Wednesday, September 28, 2005

And So It Begins

Hi there everybody

Well, school is now getting back into gear. Classes are getting to the point where they actually occasionally want us to hand stuff in and all that. But such is life.

So not much has been going on here other than classes. I met with a couple professors last week and convinced one to accept me as a thesis advisee (the other also agreed, but said that he did not feel qualified to advise the topic since he has not background in peace theory, only development economics). I do not have a definite question yet, though there is a larger issue that has been settled on, which is the "Role of Agriculture (or insert more specific/ another word relating to stuff in rural area) in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding". Dr Uvin's first response when I proposed it was "that is an absolutely fabulous PhD dissertation. Unfortunately you are writing a MALD" The reason this is the case being that there is no literature addressing this topic and it seems to be an up-and-coming field of study. There is currently a project being run out of UN University on this topic, which is going to lead to a book being published entitled "Agriculture for Peace". But it is not much use to me.

So I need to narrow the question and make it a little more manageable for a MALD (Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy) thesis.

On a much more fun note, I had dinner with Molly's aunt and uncle last night. They have a new 11 week old puppy named Reuben (I think he is named after the sandwich, but Molly disagrees, and we failed to ask last night), part black lab and part "other". Unfortunately I left my camera at Molly's about a month ago, so there are no pictures at the moment. But he is very very cute.

So that just about wraps it up. I officially received my first auto-generated comment the other day on the previous post. So if you look at it, don't click on the link. It is blog spam.

So cheers all and I will be in touch.

Monday, September 12, 2005

Back to School

Well, it has again been a little while... So what is new at this point in my life? Well, as the title of this post would seem to imply, I am back in beautiful Medford, MA and starting another year of school. But I will go back to what all has happened since I returned from Singapore.

I came home and headed down to Oakland to see my parents and grandma, which was nice. I guess the biggest news from that end is that each day is now a "CSI" marathon as opposed to the more traditional "Law and Order" marathon that I remember.

I then met Molly up in Portland to begin the drive East. The first stop was Moscow, Idaho to see Chris, which was as much fun as it always is. We then stopped to camp in Glacier National Park. The first half of the drive through the park was beautiful, heading for our campsite on the East side. As we were winding our way up to the continental divide, Molly pointed out all the clouds pouring through the pass. Well, when we got up there the temperature dropped by about 30 degrees and we could see maybe 10 feet, the clouds were so thick. It was also drizzling up there. But we made it down to the campsite, if slowly, and set up the tent. It then drizzled all night and was about 40 degrees in the morning. It snowed about 300 feet above us. Needless to say, we did not see any glaciers. But I did become friends with the hand blower in the bathroom while I tried to get feeling back in my fingers from putting away the wet tent at 6:30am in the cold.

It was then into the great wild that is Canada. The weather at first was not too good. It rained all morning and the wind was blowing so hard that the rain was trailing at a 45 degree angle up the windshield, even though we were doing 65-70mph. It the became beautiful for the rest of the way across Saskatchewan and Manitoba, which are about as exciting as Nebraska and Iowa, and 100 times more desolate.

We eventually made it to the north shore of Lake Superior, where we had plans to camp and hike and stuff. It rained and was foggy the entire time we were there. So from the 10 meters or so I could see off the highway, it looked really beautiful. But anyway, we did not camp and we did not hike and we were very disappointed. But we did make it to Montreal a day early to see one of Molly's friends.

The city was very nice, and some more time there would be appreciated some day. We were only there 2 nights, so we didn't see all that much, though we did take a nice walking tour. One comment about it though... I have rarely been in a city where street signs and directions on the highway are more worthless than they are there. And it was not the French thing at all, since it is pretty easy to figure out what the signs say (and Molly speaks French). It is just that the signs are not very useful, and often downright detrimental to trying to navigate the city.

Anyway, it was then back to civilization for one more day in the car and our heralded arrival in Medford. There were trumpets blaring and people lining the streets to welcome us back from our adventure into the wilds that is Canada. It was very touching.

So then I moved into my new apartment. It was of course a couple days of hauling boxes, which was fun. But I eventually got my stuff into the apartment (ok, it was about 2 trips in a Toyota Corolla, so maybe the moving process was not all the epic). And when I arrived I was pleasantly surprised to find a bunch of abandoned furniture in my room (no big surprise there since this is very much a college area). There were no personal belongings in my room.

So I moved in and was almost completely unpacked when I got an email saying something along the lines of "Hey ******* (previous tenants name), get your stuff out of the room. I think Ian thinks it is abandoned." So to make a long process into a sentence, I had to repack almost all my stuff and the guy came to collect all the furniture. I was pissed. Especially since classes started in 3 days and I wanted to be able to relax a bit, and now I was back to square one.

So the guy came to get the stuff, and I used all my new-found diplomacy skills to basically tell him "you're an ass" and "this is totally unacceptable." The end result being that he paid me for 3 days' rent, which still did not change the fact that it was terribly inconvenient for me.

So now classes have begun. It is strange to think that there are only 2 more semesters and one thesis left. I am excited about my classes, which include lots and lots of economics. I am taking classes on "Agriculture and Rural Development," "Managing Economic Reform in Low-Income Countries," "NGO Management," and "Law and Development." It should be fun and I will be seeing professors soon on getting a thesis topic approved.

Cheers all.