An Alternative Blog

For anyone who might still be looking at this, or who misses doing so, I'm keeping a personal blog now over here. Laura won't be posting (I'm not sure she even knows it exists!), but as you can see I'm getting back into doing so fairly regularly.

More Pics from 2nd Californian Christmas

The Pacific ocean from 17-mile drive, outside Carmel.

Laura and I on 17-mile drive at sunset.

Mary Clare and Hugh on 17-mile drive. 

Hugh on the beach at Carmel at sunset.

2nd Christmas in California

Some photos from our recent adventures...

Half moon bay, where we recorded your video message. 

Looking out over Palo Alto and into San Francisco bay. Doesn't it look like Scotland!?

Looking towards Woodside, which is where the wedding will take place (we'll be visiting the venue next week).

Diana's living room, before the tree was 'decorated' (I use the word advisedly, the 'decor' is a bit OTT for my tastes!). The window looks out onto a golf course.

The climate here means there are extraordinary vegetables all year round. Add this to the extraordinary affluence in this area, and it means that one of the coolest places to visit is a California supermarket! This is the 'downmarket' Safeway just round the corner. 

It's hard enough to adjust to the climate, the presence of unseasonal sights (below: the trees think it's Autumn) and foods (above) makes it even stranger. 

Finished

I handed in the finished product yesterday; a process featuring little or no fanfair. I feel like the university ought to employ some people to clap and toss ribbons and put some flowers in your hair or something when this happens. Neither the binders nor the lady at the Graduate Research Office even bothered to say 'Congratulations', and so for a little while there I felt more like I had crossed some minor administrative task off one of my interminable lists, than like I'd just finished a gruelling four year rite of passage and begun my career as a professional philosopher. (Notwithstanding the impending viva voce of course, but I can't bring myself to worry about that just yet).

Hey, never mind. Laura was ready and willing to bump up the joy, and after a delicious lunch in the sunshine at Thyme Cafe and later a scrumptious dinner with the housemates, I consolidated my feeling that I have finally shed a huge weight off my shoulders and reverted to a nicer, less stressed and inscrutable version of myself.

This is a bittersweet post though, since I think it will be my last on this blog for a long time, or possibly ever. The coming term brings a huge quantity of work, and promises to take away a lot of my leisure time. Until that's over - come January or so - I think I will be too swamped to keep you up to date on me and Laura's news and continuing travels through the mild to moderate peril of academia. So unless the unthinkable happens, and Laura starts posting on here, I must say farewell to you all dear readers, and many kind thanks for patronising our humble blog. Be good to each other.

Drew.

Engagement Complete

I once saw a feature on a television programme about the rationale for giving expensive engagement rings. The presenter suggested the original rationale (way back when) was this: if the man were to break off the engagement, the woman would have some financial compensation for the damage done to her reputation (by his rejection). The presenter rightly remarked that this rationale is now rather archaic. I like to think we live in more enlightened times, when broken engagements, horrible and painful though they may be, don't lead to be people being shunned or treated differently than anyone else.

This naturally raises some questions: isn't the traditional arrangement rather sexist? Not only is the giving of gifts one-sided (getting engaged is nice for BOTH of us right?), there is a presumption that the man is the flaky one, more likely to break off the engagement than the woman. If it is sexist, then why do we keep doing it?

Happily I somehow convinced Laura that we should once again subvert tradition by exchanging gifts of equal value in celebration of our engagement. Of course this is a more expensive course of action, which is why it took until yesterday for us to complete our engagement gift giving.

Yesterday saw the arrival of a beautiful new guitar, which was my preferred way of celebrating our engagement - and something I intend to enjoy for the rest of our life together. I know they won't mean much to many of you, but here are some pictures of what is truly the most wonderful instrument I have ever played...

Actual News

I'm delighted to say I've just been appointed to a one-semester Lecturing post at my soon-to-be alma mater Sheffield. I will be teaching two courses: a 2nd Year course called Descartes & the Empiricists and a brand new first year introduction to critical thinking called Reason & Argument. Hooray for gainful employment, however short lived!

Soundtrack to my Thesis Daze

I've been listening a lot to Patrick Watson lately, an entirely new discovery courtesy of Regnyouth archives, my main source of new music (instructions for newcomers here). His extraordinary, surreal and bizarre music is the ideal soundtrack to the sense of unreality that accompanies being incapable of thinking about anything other than concepts and truth. In that sense, it may be unwise to listen to too much of it. (Imagine Jeff Buckley and Björk had an adult child who was best friends with Martin Grech and whose uncle is Ed Harcourt.) Nevertheless, I'm excited about the slightly more experimental/electronic direction mainstream music seems to be taking in the US - at least if the rise of MuteMath can be considered significant (this discovery courtesy of John Mayer).