From keithw Fri Nov 21 16:50:39 1997
Subject: KeithNet: My stuff arrives at last
Content-Length: 32454
Status: OR

Well, hello again everyone.  Sorry it's been so long since I last
wrote - I've once again been having too much fun!  (and too much
work...)

Adminstrivia: Welcome to anyone who's just joined us.  I send out
these messages about once every fortnight, mainly to all you New
Zealand friends of mine, but to other people too.  They're not usually
*quite* this long!  If you want to be removed from the list at any
time, just email me and I'll take you off.  Similarly, if anyone wants
to be added just email me.  Please note that the list is split up into
sections, so there are a lot more people on the list than appear in
your 'To:' header.

A number of you will be losing your email addresses soon, or will have
lost them already.  If your mail starts bouncing, I will simply delete
you from the list.  You'll need to arrange for a friend to print them
out for you and to get yourself resubscribed next year; alternatively
if you have another email address now please tell me.  If you still
have email, please print out copies for anyone you know who would like
them.

You can always read these messages (and all the back issues) on my
KeithNet page, at

  http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~keithw/news/

On with the show.

My last message was three weeks ago - Friday the 31st of October.
Obviously, a lot has happened since then.  The most exciting thing for
me at the moment is that all my stuff has arrived; the immediate
consequence is that I am typing this sitting on my bed in my flat,
rather than taking up valuable university work time - which is
certainly a good thing.  For those of you who met it, this computer is
the one that I had sitting on my desk at uni - no case, just a
collection of bits I put together from my collection, with wires
everywhere.  For added variety and to save space, it is now securely
stuck to the side of my filing cabinet with gaffer tape.  Works great!
It's wonderful having a computer that's only worth $50 so it doesn't
matter what you do with it.

Three weeks of news to catch up on.  Hopefully this won't bore you
all...

You may recall from my last message that we had a Halloween party at
the flat.  The pumpkin pie worked out OK, despite being egg-free, and
tasted very nice (although it's rather hard to grind whole cloves with
a pepper grinder).  The soup was wonderful - and pumpkin soup seems to
be unheard-of in Scotland.  The flat has a blender, and so the texture
was perfect!  Recipe from my trusty Edmonds cookery book - thanks Rob
and 'Cilla!  Absolutely necessary for any Kiwi abroad.

On Saturday night I went to a bonfire party (in Scotland it's not
called Guy Fawkes' Night, it's called Bonfire Night.  Strange they
don't acknowledge him more, given that he was trying to blow up the
English Parliament, but...)  It was at the house of a guy from church.
*Huge* section, very nicely done, big bonfire, loads of fireworks (I
spent ages trying to find a shop that sold them, got some, and they're
still sitting on my floor here because they weren't needed), and
easily a hundred people.  For the more indoors-minded, there was a
selection of intellectual puzzles (including one with nine tiles with
kiwis on them that you had to match up, which I did the geeky way with
pencil and paper), an `intranet' with space for you to design your own
web page (I put one together for an old guy who was *very* happy to
see his name on the computer screen in lights!), and plenty of food.
Had a great time, and met a few people.

In the UK, they still have fireworks.  The regulations are becoming a
bit tighter - hence my difficulty buying them - but you can still get
firecrackers and rockets as well as sparklers and Roman candles.  It
was great to see Guy Fawkes' like it used to be in NZ.  I guess part
of it is tradition, but also looking at the weather there would have
been practically a zero risk of fires starting from rockets that
night.  Maybe NZ should just move Guy Fawkes to May 5?

Sunday morning was church; in the afternoon I went out for a drive
with one of my flatmates.  Again, the colours were absolutely
wonderful.  Autumn is incredibly beautiful over here - although it's a
fleeting thing: now (two weeks later) practically all the leaves have
fallen and it's not beautiful any more - just muddy.

That evening the flat decided to get our shot of Scottish history and
culture and watch _Braveheart_.  I don't know about the history and
culture - most Scots I've talked to have been very skeptical - and the
whole thing was so Hollywood.  Lots of gore, lots of love interest,
but rather free with history and lacking in any signficant plot.
However, it was interesting - we certainly gleaned a little, and maybe
I'll look up the real stuff one day.  In fact, knowing my Scottish
history is likely to be quite important over the next couple of years
as Scotland moves to having a separate parliament.  Interesting times!

I think this week (the 2nd to the 8th) was a fairly typical one, so I
shall describe the overall structure of it.  Sunday I have already
covered: church in the morning, some sort of outing in the afternoon,
and then (usually) church again in the evening.  Queen's Park Baptist
Church is a great church - it's 20 mins away by bus, but it's got a
good range of ages, including plenty of young people, it's
significantly involved in the community (drop-in centres, street
people, kindergarten/creche facilities, etc), and it's serious about
studying the Bible and about being open to what God wants to say and
do with them.  It's also a very friendly environment.

