 |
|
We then walked down to the Tower of London, but decided that the hour or so remaining before it closed wasn't worth the steep admission fee, so we wandered over to St. Paul's Cathedral, one of the sites on the walk, and the 2nd biggest Cathedral in the world, after the Vatican. Unfortunately St. Paul's also charged an admission fee, so we decided to wait and come back for Evensong, which would hopefully be free. We continued on the walk which took us down Fleet Street and the Strand, both of which are famous, but neither of which was very interesting to walk down in the frigid weather. Finally, we decided to head back to Evensong and jumped on a bus. Well, actually we didn't know which bus to take and Rebecca jumped on one going by in the right direction just as it was beginning to move, and I was forced to run along side and jump on. The conductor was a little peeved at us, but we did better than another couple who got separated from one another jumping off at the last minute.
Evensong was indeed free, and they even let us sit in the choir for the service. What Durham Cathedral was to simplicity St. Paul's is to ornateness. Everything is gilt with gold and the entire ceiling above the choir is covered in detailed mosaics inlaid with precious metals. Even the pipes of the organ were gold plated. Although St. Paul's was certainly magnificent, I much prefer the simple style of Durham. After the Cathedral we headed back to the Hostel for dinner, to rest, and to decide what to do for New Years Eve.
For New Years Eve we decided to go down to Trafalgar Square, figuring that even though it was freezing cold, it was the kind of thing you only do once in a life time. The Tube was very efficient getting us there, and then we were out in the streets packed with people. The square was packed with many thousands of people, all bundled up for the weather. There were also almost as many police as there were people. Due to past incidents, before you could enter the square you were searched by police and had to get rid of any beverage containers, and fireworks. For the most part, everybody just stood around, making noise and blowing whistles until midnight, at which point a electric sign in the middle of the square flashed "Happy New Year". I was surprised that there wasn't a count down, and no singing of "Auld Lang Syne". Getting out was also an adventure. You couldn't really decide where to walk, you were just pushed along by the crowd. Some police told us that two people were trampled and died last year, and having been in the crowd I can see why. Overall, it was the kind of thing that is worth doing once to see what it is like, but that you wouldn't want to do again.
On New Years Day we dragged ourselves (well, I dragged myself-- Rebecca
is a morning person and was already up when I got out of bed) into London
to see the sites. We first went to Buckingham Palace to see the changing
of the guard. We knew that the guard changed around 11am every other day
in winter, but we didn't know whether New Years was the right day for the
change. 
It
turned out it wasn't so we walked over to Westminster Abbey to see if it
would be open for free admission from 6pm to 7:45pm as it is normally on
Wednesday's. Once again the answer was, "No", so we decided to come back
later. As we went outside, we noticed that "Hey, there's Big Ben" (well
actually Big Ben is the bell in the clock tower, but I'll use the common
reference). 
There
is a picture of me and Big Ben at right. We also noticed that it was almost
exactly noon, and we decided to wait and hear it toll 12 times. We only
got to hear it toll five or six times, however, before it was drowned out
by fireworks going off which we soon saw blossoming over the water. We
headed the short distance over to where we had heard the fireworks and
saw that a New Years Day parade was going on-- serendipity in action. The
parade was a very international one and there were bands from US and Canadian
High Schools, as well as those from the UK. There were also some floating
balloons and some equestrian groups. There is a picture of George Jetson
and some other bits of the parade at left.
 |
 |
After
watching the parade for a short time, we took the Tube over to Trafalgar
Square to get a picture with the Lions at the base of the Nelson Monument
(see pictures above). 
We
also found that we ran right back into the parade, which had been proceeding
from Big Ben to Trafalgar Square (see picture at right of Mighty Mouse
on his way to Trafalgar Square). By this point we were also getting hungry,
so we decided to walk to our next destination, the Tower of London, in
hopes of finding a restaurant along the way. We found a Pizza Hut, but
it was too expensive, and we saw several McDonald's and a Burger King,
but we had eaten at McDonald's the night before and weren't interested.
