Life’s been insane. Now, finally, I’m in our beautiful home, trying to contemplate.
The last couple of days we have been settling in the flat mainly; it’s amazing how much time and energy goes on this (sounds like a very lame excuse from studying). Only the bathroom, finally WHITE, took a whole day… On Wednesday, went to a conference dedicated to a quest for a heterodox view on development and institutions. Quite a few very prominent speakers were invited and gave profound presentations of their research; but I will be frank with you, I’ll confess I didn’t enjoy it the way I had expected. All they were saying rang bells with me at some level, but it was more like some vague shadows of something I know; I could not connect things and make them fall into place, and my mind was wandering. It’s hard to say why.
I was thinking about econometrics, for instance. I thought, how imperfect a tool it is, and yet there is hardly anything better devised so far to test hypotheses. The very thought of how much manipulation of the data econometrics allows makes me shudder (I won’t go into detail just yet…). I quite liked Econometrics when we studied it, but I feel desperate when I think of a more long-term relationship with it, to be honest.
By the way, our exam results have been announced; I am both happy and disappointed, because I expected worse results for some subjects and better for others, so on average it’s just about ok; but frankly speaking, not too motivating… I probably need some time to get over it, that’s all.
Anyway, the real highlight of the last couple of weeks was my trip to England. We met with Rishab in London on the 22nd; I went for a job interview of sorts, with no particular results (everything depends on me, actually, not on them). Then we headed for Oxford, where the following day we attended a conference organised by the postgraduate students of Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity, which was quite informal and fun. We had great time with Rishab in Oxford, though very brief; Oxford is the town where I had spent some of the happiest days of my life three years ago, no matter how cheesy it may sound. On Sunday Rishab was in London, and I went to Cambridge to catch up with my friend Ross’s parents, which was very enjoyable.
On Monday we re-united in London, went to some galleries, met with my friends near Victoria, and… I’m supposed to say ‘left for Glasgow on a night bus’, but in fact, and it was truly dramatic, for a certain reason we couldn’t get on that bus, and spent an adventurous night in Victoria station, from which we only went to Euston at 5.30 a.m. the following day, and caught a train to Glasgow from there, which cost us nearly 200 pounds.
The real surprises of the night included:
1) the fact that there were almost as many people in the street at 2 a.m. as during the day;
2) a taxi driver DIDN’T want to make money on us;
3) the station was closed from 1.00 to 3.00 THOUGH THE TRAINS KEPT DEPARTING FROM IT.
The amount and intensity of the adventures were such that when I saw ‘Glasgow’ on the departures screen in Euston, I nearly started dancing. I never imagined Glasgow being such a cherished combination of letters, and such a great place to return to.
Well, now back home, and the laptop is open, with files on oil prices and stock markets arranged in a pretty cascade. I won’t pretend I’m happy with it; I am a bit lost in these materials, and struggle to put my thoughts together on what I want to do and how I’m going to do it. I don’t want to complain and moan and make you hate me, either. So I’d better stop here, to resume later on, when I’m in a more inspired-for-dissertation mood. Yes. So. Stop here, right. Here it is. Full stop.
1 Comment
Sunday, 8 July 2007 at 3:27 pm
Life is a whirlwind, isn’t it? And coming back is such a great thing, sometimes it doesn’t even matter where to. Perhaps they should change the definition of “home” to “a place one comes back to”. I suddenly have an urge to come back, too.
Do write when you’re feeling more inspired, perhaps (and hopefully) it will be contagious.