yes... it's rather worrying what the weather is like these days... a year ago, the highest recorded temeperature was approximately 35degC here in the twin-cities... this weekend it is between 37-39degC and on monday, it's predicted to be 40degC...
i am hoping for persistent RAIN... but i fear that it is a small price that one has to pay for screwing up the eco-system... cars, petrol... nuclear power... WARs?! the price is that one could die in the heat... imagine being cooked to death... pretty awful.
it's so hot... i had to stay up till 3am to tire myself out to be ambivalent of the heat and stickiness... someone's gotta be able to fuel something from all this heat?!
i read, watched, and listened in horror to some fragments of the terror that is being experienced in the middle-east... it is very distressing to watch a traumatized old man who's just lost his wife, home and hopes when the rockets/bombs fell... or to see families being separated in their attempts to escape... or civilians being injured, maimed, shredded...
it's just incomprehensible that everyone is relying on violence to get what they want... and they themselves are behaving like the terror they wish to curb.
all this madness... it will not end... it will not end... the pain... the pain...
Manjack home from the wars walked down the street ---
bent like a bow his body round its great scar ---
and held his head upright. I saw his eyes
flaring and fixed, a tiger or a dark star.
Pain, what ist it? The sycthe turned under the ribs,
the soft explosion in the belly that means death,
the hornet where were berries, the snake in flowers,
the ice about the heart, the lung that leaks its breath ---
that which drives out love, hunger, thirst or hate;
the trap that waits, the precipice past hope
upon whose edge we walk, how delicately ---
the loaded whip no shoulders can escape.
Pain, what is it? That which keeps alive
amoebae doubling from the acid; pain
that forces flesh to wisdom: hedge of swords
beside the road from protoplasm to man.
Pain that fierce darkness thrusting at all life
that drives it up to light; pain the black No
that knifes us in blind alleys; pain that can only say
You have chosen wrong; this is no way to go.
Manjack home from the wars walked down the street,
and in his flesh a fire that ate him lean.
Vision of famine, death with blazing eyes,
what shall we do to save ourselves from Pain?
~~~Judith Wright~~~
from Woman to Man, 1949, in Collected Poems
a telly followed me home today... it belonged to a colleague whom i've never met...
<< meet telly...
(notice also how much of my sunlight is blocked by the infestation of the climbing ivy all over the windows in the background?)
i am not quite sure if i like telly... i've lived without one for the last 11 years! and radio is just fine... if i remember to turn it on or listen to my radio alarm in the mornings...
but catching documentaries from pbs.org on the string-theory -- the 2nd of the series of 3 related programmes, which i'd seen as a taped version in the uk -- and bbc world news at 10pm daily can be quite a treat...
[it was particularly amusing to hear the views of the reporter summarizing Bush's veto-decision on stem-cell research in the lines of "for those who support Bush, it is a matter of Faith, but for the majority who support the research, it is a matter of common sense." -- i think it is amazing that such free-speech is embraced because even in developed nations elsewhere, words need to be constantly restrained.]
hmm... telly does make my living room less like a art-gallery though... crap. i'll have to make a huge colorful thing or two for the two remaining bare walls... hmmm.
i am still ambivalent.
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update: i think telly is quite evil... i need more self-restraint!
so much has been going on... and there's so much to comprehend but it is not easy because it is beyond what we (the royal 'we') can imagine...
my thoughts go to those who are trying to escape the bombings and have no say in whether they might live to see the aftermath of the on-going crisis, or to live with the injuries, or to see their love ones dying and dead, or they themselves catching their last breaths.
meanwhile, iraq continues to struggle with unrests...
as if the manmade deaths and violence are not sufficient in the turbulent mid-east, mumbai's train-bombing last week added more doubts to the idea/possibility of peace.
even UN-peace-keepers are short-staffed.
and the current headlines overshadow other chronic humanitarian crisis... remember Dafur? the news don't really highlight enough of the trouble that's out there... there's also on-going trouble in sri-lanka, cambodia, just to name a few.
it is frustring to read the news these days; most of the headlines and reports are sad, shocking, and disturbing. it makes me wonder how we could be so inhumane to each other... we do not appear to communicate these days, if we appeared to do so before, we might have merely done so on cordial terms or for the benefit of ourselves...
or perhaps it is more appropriate to say that we do not wish to listen... in many countries there remain little dialogue between the state and their citizens... let alone between nations.
soon, even natural disasters will engulf us all... because it's no good to make us learn... we just don't.
the current sweep of the human toils in china and indonesia are the replay of variations of the same theme... warnings and symptoms of global warming...
warnings of self-destruction.
i thought london was HOT... running in the heat of 33 degC is actually not that bad if you compare it to living in 38 degC with close to 70% humidity... that's what minnesotans had to live with this weekend! SCORCHING. ASPHYXIATING.
