November 24, 1998

This will be my last email before I leave for Paris. My itinerary is basically this:

Thursday: leave at 12:15 am. Arrive in Paris at 2:15 pm. The rest of the afternoon and evening at our disposal.

Friday: Walk to Notre Dame from the hotel. Then on to Sainte Chapelle by foot and from there to St-Denis (pronounced: Sah-Dahnny) by coach. Return to hotel at 5 pm with the rest of the evening free.

Saturday: Chartres cathedral.

Sunday: Castle of Coucy and then on to Laon cathedral. Arrive back at hotel at 4 pm with the evening free.

Monday: Depart Paris for Amiens cathedral. After the tour we are off to Calais for the ferry ride. Arrive in Swansea around 11 pm.

I will get an email off to everyone sometime Tuesday with a sketch of the trip and my impressions. Sometime later in the week I will have pictures and more details up on the website.

Au revior, idano

November 20, 1998

I was on the bus headed for the City Centre when out of the corner of my eye I beheld something miraculous. Here amidst the shops of Swansea was a sign that said POCO’S!

(For those of you who are not in the know Poco’s is a Mexican food restaurant in Tucson Arizona. It is rumored that they are going to change their name to “Poco’s Navel Yard” because the burritos they serve are so big that they could probably show up on sonar.)

I had not yet had breakfast and it was almost noon. Instantly my brain interpreted the sign and sent a message to the stomach.

Brain: “Alert! Alert! Poco’s detected on starboard bow; flood all digestive enzymes; this is not a drill, repeat this is not a drill.”

Unfortunately my brain acted out of instinct and did not take the time to read the rest of the sign. Immediately following Poco’s were two more words.

Brain: Wait. We don’t need no stinking words after Poco’s. That’s it just one word.

Reality marched on despite the protest of desire. The next word began with a “C”, followed by an “o”.

Brain: “Please be ‘Poco’s Co.’ They have incorporated and gone worldwide.

No such luck.

Next came double “f’s” and double “e’s”.

Brain: “Doh! ‘Poco’s Coffee Shop?’ Are you kidding me? What does Poco’s have to do with Coffee? If this is God’s idea of a practical joke then I’m going to become a saint so that I can assure myself of getting to heaven so that I can throw a pie in his face.”

So here I am, hopes dashed upon the rocks, hungry, and disappointed.

Brain: “Okay Stomach, false alarm. Recall the digestive juices.”

No response

Brain: “Stomach. Report.”

No response

Involuntary response centre: “I can’a close the gaits, Cap’in. If we doe ge some food in here soon Cap’in, she’s gonna have a meltdown.”

Brain: “You’re going to have to do something. Even at warp-9 it is going to take a few minutes to get food. And were going to have to visit a Lloyd’s ATM cashBase to get the resources to pay for the food.”

Involuntary response centre: “I’ll do what I can Cap’in but I can’a work miricles. You better not stop to talk to any of the cute natives along the way.”

Brain: “No promises. Now get to work.”

So off to the bank. Money in pocket. Searching for sustenance.

Memory: “Captain. I have searched the databanks for suitable sustenance suppliers. The most logical selection based on our current need for “Now Food” is a Burger King located 1.2 . . .

Brain: “Just feed the coordinates into the navigation system and set coarse at maximum warp.”

To make a long story just a little bit longer: I’m sitting in a bar called “McCluski’s”, watching the Miami Dolphins and the Saint Louis Rams on a big screen TV, with a bacon-double-cheese-burger ensconced in a very happy stomach.

Later: After the football game I went next door to see “Saving Private Ryan”, again. (It just came out over here.) Football, a good American war movie (We win again), hamburgers, what a great all-American kind’a day I think to myself as I leave the theater. Then I walk right past a Medieval castle, across the street from the theater, and do a mind warp back to Wales.