Everything else was closed, the streets were deserted (probably because
it was New Years Day-- imagine that!). Finally we arrived at the Tower,
and there was a McDonald's there which we broke down and ate at. We also
found out that the Tower was closed for New Years, so only got to walk
around the outside of the tower. We also had a chance to walk across Tower
Bridge, although it was also closed, so we couldn't see the inside of the
bridge. At left is a picture of me with the Tower of London in the background
taken from the Tower Bridge.
Finally, after having seen a lot, but not having been inside anything due to New Years closures, we decided to go to Westminster Abbey and pay the entrance fee. It was interesting to see the Abbey, which seems to function primarily as a cemetery for the powerful and famous. Perhaps the most striking thing to me was that how important or powerful you were in life had little to do with the elaborateness of your burial place. Perhaps the most prominent burial was that of an unknown soldier memorialized with a large plaque right at the entrance to the abbey, while in a small alcove at the back of the Abbey were 5 or 6 kings all buried with only a tiny plaque to say who they were.
After
Westminster Abbey we called it a night and in the morning we hurried in
to town to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, which we
now knew was on for today. We got there early, hauling all of our bags
since we had to catch the Eurostar right afterwards, and got a very good
place to watch, right at the fence (see picture at right of me in front
of Buckingham palace-- Note especially that: a) I look like a chipmunk
b) I am carrying our lunch). 
It
wasn't quite as cold as it had been New Years Day, but my toes were still
numb by the time the changing of the guard was over. The ceremony itself
wasn't that exciting. I thought there would be a big troop of men marching
back and forth playing music. Instead, only a few guards would march around
at any given time (see picture at left), and, other than when they marched
in and out of the courtyard, they only played two songs. When it was over
I was left with the question, "How can it take them so much time and effort
to do such a straightforward thing?" It was another event worth seeing
only once. I think I enjoyed it more when I heard the band part of the
guard play at the Rotary Conference in Brighton.
On Thursday we didn't arrive until around six in the evening since our
train was delayed by over an hour (they gave us vouchers for a one way
ticket on Eurostar for the delay, but we may not get them since 
we
had youth tickets). Despite the fact that it was dark, we figured that
we were in Paris and should have a look around. Our hostel, the Young and
Happy Hostel, was located in the Latin Quarter, and it was only a 15 minute
walk to Ile d'le Cite, the island in the Seine which houses Notre Dame,
among other things. Notre Dame looked very pretty lit up at night, but
there was scaffolding over much of the front which was disappointing.
The next morning we took the train to the Arc d'Triomphe (see picture
at right) and worked our way back to the hostel over the course of the
day. It was bitterly cold and very hazy, as it was to remain during our
entire time in Paris, so we decided not to go to 
the
top of the Arc d'Triomphe, which is supposed to have a great view in clear
weather-- we figured we could see the mist from the ground as well as from
the air.
Since it was so cold, we decided to go to the Louvre which would be warm, and hope for better weather on the next two days, a hope that turned out to be in vain. We walked down the Champs Elysees, which proceeds from the Arc d'Triomphe to the Concorde, and the Palai d'Louvre beyond. It was strange to see all of the fountains, which must be glorious in the Summer, all frozen over with ice. Eventually we made it through the Concorde, the square where Louis XVI and others were guillotined during the French Revolution, and the Tuilleries Gardens, which was full of more frozen fountains (see picture at left), and into the courtyard of the Louvre and its famous Pyramide entrance.
 |
and
one could not hope to appreciate or even look at more than a small portion
of it in a single afternoon. I wandered through the various exhibits, stopping
when something caught my eye. Unfortunately all of the titles were in French,
so it was difficult to understand what the paintings and sculptures were.
