Brad's England Journal- October 1996 Entries 

Tuesday, October 1, 1996

This morning I went and registered for the gymnasium, and did a bit of working out. It was the first time since I had had my shoulder surgery back in August. I wasn't able to do much work with my upper body, but I did get a good stretch for my shoulder.

I also enrolled in a basic German class and had the first lecture today. It seems quite good and we have already learned several German phrases. My extra-curricular activities this year will be orienteering, German, Anglican Society (church), and some community service playing with kids on Saturdays when I am free.

Tonight I went to an interesting dinner called the Rich Man/Poor Man dinner, sponsored by the Anglican Society among others. Everybody paid 3 pounds, and then drew from a basket whether they were a rich man or a poor man. The poor men got to eat rice and serve a nice meal to the rich men, and then clean up all the dishes. I wound up drawing poor man, but the company was good in any case.

Sunday, October 6, 1996

On Wednesday, I finally got my phone hooked up in my room. It is nice to finally have a communication link with the rest of the world. That night, Rev. Gorham, the Anglican priest on campus came over for a chat. It was an interesting chat, and mostly we discussed cultural and political differences between the U.S. and the U.K..

Then on Thursday, I met with Ela Claridge, my mini-project supervisor to define what my project will be. I will be working on image processing, with a specific eye toward recognizing cell boundaries in medical images. The final goal is to have computers count cells in medical research applications. I will spend the first 6 weeks, or so, learning the background material, and then take 4 weeks to do a project. The project will probably have to do with recognizing boundaries using wave propagation, but as I learn more that may change.

BJ at Rotary Formal DinnerYesterday (Saturday) was the Rotary Club of Tamworth-Anker's Annual Presidential Dinner. It was a formal occasion, but I was allowed to get by with my dark suit and a bow-tie. The dinner is put on by the Vice-President to honor the current President and all the work that he has done. Next year the current Vice-President will become President and enjoy the same treatment. Dr. Yanammani is the Second-Vice-President, meaning he will be President two years from now. His job was to do some of the announcing for this dinner. Everything was very impressive and we were all received on a red-carpet. At the end of the evening there was some dancing-- I skipped the ballroom dancing but joined in for some of the rock and roll dancing. At the right is a portrait they took of me during the evening. I also had some interesting conversations with some of the Rotary Members. One of the interesting observations that came up was that more interesting than the differences cultures are the similarities. Once we get to know one another we are not all that different-- we all have a mother and father, and friends that we care about. It is only ignorance and closed-mindedness that keeps us dwelling on differences and generates friction, anger, and even war.

Today, I went to my first Orienteering Event at Clent Hills. Three of us joined together on a 2.9km course with most of the control points located right off of the paths. We didn't do to well, but we only got lost once and we did make it through. We ran most of the course, however, and now my ankle has stiffened up so much I can hardly walk. Hopefully as I use my ankle more it will not stiffen up as much.

Wednesday, October 16, 1996

Well, it has been quite a while since I have written in this journal. I have been quite busy with school work over the past week or so. My Human Computer Interactions course requires everyone to help present one lecture along with five other students, and this Friday is my groups turn to present-- we are talking about designing computer interfaces. In the same class we have to prepare two workshops in teams, and one we are in the middle of preparing the first one. For the first workshop, we have to try and justify or disprove the statement "Reading text on screen is more difficult than on paper." Part of our efforts are devoted to an experiment where we will have users read both on screen and on paper to determine which allows users to read quicker and retain more information.

Last Tuesday (just over a week ago today), I went out to "The Pulse", a local nightclub. They had advertised a foam party, which is where they fill the dance floor with a bunch of bubbles. I had never seen this before, and it seemed like a pretty interesting thing, and, on top of everything, admission was only £1. I invited the other students in my Computer Science course, and Cecilia, a Swedish girl, joined me. About twenty other students from around Pritchatts Park, the International Housing complex where I live, also came along. The evening turned out to be disastrous. Hardly anybody was at the club, and consequently they decided not to have any foam-- which was the main reason I went. In addition, they seemed determined to live up to their title as the loudest nightclub in Birmingham; it was so loud that you couldn't talk to anybody without bending over and yelling right into their ear. On top of this, the DJs didn't seem to have any concept of what type of music is good to dance to, and played songs with erratic or non-existing beat. My ears rang for two days after the trip to the nightclub, and I won't go back to "The Pulse" again.