Mondays I go shopping at Safeway after university.  Safeway is the
most common supermarket.  It's hard to decide what it would be
analagous to in NZ, partly because I haven't looked around many
others.  The first thing you notice is that it's *tiny*.  The Safeway
I go to is considered average size; there's another nearby that's
considered big.  But even the big one is only about half the size of
Foodtown Greenlane (if my memory serves me correctly).  Also, there's
another shop called Iceland which sells anything frozen at much
cheaper prices and in much bigger bags - the most mince you can buy at
once from Safeway is 500g, and it's only refrigerated not frozen!  I
think the explanation is that freezers are a relatively novel concept
to the British, and they would rather buy their food every day than
buy a week or two's worth at a time and keep it in the freezer.

Safeway also has a loyalty card system like Foodtown in NZ.  It's
called an ABC card, and you get all of *one point* for every pound you
spend.  Judging by the posters I've seen with the various promotional
offers, a point ends up being worth about 1p.  Not so bad, I guess,
but not that exciting.

Tuesday night is washing night.  This works out quite nicely where I'm
staying - there's a laundry for the block, and hence we don't pay the
power bill for the drier (directly, at least).  I once tried to do
some washing on Saturday, but it was impossible - everyone else tries
to do it then.  So Tuesdays are far better.  I spend the first part of
the evening rushing backwards and forwards between the laundry and the
kitchen, cooking dinner and doing the washing simultaneously (we're on
the top floor at one end of the block, so it's a long way to the
laundry!).  Then I spend the rest of the evening ironing and chatting
to my flatmates if they're around.

This particular Tuesday I brought out my silk shirts and ironed them
as well (I wore one on Sat, still crushed as it had come out of the
suitcase, claiming that it was supposed to be that way, but people
weren't convinced).  I was told that I was impressively domesticated
for a guy.  We'll see how long it lasts - I've already stopped ironing
my T-shirts (in the Glasgow climate no one ever sees them anyway).

Wednesday I normally go out to Fellowship Group, which is a
Bible-study group of eight or so people from church, led by Steve
Brandon, a NZer.  However, this time it was the fifth of November
("...gunpowder, treason and plot...") and so we went to Glasgow Green
(a big public green - imagine the Auckland Domain minus the raised rim
and the interesting gardens) to watch the public fireworks display.
Despite the light drizzle, there were lots of people, and it was an
impressive display.  In fact, it was *very* impressive.  The displays
I'm used to show about ten or fifteen minutes of fireworks, tops, and
stretch them out a bit with gaps in between to make them last longer.
This was half an hour of solid continuous fireworks, in all imaginable
colours and patterns.  I have no idea how much it must have cost - it
would have been a lot.  But my usual niggle with fireworks displays
struck again.  They almost always seem to be done by technicians
rather than artists: the display was just a series of "hey, this is
cool... hey, so's this... hey, let's do a whole lot of cool things in
a row to make a *really* cool thing".  There was no sense of overall
structure to the display, no ultimate point or coherence.  Half an
hour of the display was no more exciting than ten minutes, because
even though they had different colours and different patterns, it just
felt like more of the same.  Ah well.

They also played some traditional Scottish music and did some cool
things with lights and Celtic designs.  But what was really weird for
me, being a foreigner, was when a voice came over the top of this,
reading out some hyperpatriotic poetry about Scotland's greatness and
raising the Lion of Scotland and so on.  I couldn't decide whether
this was just pseudo silliness or actually for real, but apparently
they really meant it!  My American flatmate commented that there they
would have just fallen about laughing if someone tried to do something
like that; in NZ it wouldn't have been so bad but still we don't quite
go to that extreme.  A fascinating insight into the Scottish mind.

I'd gone with a group from the university Christian Union (CU), and
afterwards we headed back to the university, and a group of us went to
a local pub (called The Curler's - pubs have weird names here) and
chatted for a while.

Thursday I spend three hours in the afternoon tutoring a class of
third-year mechanical engineers doing an introductory software
engineering course.  It can be quite hard work, but most of the time
it's pretty enjoyable.  I'm learning a bit too - I haven't done much
software engineering at all in my degree, so I have to pick it up as I
go along.  After that, I go along to the CU main meeting.  This
particular Thursday it was a guy called Nigel from UCCF (the national
organisation of CUs around the UK), speaking from the Gospel of John
about Jesus' analogy of the vine and the branches, and the twin points
that we must remain in the vine (=Christ) to live and bear fruit, and
we must be prepared to accept the pruning of the gardener (=God).  He
was very good.  After the main speaker, we have a "buffet tea"
(Scottish for sandwiches and cordial, evidently), followed by an hour
of praise and worship and group discussions and testimonies and so on.
Since it starts at 5pm, this is all over by 7:30, which gives me time
to go home and get things done!

Friday 7 November was an exciting day - I got a pager!  A friend of
mine from NZ spent some time working in the UK and acquired a UK-only
pager.  Since he's now back in NZ and it's of no use to him, he gave
it to me!  It's nice to have *something* on my belt again, even if it
isn't a cellphone (they're not anything like as cheap as in NZ yet).
If you're in the UK and you want to page me, the number is
0839-453-673.  It doesn't work from outside the UK.  Leave your number
and I'll call back as soon as I can.  Fridays I tutor the software
engineering class for another two hours.

