From keithw Thu Oct 9 21:13:32 1997 Subject: KeithNet: The Glasgow Update Content-Length: 21520 Status: OR Well, here I am in Glasgow! I've been here just over a week now (I arrived on Wednesday night the first of October, and it's now Thursday lunchtime the ninth). Things are going well. This is a bit of a whopper message, but it is a little overdue so I think you'll forgive me! First up, some administrivia and contact details. Flat: Keith Wansbrough 3G Palmerston Place Glasgow G3 8PE United Kingdom If you need to find it, Palmerston Place is a tiny unmarked street (about 30 metres long) that the University made up, coming off Kelvinhaugh Street at around number 25. My phone number at the flat is +44 141 221 0146, but it is shared with the whole block of eight flats (i.e. 40 people), and you'll probably find no one answers it or it's engaged. Sorry! I will look at getting a phone at some stage, but there's no building wiring so it will cost quite a lot to put in. (BTW: the '+44' means '00 44' in New Zealand, and just '0' in the UK.) University: Department of Computing Science University of Glasgow Glasgow G12 8QQ United Kingdom My office is at 17 Lilybank Gardens (a whole row of tenement houses that have been joined together and make up the computing science department), in room F151. Phone number is +44 141 339 8855 x8477, but it only works during office hours: 0900-1700 weekdays local time. Sorry. I gave some people a direct dial number before, but please ignore it - it doesn't work. They obviously don't have Centrex in Glasgow! Email: keithw@dcs.gla.ac.uk Web: http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~keithw/ (but be warned that I haven't done any updating on it yet). As I stated earlier, email to my old address and snail mail to my old NZ address will both be forwarded - the former once per day and the latter rather slowly. But please use the new email address: my old account will be deleted at some stage and cease to work. On to administrivia: I am getting a number of bounce messages. Does anyone know what has happened to the following people? Their email addresses no longer work (I think). fmanu@clear.net.nz (Faye Manu) alisonwintle@usa.net (Alison Wintle) dtitheridge@sbsnov2.auckland.ac.nz (David Titheridge) elijah@netgate.co.nz (Richard and Emma Graham-Greene) Thanks. --8<-- Now we've done all that, on to the real point of the message. How is Keith doing, has he settled in, is he OK, what are his flatmates like, does he like Glasgow, does it rain a lot, can he understand what people are saying, etc, etc, etc. Here goes: On Wednesday 01 Oct I got on the train around 0930, with two absolutely humongous suitcases and a big pack. I had put all the heavy things into the pack, to make life a little easier for myself, but even so the two suitcases were quite heavy (not to mention the difficulty of putting the pack on and taking it off!). The train I took was *not* the quickest and most direct way to Glasgow. That would have been a train to London Victoria Station and then another train from London up to Glasgow. But since I had the baggage, I couldn't do it - it involved changing stations, via the underground, in London. So instead I took this route. The train was a fairly slow one, and it went from Haywards Heath (well, actually from Brighton I think) all the way up to Edinburgh. But since that wasn't where I was going, I changed trains at a place called Preston, which is most of the way up England, getting close to Scotland. This involved merely changing platforms, which wasn't so hard (especially when I found a trolley!). The second train went to Glasgow and then on to Edinburgh. The journey up was fairly uneventful. I didn't really feel like looking at the view, so I just read a book - I started reading _Lord of the Rings_ on Tuesday evening, and so I spent most of the day reading it. Changed at Preston around 1600 or so, and there was a wait of half an hour. But then life got exciting: between Preston and Lancaster (the next station), a train had spilled "a corrosive substance" on the tracks, and the signalling system was out. In order to avoid a huge accident like the other one they had recently, the train went for the entire distance between the stations at around 15km/h. This of course slowed our progress significantly - not to mention the huge scheduling problems that were clearly occurring at Preston! Anyway, we made it through without incident. By the time I reached Glasgow (around 8pm)... wait for it... I had *finished* book one of _Lord of the Rings_!!!! That's quite a bit of reading. From the central station, I caught a taxi to the welcome desk at the university. The taxi signs at the station point to the door at the *rear* of the taxi rank, but the rules in Glasgow say you have to take the front taxi on the rank - where there is no ramp for the trolley. And Glasgow taxis don't have boots (trunks, whatever... not sure what they're called here yet). But it worked OK. There they got me to sign the lease (which has some *crazy* clauses, but I didn't have much option), and they gave me the keys to the flat. They also paid for a taxi to the flat, which was very nice because the taxi driver couldn't find the street *anywhere*. He thought I might have an idea, but of course I hadn't been able to find it when I'd looked on a map either, and