November 20, 1998

Let me tell you about the people that live here in my house. First, let me tell you about the house. (Note: the flash on my camera is broken so pictures will NOT be forthcoming until I get a new camera.) I live in house 69. There are eight rooms, four upstairs and four down (the ladies have the upstairs), a bath upstairs and a shower down, and a kitchen and a dinning area, both downstairs. In room 1 is me. My room, like all the others, is about 8×12″. Plenty big for one person. Room 2 is Nick, a good bloke from Britain who is studying marine-bio and spends most of his free time surfing. Room 3 is Sean who is originally from Tanzania but looks more like a British aristocrat; he is studying philosophy and psychology. Room 4 is Tasch; he is from Germany and is studying literature. Upstairs in room 5 is Rashme; she is an East Indian from Canada; she already has a degree in polysci. and is now getting a degree in law; she studies, all the time. Next

is Stephanie, she is British and is studying biology. There is Peggy, from France, also studying biology and is another studyholic. Finally we have Franca, from Italy. (Pronunciation note: to pronounce ‘Franka’ correctly you say ‘fr + cat purring sound + anka’.) she is studying literature and her English is not so goodly, but it is improving.

Aside from the eight official residents there are two other people who are here all the time - Paola and Jenny. Paula is Franca’s friend from Italy and Jenny lives two houses down and is pretty much everyone’s friend.

As you can gather there is quite the international scene going on here. It isn’t rare to be in the dinning room and have conversations going on in two different languages. On one occasion there were four conversations going on and all in different languages. English is the only language that everyone knows but the Italian girls speak French better than they do English and of course Peggy is a native speaker and then Reshme speaks French fluently and some Italian. When we are all in the room together I have to constantly remind them not to lapse into French or Italian. I hate it that I don’t speak any other languages. Jenny, who is from Sweden but looks and speaks like an American-new-age-hippie-chick, speaks six languages, fluently.

I’m hopeful that after getting Latin down pretty well I’ll be able to learn a little French and Italian from the girls.

Many of you on this mailing list are ‘computer literate.’ Some of you know more than others and some of you make a living being ‘in the know’ with computers. Anyone who knows anything about computers has probably run across someone who knows less than they have and needed help. All the sudden you’re an expert, comparatively. For those of you who have lent computer assistance before might find this rather humorous. My polyglot friend Jenny knows next to nothing about computers, but she does have a 386 laptop running Windows 3.1. It just so happens that she got a job translating a document from English to Swedish and they want the translation done on a computer. Good thing she has the laptop to work on; bad thing that she knows nothing about it. So she comes to me to help her get things sorted out. Now it has been many years since I have worked on a Win3.1 system so I’m a bit rusty, but all she needs to do is make a document. As bad as Win3.1 is MS-Works is worse. So I have to help her use an outdated operating system and the worst word processor conceivable. But it couldn’t be that hard, right. Oh, did I mention that the language is set to German on the operating system? Well not everything is in German some of it is in Swedish. So, here I am trying to help someone who knows next to nothing about computers and they have to translate everything for me. The upshot of this is that I now know that “Ja” in German means “yes.”

So I was wondering, can computer literacy count as a language? I think it should. Perhaps I’m not the mono-linguist I thought I was. Now if I could only get NAU to wave my language requirement.

This past Friday I went on a tour, run by the history dept., to three Medieval castles. Of course I took many pictures. I will put them up as soon as I can but I don’t think it will happen this week. Funny thing about school is that sometimes, rarely, I have work to do. Like, ah, college - bubble gum popping sound - would be, like, so much more fun if it weren’t for the classes. Or as Mark Twain said, “Don’t let college get in the way of your education.”

Chow, idano

November 19, 1998

I’ve been meaning to email you to let you know how the basketball is going over here. In short I’m not on the team, but that may change. The way they do things here is you try out for the team on the first day of the meetings. Now it just so happens that I had one of the worst days of basketball I’ve ever had. I could not dribble the ball to save my life. I did manage to make it to the final cut but that was it. I later found out that the people that returned from last year are on the team automatically and they get just about all the playing time.

