Brad's England Journal- Final Entry 

Sunday, October 19, 1997

I just read the end of my last entry back at the end of July, and I said that entries would be "few and far between."  Well, considering that two and one half months have gone by since that entry, it seems fair to say that the entries are very few and far between.  I am now back at Stanford, and three weeks into the new quarter here.  Obviously I am back from England, and I am happy to report that my Master's Thesis was also completed and turned in to the University back in England.  Still, such a simple summary doesn't really convey how my year in England finished up, so I will endeavor, with this one final journal entry to summarize what happened.

August has already pretty much blurred together in my mind.  I'll try and convey the day to day life of that month first, and then go over the more major events that ocurred.  As I indicated in the last journal entry, the month of August was pretty much dedicated to working on my Master's Thesis, which I also call my Master's Dissertation, but which is most properly called my Final Project.  In any case, I spent most of the time in my room programming and trying to get things to work properly.  I tried to avoid other distractions as much as possible-- I even went so far as to get a crew cut so that I wouldn't have to deal with my hair (although realistically dealing with my hair didn't take that much time in the first place).  Of course even if I were to focus myself complete, which I seldom am able to do, it wouldn't have been possible to do nothing but work.  So I went out to the movies several times, went to see a spectacular fireworks display at Cannon Hill Park, and went out on the town with my roommates once or twice (once to celebrate Kris' Birthday).  Of course there were all of the mundane day to day things like laundry, but I suppose they almost go without saying.

On Saturday, August 10th I went up to my Host Counselor, Dr Yannamani's house for dinner.  Due to busy schedules and unexpected occurences we hadn't been able to get together since April, so it was nice to see him and his wife, Pushpa, again.  The Yannamani's had some other friends over to their house that same day; they were another family of Indian descent, and two of them were actually just visiting England from India.  We had some very interesting discussions about global issues including the changing role of women in today's world.  Although I have had similar converstations on many occasions, for me it was especially interesting to discuss such issues among a group from differing cultural backgrounds.  I was somewhat surprised that many of the ideas and problems were similar seen from a US, English, and Indian perspective.  Of course another highlight of the evening was the wonderful Indian food.  I will miss the chance to go over to the Yannamani's for some home cooked Indian food.

The Wednesday after my dinner at the Yannamani's, I gave a speech at the Sutton-Coldfield Rotary Club (see photo with club president at left).  It was actually a bit of a surprise to be asked to speak so late in the year, as the official end of the Scholarship year was at the end of June.  Nonetheless, I was happy to go and speak to the club, especially since Alan Pearce, the man who had given me a ride to Glasgow and back, among many other things, was a member of the club.  Sutton-Coldfield is a lunch club, so the meetings are kept fairly brief, and thus I had to keep my speech to about 15 minutes.  I talked again about the differences I had seen between the US and the UK, although I modified it slightly by talking also about technological differences, and also how I saw the Internet, computer and communications technology bringing the world closer together.

August 25th is a Bank Holiday in the UK, which pretty much just means a designated three-day weekend.  For the Saturday and Sunday Kris and I went up to Blackpool.  Blackpool is a seaside town on the western coast of the UK, just to the north-west of Manchester.  From what I gather it doesn't have the greatest reputation in the UK, known sort of as a working man's holiday destination.  So, a good question is why did we decide to go to Blackpool?  Kris went up because his friend was having an engagement party there on Sunday afternoon, and he didn't care to do a day trip.  I went up to ride the worlds second tallest roller coaster, and also to see what it was all about.

View of the Big One from Beach
On the Big One
Me with Big One in back
Kris in front of the Play Station Ride

