Sense memory at the souq

Smells are evocative. For me, it began on the plane with the unidentified but specific smell I associate with the Middle East, particularly the souqs. The scenery traveling from Cairo airport to Giza was quintessentially Arabic too, although I was too tired to take much in yesterday evening.

This evening, sat sipping mint tea after a wander around Khan al-Kalili souq I was struck by the power of the senses to remind me of other places and times.  The setting sun and the dusty city coming to life on foot could be anywhere in the Arab world. Cairo by day is full of traffic and like nowhere else I've been, but when the sun went down and the mosque emptied, it was all people walking, buying from the street food vendors, greeting friends in the inimitable Arab style and bustling around.

The sound of traffic dying away, and the horns giving way to a hub-bub of voices, in a dialect of Arabic so unlike the Modern Standard Arabic I've started learning that I can't even follow the ritualized greetings. The call to prayer from the mosque in the square reminded me of the riad in Marrakech right by a minaret, and the 4am call. The inevitable sound of souvenir hawkers approaching the table we're sat at, selling everything from tissues to pashminas, from "Rolexes" to jewelry. The studied continuation of Indo-European language conversation as their sales pitches are ignored.

The taste of tooth-achingly sweet mint tea, drunk black with spoons of sugar added. Again, Morocco.

The smell of spices from the souq. The smell of sweetcorn charring over an open brazier. The gentle scent of mint from the tea. The subtle underlying whiff on the breeze of incense burning. And pervading it all, the unmistakable smell of shisha pipes, of tobacco laced with fruit smoke. All these are are the smells I love, reminding me mostly of many happy hours in Muscat, in the old souq haggling over pashminas, or sat in a local cafe eating mezze and drinking avocado juice, or sat in the desert with some locals, sharing a barbeque of local dishes and conversation.

For all that there are similarities, there are differences. The language. The stall owners are more practiced at flattering in English. The city is so much bigger, but also very densely packed with people. These make it far and away the least laid back city after London and New York. "In'shallah" its not much in evidence here!

Dissertation research, twenty-first century style

One of the two main draws for doing an MSc was the opportunity to do an extended research project.  My program requires a 10,000 word dissertation on an original historical topic and I've picked the UK government's response to Israel's 1980 de jure annexation of East Jerusalem contrary to all international law, and formalising a state of affairs that had existed de facto since the end of the Six Day War in 1967.  My research centres around British government documents from the time at the National Archives, and contemporary broadsheet and academic journal writing.  The biggest problem I seem to be facing is how to organise that much information, but the lovely folk at Sciplore have written a tutorial on how to use open source software to manage not only your references but your notes and structure as well.

So my workflow looks like this:

• Track possible sources in Open Office spreadsheet
• For every source I make notes on, create an Open Office document with one page per page reference from the original source.  So if I'm taking notes on pages 5, 90-100 and 253 I will have three pages in my Open Office document.  Save this as an OO file, then export it to PDF (in a different folder).
• Open the PDF in Foxit Reader and add a bookmark with a meaningful name to every page of the PDF (which is why different pages for different page references mattered in the last step).
• Use Sciplore MindMap's monitoring function to automatically import PDFs and their bookmarks, giving me ready made notes of key facts and thoughts, complete with hyperlinks back to the notes I've taken.  For journal articles or digital pictures of original documents I can also use Foxit's comment feature as well as bookmarks.
• Rearrange nodes within Sciplore into a sensible structure, still retaining the hyperlinks.
• Update my spreadsheet with the source's status (to read / first cut / finished / useless)

Theoretically, JabRef will pull references data from Sciplore and then link back into Open Office to manage citations and styles.  I haven't tested this bit of the workflow yet though...

Israel images

I went to Israel for a week or so just after Easter.  I was (un)lucky enough that my Rain God status came into play again (Douglas Adams reference here) so as well as getting wet I got some lovely moody photos which you wouldn't necessarily associated with a Mediterranean country in late April.