Since I’m a member of the basketball club here - they have clubs for everything - I get to play every Sunday. For the first two weeks I was all right. I’ve played enough to get a modicum of dribbling skills back and I’m definitely the best guard out there. This past week, well lets just say “basketball was very very good for me.”

You all know how I have a knack for “shit-shots” or so you call them. Well you should have seen me the other day. The first game was pathetic. My hands were cold and I turned the ball over at least five times. (We play games to 7 straight and behind the arch is 2.) I had my Chinese exercise balls with me so between games I would twirl them in hopes that they would warm my hands up. Boy did they ever.

The next game was much better. I had a few layups and made a few steals. It all started to happen in the next game. I had a perfect 3/4 floor pass to our big guy. The pass was just over the fingertips of the defender. I got a nice round of applause from the guys waiting for the next game. In the same game I had a offensive rebound, pump-faked, dribbled under the basket and circled back into the paint, dribbled behind my back three straight times, circled back the way I had came, pump faked again and made a fall away. (Another applause) We won that game, but just barely.

It all started in the next game. I had a coast to coast layup, made a steal and had a layup in which I got clobbered in the process. The guy couldn’t believe I made the shot. Add a couple of jumpers and we won the game going away.

Mark, remember that pass you made to me at Bear Down where you thought you over threw me? I have a better one now. Almost the same exact situation except this time I had a defender to contend with. I caught the ball in the air brought it up above my head and then cupped it under as the defender went by and made a reverse. In the same game I made my only real shit-shot. On a fast break the pass came right over my shoulder but I let it go so that I could take it in off the bounce. It went a little further than I thought and all I could manage to do was grab it and throw it up as I ran full speed past the basket, and then into the wall. I turned around hoping that someone on my team would get the rebound only to see it fall through the hoop. (Standing applause this time.) Throw in a few jumpers and assists and another win.

The next game I’m feeling pretty cocky. (Yes me.) First time down the court, three point range, swish. Next time down the court, same place, same result. Next time down the court my teammate makes a three pointer from about five feet behind the strip. Next time down the court (we lead 6-0) I shoot from about 10 feet behind the strip - swish. We were on the court for maybe 2 minutes.

The next game was just a continuation of the last few - layups, steals, assists, jumpers. For the day I can remember missing just two shots. Aside from the retched opening game I only remember one other turnover. So when we show up it is nice to know that I am the go-to-guy on the team no matter who is on the team with me. I had better enjoy it while I can. I have no doubt that my reintroduction to American b’ball will be harsh.

Adieu, idano

Btw, I can’t get used to the three-step rule here. I still take just two.

November 9, 1998

Yesterday at basketball there were only twelve people who showed up. That means a lot more playing time for me. The bad news is that while we were waiting for enough people to show up to play full court we played some three-on-three. I went up for a jumper and came down on the side of someone’s foot spraining my left - good - ankle. I walked it off but all day long I couldn’t pop-stop for jumpers or sprint. We played for about an hour and a half and then someone had the bright idea - me - that we should match up the Americans against the Europeans. (Five Americans and six Euro’s at this point) The bad news is that the Europeans had the 3 of the tallest players while us Americans were all guard types. We were playing to 15 win by two and counting 3s as 2. We had to play a zone because we were oversized and I couldn’t move to my right fast enough to guard anyone one-on-one.

It started off fairly even but the Euros began to pull away and had a 10 - 6 lead. That is when I twisted my ankle again. You can’t imagine how pissed off I was. I pounded the floor, cursing. I jumped up and hobbled down the court. There was no way I would quit a game like this. We got the ball and I took a two pointer and missed. They came down and scored - 11-6. Next time down the court I took another 2-pointer and made it, followed by another - 11-10. They scored a few points and we scored a few points - 13-12. I stole a pass and managed to limp down the court for a lay-up - all tied up. They score, I hit a jumper - 14-14. When we got the ball back I got a pass about 5 feet outside of the three point arch at the top of the key. I pump-faked a shot and my guy went for it. I dribbled past him to the right. Another defender came up. I crossed over back to the left, knifed in-between the two defenders leaned in, jumping off my left foot - barely - and took a leaning three-pointer. Bank-swish. It wasn’t pretty because I had no intention of banking it but we won. America brings home the cup.

