Back from Lincoln. It was lovely and I’d forgotten how wonderful it is to be with large groups of Lib Dems. Makes the flat seem even worse by comparison. I’m starting to think of moving out at the end of Lent Term…since I’ve only paid through the end of this term.
More on conference later?
Because I’ve been ordered to bed. But, a note of things:
1) Off tomorrow morning to Lib Dem Youth & Students conference in Lincoln. I think much of this has to do with the chance to see Ryan again, explore someplace new and get out of London for a few days. This city gets to be a bit much after awhile (for all that I do love it). Let’s hope I’m not too old!
2) Duchie’s show at the Indianapolis Civic Theatre opens (for the public who aren’t high school students) tomorrow! Silly me thought it was tonight, so I called to tell her to break a leg (but not her own). We talked for an hour, so it’s probably good that it didn’t open tonight! Anyway….go Duchess! And if you’re in Indy, go see the Crucible! Also, the post-New Year’s trip might be working out!
3) Went to a concert tonight at Queen Elizabeth Hall with a group from my course (Marjorie, who taught my British music class on the London program, would be so proud). It was by the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment. I mostly went to be social and was sort of meh about the idea of music, but it turned out to be fantastic and so much fun! The musicans were all really enjoying themselves, the music, and playing together and I think that had a big impact on the mood of the audience. Anyway, I’m at the point of being up for another evening (probably a good thing, since we may have just formed a mini-cultural event group)! Did I mention that the tickets were £4 and there were free drinks afterwards? Woot for student discount schemes!
4) I’m sure there’s more, but I have to pack for tomorrow and pack myself off to bed!
Have just gotten the news that I’m going to be able to review the show at the Donmar that I wanted to see, “The God of Hell.” On the other hand, I don’t think I have the first clue what I’m doing (having not written a serious review since journalism class at NCHS). Anyone? Anyone? Ack. Suggestions will be welcome!
Wait, does Will’s promotion mean that Donna might come back? Because thinking that we may have seen the last of her would really be too much. Or maybe she’ll get hired on with the Santos campaign, now that everyone’s been fired! More Donna! More cowbell!
This week’s West Wing, anyone? I didn’t quite cry, but there was significant mistyness. I don’t want to spoil things for anyone who hasn’t watched, but so awful and so painful to see that exit. Confrontations between those two are never good and always uncomfortable, but knowing that this was the last one and that things would never get patched up made it ten times worse. And the realization that only one of the original cast that I loved so much is really left in the White House(I want to qualify that statement by saying that the President doesn’t count and Charlie’s in a new role)…. I’m going to be so utterly destroyed when this show goes off the air.
I really need to watch some old episodes. But not now. There’s reading to do.
I reeeeeeeeeeally need to go to bed. But, it’s just past 2:30 this morning and I’m burdened with the knowledge that I’ve got loads of reading to get done. If I could just finish this one article, I’d be happy. There’s a book excerpt, too, but the photocopy that someone gave me only has every two pages on it (didn’t notice it was copied on both sides, eh?). That’s the reading for SO424 on Thursday, too, so I’ll try to do it by then. (And, for some reason I seem to be a week ahead (more or less) on all the reading for that class, even though I’m not, because everyone seems to be trying to get it done for the seminar held the next week, rather than for the lecture.) I-Law’s reading is going to kick my ass tomorrow if I don’t find some serious time to be reading…I think one of those articles is 80 pages long. Shite. But, there’s a lecture at 1:15, office hours to go to, a LIMUN meeting at 4 at SOAS (and, yeah, I don’t actually know where that is, other than Russell Square). I suspect that going to debate club this week might just be a bit of a pipe dream. On the other hand, I always feel charged afterwards…it’s like a brain workout. We’ll see.
I’m going to Lincoln this weekend for Lib Dem Youth & Student’s conference. It’s probably against my better judgement, but I’m really excited to see Ryan again and I’m reading for a break from London. This will, of course, be followed by Model UN at Oxford the next week. Eeeash. I wish I didn’t have such an overactive guilt complex sometimes. Or just a better work ethic. I’m going to have to start hiding my ethernet cable. Or does someone want to find a program whereby I can lock myself out of the internet for periods of time.
I also noticed that it’s 38 days until it’s time to retake the LSATs. Now that that date is approaching, I’m starting to wonder why I was so committed to retaking them. I’m not going to be some crazy person who spends 8 hours a day taking practice exams and reviewing them (although I acknowledge that it would probably help my scores) and I haven’t taken a class (which was my original reason for the retake). How much better will I really do? and where do I really want to go that didn’t already admit me with the old score (*waves at the WCL people*)? Maybe its just that law school feels really, really far away right now (both geographically and temporally) and so the whole process feels weird and slightly pointless. I’m also in an academic environment where people have already done their law degrees, so they’re not thinking about “going to law school” in the sense that we would as undergrads.
