Orange People, Day 4: Amsterdam and airports

Multi-storey bike park, Amsterdam. The Dutch like to complain about bike theft, apparently, but they also like to leave their bikes around with no or minimal chaining compared to the big U-clamps common in Sydney and London. Statistical correlation or coincidence? You decide.

This will be a shorty, as Tuesday was my last day in the Netherlands and Grant's last day with Rohan and Narelle, as his work required him to get drunk with some Dutch customers on Tuesday night, and he had a meeting with them on Wednesday.

So, Rohan went to work like a good soldier, and Narelle and Grant and I headed to Amsterdam for a look at the outside of things, since we only had 3 hours or so to work with before we had to head for Schipol airport for my flight home/Grant's meeting with his workmates ahead of the pissup. Pictures here and following, bearing in mind that (a) the bridge opening is in Den Bosch and (b) there are no pictures of the pleasant half hour nap we had in the park next to the guys discussing the thriving market in 'shrooms.

We really didn't have enough time to experience the joys or otherwise of Amsterdam but it was good to see what we saw. Maybe next time we'll get a better crack at it. Until then, fave Netherlands places in order of faveness: the Hague, Utrecht, Den Bosch, Amsterdam.

After that, I had a relatively uneventful flight home to Gatwick and a train trip home that took longer than the flight from the Netherlands. Go Thameslink and the tube!

Steps on holiday: a million, so I promptly ceased walking altogether on our return home.
Thesis words: none in two weeks, and now I'm scared to touch the thing, a slight problem as it's officially due in a month. However, I think I'm only about 2-3000 words from the finish line so a little more procrastination will just help make things more exciting. Right?

He made it!

So, Grant has survived an epic 2 week journey to self awareness via extreme sleep deprivation aka shiftwork, which culminated in a heroic 72 hour week finishing at 7.30am Sunday - and, being a glutton for punishment, he's back in the office today for the usual 9-5 grind. Did I mention he's done all this while I've been on holidays? Talk about adding insult to injury.

To his credit, evil nightshift Grant did not make an appearance. Not even a single irrational temper tantrum was had.

Anyway, as a result life has been relatively unadventurous around here lately. I spent my first week of holidays doing exactly what I do the rest of the time, ie. reading reading reading until the bleeding of the eyeballs. Oh yeah, and writing writing writing until the bleeding of the fingertips. Thesis has now cracked 22,000 words (for those playing home game: word limit 15,000 words, oops). Thesis supervisor has commented gamely that it's "like a mini M.Phil or PhD" by which I think he means "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP WRITING!" The BEST part is that I have another 3 months to work on the thing, including the rest of April off and half of June.

We did go for a nice stroll around Holland Park and environs yesterday. Spring is indeed in the air. T-shirt weather, which means it will probably snow tomorrow. Highlight of the walk was a small child, 4 tops, scootering towards us on the footpath, with giant crowds everywhere. He said something which I did not think he could possibly have said. However, Grant confirmed it. Yes, the 4 year old in a park in the midst of GBP2.5million houses and tertiary-educated nannies instructed me to "move my f---ing arse." THIS WAS NOT IN THE BROCHURE ABOUT ENGLAND. Furthermore, HE WAS THE ONE SCOOTERING AT ME. If anything, HE should have moved his f---ing arse.

Actually, the nicest part of the walk was the usual admiration of 150 year old palatial mansions that is our usual weekend passtime. There but for the GBP2000/week rent we go.

Not sure what we are doing for Easter break. Grant is trying to work it, because he is an unstoppable machine as several of his underlings have apparently admiringly commented. We might try to fit in a couple of day trips, but I'm not sure that regional England will be open to feed us if we do.

Steps this week: 3500. Shut up, it's only Monday morning! 85Kish last week.
Thesis words this week: 2500 if you count 7 days back. I don't want to talk about it (I'm not TRYING to write a textbook, honest).
Cycle km: none last week. Tch.
Sunshine exposed to and resulting effect on mood: several hours; bouncing off walls. It's good stuff, sun. You forget that back home, what with the fact it wants to give you skin cancer.

