Nice weather

Hello! I haven't updated because there hasn't been too much interesting stuff going on yet this week!

The weather has been really nice lately. 50s to 60s and only rain every couple days, haha. This is the first time that London has seemed rainy so far. Hopefully it won't spend all summer raining too!

On Tuesday or Wednesday night, Pep, me and a random friend of ours, Christian, went to a club / bar thing in Soho that had "live classical music." It turned out to be a renaissance chamber group playing a mixture of "duets" (in Renaissance language this means for three people) and bawdy centuries old drinking songs. In terms of their music, I wasn't terribly impressed, but they were fair enough players so it was enjoyable. They taught us all to sing a Henry Purcell drinking song, haha. The pub we were in was dedicated to Oscar Wilde and they had picture frames all over the place surrounding quotations by him. During a break between sets, I went to find the bathroom and squirmed my way out of the crowd. I found a back hallway and walked and walked and found some stairs and went down those and found that there was a whole basement to the club that must have taken up most of the otherwise shared building! There were hallways leading out of that going to more communal areas, more staircases, etc. I found it very interesting that the stage wasn't in the basement, since the upstairs was very tight and narrow, and clearly they weren't using the basement for more than a couple overflow tables and chairs.

We got a bunch of people together one afternoon to play football (soccer) in the backyard. It seems so big when we are having picnics out there, but once we had more than about six people running around we found it to be way too small. My legs are really torn up because there are spiky bushes surrounding two sides of the yard and we frequently had to retrieve the ball from them. A few weeks ago one of the upstairs windows blew open, hit the wall, and shattered all over the backyard grass, so despite trying to pick up as much of it as we could before playing, a couple people ended up with some glass related injuries as well. I guess next time we will just have to walk to a park! I'm glad that my brand new ball didn't get impaled on any glass and ruined!

I went to one of the university pubs after class yesterday with some classmates and learned a bit about the educational system here in the UK. Well, first of all, I still find it odd that the university maintains its own pubs and night clubs above the union, but second of all, I have noticed that many students seem to go to the same place for undergraduate and graduate school. Although this is not entirely uncommon in the US, there seems to be a stigma on staying put too long (an exception being for a Master's and then PhD degree, obviously). When I mentioned this there was some confusion. "But you have already made contacts, found a place to live, and made friends by undergraduate school -- why wouldn't you want to stay for graduate school rather than have to go build a network again?" I was asked. Food for thought.

My computer music professor wants to talk to me about applying for a PhD programme at UCL and although I am not particularly interested in doing a doctorate in the UK (especially in Computer Science, aghhh), I figure it won't hurt to talk to him. From my internet researches, I have come to the conclusion that most PhD programmes in the UK are faculty driven. A department comes up with a certain amount of ideas for research and then advertises them like, "PhD opening for Durham University: Costume Design in Venice in 1700s, 2012 - 2013" and interested students apply. My understanding is that in the US, students find faculty members at universities who share their interests and then work on a slightly related project for their doctorate studies, so this is another way in which the educational systems differ.

I also got some news back about a potential work placement! I might be working at the Royal National Theatre next term! I have emailed the contact back and asked for an interview next week sometime, so hopefully I will know more soon. Although the position is in the archives department (a place where I spent a considerable amount of time as an undergrad working as a scanning monkey and which I hope to avoid as a full-out career, haha), it sounds like there are a lot of opportunities there which don't involve straight-up digitization. I might be involved on an iTunesU project, coordinating collaborative projects between universities, or incorporating technology into stage performances. The iTunes U thing sounds pretty cool to me. I have taken a few courses online through it before and always was pretty impressed. I am excited too because the National Theatre is a really big name over here, and I walk past their facilities not infrequently. They are in the same stack of buildings as the London Phil.

Also, it's official: I will be getting an MSc, and my thesis is going to be on live coding languages and their effects upon performance. If you want some idea of what live coding is, what this cool video! By about three minutes in it gets pretty neat, in my opinion.

Easybus emailed me back and said that they didn't find my purse, so I guess I am out of a wallet now. I've already started replacing some stuff, but I'm sad because my spanish insurance card, old nebraska university student card, and a bunch of random stuff like my gym membership card were in there. I am on the prowl for a replacement London map, but I don't think I'm going to be able to find one as awesome as the map I got when I applied to King's College, alas!