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.

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.

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 .

It has been brought to my attention that it’s been a while since I posted. Frankly, I think you can tell from my previous post that I really didn’t have many words of wisdom to share. And, there have been some new developments in life. But now I do have some new words of wisdom to share, so I will post.

1. Do not expect any degree of organization from student driven initiatives. This could be conferences, or funding proposals. In particular, do not expect funding from funds controlled by undergraduates if you are a graduate, even if you pay into that fund. In any dealing with student led initiatives, expect about 6 emails back and forth just to figure out when/where to meet to discuss how to clarify the “issues” you/they have. Then expect several awkward face to face meetings reestablishing basic criteria which should already have been established. Expect to get your way so that they can save face in front of professors/staff in the end, despite countless lost hours of useless exchange.
2. While you can attempt to write a review paper on a topic that hardly anyone has researched, expect *it* to take a long time, *you* to feel disorganized, and that *no one* will understand you. Feelings of isolation will keep you down.
3. Do not expect a linear relationship to work. Instead, think like systems thinking. A whole lotta nothing can get done, and then *WHOOOMPH*! Emergent properties lead you to have a brilliant paper on your hands.
4. Sometimes when you are having a down period, you can hit the “reset” button. As in, stop exercising, go to bed early, do what you need to do to feel good. This helps previous emergent properties emerge.
5. Do volunteer for small, radical events. You will make the cooler friends.
6. Avoid the killers. As in, people who repeatedly *insist* on bringing severe (as in death causing) allergens to parties after being told not to bring said allergen to a party. These same people have a tendency to try to overwater plants. Overwatering kills, people.
7. Do fall in love, but not with undergrads. Because a) they will be smart (hey, you’re both in grad school!) and b) no one notices if you are late for school in grad school. It’s your own damn schedule If they are an undergrad, and not mature (as in, not older), everyone will look down on you, but sort of quietly without you knowing.
8. Have friends/significant others with cars. I have essentially only taken public transit once a week for the past 6 weeks. HA! This way, you can feel morally superior about helping others reduce their emissions while being lazy. Muah ha ha.
9. It is important to have a back up bar, in case your first choice is closed or full. This is *very* important in KW.
10. Don’t expect the waitresses to know what “stout” is. Yes, I am embarrassed for them, and I am planning a social marketing program to educate the waitresses here.
11. Do go to the local churchical second hand shop in search of a love seat. Because you might find an amazing, vintage, irregularly shaped turquoise love seat for your office, and since they are churchical it only costs 25 bucks, plus 25 bucks delivery, plus tax. Yes people, 54 bucks for said loveseat.

Now that you have my words of wisdom, please go forth and prosper!

I started Valentine’s day as neutral towards the event, but when I opened my Facebook, I saw that codejill’s status was “will walk V-day to the end of the pier and force it to jump, and when she gets back, we will dance!” and I decided it fit in with my current agenda of declaring war on virtuous things. So I joined that team.

Instead of dancing, MY V-day turned out to be a hot date with a married man and a gay man. We went to a movie (The Visitor–see it!) and ate chocolate, and then had drinks at my favourite bar. It was kind of exciting to watch all of the awkward dates going on around us and cringe while the fun, but still V-day music which was all slow dance love themed played. Another (gay boy) friend joined us, and I tried to convince him to slow dance with me, but he was having none of it.

When I got home, codejill and I instant messaged comparing our respective V-days, and somehow ended up watching these videos, in this order. The first was just randomly posted by a friend, and completely hilarious.

Which turned into watching this one:

Where you might want to note the following:

Bon Jovi flies at 0:53 to about 1:20 (yes, flies)

Guitar solo at about 3:00

More flying at about 3:23

Not that I’m into the music or ever owned an album, but I’ve always imagined a Bon Jovi concert to be the most amazing thing ever. I think codejill and I have resolved to try it if the opportunity arises.

Between going on a date with the least opportunity ever, and therefore the most fun, and cataloguing a Bon Jovi video for exciting things, I think the most exciting V-day ever.

Well. Despite my complaints of how bad season 3 was, characterized by bad sex, bad drama, and a depressing story line, I think The L Word has sunk to new lows in season 6. I can’t believe how bad it is. It’s like they hired writers who had never seen the show before, and the actors all forgot their characters. The season started with such a promising premise: Jenny finally gets killed off (sooooo exciting), and Lucy Lawless is the cop (excellent). But that amazing scene encompassed about five minutes, and the rest is downhill. I am wondering if they drew their inspiration from invasion of the body snatchers. For instance, there is NO WAY Phyllis, the chancellor at UC, could be in love with Bette, the dean of fine arts. The fact that the only sex is Shane and Jenny is just scary. So scary. And uncomfortable. And wrong. And gross. Shane has completely lost any attractiveness factor.

The worst part is that Jenny is still a total crackpot, and has become even *more* central to the storyline than before. Is that possible? Ugh. I am deriving very little psychic flux of enjoyment from this.