White cliffs of Dover, OR, giant chalk horsey!

Look! A castle!

But first, a weather report. Week before last it was t-shirt weather, just about. Bright sunny skies, and I was getting terribly sweaty while cycling. Then apparently something odd happened with the arctic or whatnot, and all weekend before last was bloody freezing. Sleet on Sunday, and last Monday we had snow. At the end of March. This in a city in which people assured me it would not snow at all ever. So I am pretty chuffed, even if the last batch was just a few light flurries.

So, weekend before last our adventure was to Dover, White Cliffs Of. On the way, we saw this controversial horsey. Unfortunately not one of the mysterious old ones.

Dover proper was a little shocking. It isn't flat, for starters. We had to walk up the hill to the castle (in fact, the hill we walked up was the side of one of the white cliffs), and my calves were in agony for three days afterwards. I am a Londoner now, and I don't hold with all this crazy hill business. I don't care if it's been a strategically significant site since at least the first century (there are the ruins of a Roman lighthouse). It should be flattened for the sake of the tourists.

Dover is of course the closest point of England to France and therefore the most likely invasion point, although I believe the last actual attempted enemy landing was in the thirteenth century. Still, better safe than sorry, and it is therefore the home of Dover Castle, a giant fortified structure whose ramparts contain an eclectic combination of Roman, Saxon, Norman, Tudor and WWII-era structures, as well as a warren of tunnels built during the Napoleonic wars and WWII. The evacuation of Dunkirk aka Dunquerque was coordinated from the super secret tunnel warrens, as was the naval stage of D-Day. If war is your bag there is quite a lot of interest around. Alas, the place is sadly lacking in the stolen treasures that other castles so amply offer.

On the other side of town is another giant hill. It's also full of tunnels, as one does. Otherwise, Dover is an excellent mixup of faded glory and postwar fugly, a lot of it having been bombed out of existence before it had a chance to fade.

Sunday before last we strolled around Kensington and unfortunately broke the seal on our formerly frugal selves. I picked up some boring black shoes for a lawyer functiony thing, Grant purchased his long-desired hoodie, and we spent an embarrassing amount on media (Kaiser Chiefs aka RUBY RUBY RUBY RUBY! Chili Peppers because we are oooooooooold school, and "Peep Show" DVDs which if you can stand embarrassment-based English humour is worth a look). We got sleeted on halfway through proceedings which was a good excuse for a break for tea and scones.

Grant actually had last Monday off and got to spend part of it queuing in a job centre for a National Insurance number (sort of like a TFN) in Camden Town, but he was happy as it snowed more there than here. I took the opportunity to add about another 1000 words to my thesis and freak out some more about it - 18,600 words now (word limit for those playing at home is 15,000). Good times!

Grant did a bunch of 12 hour shifts last week while I pretended to be studying French copyright law. Last Tuesday I had the aforementioned lawyerly thing which was a reception at a firm with whom I used to do some associate work. It was actually a wonderfully fun and incredibly long evening with about 6 hours of excessive corporate hospitality and some really aggressive wine waiters with an excellent grasp of stealth glass filling techniques. Anyway, I have a fistful of business cards to do the networking thing and it was nice to remember that I am actually OK at that particular game. And better still to hang with some of my peeps, aka lawyerly types. There are not really many lawyerly types at uni, and oh I had missed the snark and the brainiacs and the crazy client stories and those who sympathise with me when I say EUROPEAN IP LAW IS STUPID (ie. those who also harken back to the glory days of English sovereign IP law without nasty European bits in). I am considering doing a short stint over here at the end of my degree given the horrifyingly big numbers that get bandied about salary-wise for IP lawyers, but I guess I'll see what comes up.

However, excessive corporate hospitality did mean that the next day I was a touch under the weather and not really up to proper study other than uni class. For some reason this made me feel compelled to clean the oven. It doesn't smoke as much now, but buggered if I can work out why it was smoking before - it has weird black plastic flaky stuff in it that smells like burning plastic but who knows from whence it came - but enough of these glamorous tales from the front lines of housewifery.