Firstly, on a "Jesus boat" early one morning, the overcast sky and occasional shafts of sunshine made for some lovely effects:


Looking back to shore was a splash of green:



and a very moody mountain:


Shortly afterwards, of course, we got soaked and very cold because nobody had packed for this sort of weather:


There were compensations, as this sunset from a couple of days earlier in Tel Aviv shows:


And finally, some true Mediterranean weather, taken from the old port town of Jaffa (mostly Arab-population) looking back towards the modern city of Tel Aviv:

Addicted to Swing

Learning to dance was on my 30 Before I'm 30 list. While I wouldn't say I've learned to Swing Dance yet by any stretch of the imagination, I have taken great strides recently in the right direction.

I spent the weekend at the London Swing Dance Festival and had a fantastic time. I also introduced my friend Adam (who's danced solo in the past but never done partner dance) to the joys of both partner & swing dancing. Swing dancing, incidentally, in this case refers to Lindy Hop / Charleston / Jitterbug / Shag / Balboa / Blues. It doesn't include West Coast Swing, which is a style all in its own right with its own classes & festivals.

Friday night was the competition for all those who actually know what they're doing, and gave some idea of how big the vintage dance scene in London actually is. It's huge. Really!

I've danced on and off since I moved to London, racking up maybe 10-12 lessons over an 8 month period. Certainly, the guy in the Beginner's stream who most closely matched my skill & knowledge had been dancing for about 2 months, which given how long it takes me to master new hand-eye-foot-coordination tasks seems about right. Saturday was Charleston - solo & partnered. Up until this point, I've very much disliked Charleston because it just wouldn't click in my head as a rhythm. Finally, I began it get it. We ended the day with a Lindy Hop class, restoring my by-then waning confidence that I could actually dance at all. Not just because it was moves I knew, but because we covered more ground - Lindy is easier, which at least explains why I found the Charleston so hard the rest of the day!

The highlight of Saturday was the Jumps & Lifts taster class. I think 5 of the 15-20 beginners were brave enough (or stupid enough?) to give this one a go. We all coped, and most of us managed to put them into practice on the dance floor later. We had a further Jumps class later on Saturday, and covered one of them AGAIN on Monday evening, so they're now firmly in the repertoire, at least for partners I've danced with before and feel confident that they won't drop me!

Sunday was mostly Lindy Hop and some styling elements, as well as getting the hang of following the different styles & confidences of the leads. Following is not something I have found easy in the past. I had a couple of social dances on Saturday night with guys I didn't know, and had never seen before, let along danced with. Somewhere in one of those, it finally and completely clicked in my brain how do to it. Switches between moves and rhythms I'd never managed smoothly before fell into place and stayed there. And it was GREAT. There was a also a dance with a coursemate where we did almost nothing (other than the lifts) which we'd been taught, but still had an exhilarating time with him leading and me following steps and rhythms I couldn't repeat now.

It's not plain sailing - just because I know I can do it doesn't mean I always go on the dancefloor in the right state of mind. But I know what it feels like and Sunday was definitely better than Saturday in terms of following the guys' leads. Also for the first time, I found a partner where it very much clicks in dance terms. It'll be interesting to see if that connection persists when we haven't been dancing together for two days!

Finally, here's a video of the Charleston routine we did in front of the entire festival on Sunday night. 1 hr of tuition and a further hour or so rehearsals scattered through the day.  We're pretty damn good!

Now, if I can just justify spending the money on the upcoming Swing weekend in August...

Motorcycling - wow, there's a lot to do

OK, this isn't an original 30BeforeI'm30 idea, but it fits in the general scheme of Doing Interesting Stuff Because I Can And I'm Deadline Driven.

I have several friends who own motorbikes. After many, many years of not wanting to go near one (my late Grandad had a stiff knee from a motorcycling accident in his teens) I was finally persuaded to give it a go late last year. It was ACE!! I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie in some ways - it's why I loved cross-country horse-riding best - and this ticked all my boxes.