Other travel plans: Cambridge Model UN & a trip to Paris to see Muppet and the Earlhamites. (Note: saw the Muppet today on his way through London and I was so much happier for it!) Other ideas? I’ve discovered that train tickets around Britain are butt cheap if you plan in advance! Also, I now own a sleeping bag and am hoping to get my money’s worth out of it!
No more rants, back to that article!
Now that the part that has to happen in the Commons appears to be over, would I be safe in wondering what the big deal was about introducing ID cards in Britain? Maybe I’m just so used to having to carry a form of government id (which I use mostly in place of signing my credit cards and, most recently, as proof of address to get my reader’s card at the British Library), that I’m blown away by the idea of an entire country walking around without any way to prove their identity. Mostly, I’m not thinking in a police way, but this is a country in which credit card fraud is MASSIVE…wouldn’t a little photo identification have helped? Being American, of course, I can barely fathom the idea of leaving the house WITHOUT my little driver’s license. Also, if people in this country think that their government doesn’t already have all of that data on file, then I’m surprised. Doesn’t the NHS already know all about your health records? What’s more personal than that? And your address, length of residence, phone number, etc. are all available on the voting register. And you’ve probably told at least one of the parties your voting preference. And if students are now required to show id before going into a party at the union, then wouldn’t some offical proof of age be handy? Anyway. I do know that a majority of only 25 is pretty significant.
Did I mention that I love my site statistics?
I think I had my first non-English browser visit, so welcome person reading in Chinese at the LSE.
Also to the person who googled “oyster card”.
I get occasional visits from people who look for stuff about William Kristol and the pie-ing incident at Earlham (one of my very early posts, as I recall).
And to my anonymous stalkers in Singapore, the Netherlands, Craigville (IN) and Plano (TX), welcome as well.
I’m feeling rather magnanimous this evening. And I went to debate society practice. We’ll see, but voluntarily spending time debating with Tories and economists could probably only do good things for my ability to defend human rights in the real world. Plus, it’s so easy to forget that there are views that exist outside of my sphere of human rights students and international lawyers!
Dude, I figured it out…why you just can’t get enough of that West Wing-y goodness. Because Aaron Sorkin writing is brain crack. No, I’m serious. I used to watch West Wing to make my brain go into writing mode and I had the same intellectual “high” tonight after going to see A Few Good Men in the West End. Alas, I don’t have any papers to write for class, so this’ll have to do (even if the buzzzzz is fading and I’m starting to feel guilty that I’m not working on the article I have to help discuss in tomorrow’s seminar).
Basically, after the UN Society AGM I wandered down to Haymarket to get a ticket for tonight, getting absolutely soaked in the process. Even the concessions are £20, but sometimes you just suck it up and I’ve gotten nowhere near spending my theatre “budget” (yes, it had its own column on the spreadsheet). You may remember that I mentioned that Rob Lowe is starring as the lead attorney (the ewwww, shudder Tom Cruise character in the movie, if I remember correctly) and I’ve now completely forgiven him for that haircut in the ill-fated tv show Lyon’s Den (don’t ask me what it was about…I was too upset by the shaggy haircut in the promos to even think about watching…this was a big thing. Ask Diana if you don’t believe me). Can their be a match more perfectly suited to the stage than Sorkin writing and Lowe speaking? I THINK NOT!
*Joyce watches as her inner fangirl escapes and goes skipping about the room.*
Actually though, almost all the performances were excellent, not just his. The lead prosector was someone who I’d seen in shows at the National (and, Duchie, was the one by who’s range you were really impressed in De-Lovely). Lead female chick was really getting on my nerves, though. I HATE it when people can’t quite pull off the American accent (as if I’m one to speak…I could never get a British accent well enough to perform it in front of people) and she totally couldn’t. That wouldn’t be such a big deal, except that it’s Sorkin, and he writes for a very specific speech pattern/cadence that’s probably hard for even the ordinary American to pull off without practice. And if you just can’t get the speech patterns, then you’re pretty much sunk and you lose a whole lot of what makes him such a great writer. Anyway, she’s some British tv person and it was reeeeeeally obvious that she hadn’t spent much time onstage.