Ciao, idano

October 28, 1998

Today was my first day of classes. First up was Latin. I was worried that the professor would ask the students in the class how much experience they had in Latin and then decide to skip the first three chapters as read and jump ahead. Fortunately Latin is just as Greek to all the other students in the class - all five of them - as it is to me. In fact one of the students in the class is from Greece along with another American from Iowa, a Welsh woman, a girl from East London - insert whistle here - and a girl from Finland. The professor is a jolly middle-aged man. Imagine an academic John Cleese, that’s him. My second class of the day is Moral Philosophy. I have never had a female teach a philosophy class until this one. She does a perfect impersonation of William Shatner. Unfortunately it isn’t an impersonation. She just . . . talks . . . like this, with all the appropriate gesticulations to boot. More than once I had to hide behind my laptop monitor to keep from laughing out loud. Presumably it will lose its humor in the upcoming classes.

They have this stuff here that they don’t have in America. It’s a white liquid that I am told comes from a cow. It is readily available in grocery stores at a reasonable price. The odd thing about it is that they call it ‘milk.’ I only mention this because, as you know, you have a similar liquid in America. Believe me the similarities end with the colour and the source. ‘English milk’ is a delight to drink. ‘American milk’ is just chalky water, even whole milk. If someone tried to import American milk over here the RAF would bomb them. In comparison ‘English milk’ is nectar, the stuff saints should be anointed with, a substance Gaia herself would be proud to issue forth. If the British think American beer is ‘piss water’ then I would hate to think what they would call ‘American milk.’ It would undoubtedly be obscenely biological.

Farewell for now, idano

October 25, 1998

This is just a short message to let everyone know that I have arrived in Swansea without any hassles. Really all I want to do is test whether or not I can write emails on my laptop and transfer them to the computers on campus and email them out. If your reading this then it worked.

I live in Henderfoilen Student Village - that’s pronounced “hen-DER-voil-len.” At present I have 7 housemates. We each have our own room and share a kitchen and dinning area. There are shower and toilet facilities upstairs and down so I only have to share with 3 other people. The women live upstairs and the men down. We have quite an international flavor here. Nick is 30 years old and from England and is studying marine biology. Sean grew up in Tanzania but has lived the past few years in England, he is 25, I think, and is studying philosophy and psychology. Torstin is about 24 or so and is from Germany like me is only here for the year. He is studying English literature. Upstairs there is Reshmi she is East Indian but grew up in Canada. She is 28 and will be here for 3 years getting here law degree. Stephanie - Steph - is from England and is 29 years old.

I can’t remember what she is studying. And lastly there is Peggy, or Peggy Sue as we call here. She is from France and here English is “not so good.” She can understand basic things and fortunately Reshmi speaks French well enough to translate for her. She is 24 and will only be here for the year. If you have been counting you will have noticed that I have only covered six people. We are missing one upstairs housemate. She will probably be from England because most of the international students have already arrived.

Speaking of international students, I have been told that about one-quarter of the student population here is international. At this point I think I have met more Canadians than British.

The city is beautiful. In fact I would say it is the prettiest city I have ever been to. There are gardens and fields everywhere and the upkeep is immaculate. I have taken quite a few pictures and as soon as I figure out how to get things up to my web page I will let everyone know.

Classes begin on Monday. I have my schedule set. I’m taking Latin 101, Moral Philosophy, Language and Reality, and Philosophy of Psychology. I’m looking forward to learning a great deal both in and out of class.