I was the visitor... after a couple of radio calls and a chat to another driver he found it. I'm on the third floor (fourth floor to you Americans out there) - there's two flats to a floor in my block, and eight flats in the block: A through H. Five in each makes forty people... I managed to get my stuff up the stairs, with the aid of an American who was hanging around outside at the time. Dragged my stuff in, found my room, dumped my stuff in and started unpacking. This of course took quite a while, but I got things in fairly good order. Then I met some of my flatmates. They're pretty cool - the flat seems to have worked out excellently! Quite a cosmopolitan mix. We have me, from New Zealand, doing a PhD in Computing Science. Then there's Christoph, from Germany, doing research in medicine (hypertension, to be specific). Roger, from the Netherlands, doing research in something which I have temporarily forgotten. Meeta, who is Indian but grew up in England, doing research in medicine also, specifically protein-protein interactions of herpes simplex. And Lisa, from Alaska and/or Washington (state, not DC), doing research in philosophy and comparative religion, relating to animal ethics. Quite a mix! Christoph, Roger, and Meeta have been here for a while now. Lisa arrived the day before me - I was the last of the five to arrive. The two previous flatmates - Lisa (who was in what is now Lisa's room) and Maria - I met at a flat-changing party they held on Friday night. They're both Asian. One thing you notice right away about Glasgow is how friendly a place it is. Everyone is very social and friendly - settling into the flat has been wonderful, but you talk to people at bus-stops and in queues and so on. Weird for an Aucklander, but very cool. After I'd met the flatties and got things sorted to some degree in my room, I went to bed. The next day I did some more sorting out, but the most pressing thing was going somewhere and buying some food - the flat is individual self-catering, so everyone has their own food. Someone let me use some of their food for breakfast, but I couldn't presume any more than that. So on Thursday I wandered into the University and wandered around and found some shops. They definitely do things differently in England to Auckland, shopping-wise, and not knowing the city at all and trying to find things like supermarkets was quite tricky. I found some stuff, but I bought it at a weird place called 'Iceland' that does almost entirely frozen stuff. Later I discovered more sensible ways of doing things. I didn't really do very much on Thursday - I was pretty tired after all the travelling, and my room needed sorting out, and after I'd got the food and some other essentials that was about it. Oh yes - I also did a whole pile of washing. That evening I went to a free dinner put on at the Wellington Church, a church that looks like a copy of the Tabernacle with all the paint stripped (so it looks dark grey) and shrunk to about half the size, at least from the outside, and is right in the middle of the university area. At it I didn't meet any locals, but I did meet a whole crowd of Americans (from Dartmouth College) who were here for three months to study English Literature. They were pretty cool, and I ended up going to the movies with them - and finally *did* see _Men in Black_ (as opposed to the false alarm earlier!). It was *great* - highly recommended to anyone who hasn't seen it yet. We split up at the movies - others saw _The Full Monty_ (also recommended, apparently) and something else. But the guy I saw _MiB_ with didn't realise it was an alien movie, and he doesn't like alien movies - a huge pity, really, it was a fantastically funny example! Ah well. So I came home and everyone was very surprised that I had managed to go out on my second night in Glasgow! I guess I'm laying the foundations of a social life as intense as back home... Friday I went in to university again and visited the department. I got my welcome pack and information and stuff, but my supervisor wasn't in at the time. I visited the bank and opened a bank account (Bank of Scotland wouldn't give a cheque account to overseas students, full stop. Even if they had proof of a generous scholarship direct credited to the account. Crazy - but the guy did tell me to try their other branch. Instead, I wandered along to the next bank - the Clydesdale Bank, a very common student bank - and opened an account no problems, cheques guaranteed by the bank up to GBP100-00. Their [the BoS'] loss...). And I matriculated (terminology: NZ 'enrol' = Scots 'matriculate'; NZ 'ID card' = Scots 'matric card'; NZ 'ID number' = Scots 'matric number'). Then I joined a student union - the Queen Margaret union. Yes, there are two at Glasgow, and both of them are free to join. As well, there's the Student Representative Council, which is the body that does most of what the AUSA does at Auckland (apart from provide facilities for eating and hanging out, which is what the unions do). And I bought some more stuff, including a desk lamp which I desperately needed and a power adapter so my radio would work (I was getting withdrawal!). But when I got home the lamp had a screw fitting and the bulb was bayonet. Grr. However, I did find a radio station that played a lot of techno / drum'n'bass / dance stuff, which