C, who's the daughter of my colleague D, and who also helps out at the lab as a research assistant in summer thought i might fry in my wee apartment without an air-conditioning unit, invited me to their place for the weekend to chill-out...
so i got to visit a traditional american house and meet their lovely irish terrier... bailey! a really adorable, friendly, furry creature...
bailey loves bananas (he had half of mine that was left from making a peanut-butter-banana-sandwich! he was adamant on having it... poked his nose under my arm as i was buttering the peanut-butter and indicated he smelled the banana and wanted some! *gasp*) and like most doggies, he would be so single-mindedly obsessed with the task at hand (e.g. licking his paws clean of doggie-bone bits) unless of course the distraction is rewarded with a treat! but you can't possibly say no when you look into his big round brown eyes and his tail wagging at you, could you?! i couldn't!
the boeffs are such kind people and i feel so fortunate to be welcomed into their home... and having out-door grilled burgers and pork for dinners wouldn't be anything to miss... not in summer! heee =C)
my colleague, A, bade us all goodbye this evening... she will be moving to the university campus to start a new post next week.
i will miss her company, her cheery personality, and her bubbly fuzziness that has helped kept me sane and perky all this while.
who will i do lunch with when A is now gone and J leaves in 2 weeks to start dental school? and with whom will i share silly jokes or practice german?!
sob.
now the ratio of male to female co-workers in the lab is even more disproportionately SKEWED... 18:5 ?!?!?! and 3 out of 5 are the actual researchers... vs 18 other males...
i managed to draw on my linen skirt today in the most unintentional way... thankfully the ink was water-soluble, or i might not forgive my silly self...
just before leaving work today (or my attempt at work; my head is clearly not quite back in the us!) i spilled coffee on my keyboard and my pc-mouse drank some of it... the mouse pad was nearly drowned in the brown stuff... and my table and drawers were nearly consumed... but i got help cleaning up my mess... and i think the electronics still work...
i finally went food-shopping and filled up my (somewhat) empty fridge... among the purchase was this half gallon (1.89L) glass bottle of fresh farm milk. the traditional sort which has a layer of cream on the top underneath the cap... quite rare these days... but it was on offer today and i really miss such traditions, having been reminded so very fondly by my generous hosts and friends back in the uk during my recent return... i was really excited to have some and couldn't figure out how to get the cream out to get to the milk... broke the creamy seal with a silver teaspoon (fossicked at a british charity shop, which travelled with me to germany, back to edinburgh, and to the us!) and the milky liquid splatter all over my wee work top, over the other cutlery in the drawer which i absent-mindedly left open, and all over me... in my apparent state of sleepy shock, i dropped the wee spoon into the bottle which engulfed it whole... then i spent the next quarter of an hour figuring how to fish the spoon out!
the all-purpose chopsticks were shockingly no good in this instance... eventually, i ended up pouring the milk out into smaller containers... and rescued the wee spoon...
i don't think anyone could beat me to all that ditziness in a day! oh well... =CS
time-travel is a funny thing... especially when you go back and forth in time a few time-zones and a couple of thousand miles through the air...
i am missing edinburgh, the british weather, the accent, the fresh scottish tap-water... i started missing it all when i boarded the Delta plane from edinburgh... it's an almost immediate effect when you hear the american accent. made me quite miserable, i had to admit, but my american co-passengers were very kind... and we had a good laugh.
it's been good... even if short... 2 weeks! too short to make a trip up to the highlands with all the other bits i had to sort out... sob.
more more more later... i have to get my head back to my left-aside work and analyses and get them going again...
... ooh it's so difficult! especially when all the scotch-whisky-fudge are gone!!! what a scandal.
it's great to be 'on holiday!' ... i've not felt like it's okay not to be bothered by not getting any work done for the longest time... although it's actually funny to receive an email from my supervisor back in the us responding to my visa-approval with "Wonderful news - we have already missed you!! Come back soon!!" and i am currently enjoying the fact that i might actually not return as soon as i can! hahaahahhahahha
anyways... the weather, yes British Weather, is lovely... and London is quite pleasant too in summertime and it's wonderful to be able to catch up with nick, frank, and jonathan... and i get to spend next weekend too in Edinburgh with lucy & ruth even if i can't stopover in NY on the way back...
meanwhile... cheer for / support me for the run tomorrow... if you have nothing better to be doing! =C)