I have another friend intending to gain a motorcycle license, so the idea is we can motivate and hold each other accountable this summer. The plan is for the Direct Access Scheme, where the last part of the training and the test is carried out on a big (500cc+) bike, and you can immediately ride these without restriction - it's only available to over 21s, and we're definitely that! The Standard A1/A2 route carries a 2-year restriction on riding bikes over 125cc and I guess neither Dichotomy nor I are feeling patient.. There's a number of steps to go through - I'll link posts to them as they happen:

1. Get your provisional license - I'm fine because I have a full driving license
2. Get some glasses that have two arms and a current prescription - hopefully sorting out this week
3. Do a one day Compulsory Basic Training course - tentatively May this year
4. Pass the Theory Test and Hazard Perception Test - I am massively not looking forward to these! I passed the Driving Theory test many years ago, but the Hazard Perception is new. On the other hand, I've been driving for over 10 years, so hopefully my perception of hazards is pretty good.
5. Practice on the road - optional, but recommended
6. Take an intensive riding course and the slow-speed Module 1 test - tentatively sometime in the first two weeks in August
7. Take the Module 2 test - hopefully also in August
8. Ride, and practice, and possibly undertake further training

Simples, right? Or at the very least, some light relief from my MSc finals and Dissertation writing, which has to happen concurrently!

The psychology of partner dance

It will come as no great surprise to anyone, I'm sure, to learn that I can be a little headstrong at times. So what on earth, you may wonder, possesses me to take up Swing Dance, where the leader leads, and the follower, well, follows? I'll give you a clue. Women are not the leaders here. So, there's all sorts of characteristics which you need to be a good dance follower that don't, shall we say, come terribly naturally to me.

First, you need to trust your partner. If you're dancing properly, you're committing your momentum and body to moves that will only work with the physics of him catching that momentum and working with it. If he sends you out on a spin, or pulls you back from one, it's his job to catch you and guide into the next move, and yours to stay upright and in rhythm, going wherever he sends you. Abdicating control so completely is something that's taken me months to get the hang of. It's still hard with new rhythms and patterns, but it's getting easier all the time.

Secondly, it's the lead's job to decide what happens. If he's not telling you what to do, you don't get to make it up or decide. And just because you've been practising a move all class doesn't mean that's what he's going to do next. I'm getting better with this. It's a mental shift to realise that all options are on the table, but once I do make that shift I've had some of the most fun ever, especially doing moves we haven't explicitly been taught.

Related, I need a strong lead. Again, no surprises there to anyone who's ever met me! If the guy is acting like he knows what he's doing and pushing me around (in dance terms), I can do things I didn't know I knew how to do. If I'm floundering around wondering if that was a lead or just a change in pressure, my footwork goes to pieces, my composure falls apart and it's just a disaster. As in dance, so in life...

This is the the final thing, and the reason I'm learning all these weird mental shifts: it's truly co-creating. You both need to do your bits, and only your bits, for it to work. And when it does, it's glorious. As in dance, so in life...

Jordan: What's a girl got to do to get a shower around here?

Way back in October I spend a week hiking through Jordan. I've been intending to blog about it ever since, and failing miserably. Since then I've also been to Venice, and have just booked a further international trip for late April. I'll try to be a bit more timely about those ones!

Anyway, I spent a week hiking from Dana Nature Reserve to Petra, booked through KE Adventure. The temperature was consistently over 40C, and there was comparatively little shade. Indeed, some days seem to consist of hiking from the shade of one tree to the shade of the next...We were supported by a team of Jordanians driving 4x4s, but all our hiking was on Bedouin tracks, and we only saw the trucks at the campsites. Because of the remote nature of the campsites:


and the arid climate, all the water we used was carried in by 4x4. So, after a full day hiking through the heat, how do you make yourself fit for the group dinner time?

If there's a convenient waterhole, you can sluice yourself off, but without any soap or detergent in that. Or, you can just chill out, as at this stream we came across in the middle of day 3. We'd had an enormous climb that morning, so this was like a little slice of heaven when we descended the col and found a shady stream for our lunch stop:


Assuming that there is neither stream nor waterhole, the first thing you do is gather up your - ideally environmentally friendly - toiletries, and your 1.5L bottle of water. Then you find somewhere to provide some shade and privacy:


You look behind you to make sure you're not going to inadvertently flash an unsuspecting group member or local:


Then you set up your stuff in a convenient niche:


It is - just about - possible to wash yourself, and wet and rinse my shoulder-length with the 1.5L bottle. It's a bit of an art form, but it is doable. And the balmy 30C+ temperature combined with the aridity meant there was no need to towel off! You'll also appreciate - ok, maybe not - the exfoliating nature of the fine desert dust that gets into absolutely everything, and the combination of sunscreen and dust that gave my hair the most body it has ever had. I'm assuming it looked horrendous, however, so I won't be recommending this as a beauty regime any time soon.