On Wednesday last, I went to the Pritchatts Park Social Center for an International Christian Worship group. Some people had come by our flat earlier in the week and distributed a flier asking any Christians to come along. The group that came was truly international, with many Africans and a few British (when I went this week there was a Malaysian and an Indian as well). The fellowship meeting was different to any others that I have been to. People in the group pray out loud, singing to the Lord, in a sort of a group prayer. We also sang some songs and heard a talk by an Englishman who had been a missionary for many years in the Middle East. It highlighted for me that there are many ways of worshiping, and I will try to attend when I have time over the semester (I attended tonight, as well).

Last Thursday the Orienteering club had a race around campus. We had to go to various locations on campus and take note of information that we found there. I did the course on Roller Blades since I didn't want my ankle to stiffen up to much. This proved to be as much a handicap as a help, since I was unable to go up and down stairs very quickly, and had to take the long way around for any bits that went over the dirt. In the end I was able to get the third fastest score of the 6 or 7 people there, and probably finished sooner than if I had walked the course.

Sunday was the induction meeting for the Rotary Scholars of District 1060 which covers Birmingham and the surrounding area. My counselor, Dr Yanammani picked me and a Japanese scholar up at 9:00am on Sunday, and we went over to Warwick for the meeting. (Warwick is the site of a famous castle and many historic buildings-- unfortunately we didn't have time to see much of the town-- I only got the picture on the right-- but I plan on taking a coach trip for International students later this semester.) The meeting went well: all of the scholars got up and introduced themselves, we were given are preliminary speaking dates, and given some instruction on our speaking engagements. I was also able to collect a lot more names for my web-based list of Rotary Scholars in the British Isles, so hopefully more scholars can start using that to keep in touch. After the meeting Dr Yannamani took me and Michiko, the Japanese scholar, out to lunch at Harry Ramsden's, which was the original fish and chips restaurant in England (see picture at left). I hadn't eaten fish and chips, which is something of a national specialty here in England, so I was glad to have the opportunity to do so. It was fairly tasty, but a little on the bland side.

Finally, Monday was my first talk to a Rotary Club here in England. I spoke to the Rotary Club of Bromsgrove, a lunch club with about thirty members. One of the members came and picked me up at the Guild of Students and drove the 20 minutes or so it takes to go down to Bromsgrove. The Club had mostly older members, and they said that they had been losing people to old age and death, and that not many new members were joining. Apparently the lunch hour is not a good time for many people to meet, and new members tend to join the Bromsgrove evening club. Lunch was turkey and vegetables and was quite tasty. I spoke to them for around fifteen minutes and covered a little bit of my background, some of my impressions of England, and a bit about the Internet and how I am using it to communicate with my family. My prepared presentation was unavailable, unfortunately, since I haven't found a way to project all of the slides that I stored on my computer. Nonetheless, everybody seemed to enjoy the talk, and several members expressed interest in having me back to talk to them again at a bigger meeting where spouses were invited.

Friday, October 25, 1996

I write this entry as I am traveling to Brighton for the Birmingham Area District Conference (District 1060). I am driving down with Alan Pierce, who is the host counselor of Michiko, another Rotary Scholar studying at the University of Birmingham. Dr. Yanammani is driving down separately, as it would have been difficult to pick me up after my class today.

There is an interesting story related to my being picked up. Last night, we had agreed that Alan would pick me up in his motor home outside of the South Gate of the University on Bristol Road at 11:15am. My class which was supposed to end at 11 am ran a little late, and by the time I had taken a pit stop at the Rest Room and walked out to the gate, it was 11:25am, and I couldn't see any motor homes. I assumed that since I was late, he had gone on ahead to pick up Michiko, his scholar, and that he would swing back around. I waited until noon, and saw two motor homes go by, but neither of them stopped. The night before Alan had given me his mobile phone number, but I had left it back in my dorm room. I decided to go across the street to a pay phone and call Dr. Yanammani to try and get the mobile number. There was no answer, but while I was phoning I saw a mobile home stop and turn into the side street near where I had been waiting and stop. I quickly hung up the phone and went across the street, but by the time I had waited for all the traffic the motor home had moved, due to traffic backing up behind it. I waited another 5 minutes to see if maybe they were going around the block, but the motor home never came back. Finally I decided that I should go back to my flat and retrieve the cellular phone number and call and see what had happened. It took me 15 minutes to walk quickly back across the campus, lugging my two bags; I was sweating in my wool suit and trench coat by the time I arrived back at my flat. I called Alan, and found out that, indeed, he had gone by at just after noon in the motor home, and had gone to pick up Michiko before circling back around. He also explained that they had been late due to heavy traffic. He had just stopped near my flat, and sent Michiko to check and see if I was in my flat. By the time I had gotten off of the phone, Michiko was at the door, and we were on our way.

