M. Willis Monroe

I went to Critical Mass last night and had a great time. I stayed with them till they got as close as I thought they would to home and the split off and cycled back up here. There’s a video up here.

This week has been very productive. I’ve started writing bits of my dissertation, finished all my applications and got a grant to goto this conference this weekend. I’m looking forward both to the conference and to spending time with Anna and her family in Birmingham.

I’m currently sitting in Highbury field using someone’s wireless. I spent the afternoon in the UCL library working on my essay. I stopped here on my cycle ride to lie down for a bit and take in the sun.

Yesterday Anna and I saw 300, it was ok. The aesthetic was quite nice and it was cool to see a recreation albeit quite mythical of ancient Persia and Sparta.

I finally managed to log onto the SOAS wireless network. No thanks to NetworkManager. I had to resort to just basic command line wpa_supplicant and dhclient. Maybe with the next (0.7) NetworkManager release they’ll get some of these newer WPA technologies included. I think the many issue was the Phase-2 PAP authentication which I couldn’t set in NetworkManager.

Tonight was the SOAS World Music Choir performance. Anna as well as her flat mates Holly and Lili are all members. It was a great concert, all songs from Africa, mostly from South Africa. The venue (the Brunei Gallery) was completely unsuited for the volume of people who wanted to attend and they had to turn away loads of would be concert goers. Which was quite sad as many parents had traveled to see their kids perform.

Hannah left yesterday afternoon. I took her to Heathrow and we waited in the excessively long lines. Her stay was very nice we spent a lot of time walking around London and seeing the sights.

Oh and I’ve received an e-mail from SOAS; I’ve been accepted into the M.A. for Ancient Near Eastern Languages. It’s conditional on a 2-1 which is what I hope to get if not a first. SOAS was really my first choice so it looks like I’ll be here in London for a fourth year now.

My sister Hannah arrived early Sunday morning. I went out to Heathrow on the first tube of the day to meet her. We came back to mine and had a brunch then went shopping and then had some lunch. In the afternoon we took the tube to Russel Square so I could get an article out of the SOAS library. Then we walked leisurely over to the Royal Academy of Music to see Anna’s performance with the ULSO. We got there a bit early so had a nice jaunt down Marlybone High street. The concert was very nice Mahler’s 3rd Symphony which is long and emotional at times. Afterwards we all went out to dinner with her family.

Today I have to go in for a class this morning and then we’ll either visit the Tate Modern or the British Museum. I would opt for the later of course, but I’ll see what Hannah feels like.

I compiled the results of the pub quiz on Wednesday into a handy dandy chart. It let me see that no-one got question number seven right (”Where is the oldest educational institution still operational in the world?”) and only one team got question sixteen right (”Which country has the longest total amount of railway lines freight and passenger?”).

Here’s the chart.

Today was a beautiful day for cycling. I did all my work for today’s lecture yesterday in anticipation of working in the British Museum but unfortunately when I went to the BM to sign in I found out that the tablets I wanted to read were currently out by someone else (later I found out it’s a fellow student who’s going to free them up sometime this week). So I had more time in the library to review and complete more of the Akkadian for the lecture today.

Arabic was slow again as usual, only two more classes.

Oh and when I was walking back from Arabic to SOAS to get my bike I saw a Segway rolling down the road. It was quite exciting.

Today I woke up and in half an hour was over at Anna’s picking up some leftover paint she had. Then I cycled down to Sainsbury’s and bought some soap. Then I hopped over to Homebase and bought some nails, a saw, sandpaper, a paint brush and some wood. Then I cycled home with the wood under my arm like a joust. Then I made a shelving unit for our kitchen to hold our large number of teas and by consequence reduce clutter and help clean our counter top.

Yesterday I cycled over to Quaker meeting and had a nice worship. Afterwards I went down to the local shop with one of the members and bought some stuff for our “bring and share” lunch. Afterwards I swept the meeting room to help clean up.

There’s been an inordinate amount of road works along my daily commute. But I realized cycling in every day you’re very aware of all the little changes that go on in an area of road works. I think this is because any little change in the road surface potentially is a shortcut for a bike. So you’re constantly watching the construction site for signs of change. Where as in a car, you’re told the road is closed and then you wait till they re-open it.