I hope everyone is well. All my love, idano

October 20, 1998

I had a little adventure this past Saturday. I went with a few of my housemates to the beach about 20 kilometers from here. To call it a beach is a little misleading. When people think of beach they think of sand; there was none of that here. This beach was rocky. That too is misleading. When people think of rocky they think of lots of rocks; there were none of those here, just one of them. This beach was one big rock stretching for kilometers in each direction. It was jagged; it was cold; it was windy; it was very nearly unforgiving.

What happened was this: I climbed down the rocks to get close to the shoreline to take some pictures. (You will see the pictures by Friday. See above.) When I go out to take pictures I of course take my digital camera and also my laptop. The reason for taking the laptop is so that I can download the images from the camera and therefore take as many pictures as I want. (You’re probably already getting the picture: pounding surf, laptop/digital camera, idiot/me.) So here I am down by the shoreline, being very careful because of the equipment and the fact that the rip tide here might rip me right back to America if I were to fall in. I’m standing on an outcropping of rock about to take a picture. Remember I’m being very careful, this portion of the outcropping of rock is bone dry. Not a drop of spray has dropped here for some time. There is a cove that I’m trying get a picture of so I have to turn my back to the sea - enter Poseidon, the Greek god of the ocean. I’m sure the ancient Greeks had some saying about never turning your back on the ocean or an angry woman - and they didn’t have to worry about electronics. (Important safety tip: never, ever, ever, turn your back on a pounding ocean.) As I’m crouching to take the picture I hear a very disturbing sound. It is the water being sucked away from the shore. I turn and look. Where was once ocean about five feet below me is a wall of wet rock with water cascading down the jagged surface about fifteen feet deep. Directly behind that is a wave, a very big wave, that is about to fill the void with a vengeance. I turn and run as fast as I can up the slope. Which means I made it about a step and a half before the air shook with a clap of thunder and the world turned to white spray. All I could think was, “Don’t get pulled back in.” As soon as I climbed up to safety I pulled out the laptop. It was drenched because I didn’t have the cinch cord pulled. I opened the laptop up and the keyboard was soaked. The bottom of my backpack was full of water. Needless to say the camera was drenched. I pulled the batteries out of each and began to pray. I’m not sure what god or goddess one should pray to in a case like this since there are no god/goddesses, or even patron saints, that I know of who cover electronic goods. Perhaps I should make one up.

So, drenching wet and freezing, toting my laptop just filled to the rim with salt water, I went back to the car. When we got home I removed as much from the laptop as possible and began blow drying it. The first time I tried booting up the speakers made a sound like a Geiger counter and I got no action at all from the screen, not a blink. More blow-drying. This time there was a blink from the hard drive, nothing else. More blow-drying. The screen comes alive and I get to the bios login. I input the password - accepted - the keyboard works. It starts a RAM check. 48megs - shit, I have 64 so it’s missing 16megs of RAM. It keeps booting. Windows gives me a message that I don’t have a mouse attached. This is bad. I start up Windows Explorer - no CD-ROM, buzzard-puss! I shut it down and reboot again - same thing. Reboot - the mouse works!!! Reboot - we have spinage from the CD-ROM! Reboot - 64megs of RAM recognized. I stick in a CD and it plays - even the speakers work. After all that everything works. DELL RULES!!! I think they need to get an email about this.

As for the camera . . . this is the second time (IDIOT ME) my camera has had a close encounter of the saltwater kind. The first time it came out of the ordeal with no side effects. This time, well the only thing that doesn’t work is the built in flash. Say-la-vee. It wont make much of a difference because I almost never used the flash anyway.

Hopefully I have learned my lesson: continue to by DELL laptops and I just wish DELL made digital cameras.

Best to all, idano

October 18, 1998

In the states exercise paths are becoming very popular, nice scenic paths for roller-blading, biking, walking, jogging, et al. They are usually pretty narrow compared to city streets but they don’t need to be that wide. It isn’t like cars or buses drive one them. Over here in Wales they have similar paths. Nice scenic paved paths that lead through the countryside, very quaint. Sometimes sheep come right up to, and occasionally onto, the path. At other times it is almost like being in a narrow hedgerow canyon - they can grow 10-15 feet high. Now the big difference between the paths they have in the states and the ones here in Wales is that while you may see your odd cyclist they are not for recreation. They are for transportation. There is a reason the cars here tend to be much smaller, the country roads. What can be particularly harrowing is riding a bus on one of these roads - probably not so much for the passengers as it is for the driver and probably not nearly so much for the driver of the bus than for the drivers of oncoming traffic.

For those of you who are not familiar with my motion-sickness-affliction you should know that I can get sick on a nice, flat, straight, freeway. Now put me one a bus that is winding and jerking around corners, up and down hills, slowing for traffic and accelerating a second later . . . well I very nearly redecorated the interior of the bus. We’re talking liquid wallpaper here. I would have gotten off the bus but it was the last one back to the city and the prospect of walking 15 kilometers on these same narrow roads, in the dark, was incentive enough to keep me in my seat. Fortunately I had some battery power left in my laptop so I plugged in the headphones and listened to some Beethoven. By concentrating on the music I was able keep everything down.

The trip that I made on the bus was out to Rhossili. Now Rhossili really blows - literally. Rhossili is a cliffside/beachside city. It lies about 300ft above the Bristol Sea. One of the interesting things that I saw here was a new form of precipitation. I thought I had seen it all but when I saw foam falling from the sky I was taken aback. At first I thought it was snowflakes, real big snowflakes. But it wasn’t cold enough, though it was quit nipply. I couldn’t believe it. The wind was blowing so hard that it was picking up the sea foam and carrying it hundreds of feet into the air.

You know those thick glass pains that have the crosshatched wire mesh running through them. Imagine the wind blowing so hard that it spider-webbed one of them. And this wasn’t from any great North Sea storm. This was just an average storm, or so they tell me. You can check out the website to see pictures of the area. You tell me if it would be worth it to have such a spectacular view.

March 15, 1997

Well . . . I had the surgery this morning. I don’t know which was worse: the surgery or getting up at 5am. Although I had forgotten about the comet as soon as I opened the door to start walking up to the hospital, there it was, attracting my attention without looking into sky. For those of you who don’t have a tittling of historical au courant the appearance of a comet is considered to be an omen of an upcoming annus mirabilis. On top of that is the portentous date of march 15—the ides of march. The fates would seem to indicate that I would get screwed twice. Maybe you don’t believe in superstitious hoodoo, but the fact remains; I do have two screws in my hand.

The surgery went smoothly from my perspective—reclined. I was given a local block under the arm which entirely numbed everything below. They pulled the drape away for a few minutes for me to watch. I could see the broken bone and all the muscles around it. Neat’o.

I just took the wrapping off for the first time. I told the surgeon, who is a plastic one, to leave a noticeable scar. We’ll have to wait and see if he did a good job at leaving a bad scar. (It’s a guy thing.) The numbness is just about gone and I haven’t had to take any of my pain medication. In fact I haven’t taken aspirin of any type since the break happened. (It’s a guy thing. It sure is painful being a guy.) The preliminary ETH (Estimated Time of Healing) is four to six weeks, which translates to two to three weeks in Dan healing days. I’ll keep yaw’ll posted.

Consider yourself lucky that you don’t have to read this email in real-time. Typing with one hand isn’t what Dr. Dorvac had in mind when he came up with a new key-board lay-out. Writing my term papers is going to be tedious to the nth degree.

I have books to write and papers to read. (Quasi-spoonerism much?) (Question: how do you punctuate a rhetorical question? And what should one do about sentences which tell you they are going to ask a question and then go on to end in a question-mark? Isn’t that similar to a double negative?)

With that said, and asked, I will leave you.
Adieu, idano

Post Note: 12/2006
The healing process took far less time than I anticipated. I was typing with both hands the following day and playing basketball 3 days later.