I topped this off with a Uni book launch function on Thursday, which was yet more scads of free alcohol (no wine waiters though but you can't quibble self-service when it's free) and hanging around with a select group of tipsy academics and fellow students. Again, lots of fun. However, people seem to think I am crazy for wanting to go back to Australia and be a scary evil corporate lawyer when I could do ??? instead. I am not entirely sure what ??? is and no-one has yet clarified. Certainly there seems to be a relatively poor understanding of the differing academic markets in Australia and the United Kingdom. Here you could probably specialise in IP right off the bat. In Australia, even if I did manage some kind of academic appointment it would be low-end and general, probably in Woop Woop, and most Australian unis either don't teach IP or don't teach much of it, so it's highly unlikely I'd have the chance in the short term to actually exploit my specialty. PLUS it would be roughly a 50%+ paycut. But hey, other than that and the publish or perish mentality that would have me working longer hours than in corporate law for less cash, an academic career back home is a great idea!

I am getting rather cross with uni at the moment, because the reading is going in one ear and out the other. Fortunately I have tons of casenotes to review when it comes time for exam preparation, so I won't have to go back to the raw materials, but still. ANNOYING, because I am at last actually putting in the hard yards and am basically just making myself more confused. I'm hoping it will all settle in soon enough, esp since I am as of now on yet another 4 week holiday, then a 7 week term, then a 2 month study break, so - well, I have time on my hands and God knows I need to avoid spending it on the thesis at any cost. Humorously enough, I have been designated the go-to gal on my subjects by those fellow students with questions. I don't know that I would be relying on me, frankly.

Grant has been doing 12 hour shifts of the day and night variety for a couple of weeks to cover some training, and this has unfortunately overlapped with the start of daylight savings, so this morning we both got up at 5.45am to walk to the station and it was still dark. ICK. And then I was a zombie for the rest of the day while pretending to study the interaction of IP and human rights laws, but I think Grant managed a little better.

First grade of year (doesn't count to final assessment): A-. MINUS! MINUS! FIE! DON'T THEY REALISE I HAVE A REPUTATION TO KEEP UP, HERE?
Steps this week: 8700. But the week is young!
How deep Grant is in to the guts of his new computer: elbow - it's a little computer (Shuttle).
Tip for travel vegemite-in-a-tube users: apply vegemite to knife, not toast. It's like vegemite toothpaste!

Watch me pull a dramatically prolix thesis out of this hat!

We had a lovely weekend, first walking out to Ealing for friend's birthday Saturday via Grand Union Canal (probably about 10km - 25,000 steps). Quite a nice walk, although the canalway is about as patchy as the Bay to Bay cycleway in Sydney in parts, presumably due to a Battle of the Boroughs. It may have been my last long walk in the brown quilty jacket though, as it was bloody hot. We walked down through Acton (where Grant works) to Ealing and it was readily apparent why Acton housing is comparatively cheap. AWFUL. But Ealing is pretty swank.

On Sunday we went into town to meet another friend for breakfast near Waterloo. We had a nice walk along South Bank (ie of Thames, not in Brisvegas) afterwards. It was an unusually pretty sunny day, and the usual street performers were out. We stopped to watch a very funny magician, whose act including counting his three magic cups in many different languages, including Australian (Magician: "Aussie Aussie Aussie!" [pause]; Grant, Loz, and about three other people: "OI! OI! OI!"). The act was made even better by a magician using Grant and I as misdirection during one of his tricks - always nice to have a crowd clap while you kiss, isn't it? I must say, Grant said he could spot some of the sleight of hand, but the guy was way too fast for me. We also went for a bit of a wander around the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey and the Jewel Tower, which is a 600 year old relic of the old palace that the Houses of Parliament ultimately replaced. One of the Edwards kept his treasures there, but in a truly pragmatic exercise of Victorianism, its last official use was as a store for the standard units of weights and measures - because it is thick stone, the tower resists vibration and changes in temperature, so keeping the units stable. It's an educational if somewhat dry place - lots of Parliamentary history stuff (+ cabal, precursor to the cabinet, is an acronym of the names of the nobles involved in the first cabal of Charles II - Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley and Lauderdale) which rather highlighted my ignorance of English history. Side benefit is I finally learned what the crazy imperial weights system is based on (weights of wheat grains - crazy English).

