plan to present tomorrow... let's hope I can make it through two 2-hour classes and both presentations (BP and the non human charisma of wine) before I crash tomorrow night.... no time to "build" back up.... have to just jump back in. 

I also have a presentation Tuesday and I was supposed to run a 6k on Wednesday as part of a relay (NSEP has 2 teams entered.... Brittany, Anna, Rob and Dennis are running as a 4 person mixed team and me, Katherine and Juliana were supposed to be a 3 person all girls team.... our team names?  iNSEPtion and iNSEPerable... clever, no?)  I really don't think I'll be well enough to run, but if my team is okay with losing I am happy to walk the whole thing.  Friday my dissertation proposal is due and then a week from today I fly to Amsterdam with the rest of NSEP for a field trip followed by an extended stay for free time in the city.  

Hopefully by then I'll be back up to my normal speed.  I think I'm going a bit stir-crazy!

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