was good. No student radio in Glasgow, though - it's going to be very hard to adjust to that! On Saturday I pretty much kept to myself - did some more shopping (did I mention that I found the important shops? Safeway is pretty much like Foodtown in NZ, and Woolworths is like Deka. So apart from the fact that both are less than a quarter the size of their equivalents, between the two of them they supply most of what I need. There's two Safeways both a long way away from me and pretty much equidistant from the flat, but one is only a little bit out of my way going home from Uni, so I go there most. Found them by asking flatmates, of course... they weren't very specific with directions but I found them.). I didn't even do anything in the evening. But I *did* buy a proper lightbulb, which made my room feel much nicer and inspired me to make a solid inroad into Book 2 of _Lord of the Rings_. On Friday I had met some people from the Glasgow University Christian Union, and been quite excited by what the group seemed to be doing. They also had a list of churches that students went to in Glasgow, and I got someone to talk me through them. I picked one that sounded like my style and like a decent church. The contact it had didn't have a phone number (she was in a hall of residence), so I found out where it was and decided to just catch the bus. On Sunday morning I went to the bus stop, and see a girl with a Bible in her hand waiting for the same bus. "Are you the Fiona Gavin told me about?" It turned out she was! Then a whole pile of other students living in the area piled into the same bus, so I met quite a few there (I am trying to make an effort and *remember* people's names this time, and I think I'm doing OK, but it's pretty hard). So that was great - life was pretty simple there (I just followed them all off the bus and to the church). But there's more. I turn up at church, and who should be the speaker but a New Zealander who has been working in Thailand! (with something called Rahab Ministries, if you're interested). Then I meet a girl who is in the CS department at Glasgow, and she gets very excited when I tell her I am too, because she and a group of Christians in the department have been praying for some time that God would do something in the department - and suddenly Christians are appearing all over the place! And *then* I meet another NZer during coffee afterwards, and he says "Do you know a guy who goes to Elim in Auckland by the name of Matthew Webster?" This guy I met is someone that *two* of you told me to look up when I got here (he's a tech in the Music dept), and here he is at the very first church I come to in Glasgow! I have a feeling God is doing something here. Other things told me this was the right church to be in. It has a great community atmosphere, and lots of people of all ages, including a decently-sized youth group. It apparently has solid teaching (although I haven't heard much yet, of course). And it is *involved*. At the Tabernacle I was involved in working with street people and others, handing out cups of tea and coffee and soup and food to people and talking to them. Here the church is involved in a number of inner-city type ministries - I don't know about all of them yet, but a lot seems to be happening. It's great to see a church that is really looking outwards to its community and asking how it can serve and share Christ's light and love. Steve, the NZ guy, leads a fellowship group that I will probably be joining. After church on Sunday night (oh yes - I was invited home to lunch too) we went to a cafe called Insomnia. It was quite good, but apparently Glasgow is more a pub place than a cafe place and it is the only all-night cafe in Glasgow. And the chocolate cake was very expensive (but good, as was the hot chocolate). I shouldn't complain! Monday I sort-of officially started. I didn't get to meet my supervisor, since he was away, but I did get my account basically set up. My office still doesn't have a computer in it (for this I'm using a computer in the adjacent shared lab), but it *is* coming apparently. But most of Monday was taken up with a training course that they put new research students through - it's a requirement of many of the funding bodies. Some of it was interesting, some was useful, and some was quite boring. But I did get to find a few more places in the university (some sessions were combined with other sciences) and to meet a few fellow students and also departmental staff. Tuesday *afternoon* I finally met my supervisor. He is *very* enthusiastic, and has lots of good ideas. He also seems to take supervision very seriously, and I think he's going to be excellent. He certainly has an excellent track record. He gave me a few ideas of topics that might interest me, including one that he felt would probably suit me quite well. I agreed - it looks fascinating. But he cautioned me against choosing too early, and gave me a whole pile of reading to do. On Wednesday I did a bit of reading and a lot of sorting out of my computer account and web page and email and so on. Things are slowly getting there, but there is a lot to be done yet. As many of you have probably noticed, I've set up automatic forwarding from my old account, but there are still some bugs to be ironed out (nothing is getting lost, though, so don't