Grant has been having fun at work. The official position of whether or not he goes on shift changes every other day. He doesn't care either way - I'm not working, after all, so it won't be anything like the fun 3 years where we passed each other at the door 2-3 days a week - but it would be nice to know either way so we can plan some damned holidays.

I have been working on my thesis today (being a dangerous combination of ambitious and lazy, I am trying to make myself devote my Mondays to the cause as I am off Uni Mondays and Tuesdays). It's going OK; my supervisor seems happy with it so far. BUT, the advanced draft part is already 17000 words and the whole thing is only supposed to be 15000. PLUS I have at least another 5000 to go by my calculations. It's turning into LLB Honours all over again - for that one I was supposed to turn in 12000 words and it was 25000! The secret is to hide the total from responsible authorities until the very last minute.

However, since I am now terrified of adding words, thesis editing has become an interesting exercise in me pretending the thesis is some sort of incredibly boring jigsaw. It has now been restructured about 5 times, to the point where my supervisor instructed me to Quit Fiddling With It. Of course, I'm hoping he won't notice that I've squeezed in new sections 2(a) and (b). Right?

Otherwise Uni is going pretty well. I am doing a bit better with getting the reading done, and feeling a little less panicky about the whole thing, which is a plus. However, the fact remains that I haven't sat a formal exam in 5 years and I'm about to do three of them. SIT DOWN, CLOSED BOOK exams no less, all covering not only UK law but US, French and German/EU law as well. OK I'm going to stop talking as I am scaring myself.

I have just put in applications for (a) a 2 week residential study program in Washington DC run in conjunction with my Uni and a few others, and (b) a very casual research assistant job. I'm really not sure of my chances for either, actually. Frankly, for the former I walk a dangerous line between being underqualified for not knowing enough about US law and overqualified for knowing too much based on what I used to do at work, and on the latter my only research work has been on my own behalf, which doesn't really count as relevant experience to do it professionally, especially since I'm out of my home jurisdiction and deprived of the useful paralegals who used to do my research for me. However, I did get to go over my CV etc to fill in the applications, and the whole exercise did remind me that on paper I look quite good, and used to be a Super Lawyer Type Person, even if I feel rather like a lazy waste of potential earning power at the moment.

In final news, spring is finally really here, and I am loving it. I am much less tired and more productive than I was when we were getting 7-8 hours of daylight. The sun is up after 6pm now. I get woken up before 7am with the sun coming into the bedroom, and it's less of a chore to get up to walk to the station with Grant. There are flowers everywhere, and I no longer need a beanie on morning walks, and can cycle in just a t-shirt and my light jacket. VERY EXCITING!

Ro's visiting this weekend. Hurray!

Steps: 80+K last week; Grant busted 100K. Go team Donnelly/Eade!
Cycle: 40km per usual. Boring, I know. I should get extra points though as it was really windy last week.
Thesis words: don't even want to think about it, but about 800 words. Sob!

It Done Snowed II

OK, so further to our previous tantalising post: BEHOLD THE SNOW. This would be from last Thursday. Shut up, I never said we'd update frequently! Take a careful look at the picture of Grant. He lost that beanie (lovingly knitted BY HIS WIFE) half an hour later.

It was especially wonderful snow actually - still coming down at 10am, all clothes soaked, sizeable snowperson-facilitating snow (my snowperson was lame because my hands got cold).
Much better than the previous January snow which, while nice, had stopped by the time we got up. When I went to copyright class in the afternoon, my lecturer, who is an Australian expat decades removed from the motherland, said to me in excitement: "Isn't it wonderful?"

After I dropped Grant off at the station at about 7.30am I went for a hike through Holland Park, which is the foresty snowy pictures, esp the maze, the terribly cold fishies in the Kyoto Garden and My Lord Holland You Are Sitting Very Still.