And, sigh, Rob Lowe. I got my program signed afterwards (the man’s so unassuming, I was almost shocked when he came out and seemed…normal (if people from Dayton can be normal)) and I may have to find a friend to go with again so that I can get a picture taken and not seem like tooooo much of a stalker. Oh, and I skipped random lecture to go tonight. I needed the break and after a reflection it seemed to weird to spend quality time with the director of the LLM program in Galway that I skipped in favour of the LSE.
Classes continue. I’m annoyed that my seminar for SO424 will never, ever end on time and I’m always going to be late for the LL423 lecture that’s immediately afterwards. The main problem is that I’ve yet to be in an LSE classroom that has enough chairs for everyone and being late is going to mean spending the next two terms sitting in the corner on the floor for lecture. Blech. I interviewed for Spanish placement, as well, today and distinguished myself by the recognition that I’ve completely forgotten all that I once knew (little though it was) and my complete inability to conjugate in the past tense. Oh sigh. I still think I’m going to take the classes, even though my Thursdays are starting to seem really full. You know, a whole three hours of class and all. Also, that seminar may have helped cast some light on what I’m doing here. I think I’m the token red-stater in the MSc Human Rights. Yeah, you know how in touch I am with middle America. (See, that was irony, but I probably am more in “touch” than anyone else around.)
So back to the brain crack. I want more! (This, of course, being the problem with addictive substances.) A big part of me wishes I got that same buzz from school. Don’t get me wrong, this stuff’s exciting (even if Theory of I-Law makes my head go all hurty when they use words I don’t understand), but it’s a different kind of buzz and an embryonic one at this point in the year. But, never fear, Conor’s doing the lecture in SO424 tomorrow and he’s his very own sort of addiction. 
I know everyone’s going to get tired of me blogging all the time (after the week of radio silence, I’ve come back with quite a bit of a bang), but I wanted to make a quick mention of the lecture I went to tonight with some students from the development courses. We saw Jeffrey Sachs speak on the theme of ending global poverty in St. Paul’s Cathedral. He spoke without notes, which gives me the more than vague impression that we were treated to an incarnation of his stump speech on the topic. Nevertheless, it was fascinating.
I’m sure some of you (who don’t happen to be in Niger, although she’d be the biggest expert) have heard his ideas on the subject (although with his status as a policy developer for the UN and states around the world, I’m not sure that they’re simply ideas). They can be summed up: 1) A ridiculous number of people around the world live in extreme poverty (I’m sure that’s not news to anyone); 2) It isn’t their fault (and it’s not really even the fault of the governments that may or may not be corruptish…that’s a myth that the US and other global financial institutions need to get over); 3) extreme poverty is very much a problem of environmental constraints (the countries are landlocked, have problems with droughts, and are afflicted by really nasty amounts of malaria); 4) these are all really easy problems to fix (built infrastructure; make better seeds, fertilizer, and water management technology available; give out mosquito netting and use new anti-malarial drugs); 5) it won’t cost any more than the 0.7% that the West keeps promising Africa every year (and then fails to deliver).
One of the other speakers, Hilary Benn, the UK Secretary of State for International Development (and why haven’t we gotten ourselves one of those?), pointed out that no one would have predicted that we’d be in a place to push forward with these goals 12 months ago. But, in the past 12 months (often at the urging of the Blair government), the EU, the G8 and international financial institutions have moved forward with plans to increase aid to Africa, forgive debt and begin to help the world’s poorest states to develop from the bottom, up.
It was all really cool, especially the part where St. Paul’s was absolutely filled (and it’s not exactly a small lecture hall, to say the least) and really inspiring. I did revisit my old “what am I doing in London while Juliet actually makes a difference in Niger” doubts, but the Secretary of State made me feel better when he reminded us that what made all of these new developments possible was politics. I might not think that I’m cut out for the political life, but I keep reminding myself that my undergraduate study is not inconsequential. I think my time as a politics student and as a pragmatist among hippies means that I’m in a great place to understand how to make great changes happen through the workings of government. I’ve always thought that governments can be and are a force for good; it’s just nice to be reminded of the great things they can do when there’s enough political will in place.
Anyway, it was great and I’m just a bit happy to live in the coolest city that isn’t Indianapolis in the world. Other things that made me happy today: the tulip trees planted outside city hall (they’re the Indiana state tree, you know) and the subtle, yet cunning humour in the PowerScore LSAT Logical Reasoning Bible. After reading from the Human Rights Reader for FOUR hours, it was like watching Scrubs or some other tv show that always makes you laugh. Speaking of which…I need to get food that isn’t the nutella with a spoon sitting on my desk and keep reading. I’ve got 90 pages to churn through before lecture at 10 tomorrow. *squinchy face*