I was able to dredge up some French from my childhood classes in the language,
and together with my knowledge of Spanish and Latin I was able to get some
information. Some rooms also had placards which were in various languages
that you could pick up and read as you looked around the room. These were
very helpful and allowed a better understanding of what was on display
and the context in which it was painted or made. Of course, no visit to
the Louvre would be complete without a visit to "Le Jaconda", the Mona
Lisa. It was surprisingly boring, and, frankly, you can better appreciate
it from looking at a picture in a book. The painting is hung on one side
of a large gallery, enclosed in its on cubicle with a glass pane through
which it can be seen. Surrounding the painting are hundreds of tourists
snapping photos of it. Despite the fact that flash photography is banned
flashes are continuously flashing. The joke will be on the people using
the flash, however, as they will get a nice picture of a big white pane
of glass reflecting their flash and obscuring the painting. At right you
can see my attempt at a photo-- without the flash. I also saw some of the
other famous works in the Louvre, including the Venus de Milo, Michelangelo's
"Slaves", and the "Victory of Samathrace". It was also nice to see some
of the paintings by Delacroix that I remember studying in Western Civ,
my art appreciation class back at University High School.
 |
The outside of the building is more beautiful than the inside, in retrospect.
The inside seemed very dim (the overcast skies outside didn't help very
much), and there wasn't much interesting to see-- it seemed like a generic
cathedral. I am sure that if we had had a guided tour, there would have
been a lot more history to it that is not revealed by a casual stroll through
the cathedral. The other interesting thing was that since this was a Catholic
cathedral, there were priests taking confession in some of the chapels
around the cathedral. At left is a picture of me with Notre Dame in the
background.
After seeing Notre Dame we headed back to the hostel and called it a night since Rebecca had a bad headache. I later went out and grabbed some fast food for dinner, and then spent the rest of the evening programming for my mini-project.
Yesterday was as cold and overcast as it had been the day before, so
our idea of climbing up the towers to see the views hadn't panned out.
Rebecca wanted to see St. Sulpice 
Church,
which boasts one of the biggest organs in the world (she plays organ),
so we walked over to that. Since we had pictures with the lions in Trafalgar
Square, we went ahead and took a picture with a lion on the fountain outside
the church (at right). Although Paris has many things to see, there was
nothing in particular that we wanted to see, so we just wandered through
the city for most of the morning. Along the way we saw the Hotel des Invalides,
built originally as a Hostel for injured soldiers by Louis XIII (one of
the Louis' in any case). It now houses the Army Museum and the Tomb of
Napoleon, but we weren't sufficiently interested in seeing either to pay
the steep admission price. Instead we walked over to the Eiffel Tower,
which was 
quite
close by this point, to see what the cost was, and so that I could say
I had seen it if I didn't have time the next day.
At this point we were both pretty cold, and we decided to pay to take a tour of the city on ParisBus, which has recorded commentary in several languages and goes past most of the major sites in town. It was nice to be able to sit down and see things we wouldn't have had time to go to otherwise, but the commentary was a little disappointing compared to the tours we took in Oxford and Edinburgh. Since they had to repeat everything in French, English, Italian and German, they couldn't get a whole lot of information in. Also, even though the bus was heated, it was so cold outside that we still weren't very warm. I had to loan Rebecca my coat so that she could warm up (at left). The tour finished by Notre Dame and after a quick stop for souvenirs, we headed back to the Hostel.
We figured we should have one French meal while in Paris, so we went out to dinner at a small restaurant right next to the Hostel which had a three course meal for 69 Francs, or about $14. This was about the most reasonable price that we could find, and the fast-food I had had the night before was 45 Francs, or $9. I had a seafood salad to start, a sirloin steak with Roquefort cheese sauce and creme caramel for dessert. It was quite tasty, but I am still amazed at how much the food costs in France (even more expensive than England!).
 |
this
was the last day we decided that even though it was foggy and cold (the
top of the tower was closed due to ice), we should go up the tower. We
couldn't check our bags, so we had to carry them with us up the stairs--
I carried Rebecca's for her since she was not feeling up to carrying them
all the way up. The view from the second level, about mid-way up the tour
would have been very nice if not for the fog. We could still see the top
of the Arc d'Triomphe, and the Hotel d'Invalides, but the visibility was
not much more than a couple of miles. We had someone take a picture looking
up toward the tope of tower, which was almost covered in fog (at right). 
I
took another picture from the base of the tower looking up at the first
two levels (at left). Finally we headed to back to the bottom of the tower
for Rebecca to wait for her friend, James, and for me to head off to Gare
du Nord for the trip back to England.