Given the past month being full of a cold, a wisdom tooth removal, yet addressing all of the issues that came up for me here by being a hard working academic, I was looking forward to the escapism The L Word offers and feeling justified in watching total crap. Not anymore. It really is worse than season 3. And, while in the past I have claimed that the quality of The L Word follows a V shaped pattern (1st and 5th seasons best, 2nd and 4th OK, and 3rd the pitts), I am revising that claim. If you are going to watch, the new L Word quality order is: season 1, 2/4 (tied), 5, 3, 6.  If Jenny actually dies, seasons 3 and 6 could tie too.

I can’t write anymore. I just make lists. And then I edit them, then I make some tables, present them to people, get feedback, draw up more lists of questions, make meetings, get them answered, read some stuff I don’t understand, write questions, ask them in seminar…etc. etc. etc.

The Good

• running, cross country skiing, yoga
• good produce
• $3.75/pint of stout (how did I not notice this earlier?)
• feeding people at my house
• getting serenaded by fed people
• small neighbours offering peach jam and bagels, and letting me use their stick-grabby-claw thingamajig and hanging out in pajamas
• small neighbours helping me decorate by drawing pictures for my kitchen, and NOT ON THE WALLS (explicit instructions from the mommy), and making sure the whoopee cushion still works
• finally decorating my office at school. and using it
• discovering art talks, like shirin neshat
• new contact lenses
• plug in oil radiator thing for my cold office (finally not frigid)
• mail containing music, post cards, cards, excerpts from comic books

The Bad

• below minus 20
• sickness
• sickness causing getting addicted to the L word. again.
• office for persons with disabilities
• the wisdom tooth removal (forthcoming)
• no car is becoming a bad, i must admit

The Unknown, i.e. The Jigsaw Puzzle

• drawing up a 8 to 10 month plan to incorporate

1. a publication
2. comprehensive themes
3. 4 conference abstracts (and posters/presentations)
4. which add to my CV, and relate to my proposed research (what is that again?)
5. and incorporate a data set within one of my professors possession

• luckily, the themes don’t have to relate to “big G” geography, just “little g” geography. phew.

and i don’t know where this lies, but i’m starting to see a trend in that people over fourty all think i’m 25. but at least i haven’t been carded lately.

The most important post card

It is so easy to unwind when you start drinking good wine in the afternoon everyday. Yum. And when you get to get your culture fix from NYC after months of Kitchener (which is good for school concentration but it is no NYC).

Have been to the Met and saw the exhibit Reality Check: Truth and Illusion in Contemporary Photography. So crazy, because the theme was pretty much on about what I was on about in my highschool art class. They even had a photo from Gregory Crewdson, who I wrote a paper about in HS.

Today hit the Lower East Side, which I love love love. Went back to the Italian Cafe I found years ago when I was broke broke broke (landed back from SL) and discovered that if you search hard enough in NY you can find good food for cheap. Hit the Tenement Museum, and then Bluestockings where I found the above postcard, and a calendar with amazing poster art from contemporary artists where proceeds to go campaigns for political prisoners.I also discovered Danica Novgorodoff who wrote the graphic novel “Slow Storm”, but I’ll pick it up in Toronto since I have a gift certificate there.

On to MOMA. Saw photos by Mikhael Subotzky, but not crazy impressed. The photos seemed staged and somewhat exploitative of very marginalized South Africans, and he did not describe his means of achieving the shots (at least at MOMA). Really liked this one by Marlene Dumas, though. Reminded me of those hazy grade school memories.

I mentioned that I had not eaten cheese fondue in ages when we were at the french resto yesterday, and my uncle has kindly volunteered to make that for dinner tonight. Life is so hard. codejill was right–I was close to vacation when I posted Grump-o-rama.

A little Krio-ism up there. I finally emailed in my last paper, which was at least 1000 words over the limit, but a classmate assured me it was not inane drivel so it was okay and the prof would like it. And I *did* use “dogma” in the title since my most trusted academic wordsmith (a PhD in anthropology–she deals with concepts I can’t even imagine) said I was using it properly. Heh.

Two really important books for my comprehensives, one on logic, one reconceptualizing ’sustainability’, came after I left Kitchener(they are due back really soon since they are interlibrary). Oh well. As soon as I had set up a meeting with both advisors at the same time the second week back (so I have first week to ‘reflect’ and prepare), I turned on the out of office auto reply on my school email until January.

Feeling that end of semester weight in my head, shoulders. Acupuncture felt like nails. I fell asleep early the past two nights, even though I’m totally into my current read ‘Arrow of God’ (read it, Achebe is a genius). So I’m avoiding running, curling up with some hot apple cider, and watching Persepolis the movie.

Today was the day I finally asked “I quit the working world for THIS?”

My psychic flux of enjoyment is low low low. So is the amount of sleep I’ve had. And the amount of exercise. Academia keeps whispering in my ear “just one more day and the paper/marking will be done and you’ll be back to running”.  Ha.

I miss these days.

I have some goals I will start working on in January, and my short-term check in date with myself is next September, when I am due for the comprehensive exam. I think 8 months is a manageable timeframe, rather than 2.5 or 3.5 years.

Time for some waffle therapy.