And there you are. All ready for dinner at the communal mat:

Reading, handwriting, and becoming illiterate

I love the Middle East: the sights, the smells - oh, the smells! - the sounds, the architecture, the music, the history, the people...you name it, I find it fascinating. One of the things to do on my 30 before I'm 30 list is to learn Arabic to a conversational level. For all that I've travelled to the Middle East up until now, I've never managed to get beyond the basics of speaking and listening to preliminary greetings, and "thank you" and "no". I haven't even learned to swear! Reading and writing was beyond me. I could recognise the "Exit" sign - a useful thing when you're driving down a highway and wondering why your lane is about to disappear - but that was about it. For the record, it looks like, but doesn't always have the English translation.


I'm taking a basic Arabic course through university - 2 hours a week of class, plus 15-30 mins a day of homework and drilling. We're learning the alphabet 5-6 letters at a time, and some weeks we have vowels and vocalisation marks thrown in for free. There's 28 consonants in the Arabic alphabet, 3 of which serve double duty as loonnng vowels. Like, really long: it's one of the many features of the language which has no English equivalent. Then there's 3 short vowels which aren't usually written and 11 or so other marks or versions of letters to learn.

I've just discovered what it's like to be illiterate. It's horrendous. I love books. I always have done. Ever since I was a little kid, books have been keys to other worlds, with the author's words providing a framework around which my imagination can fill in the other details. When I read, I don't just read. I vanish inside my own head, with the author leading me by the hand through the world they have created and shared through the printed word. I'm terrible at watching films based on books that don't stick to the original point. I'll read anything that's lying around, including very trashy fiction.

And now...I can't read. At least not in Arabic. I can slowly and painfully spell out some words, but it is letter by letter. And if there's more than 3 or 4 letters in a word, chances are I've forgotten the beginning by the time I get to the end, and I end up spelling it out 2 or 3 times before all the bits stick in my short-term memory long enough for me to string them together into a full word.

Adding to the complication is that many letters share the same basic shape, distinguishable only by the placement of dots. 1 dot or 2? Above or below the line? Or no dots? Are there no dots because I forgot to write them, or does this basic letter shape have a legitimate form with no dots? I can manage 20-30 minutes of this before I get a headache and have to stop. It's worth it though. It really is. Knowing so little means there's tangible progress every single day, and every day I can look at a string of Arabic and recognise more and more of the shapes. I don't have all the keys needed to open the door, yet, but I'm definitely getting a clearer picture of what's beyond the door when I do get to open it.

The other thing that has struck me is that my handwriting (in English, French, and anything else based on the Latin alphabet) is terrible. But in Arabic, it's turning out to be not too bad. It's not the beautiful calligraphic script which Arabic is famed for, such as this panel in a mosque:
but it's not hideous.

Compare the English scrawl of my title with the repetitive Arabic words here:


For what it's worth, I've tried many times over the years to neaten up my handwriting. I really have. I can do a decent Black Letter when I need to and a passable cursive hand, but it takes aaggeeess. I've never managed to make either of them something I can do at speed. And let's be honest, in today's world of meetings, lectures and use of computers, how often to any of us write anything extended or slowly by hand? Even my shopping list is done on my Android phone these days. But maybe, by learning a new script at this age instead of being the impatient so-and-so I was a child, I can learn to write Arabic not just neatly, but beautifully. That really would be an achievement!

Dreams, redux - warning, long!

I did Lottie Love's D is for Dreams challenge about 10 days ago. It seemed to spark my subconscious into actually thinking about the bigger life questions, because I want to revisit that challenge.

First though, I know two bloggers doing the "101 things in 1001 days" challenge: Skippy & Minirhi and Rachel is doing 30 Things Before I'm 30. I have my own list of 30 before I'm 30 - the idea of doing a new thing every 10 days for three years just seemed overwhelming, given my impending move to London to become a student!

