New excitement in KW

Google streetview has launched in 15 Canadian cities, and, of course, KW (Waterloo being IT headquarters to Canada and the WORLD) is included. It looks as though most of the pictures were taken last spring. Now you can spy on where I live, and where you live too (if you live in any of those areas). I am also fiddling with Google Earth to plan for some travels, which is really fun, especially the 360 degree views.

Is it comps or the apocalypse?

I have no idea who’s reading right now, but I figure this is a good enough record of this PhD experience in a car town. I signed up to the All But Dissertation (ABD) survival guide, and have finally taken the time to read the monthly newsletter because no more messing around, I really need to. This month’s is about focusing on what is important and cutting out the rest. A few lessons I’ve learned this week:

1. Take matters into your own hands when nothing is happening. After waiting around for responses to my emails, I recruited my final committee member myself. It ended up not being so bad, and now, in theory, I can get my comprehensive question soon and be done by December 11 (theoretical deadline).
2. Leaves in a river. I have been meditating for years, but I was just taught a mindfulness technique, good for when you are short on time and energy and there are many frustrations (i.e. PhD land). Picture a river. Imagine your thought/feeling as a leaf, place it in the river, watch it float away and say “it’s just a feeling/thought. feelings/thoughts come, feelings/thoughts go.” And voila! You feel better. The only problem was that once I was so frustrated I imagined two people as salmon, and the river was Alaskan with grizzlies at the bottom….
3. Sip water. Apparently flushes out cortisol.
4. Exercise, flushes out cortisol. Joined the yoga club for once a week yoga, and I’ve been following a running training program. But now I’m sometimes needing to go running to burn off all this nervous energy that I have a lot of lately.
5. Read PhD Comics as needed.
6. Give in to urges as necessary. I have moved on from South Park as all knowing wisdom, and have been watching “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, “District 9″ (okay, dystopian I think more than apocalyptic), “9″ is tonight. My comps are coming. I want to watch movies about the end of the world and how hopeless  humans are. Is there a connection? Dunno. Maybe because I study ’sustainability’.
7. Evidence of hopeless humans: not only is KW entirely car dependent (only students, drug addicts and people with mental illness ride the bus), but it turns out that there is no parking for longer than 3 hours in my entire neighbourhood. No joke. No where. So…all cars, but NO parking. Except on private property. I get it, but I don’t.

Green VIA?

A friend just posted this link to me http://www.viarail.ca/en/car-free-day, where VIA claims that they are the “greener” way. “To celebrate Car Free Day on September 22, 2009, VIA Rail is giving you an extra incentive to leave your car at home and help contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by taking the train instead.”

Always on the cutting edge when it comes to energy and sustainability, I beg to differ. First, let’s establish that VIA runs on fossil fuels, I would be surprised if they have another source of energy for any of their processes. Every single time I have taken VIA in the summer, I can tell you it’s colder than a meatlocker. It is so cold, that I can’t sleep because it’s bone chilling cold. Colder than a bus or an airplane.  Given that VIA is apparently concerned about the environment, and hopefully my health, I once asked if they wouldn’t mind turning down the air conditioning. They told me they have no control over the internal temperature of the train. So, I challenge VIA to reduce their fossil fuels by reducing the air conditioning in the summer and actually being efficient, rather than claiming that they are.

Second, when visiting friends in Montréal, I once dared to be green: I rode my extremely tiny folding bicycle to the VIA station, folded it to a size smaller than a suitcase and was planning to bring it as my luggage and then ride it to my destination in Montréal, thereby bypassing taxis and public transit (bicycles are “greener” than either). When I got to the station, I was informed by VIA that I was not allowed to bring my folding bicycle on. Even though it folded to the size of a suitcase, fitting with other suitcases on the suitcase rack, and would not topple over like a regular bike, and they wouldn’t have even noticed it if I had packed it in a bag I was NOT. ALLOWED. TO. BRING. IT. ON. We discussed for a while that it makes sense to have policies like that for large things that fall like skis etc, but the VIA staff were petty bureaucrats to the core. They even could have put it in a plastic bag to protect the edges, but they absolutely refused.

I think of most long distance transit possibilities, the train is the best chance, but if VIA really wants to be green I really think they need to fix the large energy consuming equipment like air conditioning, and they also need to fix their policies and customer service so that people can travel in a truly “green” manner. Even the link I gave above is essentially only public relations, because if they had improved their fossil fuel consumption considerably, they would have printed a quantity of green house gas reductions.

After the bicycle incident I started carpooling to and from Montréal which I suspect might actually be “greener” than the train, due to likely comparable or better fuel economy per passenger.

Wha’evah! I do what I WAUNT!

Yeah, that’s right. I am grooming my inner Cartman. Exploring how to navigate the PhD selfishly. Because, folks, I now know that the reason why some direly low ratio of PhD’s who start actually finish (in the order of 17% or something). It’s because your salary stays the same, your fees mount every semester, and when you ask the librarian for a book, she doesn’t have it, and when you inquire if you did in fact order the book to her location, she tells you to look online yourself, and then you do, and no location is given, and you ask her again, but she’s not gonna help. You know why? She doesn’t CARE! And neither does the dean’s admin assistant (well, unless you’re the dean), and neither do the master’s students who supposedly “run” your grad association, or the undergrads who somehow have the power to charge you $30 a semester, culminating in >$35,000 per year that they have the power to disperse, but only to their own interests ($2000 shelves for the undergrad office anyone?). And you ask, well, how is this different than the rest of the world? And the answer is that I don’t have a manager who will either fend for me, or who I can hate and look for a new job, and there are no “minimum standards” of service here, and everything is decentralized. So, I have to do everything for myself all the time, and if someone doesn’t want to deal with me, in general, they can get away with it.