It has been a hectic and whirlwind trip over the holidays, and I think it will be quite some time before I come to appreciate the true scope of what I have seen.
Exams are also over now. I only had two, one on 'Biological and Computational Architectures' (BCA) which I took on Tuesday afternoon, and one on 'Artificial Intelligence and Neural Nets' (AI) which I took on Wednesday afternoon. I am more concerned about the BCA exam, since the exam grade is your course grade. I have never had a course before now where the entire score depended upon the final examination. I think the BCA test went okay, but it is hard to tell. The test was answering two essay questions out of five, and although I understood what the questions were about, it is hard to know if the content and analysis of my essays will be what they were looking for. The AI exam was 75% of the grade for the class, so it wasn't quite as critical (although 75% is still a big chunk of the grade). The questions on the AI exam were also short answer style so it was easier to understand what they wanted to know. The important thing is that the semester is over now, so there is no use worrying about it anymore. The die has been cast and all that remains is to see how things turn out.
In the end, Cecilia agreed on York, and we headed up there last Thursday night. The hostel Rebecca and I had stayed in had closed, so we stayed in the York Youth Hotel, which was actually a cheaper place to stay, and located more centrally in the city. It was late when we arrived, so we went out to dinner, read for a while, and then went to bed. The sleeping arrangement was different from any of the other hostels I had stayed in, since there were 16 of us in one huge room, both men and women. I brought ear plugs along, so I was able to sleep comfortably through the night, but Cecilia woke up at 7:00am when other people started to get up and talk. We were among the last to leave the Hotel at around 9:30 (everybody has to be gone from 10:00am to 3pm). We started talking with a few other people in our room, and Jason, a fellow from America, was talking about how he had been up in Scotland working. I asked him if he had been in Edinburgh for "Hogmanay" which is the big New Years festival they have. He replied, "What, you want me to hug your knee?", at which point much of the room burst out laughing. We kept laughing and joking around, and as he was leaving the room one Asian guy turned to me and said, "What was that you just said?" I had been talking about something rather boring, and repeated it, and he said, "No, no, not that, you just said something funny!" I replied that I didn't think I had, and he left, after which everybody left in the room started laughing since he was the only one who thought I had said something funny.
Jason, the American guy I had mentioned, joined us for breakfast. We went to Marks and Spencers, a grocery store/department store and just bought some food there to save on the expense. Jason had planned on going on a trip all around Europe, but had run out of money in England and worked in Scotland over the holidays as a waiter. He was just on his way back to the States after seeing a few more things in England-- his flight was taking him back to New York and he didn't even know how he was going to get back across the US to Oregon where he lived. It didn't sound like he was very organized considering how far he had gone, and he himself admitted this.
After breakfast Jason headed out, and Cecilia and I walked along the walls of York. The walls are quite old and had been in existence in one form or another since Roman times. We stopped at one of the gates along the wall called the Monk's Gate, which had an exhibit on what happened to the "Princes in the Tower". Edward V and his brother were locked up in the Tower of London by Richard III (?) after parliament gave him the throne over a dispute as to their legitimacy. The Princes later disappeared, and many think that Richard had them killed. The exhibit at Monk's Gate discussed evidence for and against Richard. The exhibit was in Monk's Gate since the top level of the gate house had been commissioned by Richard III. There were also some tiny cells in the Monk's Gate tower where prisoners were placed.
When we had finished walking the walls and had had lunch, we went to the York Dungeon, which overall was just a tacky museum with figurines displaying various tortures and atrocities, some of which were related to York. At one time York was Jorvik, a Viking town. During that time there was conflict between Christians and Vikings, and the most memorable exhibits showed what these two factions did to one another. Briefly, the Christians skinned the Vikings alive, and nailed their skins to church doors as warnings to stay Christian (gee, skinning someone alive, how christ-like!). The Vikings ripped the Christians chests out and hung them over their heads in a ritual called the "Blood-Eagle". Lovely.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Yesterday went very quickly, although I am not sure why. It was the first day of classes, so perhaps that was it. A few of us saw Cecilia off in the morning, and then went to the 'Parallel Computer Architectures class', which is one of two I am taking this semester. It discusses how computers which use multiple processors are put together. The other course I will probably be taking is 'Computers and the Mind', which talks about philosophical issues about computers, such as whether or not they are able to think. In addition I will be doing another mini-project, hopefully with Dr. Ricardo Poli. I hope to work on using Genetic Programming to evolve musical sequences that sound nice. We'll see how it goes; as far as I know nobody has been able to get a computer to compose great music, and I doubt that I will be the first.