My 30 before I'm 30 list
Travel
1) Visit Egypt again - Nile, Pyramids, Cairo, Aswan etc. Possibly a dawn hike around St Catherine's Monastery.
2) Visit Jordan (Completed: October 2010)
3) Visit Israel, especially Jerusalem (Completed: April 2011)
4) Hike the Inca Trail
5) Visit Venice before it sinks (New Year 2010)
6) Hike the Two Moors Way (Complete: July 2010)
7) Hike/cycle another long distance path (Coast to Coast? LEJOG? Appalachian Trail?)
8) Visit my relatives in the Orkneys (Booked for September Summer 2011)

Learning things
9) Learn Arabic, at least to basic conversation level (In progress: Oct 2010 - May 2011)
10) Get my Master's degree (In progress: LSE 2010-11)
11) Learn archery (starting summer 2010 - basic qualification done)
12) Get my Mountain Leader (Summer) Award (2010-2012)
13) Take singing/banjo/guitar lessons
14) Record singing/banjo/guitar/piano
15) Learn one dance style (In progress: Lindy Hop & Charleston aka Swing Dancing)

Making things
16) Make a corset
17) Knit myself socks from 4-ply yarn (In progress: Dec 2010)
18) Find my "style" (House of Colour day, summer 2010)
19) Make more clothes than I buy
20) Do another year of "Homemade Christmas gifts"

Charity/ethical things
21) Volunteer overseas for 2-4 weeks
22) Become an Army/Sea cadet Instructor
23) Volunteer in a soup kitchen or homeless shelter over Christmas (complete 2010)
24) Extend fairtrade / organic / happy meat shopping ethics beyond groceries
25) Stop sending Xmas cards (apart from close family) in favour of charity donations

Other things
26) Go to a professional opera production (2010/11)
27) Go to a professional ballet production (2010/11)
28) Run a 10k race or do a Sprint Triatholon
29) Buy a house
30) Plant a vegetable garden

On a related theme, I have a list of things I'd like to accomplish while I'm at LSE. Some are duplicated of the above, but some are new. This list will probably grow before it starts to shrink!

Things to do at LSE
1) Graduate. Duh. Perhaps this should read "Graduate well". I'm not going to put myself under pressure to get a Distinction since I've finally learned that Academic Achievement Is Not The Be All And End All.
2) Learn Arabic
3) Intern in politics or a think tank
4) Audition for a choir...and ideally join!
5) Have an article published, eg in The World Today

Finally, my subconscious presented me with a life-long dream: I've had variants of this for several years, and some elements have persisted for over a decade. I have no idea how this would work out in practice, given my current circumstances. However, Lottie's challenge was to dream regardless, and maybe the universe will arrange things in such a way you can spot the opportunities to make it happen.

My life at some indeterminate point in the future...
...looks very little like my life at present or even in the foreseeable future. I want to have experienced (not just seen) much more of the world. I love learning about other cultures and history, and standing in the wilderness with a vista, and no signs of human activity. That's pretty much (one of) my idea(s) of bliss. However, I've also learned that however much I love to travel, I need somewhere to call home, somewhere I have roots in both physical and social senses.

Thus, I need to combine the wilderness with a place I can truly call home. Apart from one 4.5 year period, the longest I have lived anywhere in the last 14 years is 18 months, and while I'm very practised at boxing up my life and moving it, I'd really like to not have to do it too many more times. What I see as my dream future then, is this:

I have a smallholding, which is self-sufficient year-round for vegetables, any fruit the UK can grow, meat & eggs. There is a small amount extra which I preserve or sell. The smallholding takes in visitors of several types. There's a camping barn & field, and probably a bunk-house. In the term-time, school groups come to work the soil, tend the animals and learn basic cooking with ingredients they have picked themselves. In the holidays, families and groups of friends come and stay for holidays. There's a space which can be used to run yoga, photography, music and other "retreat" style workshops. I have two adopted* children and a stable relationship with a significant other. I have time to raise the children, and be active in local & charitable organisations. I grew up in a village with a real community feel, a summer fete, a maypole festival and all the other trappings of a quintessential English village: I'm determined to find a corner of England where those traditions live on, and make my home there.

*I really can't envisage the whole pregnant-and-baby stage. I've tried, and my mind insists that The Dream starts when they're at least toddling. I've given up arguing with it on this point.