It was getting me down until I started to channel my inner Cartman. Not going to send me an article I *know* you have? Wha’eva! I don’t need you! Cartman ate all the skins off the pieces in the KFC bucket and didn’t care until he broke the toilet pipes. You say I can’t have vegetables (a portobello mushroom and an eggplant)  just because I already got a burger at the orientation BBQ that *my* fees pay for? Wha’eva! I do what I WAUNT! I’m gonna eat that portobello mushroom and potentially piss off the vegetarians anyways. Because a burger is not the end of the world, and balanced diets are in, folks. You are going to give me a hard time funding my small project asking for plants for me and my classmates? Fine, I will inform all of the grad students, via email how to get their refund on the $30 fee that goes to your fund. Wha’eva! I do what I WAUNT!

I have been complaining to a few friends about this, and while the science types don’t seem to get the same treatment (they are sort of problem solving and “in it together”), my friend assured me it’s common in the social sciences. Like the social science wine and cheese which is tense, and everyone seems to be waiting for someone to get drunk and slip up.

I think my inner Cartman is going to get me through. And I can imagine his response to all of the “helpful” people here: “You can suck. mah. bawls.”

A little crude, but it’s getting me through the day and keeps me laughing, focused and productive, rather than plotting my revolt or my resignation

Until further notice…

I was so stressed from writing today that I put an out of office response on my email. Now, when you email me I have “Away from email until further notice. Thanks, Chrysalids”.

“Until further notice”? Who writes that? But I seriously don’t know when the writing stress will be over with.

And I can apply it to many facets of life:

Until further notice, I am into Jeff Buckley.

I will minimize the meat until further notice.

I am restricted from travel, until further notice.

Until further notice, please do not mention climate change as a moral imperative in my presence.

Yeah.

Writing Activities

Still writing, writing, writing and going through tons of theory which I’m categorizing along epistomological, spatial and temporal scales (wow!). I’m sick of my music, and I don’t like CBC radio after the morning, so I have discovered the beauty of 89.9 FM, Radio Canada. French speaking is so smooth on the radio, I can tune in and out (I really like the human voice as soothing background) and they play tons of world music in all kinds of languages. This should last me a few weeks at least.

And in the ongoing battle of The Chrysalids versus Fruit Flies, I am tipping the scales in my favour! Matt Galloway openly complained on Metro Morning about all the damn fruit flies in his house and urged listeners to call in to give ideas about how to get rid of fruit flies. I have tried the following solution: put a piece of fruit (mine is a rotting apple) in a container, cover with plastic wrap (I used an elastic to hold it taut) and then poke holes with a fork. Apparently fruit flies will sniff the fruit and get in, but not out. It wasn’t working at first, so I aided the stink and rotting of the fruit with balsamic vinegar, and presto! I currently have at least 10 fruit flies and counting. When I get a functioning camera I will post pictures.

Routines and Writing

I am getting ready for the comprehensive exam this Fall, the one point of the PhD where they can get rid of you. There are different formats, but mine consists of getting a question, and having three weeks to answer it in 10,000 words (plus appendices), and then I will have an oral component a few weeks later.

My preparation consists of writing a series of three papers to critically examine the topic I’ve chosen. I wrote one paper, but it was something I really didn’t know, and felt like I was pulling teeth (actually, I *did* get my wisdom tooth removed while writing it). Now that I’m writing the second paper, I realized I need to restructure the first one. So I am simultaneously writing two papers, and trying to get them off my plate before my planned deadline, and then move onto some more research (two projects on the go) and then on to the third paper and so on until I hit the comprehensive exam, which I’d like to have over with by the end of December. So, I am *craving* routine. Routine, routine, routine.

I am figuring out how to set up to have food on demand while I’m writing. I’m avoiding going away for long periods of time (now that I did my two 10+day trips!). I’m trying to run in the mornings and do some living room exercise. I’m not being good about responding to emails and phone calls (I just got a new phone and haven’t even set up voicemail!). I’m downplaying the excitement which is not on the page.

More stuff to look forward to…

So, apparently there are more things for me to fear in PhD land: swine flu. Word is, universities might be more hard hit, since the flu tends to attack young, healthy people–like the demographics on university campuses. One more reason to run straight to my office and dodge undergrads, increase my use of hand sanitizer on campus, and perhaps schedule a few extra days at home a week .

There goes that dream…

The local outfitters store, Adventure Guide, is promoting FiveFingers footware. Apparently you can “Discover a level of performance and a connection to your environment that is positively without peer.”

But when I checked the FAQ section on the FiveFinger website, “Unfortunately the design of FiveFingers does not accommodate webbed toes”. So no FiveFingers for me (but I am shocked they even addressed the webbed toe issue on the website anyways showing wider recognition for my condition!)

Where does Mother’s Day come from?

Check out Inter Pares’ Take Back the Day campaign, and