Last night was Burn's Night at the Tamworth Rotary Club. Robbie Burns was an 18th Century Scottish poet who is revered by Scots, and each January many people get together to celebrate his life and poetry. The problem is that many of his poems were written in a pretty inscrutable Scottish dialect that nobody can understand too well (at least nobody non-Scottish), so mainly people get together and read funny poems and things, and talk about Scotland. At the dinner we did get all get a bit of Haggis, which I had never had before. There was even an elaborate ceremony where the Haggis was presented. Haggis is a sheep's stomach stuffed with a mince of sheep lung, oats and miscellaneous other things. When described it sounds quite disgusting, but it actually tastes quite good. Overall the evening was a lot of fun.
On Monday, the district wide Paul Harris Dinner was held in Drayton Manor, the same place where my host club, the Tamworth Anker club, have their meetings. I didn't have to speak at the dinner, so I had a chance to listen for a change. One of the speakers was a policeman who had been on a Group Study Exchange program to the US many years ago. He related how beneficial the program had been to him, and how ideas he learned visiting Police Departments in the US had influenced decisions he had made in his career since then. The second speaker was a comedian who told a bunch of jokes, only half of which I understood since they were very local in nature. One that I do remember is: "What is the difference between a Brummie (someone from Birmingham) and a 747? The 747 stops whining when it lands at Benidorm." Now, I had no idea why this was funny, until it was explained to me. Benidorm is a city on the Costa del Sol in Spain where it is popular to go on vacation. Apparently, though, many Brummies just complain once they get there about there not being any good fish n'chips places etc., thus they keep whining.
 |
 |
 |
Believe it or not, other things did go on in the week besides Rotary Events. As everybody in the US will know, last Sunday was Superbowl XXXI. Over here, however, it went by almost unnoticed. I remembered it, however, and did watch it. Because of time differences, it was shown from 11:30pm, to 3:00am, which made for a late night. Kris, one of my roommates, stayed up to watch since he is a fan of "American" football. I didn't quite make it through the whole game, since it became clear that Green Bay had it pretty well sewn up. The end score was Green Bay 35, New England 21, which was the score when I went to sleep. It was a little weird having so little Super Bowl hype, and also strange not to have all of the cool commercials.
The other big thing from the past week was the presentation I did on Turing and Searle for the "Computers and the Mind" course, which I did decide to take. I gave the presentation with two other students in the class, Martin, who is in Computer Science, and Graeme, who is in the Cognitive Science program. The presentation was on two papers, one which Turing wrote in the mid-1950s and the other which Searle wrote in the 1980s. Turing argued that you could make a computer 'think' like a human, given a sufficiently advanced computer, and a suitable program. He proposed that if you could type messages back and forth to the computer and were unable to distinguish them from human responses, the computer could be said to think. Searle argued that even if you made a computer in-distinguishable from a human in such a fashion, it still would not be thinking since it was just manipulating numbers and values according to some sort of program. He reasoned by analogy, that if you had the program answer all questions in chinese, and you had a man execute the program (who didn't know chinese) that it would still appear that the program was intelligent, while clearly the man wouldn't know chinese or understand what was being asked or the responses. He argues that, by analogy, the computer couldn't really understand the questions being posed to it. Of course there is much more to it than that, with arguments and counter-arguments. I presented Turing's paper, which I tend to agree with-- if you cannot distinguish a machine from a human, how can we possibly treat it as anything but intelligent? In any case, the presentation went well, and it looks like the course will prove interesting.