"Well, hurrah!"

(I cannot help but to hear the voice of Hugh Laurie whenever I read this exclamation...)

I got my first English job! (Another one might follow next week.) And it's not just any job: it's documentation work at the geology department of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery. Now some of you might be aware that the English are particularly dexterious in coming up with impressive names for not-so-impressive objects, but this one's a real pretty, honestly. It's a nineteenth century museum in a "purpose built" palace in Queen Street (where else), founded to commemorate (the death of) Prince Albert halfway the century. Actually, the project included the city library, the Exeter School of Arts (now part of Plymouth University) and even the ancestors of our own University. The entire city community donated money and objects, as did many excentric adventurers and noblehumans. Now they/we have a very broad collection "of regional, national and [even] international importance", encompassing a potpourri of archaeology, history, geology, biology, ecology, visual arts (both "fine" and decorative) and ethnology. Everyone coming to Exeter should visit it, because there's something for everyone of you. Reconstructed Roman baths (the Greek didn't conquer the British isles, I'm afraid), jurassic rocks, Egyptian mummies (though I am not sure whether they suffer from artrose; and I still have to visit the British Museum, dus dat houd je nog tegoed Y!), medieval wooden houses, romantic paintings, modern ceramics, a gigantic taxodermitised giraffe, Oceanic masks, Baroque keyboards and clocks, a quite gezellig café and a shop scaling everything down into nicely portable and affordable objects. But the most wonderful is the presentation: they have kept everything in a pre-World War (II), rariteitenkabinet kind of state, with labyrinthic chambers, oak display cabinets and as much stuff in one room as they could manage (which is why they are able to display 10% of 1.5 million artefacts in one tiny building...). Oh, and the head of the geology department is Roger Taylor. What more could a human wish for... (Well, actually, money would be nice: but as things are I am still a volunteer.)

So, I'll show around everyone I can, and for the rest: http://www.exeter.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=2650 !

sans titre

(maak dat de kat wijs: that comes suspiciously close to a title, doesn't it?)

M just saved me from terrible blamage which could have been caused by last night's entry, written in a near-comatuous state - or perhaps he has not been able to save me quite, for as I see some of you found the opportunity to peep at my hebdomadal before corrections had been made... anyway: I'm not gonna tell you all what corrections we are talking about.

What I would like to do is thank M in the following manner: recently the man has opened a public diary himself (though solely for the purpose of science), which I advertise here:
http://nican-nicuica.blogspot.com/

londON

And on we write...

Around half past ten I was welcomed at Paddington by our comrade M and, after some further ticket struggles, safely guided to his comfortable UCL lodgings in Bloomsbury or Camden or WC1 or thereabouts (near Corams Fields, near St Pancras, King's Cross and Euston train stations), after having indulged first in the luxuries of the UCL graduate anthroplogists' very own Common Room (a thing we still lack at both UC and, I believe the UvA and the VU - again, in random order). We talked, we had a cuppa, I waited for my sleeping mat to inflate itself, and we had a short but wholesome rest.

Breakfast included not only English tea and English bread (on which no doubt a seperate entry will follow) and 'English' yoghurt (which does not exist), but also glorious pindakaas and pure hagelslag (although polluted with "funnies").

And Ah: London...
I had my first rides in the underground, which might almost be as exciting as le métro. My first walks in various tiresome subways. My first inhaling of the smog, the fog. Large parts of London continuously smell as if something is being fried (which is probably true, though it's not entirely sure what). Other smells include the usual city-odours: exhaust gases, river water, stone, iron, food, beer, parks. Piss and pod are remarkably (though not completely) absent.

M assured me that it had to do with the weekend, but the city seemed deserted. So much the better for a first visit, because in this way I had first class views everywhere.

We walked through Fleet Street, the one-time Times (and other newspapers) imperium. We walked through Holborn ['ho-bun], slightly depressing law(yer)'s and business land (if I remember correctly: please help me if necessary, you London connoisseurs). I saw the Ivory Tower, or rather the World War II ministry of information (or something along those lines) which image George Orwell used as the Ministry of Truth in his 1984; it is beautiful in the best fascist architecture tradition of Rome and former Berlin. I love it (and took a picture of it).

We saw St Paul's, we saw the Thames, we saw various bridges spanning the Thames, we saw Tate Modern.

About which more tomorrow, I hope, because I am sort of imploding right now.

A last note: finally, the black and white pictures have been put into frames and stuck onto the noticeboard. It makes a difference. They cheer me up (even more than I am cheerful already). They tell me how lucky I am.

Goodnight.