At the Blackpool Pleasure Beach
Anyway, we left on Saturday to head up there.  We had planned on taking the National Express Bus since it was direct and slightly cheaper, but we cut it to close and missed the bus, so we took the train instead. The train was more comfortable, but we did have to change trains twice before arriving in Blackpool.  After checking into a cheap Bed and Breakfast, we headed down to the main attraction of Blackpool, the Blackpool Pleasure Beach.  It is a little hard to describe what it is like, but I would guess it is somewhat like Coney Island.  There are a bunch of rides of varying age and excitement surrounded by many small food stands, carnival games, and souvenir shops.  Unlike an amusement park you have to pay for each ride separately, and in my case the main one of interest was the "Pepsi Max Big One".  Its claim to fame is that it is the roller coaster with the steepest and highest drop of any in the world, although I have been told that there is one in Australia that is slightly taller now.  Aside from this one attribute, there is not much else exciting about it-- no loops or anything like that.  In any case, we rode on it three times, at a price of £4 per ride, which is quite expensive.  It was certainly an impressive drop, but I didn't find it too terrifying.  My roommate, Kris, found it more intimidating, but he confessed to being somewhat afraid of heights, while I am not.

After the roller coaster, we hung out and went on some of the other rides at the Pleasure Beach, before heading back through Blackpool to our Bed and Breakfast.  Blackpool is basically a boardwalk along the side of the sea, with most of the excitement going on in the strip of buildings facing the ocean, and on three piers.  The town is full of gaming parlors and bright neon lights, a kind of a low scale Las Vegas, with carnival barkers out side of each game parlor trying to lure in the passersby.  Kris and I walked up the boardwalk, through what started as a drizzle and turned into a fairly heavy rain.  We were looking for a restaurant to eat in, otherwise we would have hopped on one of the frequent trams that run up and down the waterfront.  The restaurants we passed all looked either too expensive, or not very good, and in the end we settled on a default we could be certain was decent: Pizza Hut.  Eating there also gave us a chance to dry off before going back to our room.

Saturday, January 24, 1998

Whoops, another bit of a time warp here.  I never finished the last entry back in October, and haven't gotten around to writing again until now.  This time, I hope to finish things off once and for all.  I'll start off right where I left off, and then give an explanation of why I didn't write for so long.
Beach Scene at Time 
Zero
Same Scene, 2 Minutes Later!

Fast Tide
Anyway, after eating at Pizza Hut we grabbed a tram back to our room and went to sleep.  It was a bed and breakfast, so we had to get up by 9:00am on Sunday to eat the included breakfast.  We headed into town in the hopes of finding a Go-Kart Track, but by the time we found one Kris had to head off for his friends engagement party.  We agreed to meet later that afternoon back at the B&B so that we could catch the last train back from Blackpool to Birmingham.  I went back to the B&B right away, and spent my day programming for my thesis on my laptop.  I also walked out on the beach since the skies had since cleared (see right).  The tide was coming in as I was walking, and in the half hour or so I was out there, the beach became completely covered with water!  I took some pictures which show just how fast the tide was coming in.  They are shown above.

I waited for Kris at the B&B, but he didn't show up, and finally I left a note for him at reception and took the tram downtown to the train station, hoping that Kris was just running late and could meet me at the train station. I bought my tickets and got on the train, which only had two cars.  Kris never showed up though, so I headed back alone.  Some women from Nottinghamshire rode on the first segment of the train ride with me.  They had really thick accents, and found it amusing to find a kid from the US working on his homework (I was actually programming on my laptop computer) on the train with them.  They had come to Blackpool for the weekend to drink and flirt with the guys, and seemed to pretty much typify the type of people that go to Blackpool.  Eventually I made it home, but Kris didn't make it back until two days later-- he had decided to stay and hang out with his friends in Blackpool.

At the end of that week, the last in August, I moved out of the University as the dorms closed.  I packed up my stuff and went to stay with Alan and Anne Pearce for the week or so until my flight home on September 9th.  It was actually a very interesting week to stay at their home, since on that Sunday, Princess Diana of Wales died.

I awoke rather late morning and came downstairs for breakfast.  Another of the Pearce's guests, Eric, and older man from Stratford, was sitting downstairs reading the newspaper when I came into the breakfast.  As I sat down to eat, he asked me if I had heard the news.  When I replied in the negative he said, "Princess Diana has been killed in a car accident."  I couldn't really believe it was true, but he went on to explain the details of how she had been killed early that morning driving home from a restaurant in Paris.

It turned out that they had been awoken shortly after the Princess death when the Pearce's daughter, Eleri, called from California.  Being eight hours behind she had heard on the evening news of the tradgedy.  I had slept soundly through the entire thing.