Since then, on our trip down, we have stopped for lunch at a restaurant chain known as Harvester. I had a nice fish and chip meal, and we had an interesting conversation. One of the topics of conversation was "conversation". Michiko had observed that frequently meals lasted a long time as people spent much time talking, and wondered how people came up with topics of conversation. Apparently, in Japan, conversation is usually much more structured and there is not the same free flowing chaining of conversation topics.

It has been quite some time since I wrote in my journal, so I shall try to catch up all of the recent events, starting with last Thursday, when I went to the Ice Rink with the Orienteering club. All of us met at the Guild of Students, and then took the train down to "Ice Planet" located near the city centre. We spent about four hours skating, and I was able to skate pretty well since I go around campus every day on Roller Blades. My only complaints were that they had everybody skate around the rink in the same direction the whole time, and that I got blisters on both of my feet from the skates. While skating I had a good conversation with Rachel, another member of the Orienteering Club. She is a medic, and we talked some about the differences between medicine in the UK and the US. Interestingly, in the UK medicine (and also Law) are first degrees from the University, so by the time you are 22 you have a Medical Degree (as opposed to 26 in the US). She was describing the series of steps after your degree in the UK, which involves a series of six or seven levels before you are an official doctor (although, evidently you do practice medicine to varying degrees as you go through the levels). One of her opinions was that because you get your medical degree so early in the UK, you are not really prepared to be a doctor. I think this contrasts with the United States where you have to spend so much time training that by the time you go into practice you are quite old.

Last Friday morning was our big presentation for my Human Computer Interactions course. Our topic was Design of the Human Computer Interface, and the six of us on the presentation team had spent a good deal of time practicing and preparing all of the slides. We had one hour for the presentation, and all of us dressed up nice for it. We had the slides on computer, and tried to project them, but it came out dim, so, unfortunately, at the last minute, we had to go with our back up plan of printed transparencies. The presentation went well, although we took a little bit too much time. The only comment the professor for the class had at the end was that we should have stood on the opposite side of the overhead projector so that we wouldn't block the screen. I think we did a fairly good job, but it will be interesting to see how the other presentation teams do, since after the presentation we found out that it wasn't assessed. This was a little disappointing for me, since I would have spent more time on my mini-project for the semester, and less on the presentation, if I had known this.

Saturday night was the second big party that our flat has hosted so far. The party had been announced three weeks before, and we there was some evidence that a lot of people knew about it. For one, a French guy had come up to a friend of ours and indicated he was going to the party, which he had heard was going to be the "biggest party of the year". The scary thing about this was that he was an undergraduate and didn't even live in the Pritchatts Park Post-Graduate housing area. The other evidence that the party might be large was that one of the guys living in our flat had run into a girl at a bar, and in talking to her had asked what she was doing Saturday night. She responded that she was going to a party, which further conversation revealed to be our party. The interesting thing here was that this girl did not even go to our University!! In any case, we planned for a big party and all chipped in to buy £50 worth of soda, beer, and crisps (potato chips).

Hanging Out in the Aftermath 
of the Party
  
The State of the Kitchen after
Our Party
 
Brett Making Sure No Beer
is Left Un-Drunk
  

Space was short in the flat after our 
party, so people had to sleep 
wherever they could find, 
including the bathtub

Flat 4's Second Big Party
Before coming to our party I went to a jazz concert at the Guild of Students with a couple friends. The jazz was very nice, but I was concerned that our party might be getting out of hand and left early to return to the flat. When I got back at 10:45PM, I found out that Security had already come to warn us about the noise, and forced us to close the doors onto our patio. So, everybody was inside and around the back of the building. The inside of the apartment was sweltering, but we did open the back windows to try to let the heat out. I spent most of the night playing security, making sure people didn't smoke under the fire alarms, and herding people back out of the courtyard so that the noise was kept down to a dull roar. By midnight the peak was reached, and the apartment was packed, with barely enough room to stand in the living rooms, and people filling up the halls as well. We figure that there were about 150 people at the party at the height, and 200-250 over the night. The beer, chips and soda that we bought were gone by 10:30pm. The party finally wound down about 4:00am, and I didn't get to bed until 5am. Overall, the party was a huge success, but everybody in the apartment agreed that we shouldn't have one quite so large in the future, since it makes it to difficult to manage. Sunday we spent cleaning up the mess left by the party, which was not inconsiderable.

