Sunday, October 29, 2006

Mustard and Scholarships

Yesterday I opened a new jar of Dijon mustard. This is more exciting than it may sound, as real mustard (in contrast to that bright yellow stuff they sell in plastic squeeze bottles which never seems to mould of go off) is spicy and biting when first opened. Slowly, over time, it mellows slightly in the jar. Even in my house where much mustard is consumed, I notice the difference between the piquancy of the old jar and the new. The first vinaigrette maid with the new jar impacts my taste buds and leaves no question as to its supremacy over the lettuce leaves! If any vinaigrette is left over it demands to be mopped up with a piece of bread and savoured.


This week I applied for a scholarship for next year. I might have to pay for 3 or 4 months after my current scholarship runs out and so I finally found something I could apply for as a Canadian living overseas. I had to line up three referees to write letters for me. This is always a difficult thing to do as it has to be people who are somewhat familiar with my work and know me now, but they are not all supposed to be from the same institution. Well, in the end I had to go with the Head of Drama and my two supervisors. They were very willing to do this for me, but at this level they appreciate it if you give them the material which they should include in such a letter. Not exactly write the letter for them, but give them the notes to write from. It is such an awkward (doesn’t it look strange to see wkw in the middle of a word?) experience to talk about why you are wonderful and should be given money. Apart from that, I actually found that most of the material I needed for the application already existed. It seems the older you are and the more things you have written and/or applied for, the easier it is to cut and paste from everything! So I have now amassed enough information about my own life that I can structure an application without too much effort. It is simply time consuming. And I doubt I will get the award, as they usually tend to give such things to people who are trying to cure cancer or save whales. However, it is important to at least try and at the very least I have “a distinguished academic record.”

Monday, October 23, 2006

Pumpkin loaf and biscuits


The conference is over and it went very well. Exhausting all around but only positive feedback from people on how it was organised and the content. I can't take any responsibility for the quality of the people who attended, but apparently we managed to provide an open environment for people to discuss just about anything!

I recovered by spending yesterday watching DVD's of West Wing. Highly enjoyable. And I made pumpkin loaf. That was also good. Today I have done some work, but I also had to bake again, and this time it was buttermilk and cheese biscuits to go with soup that I bought. Yum.

Now I have to read through an article, clean the dishes and go to bed...but I will leave you with a photo of me and my German host-sister Birgit from two weeks ago in Germany.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

website

This is the conference website, although not every detail is on here.

http://www.english.qmul.ac.uk/sightingdoc/

Germany, archives, conferences and pumpkin

There are so many things that I would like to post about, but somehow recently the only time I think of to write something is late at night when I should be sleeping! It is now 12.02 and I just had to get something down...

The past few weeks have flown by. I was in Germany visiting friends and did some research in an archive as well. This was the first time I have even gone to a 'real' (that is, with old unpublished documents) archive. I looked through folders and tried to decipher handwritten notes. I pretty much failed to do the second, but photocopies do not help handwritting in the least. And most of it was in German...but I did find one lecture given by Hannah Arendt which I can use for my research and this will be great to have. I was able to photocopy the whole thing. There is one folder which I was not able to read through while I was there, but an excuse to go back will be nice!

Teaching has started and I once again have a good group of students, although this week they were a little tired and I was exhausted, so conversation would go really well for about 10 minutes and then they would drift. I managed to make it through about 1 1/2 hours and then I ran out of stuff to bring up. Next week I will have a better handle on things.

However, this Friday the conference that I have been organising for 4 months starts (which is also on archives!) and I am up to my ears in details which all need to happen between now and Friday at 13.00. The conference should be great and I am very much looking forward to it...although I don't even really know what I am going to be doing during it. Hopefully things will run smoothly and I won't have to do much trouble shooting during the actual conference itself.

Water, food, tables, chairs, AV equipment, lighting, security, name tags, programmes, and coffee have all been looked after. Now I just need the people to show up and the whole thing will happen! Well, at this point I have 50 people registered and more who will show up on Friday. I need 60 people to eat all the food I ordered...

Meanwhile, I tried making braised celery last night. It was excellent on rice with some grated parmesan. Also, a very good recipe for Plaice steamed in a sauce in foil envelopes, and I think that pumpkin bread is on the menu for this weekend...yum! I love autumn food!