worry about that!). In the evening I went to a combined church fellowship group meeting. Today I got in to uni late - the washing machines have been out of action for a couple of days, and I had some washing that *had* to be done. Then I had more email to deal with, and a few more bugs to sort out with my system - and then there was another training session: to do with teaching, tutoring, and demonstrating. It was excellent - I guess it should have been, given that it was given by the Teaching and Learning unit of the university. Very useful - I will be doing some of this kind of work soon hopefully (for pocket money!). Tonight I have just been to my first Christian Union meeting. The CU looks excellent too - I'm looking forward to getting a bit more involved and meeting some more people. So that brings us up to date. There's a few things I haven't mentioned. First, the weather. It has been pretty much like Auckland weather so far - rain interspersed with sun, and sort of winter temperatures. This is great - but I know it's going to get a *lot* colder. 'Twill be exciting. I've been quite bad so far - of Glasgow, I've seen my flat, the route from there to the University, and a few bits of the university. That's all. But I've been settling in and getting to know a few people, and I figure that's more important initially. But after my European tour, seeing everything, I feel I need to see a bit of Glasgow (and take some photos). So I'm devoting this Saturday to doing that, and looking forward to it! Flatting is going well so far. I've fitted in quite nicely. The first few days weren't good because I wasn't eating properly. Mainly because I couldn't - I hadn't bought enough selection of food and so on to cook any real food. But after a day or two I got sick of cheese on toast and cheese sandwiches, so I bought some more stuff. Since then, I've been eating quite well. Food prices are quite strange here - normally there's a number of normal brands and the supermarket's own brand, and whereas in NZ the normal brand might be $1.00 and the own brand $0.80, here the normal brand is GBP 0-30 and the own brand is GBP 0-11! It's a huge differential - but it works out well for people like me! The example above is a 454g tin of whole peeled tomatoes - 11 pence, or about 27 cents! Not bad. Cooking for just one is quite an adjustment to make, though. I am still always cooking a bit too much. For some things I cook a whole lot and freeze it (one of the flatmates has a microwave, luckily), but you can't do this with everything. I'll get used to it soon though I imagine. I've had to buy quite a lot of bits and pieces, and the startup costs of stocking my 'pantry' and so on seem quite a bit. But as far as I can tell the scholarship is quite generous. I will draw up a budget in a few weeks when I have a better idea, but it looks OK so far. I am being thrifty too - I didn't buy a laundry basket, although I needed one, because they were something like GBP 6-50 (ouch!!). But then I saw one that some other flat in my student village had thrown out (presumably leaving his/her flat to go home or something) that just had a slightly broken handle! None of you will be surprised that I patched it up with some gaffer tape (the answer to everything) and it's now doing sterling service. The accent hasn't been as much of a problem as I thought it would be. Most people speak in a fairly intelligible version of English, and they usually seem to be able to understand me OK. On the first day here, though, I went to a bakery and asked for a sandwich, and she asked me something that I had to get her to repeat at least four times before I finally got it when she rephrased it. She was saying "brown or white bread", but I couldn't understand a single word! That happens occasionally, but not too often luckily. I've had some interesting conversations with my flatmates, and along with my officemates (we have a huge functional programming enclave in our corner of the CS building), church people, CU etc, I seem to be meeting quite a few people. It's all quite exciting and I am definitely enjoying myself! Apologies to those of you that have written to me that I *still* haven't replied to your messages - as I've said before, I definitely appreciate them, and now I may well get around to replying in the next little while as I have a reasonably accessible computer. Also, apologies for the long delay - getting settled here has been a big thing, and I haven't had much time for other things. Now I'm a bit settled, I can focus on such things. So that's me - here in Glasgow! It's a great place - as they say, "Glasgow - it's miles better" (??!! whatever that means. Not as bad as Morrinsville's old slogan, though... >;->) Love and hugs to all, --KW 8-) (in Glasgow at last!) ---- PS: Please print this out and show it to anyone you know who would like to see it and who doesn't have email. PPS: Note the new .signature! Do you like it? Suggestions? -- : Keith Wansbrough, MSc, BSc(Hons) (Auckland) -------------------------: : PhD Student, Computer Science, University of Glasgow, Scotland. : : Native of Antipodean Auckland, New Zealand: 174d47' E, 36d55' S. : : http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~keithw/ mailto:keithw@dcs.gla.ac.uk : :----------------------------------------------------------------------: