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.