Sonnets vs Somalia

I haven't written in a few days, huh? That's because nothing too interesting has been going on. I've just been in Cambridge doing whatever it is that I do here (and to tell the truth I'm not totally sure my what that is still).

Actually this is what I do. I just look at this all day.

So I haven't really felt like it's worth my time writing or your time reading. But then I remembered that I have kept a diary almost my whole life for the sake of recording things and only about 1/8th of that could be considered interesting. So here is a recounting of the past few days. Feel free to skim. I felt like I was skimming even as I lived it.

So Monday. On Monday I got myself all worked into a tizzy because I got an email from my supervisor with a forward of my assignment that she sent last week. She was being very nice and making sure that I had received it since I hadn't yet responded. I had in fact received it but this reminder caused me to re-read the email and realize that my assignment was due that day and not on Tuesday like I had thought. I felt especially guilty because I literally just slacked off the entire weekend. It's not like I was working on other things.

This is my library. I work here.

So basically I wrote all morning.  It was pretty fun actually. And just goes to show that I do so much better with a deadline. This is why school was invented. If all we ever had was access cards to libraries the nuclear bomb would never have been invented.

Ok that wasn't a great metaphor.

What I'm trying to say is that things that are 'advanced' but not strictly necessary never come about without a deadline. Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say. I mean people like DiVinci would still have dissected dead bodies and Newton would still have figured out his laws of motion because that's the kind of thing they thought was fun....but they are higher men.

Speaking of Newton, I saw a lock of his hair today! But I'll get to that latter.

Back to Monday. Monday, if you saw my facebook status was also a day that I did a lot of stupid things. I was supposed to babysit Anson but never got the message from his mom saying that they didn't need me anymore so I waited for like fifteen minutes outside the porter's lodge for them to show up. I tried to call her but accidentally dialed my supervisor instead. She didn't answer but later texted me to find out if I was ok. It was embarrassing and I felt quite unprofessional. Later that day I tried to fill out an internship application and accidentally sent it in too early so that the box "describe a time you solved a problem creatively" went unanswered. I was really tempted to email them about this accident and then pass it off as a creative solution.

The other stupid thing I did was skip dinner and then bite into a piece of moldy bread at around midnight.
So stupid.

But! Things got better! Because I got to talk to good old Sameer Ahmad who I haven't talked to in weeks because he thinks that he's really important saving the world from chemical weapons...or something like that.

Alright Monday is hogging the spotlight. I will get to Tuesday.

Tuesday = very boring.

 The only thing worth mentioning is my seminar on war and insecurity. The majority of students at PKP are American but in my seminar I also have a classmate from Greece and another from Holland and then my teacher is from Dublin. So somehow linguistics came up. I think it started with the phrase "sorry Stratos, but it's all Greek to me."

Here are the various flags represented...just for fun.


From there we somehow got to the word "double dutch." How on earth did that come up? My teacher had some good reason for using it but all the Americans were just like "jump rope?" And then the Dutch guy was like "double dutch? It's like being extra safe. Like when you use a pill and a condom."

I mention this because in context it was about the funniest thing in the world. But then I did warn you that Tuesday was very boring.

Wednesday: Wednesday was a reaction to Tuesday. Determined to get up and do something with my life, I set myself a strict schedule which included four hours of working on my supervision which I'm proud to say I followed pretty well. I spent several hours in the university library and then had lunch and then watched Black Hawk Down.

Does my title finally make sense now? I remember wanting to Watch Black Hawk Down when I was younger because Orlando Bloom was in it but I couldn't because it was rated R. And then I forgot about it.

And then I remembered it again in the past couple weeks as I've been learning about US peacekeeping and modern day politics relating to third world security and western intervention. As one of the biggest UN disasters ever (or at least from the American standpoint), Somalia gets mentioned quite a bit. So I decided to watch the movie as the fastest, easiest way to familiarize myself with the event.

Since I would get in trouble if I downloaded anything illegally from my dorm (they are always watching!) I went to the library at Pembroke College and watched it in there. We aren't allowed to borrow anything or even take it out of the room so I had to change the international setting on my computer's dvd player and watch it with headphones on, totally paranoid that people could hear all the shooting and epic music playing for three hours.

It was a really good movie but not nearly as hard to get through as I had imagined. See, I make it a point to avoid R rated movies as they are generally inappropriate for whatever reason. But I'm making an exception for movies that are based on actual social/historical events of great importance for the purpose of informing the audience and not just shocking them (are there enough qualifiers there?). Anyway, I guess I've been studying development long enough that I wasn't too shocked by what happened. And admittedly, it's quite old news. I'm sure most of you have seen Black Hawk Down as well.

But it's a fascinating case study. By which I mean, I'm probably going to write a securities paper based on this event. I mean it's just the classic dilemma. Interfere with national sovereignty? Fight in someone else's war in order to feed someone else's famine? Or sit back and watch the country destroy itself on CNN? Are we trained to fight or to make a difference?  (Watch the movie trailer to pick up on my blatant plagiarism).

I mean in every oppressive regime its always the vocal minority calling the shots and the silent majority too afraid to speak out but wishing someone else would. In this situation, the UN forces were trying to help and protect civilians. But did they have a 'right' to do so?

I think my answer is yes and will probably always be yes. I believe in the ideals of the UN even if they aren't very enforceable or practical. It's such a tricky business though. There's politics and poverty and insurgency and famine and security and children and warlords and history and economics and soldiers to take into account just to name a few. It goes back to the question I posed in a previous post: how much compassion do we owe our fellow man? What if your son was a soldier dragged through the streets of Somalia?

Alright enough of that. I'll move on to the sonnets.

After dinner I somehow found myself watching "A Midsummer Nights Dream" at St. John's college gardens with a few friends. We got there late so there were no seats left and we just had to sit on the grass. But we were in front so that was alright. It was the same company who did a Winter's Tale that I went to a couple weeks ago. It was pretty good but I didn't think the actors were as great. And I swear I have the same purple tights as the man who played Demetrius. We got them from Primark.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a bizarre play. I mean seriously. What on earth? I really felt like I was playing into the typical townsperson role as I laughed along with everyone else at the stupid physical humor and bumbling idiocy of many of the characters. I'm told that it is one of Shakespeare's most highly criticized plays but most well loved by the masses. I can't decide yet whether or not I'm one of the masses. It is a great title for a play but...

Illustrations like this one make it seem way cooler than it actually is. Or maybe I just didn't see a very good production. What do you think Shakespeare buffs?

So yeah. That was my last few days. Sonnets verses Somalia, English verses International Relations. You know your life has taken an unexpected turn when you realize that you enjoy analyzing bloody war scenes by yourself in a library more than watching Shakespeare on a nice midsummer night with friends.

Or could you guys have predicted that for me?