Freakishly, the tube was only running about 20 mins late when I caught it in to class in the morning despite the snow. Considering that it routinely does way worse in bright sunny weather, I was pleasantly surprised! It still would have been faster to ride in, but I get scared of unusual weather conditions, viz. when I rode home after hail in Sydney and tried to access my inner European for racial memories on what to do when hitting an ice drift at speed. I did ride in the next day, and got absolutely drenched in a sleety downpour (fellow student, English: "You don't have to ride in EVERY day, you know"), and then afterwards had to spend half an hour cleaning the grit out of the bike that had been scattered in the snow the day before. Apparently gritty abrasive salt+dirt+water = bad for bikes. Or so I am told. I have my suspicions that it is a beat-up though to make me clean my poor old bike.

Grant actually had to come home early on the snow day with a cold and was off sick the next day too (damn contracting damn no sick leave). However, he's much better now, with the exception of in the wee small hours when he tends to start hacking up a lung just to piss me off. We have new cough syrup - honey and lemon flavour. On inspection, ingredients = honey and lemon. Not entirely sure why this product exists.

Anyway, Grant's bug did mean we didn't get up to too much hiking at the weekend, which coupled with the fact I rode into school 2 days last week meant that my walking total was CRAP - a measly 58000 steps. Did however do 40km on the bike. Not very flash, but given it is the dead of winter I am pretty chuffed. I have to wear a jumper while I ride and everything. AND windproof gloves, cf Wednesday when I didn't wear them and couldn't feel my fingers for quite some time thereafter.

We did meet a friend of Grant's from when he was working in Syd, who is over for the week, for drinks and dinner on Saturday night around SoHo (no champagne, but if there had been I doubt it would have tasted like cherry cola). Met some nice friends of hers, too, which is always a good thing in this big wide city. Otherwise the only other weekend adventure was a moderate stroll to Kensington Palace Gardens for tea and scones. I used the word "grand." Now all I need to do is start saying "all right" instead of "Hello, how are you?" and I'll be set.

Thesis has been doing quite well yesterday and today, in part because I cheated by doing thesis work instead of trade marks/copyright today as well as yesterday. Aren't I clever in using my self-distracting powers for good instead of evil? Yesterday I cleaned the flat from top to bottom by way of distraction. Excellent stuff. Anyway, today's slog got me 1800 words added and about 800-1000 subtracted, so I am still ahead of the game. My argument now goes from intro to parts a through c of part 2 before running aground, compare earlier where it sort of went intro, part 2(c), make of that what you will. OF COURSE, disclaimer here is that my supervisor has read none of it yet so could decide it is all total rubbish. I think I keep deterring him from reading what he has already by sending him a new draft every week. I personally would regard that as a tip not to read anything until I had a version someone was prepared to call final! It isn't due until July but I have 6700 done pretty well and another 6000 done in early draft form. Cue freakout re: 15,000 word target overshoot (familiar from 2000 where I produced a 25000 word thesis that was supposed to be 12000), which is why I am glad to have cut some words out. Have to do some more work on the USA part of it though.

I must say Jamie hit the nail on the head when she told me the problem with grad school was the utter lack of external stimulus to activity. I have *no* assessment tasks due until July, and final exams are August. Until then I could do jack and there would be no consequences. Don't tell my brain this or I won't get anything done. It's just between you and me, OK? All of this is way worse coming from a life where the task that got done first was (a) the most overdue (b) the one with the screaming client or partner attached to it, and there sure as hell were stimuli to prompt action (positive - $$$, negative - aforementioned screaming). Feel rather like a marionette with strings cut at times. Still, it is nice to relaxxxxxxxxx just the same, also to use brain as sharp instrument instead of blunt one for a change.

UK things people never warned me about: the limescale. OH MY GOD, THE LIMESCALE, THE KETTLE KILLING, DRAIN-CLOGGING, TAPE-CAKING LIMESCALE (apparently it's very healthy for you though). Also, still a bit annoyed by lack of tags on teabags.

OK, off to veg shop and then copyright study. YAY.