That whole week was very strange, as the mood of everyone was quite altered.  For that whole week almost all of the television channels played nothing but news and tributes about the Princess's death.  There were stories of millions from all over the country going to sign books of condolences which were set up in almost every town.  The Pearce's set up a special book for the residents of their retirement home to sign.  Dorothy, Eric's wife, watched the television for hours on end to get the details of the story as they broke.  This was not so unusual in itself, except that she was not a big TV watcher normally.

Group Photo at Final Tamworth-Anker Rotary Club Visit
That Monday I went to my host Rotary Club, Tamworth-Anker, for the last time.  Because of the recent death of the Princess, it was a strange time to visit the club.  Since I had spoken to the club once before, I gave a slightly different talk than the one I normally gave.  Instead, I talked about what I had been through during the past year, in terms of my time at the University, my travels, and the various Rotary Activities I had attended.  There is also an old expression, "May you live in interesting times," so I discussed how this had certainly been true for me during my year in England since I had seen the overturn of Tory government after 15 years in power, and witnessed the shock of Princess Di's death.  I wound up the talk by briefly describing how amazing it was the way the Internet, global television, and the ease of making international phone calls was making the world a much smaller one.  My one comment was that there were many advantages to this in terms of world understanding, but that there was also a risk of everything becoming to homogeneous.  During questions on this, I commented that I had been somewhat saddened to see the number of retail stores that the UK had in common with the US on first arriving.  One Rotarian's comment on that was that I shouldn't worry too much, since it would be a long time before the British would be convinced to say "Have a nice day!" to all the customers (the British have a running joke about the fake congeniality of workers in the service industry in the US).

Princess Diana's funeral was that next Saturday and was very memorable for me.  I had thought that it was starting at 11AM, so I actually missed seeing all of it live.  Still, I saw Earl Spencer's speech, and the procession from Westminster Abbey.  Just about everybody in the house was emotionally effected by the funeral, and hardly any one had dry eyes.  Even I felt a little choked up when I saw the footage of the flowers from here two sons atop her casket with the simple inscription: "To Mummy."  The most amazing thing was to see the people who lined the entire 60 or so miles of the procession route, all of them throwing flowers on the hearse, to the point where the driver had to stop several times to clear them off just to be able to see to continue driving.  They say the British are not a very emotional people, but during the week following Diana's death I didn't see anyone who was not emotional.

Final Photo in England (Left to right: Rao Yannamani, Anne Pearce, Me, and Alan Pearce) 
My flight back to the United States was on the next Monday, but I didn't want to have to get up very early just to get to London on time, so I had contacted Karen, a friend of mine, whos parents had a house in London.  The Pearce's put me on a bus down to Heathrow, and from there I took the tube to Karen's house after checking my luggage at the airport.  Monday morning Karen went out to the airport with me to see me off, and before I knew it, my year in England drew to a close.  I sat next to a couple from Wolverhampton on the flight to San Francisco, and had them take my last picture of England out the window of the plane (see right).

I arrived home on the 9th not too long after I had departed due to the eight hour time change.  The only loose end was that my thesis was due on the 15th, so I still had work to do after I returned.  My friend Patrick also got married in Massachusetts the Saturday after my return so I was jetting around the country not long after getting back.  The whole time I was hauling my laptop around with me and finishing up my thesis, which I did manage to finish and electronically transfer back to England just before the deadline.  One week after that I moved back to Stanford, and things were off to the races there.

So, that just a about summarizes everything, but I will give some brief explanation as to why it took so long for me to get around to finishing this journal off.  In a nutshell, my excuse is that I had my PhD Qualifying Exam just a few weeks ago, and I was spending most of my free time studying for that.  The exam is both competitive with less than half of the candidates passing, and quite broad in the material covered.  In addition I was switching between research groups last quarter, further complicating things.  The good news is that the exam went well, and I just found out yesterday that I passed, and am now cleared to pursue my PhD in Electrical Engineering here at Stanford.  So, now a new chaper opens in my life.  I hope it is as exciting as this one I now draw to a close.