Monday night the Anglican Society went to the Walsall Illuminations. Walsall is a small town to the north-west of Birmingham which puts on a light show every year at this time. Hundreds of sculptures made out of light bulbs, and many lasers are set up around the town arboretum. In any case, the members of AngSoc met at the train station at 5:15pm to make the 45 minute trip up to Walsall. The train ride was a good opportunity to get to know the other members of AngSoc better, as was the stop at the Pub just after we arrived (it was still light when we got there and we needed to wait until after dark to see the Illuminations). The main attractions are all located along a mile and a half long loop through the park. As we walked along the loop I was introduced to many of the children's television characters from the UK, as most of the light figures were from children's television shows. They also had some people dressed up as characters from the shows, and many of the passersby were amused when I got my picture taken with Rupert Bear, one of TV characters (see left).

Rev. Gorham, Ian, Louise and
Elizabeth (L to R) in Front of a Laser
Robot Sculpture
A Particularly Spectacular Light
Sculpture of an UFO with Steam
Coming Out
A Street at the Illuminations Arched
with Light Sculpture
Wayne, Elizabeth, Karen, Phil and
Philip (L to R) in Front of a
Sculpture of a Monster Made Out
of Junk

Scenes from the World Famous Walsall Illuminations
One of the main topics of conversation during the evening was accents and vocabulary. Clearly I had an American accent, but all of them had slightly different accents as well. We talked a lot about how different accents are all over England, much more diverse than in the US which is a larger country. Another topic was what words we use, for example here they say "pavement" instead of "sidewalk". Spelling was also an issue, with all of them claiming that American's misspell -er words (center=centre), and -or words (labor=labour). I jokingly told them that we had it right and they were just too susceptible to French corruption of their language.

After the Illuminations we all went out to a Balti dinner in downtown Birmingham. It was my first Balti dinner, and I was excited about it since Birmingham is famous for Balti food. Balti is a type of Indian Curry which was originally invented in Birmingham, similar to the way Chop Suey was actually invented in the United States. Balti is Indian for bucket, and is a description of how the food is prepared; all of the ingredients are put into a metal bowl, in which they are both cooked and served. This preparation technique insures that all the juices are left for you to eat. I ordered the "Special Mixed Balti" which had chicken, prawns, and vegetables so that I could get a taste of all of the different ingredients. One of the other students commented jokingly that this was typically American-- apparently American's are considered to be suckers for anything with "special" in the title. I had actually ordered it for the variety, but found the comment interesting nonetheless.

Monday, October 28, 1996

The District Conference Weekend is now over, and it was a lot of fun. Friday evening when we arrived in Brighton we had a short time to change, and then went down to dinner. Since we had traveled in the motor home, it had taken us a longer to get to Brighton, and everybody else had finished eating when we got there. The Pearces went to the camper park, so Michiko and I had to eat by ourselves. Once we finished eating we headed over to the conference center where the main entertainment for the evening was: a carnival themed ball. Since I didn't have any carnival them clothing, I borrowed a Caribbean style shirt from Dr. Yannamani and tied my rain coat belt around my waist to try and look like a pirate (see right). Michiko wore a kimono, and when we got to the ball I found that some scholars didn't dress up at all, while others had rented costumes. The ball was a lot of fun, although I was feeling a little bit sick, and it was amazing to see the variety of costumes that the Rotarians wore.

The next morning we had a series of talks by distinguished Rotarians and invited speakers. At the beginning of the conference they played the song "Another Brick in the Wall" by Pink Floyd as the club presidents came in with bricks and built a wall. This was to emphasize the Rotary Theme for this year, "Building the Future with Action and Vision." The words in the song fit well, since they talk about putting bricks into the wall, but anyone who has seen the movie "The Wall" by Pink Floyd will realize that in the context of the rest of the movie, the wall is actually a psychological barrier that is built between the protagonist and the rest of the world, and is thus a bad thing. An American Youth Exchange student and I both thought it was a little strange since we knew the context, but most people found that it was a good up-beat song to start out the conference.

Most of the talks in the morning emphasized strengthening Rotary and ways of insuring that Rotary was flexible enough to survive into the future. There were also a couple of students from Birmingham area schools that had won a public speaking contest and gave their opinions on improving modern day youth. A police captain also gave a similar speech, giving an interesting contrast between the viewpoints on youth, both by themselves, and by older generations. Finally, a young woman from Birmingham who had sailed around the world non-stop by herself gave a speech about her inspirational journey. Being a sailor myself I could appreciate how difficult the task must have been.