Bike k last week: 40km
This: 0
Thesis: 1800 words, but lost 800-1000, so what do we call that?

"Surreal, but nice."

Thus speaks the hero to the heroine in Grant's favourite girly flick, "Notting Hill," which was on the telly on the weekend. Hereabouts the movie is considered horrifically twee and it can also be regarded as a rather racially suspect whitening of a quite multicultural area. All that notwithstanding, it's nice brainmush and on top of that we now get to squeal "OH MY GOD, THAT'S...[insert name of local landmark/shop here]" every five seconds, which was indeed surreal, but nice. You know you've arrived when the geographical names in English film and telly start to make sense.

It was hotting up last week - even to the point of not having to wear a beanie! - but apparently this was a bluff, as it is now freezing again. Heavy frost this morning, for the first time really. No more snow, sadly.

I have given up on my lofty ambitions to do this degree properly and read each case report in full, and am now reading the headnotes only, which is like the Cribb's Notes. I feel like an intellectual traitor but on the plus side, I got through three weeks of trade mark reading in one day yesterday. You can't argue with that kind of brute force productivity, people. At this rate I might even catch up on copyright sometime before the exams.

Cycling kms last week: 40km
This week: none yet, trying to be brave enough to ride to uni today despite cold (riding is the only way to guarantee getting there in under an hour - it is supposed to be a 20 minute tube trip, but that only works under lab conditions)
Thesis this week: about 1000ish, again
Steps this week: truly pathetic 17,000.

And how have you all been?

See, I actually *am* working over here!

It's something of an adjustment going from a rather speed-oriented job juggling billions of deadlines with everyone wanting everything done RIGHT NOW (in fact, a boss once gave me two things to do - being already busy, I asked her which one she wanted done first and she wanted them BOTH DONE AT THE SAME TIME) and every minute involving an influx of files, mail, faxes, calls and emails to my new life as a sane person. I mean as a student/housewife who spends two fulls days a week at home studying/cleaning things and 3 days per week at uni for 3.5 seconds total. Basically, I've gone from being the very model of a modern Sydney career gal and queen of efficiency (tip: cut out the dead wood, including anything in your life you may find pleasant, also consider eating your cereal WHILE walking the dog around the block in the morning) to being a giant lump with whole days rushing past and no self-discipline. This has not exactly lead to rapid progress on my thesis.

However, I've been trying to get a little more organised about my scads of time. Instead of sleeping in I now go for a walk to the station with Grant in the morning which sort of wakes me up. It's important however that I not wear comfy tracksuit pants for this as otherwise the whole day will be a write-off, don't ask me why. I try to get out to do the veg shopping while it's actually still daylight, even. In fact, the last two weeks have been 100,000 steps + which I think is not too bad. Oh yeah, and I now have free timekeeping software which I use to attempt to hammer myself into productivity, even if Grant thinks it is desperately pathetic (hey, timekeeping is a valuable SKILL in my profession; I have to stay in practice).

HOWEVER, my new-found self-discipline actually wasn't really translating very well to uni work. Yes, I've been to the library weekly for a couple of weeks. But then you actually have to read the stuff. Unfortunately photocopying doesn't itself provide for osmotic assimilation of the text. And what I was managing to write on the thesis was terribly discouraging as I changed the planned structure after I got a chunk done which meant I was going to have to rewrite it. So of course I just left it alone for a few weeks :)

But there is hope. I have discovered the 40/20 rule much beloved of PhD students (40 mins work, 20 mins break). It works really well if like me you are obsessive, bully yourself into sitting down to do 40 mins, and get up 3 hours later. Therefore not really a 40/20 rule so much as a 180-with-toilet-breaks rule but anyway, it seems to work. I've done 1800 words today that I think are actually useable. Total so far 6700, but about 2000 of those need to have quite a bit added to them to work with the new structure.

Now I'm scared to stop writing as it may be my only productive day of the academic year, but I've sort of run out of content so probably should give it a break and read some more grist for the mill. 15,000 words by July was never really in doubt, but it was in doubt that it would be any good!

Thesis today: 1800
Steps: 5700 dammit time for a walk.