Outside View of the Pavilion
Detail of Some of the Pseudo-Chinese
Wallpaper
View of the Kitchen at the Pavilion
The Dining Room of the Pavilion

Pictures of the Royal Pavilion
In the afternoon, there were no talks, and all of the scholars and Youth Exchange students were given a guided tour of the Brighton Royal Pavilion, courtesy of the Brighton Rotary Club( see picture at right). The Royal Pavilion in Brighton was built by George IV, who commissioned it at the time he was a Prince. Later, when George III became insane, George IV took over ruling England as the Prince Regent, and expanded the Pavilion to make if fit for entertaining foreign royalty. During this Regency Period he ruled England from the Pavilion. The interesting thing about the Pavilion is the architectural style. From the outside it has a Indian look to it, as George IV was quite fond of this style. Neither George nor the architects of the Pavilion ever traveled to India, however, so the construction is actually only an approximation of Indian style based on pictures in books. The inside of the Pavilion has an eclectic range of styles, from faux chinese to more standard English styles. Part of the reason for the faux-chinese, and some imported genuine-chinese items, was to impress guests. Few ever traveled to China since it was many months by boat, so anything Chinese was considered very exotic. Another impressive feature of the Pavilion was the kitchen which was made very modern for the times, and included an automatically rotating spit and a high ceiling with windows designed to clear smoke from the room. George had this special kitchen made to attract a good French cook. His thinking was that by providing a more modern and safe kitchen than any in France, he might be able to attract a French chef despite the war that was going on at that time between England and France. In the end he was able to do so, and the meals served at the Pavilion were among the best available in Europe at that time.

Picture Taken of Brighton from Roller Coaster with Taiji in Foreground
After the tour of the Pavilion we had a quick lunch at a local cafe. I had a chance to eat at a table with some Argentinean's-- two Youth Exchange students and one Ambassadorial scholar. I was able to practice speaking Spanish with them some, but I found that my vocabulary was very much lacking. Finally, a few of us went to the Brighton Palace Pier which is a small amusement park out on the water. They had a small roller coaster with a loop on it, and Taiji, one of the scholars from Japan, and I went on it. It shook you around quite a bit, but was too small to go very fast (see above picture). We also had our pictures taken in some cut out boards where your face appears on a different body. You can see me as a mermaid and Taiji as a diver at left. After this we all went back to the hotel for dinner and the Regency Ball.

Since we were in Brighton, the theme of Saturday's ball was Regency, recalling George IV's time as Prince Regent. The dress was formal (tuxedos) and white bow ties were most proper, although not all men wore them. In addition, the men all had to wear sashes with a cross on them, also typical of the Regency Period. The sashes were worn from left shoulder to right side, as that would keep your sword free in case you needed to draw it. I had a lot of fun at the ball, particularly because I had been feeling a little bit under the weather on Friday night, and was now feeling better. Also, since I had met all of the scholars and Youth Exchange I knew more people my age, and was able to have a good time dancing (see group photo and dancing photos below). The band that played was the Grenadier Guards, a army unit which normally plays at the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace (see picture at right). For most of the night they played popular tunes, and then at the end they dressed up in the full palace guard regalia and did a marching band act which was very impressive.

Group Photo of Youth Exchange
and Ambassadorial Scholars
A Traditional Regency Dance
Another Regency Dance
Myself and Albana (Argentinean
Youth Exchange Student) in a
More Traditional Couples
Dance

Scenes from the Regency Ball
Sunday morning we had more talks from Rotarian's and others. A Youth Exchange student who had just returned from Australia gave a talk on her experiences. Apparently, before she had gone off to Australia she had been a very shy person, but after listening to her speech it was clear that she wasn't anymore. We also had a very funny talk by Ian McCaskill (sp?) who is a BBC weatherman. The speech was very funny, but he had a strong northern English accent, and a lot of his jokes required some knowledge of British culture. I was able to understand most of it, but the Argentineans and Japanese that I was sitting with did not understand most of it. After the talk was over some Rotarians and I tried to explain the funnier parts, but overall I don't think the non-english speaking students were able to take much away from it. Finally, just before leaving on Sunday we went to the Paul Harris Fellow's Lunch. The Paul Harris Fellowship is a Rotary Award indicating a $1000 donation to the Rotary Foundation. In the US and some other countries this means that the Award is given to individuals who donate that much money, but in the UK the clubs raise the money and then give the award to Rotarians that they feel have done a lot of work. The lunch was very good, and the highlight was a speech by the cultural ambassadorial scholar from the Czech Republic. It was very interesting to here the story of her sponsor club which had been founded before World War II, shut down during the War, founded again after the War, shut down at the start of communist rule, and finally restarted when the communist regime fell in the early 1990's.

When we left the remains of a hurricane were hitting Brighton and the rest of the south coast of Brighton. Impressive waves were breaking on the beach, and we got soaked walking from the Taxi to the motor home. Despite the rain we were able to make fairly good time on the way home, although I was not able to make the 6:30pm church service when we got home.