Saturdays I usually seem to end up doing something that takes the
whole day - I've been on a number of day trips, but still haven't seen
much of Glasgow itself!  This particular Saturday was *quite* an
adventure.

It was a fellowship group trip.  We took two cars, and intended to go
to Dunkeld (a nice 100km away or so) and then on to Pitlochry... we'd
take a look at the scenery and go for a nice walk near Dunkeld.

First up, it was raining a Scottish drizzle.  That wasn't too much of
a problem.  But then we discovered the car problems.  We'd happily
drive along for fifteen minutes or so, then the engine would start
coughing and spluttering, and then we'd be pulling over into the
emergency strip and wondering what was going on.  We'd sit there for a
while trying to start the car, give up, pop the bonnet, look at
everything and see that it looked OK, shut the bonnet, try again, and
it would start!  We'd get another ten minutes or so down the road, and
then it would die again.

As you can imagine, this was very frustrating and very slow going.
Nonetheless, we finally made it to Dunkeld - not without having tried
a number of experiments, including removing the fuel filter!  (this
was a real student car of course).

In Dunkeld we had lunch at a cafe, and then got the car without
incident to The Hermitage.  This is a park which includes some nice
woods and a stretch of river.  This particular river is one of those
*up* which salmon (crazily) swim, and jump when necessary, when they
feel the primal urge.  Above a particularly spectacular waterfall is
built an 18th-century folly named the Hermitage, near another folly by
the name of Ossian's Cave.  From here, if we'd arrived two weeks
earlier, we would have been able to watch the near-suicidal attempts
of the salmon to bash themselves to death against the rocks (I mean,
to jump up the waterfall).  As it was, we saw a few salmon jumping in
the pool at the bottom, but none on the falls themselves.

The reason for the folly is that apparently a hermit by the name of
Ossian did once live in this particular area and did like to watch the
salmon as he meditated.  The Hermitage, however, is more a place for
taking parties to watch the salmon than a place where a hermit would
live; the Cave is even stranger - it's like a small cave, but built
free-standing a few hundred metres from the Hermitage.  Curious - I
guess that's why it's called a folly...

Anyway, after this it was time to head back (due to the time we'd
wasted fighting the car on the way).  Those who needed to get back to
Glasgow piled into Steve's car, and those who were in no such hurry
(such as I) got into the interesting car.  We played with a few things
under the bonnet with no real sense that we were achieving anything,
and headed off (spending an hour in a cafe on the way).  Surprisingly,
things seemed to go very well for a considerable time.  But it was now
dark, and we noticed that the headlights were getting dimmer and
dimmer.  Concerned that we would be run into if we were not visible,
we pulled over and eventually gave in and called the AA.  Freezing
cold by the side of the road is not a good way to be...

They came in a remarkably short space of time, recharged the battery,
played with a few things, and listened to our description of what had
been happening.  We knew the alternator was a bit faulty, which
explained the lights dimming, but we still didn't know what was
causing the engine to cut out all the time.  The answer, apparently,
is not a well-documented one.  Without a certain hose attached, the
carburettor is liable to ice up due to low temperature and pressure -
but the problem only shows in continuous motorway driving, because as
soon as you slow down the ice melts again.  So with the requisite hose
patched up with string, we drove off into the night.

Back in Glasgow, I had my first encounter with Scottish fish and
chips.  Same name, sure, but there is absolutely no comparison.  In
NZ, fish and chips means *fresh*, *hot* fish, and *fresh*, *hot*
chips.  The Scots haven't heard of this, and so their fish and chips
are dry and leathery on the outside, powdery on the inside, reheated
nasty things.  Think of the Happy Days (cnr. Queen Street and
Bledisloe Lane) way of doing things, as opposed to the Brucies way of
doing things.  Heat lamps do very bad things to fish and chips.  And
terminology too - what I would call a piece of fish and a portion of
chips, or one fish and one chips, is a "fish supper" in Scotland.
What you call it if you order it for lunch I have no idea.  Rave over.
Maybe there is somewhere in Scotland you can get real fish and chips,
but by the looks of surprise on the faces of my companions when I
exclaimed that something was wrong, I'm not too hopeful.

Being the party animal I am, I then went on to another party.  But
time is fleeting, so I shall skip the details.

The other major thing that I haven't mentioned that happened that week
is that I made the Great Shift - I changed from vi to emacs!  For
those who don't know, these are two programs that you use to type in
text like what you are reading; users of vi relate to users of emacs
in a way inspiring the technical term "religious war".  However, I was
finally convinced that the advantages of moving to emacs outweighed
the disadvantages of having to learn a new system, and so did the
unthinkable.  So far it's gone really well and I'm pleased I've
shifted - the worst part was spending several hours trying to print
out the 500+-page manual double-sided on a single-sided laser printer.
Ouch - never again!  (yes, I know you don't *need* the manual, but
reading it is *very* useful).

Funnily enough, I was kind-of tired on Sunday.  I spent a few hours of
a lazy afternoon wandering around Queen's Park (after which the church
is named), which features grass, playgrounds, and a glasshouse in the
middle.  Understandably given the climate, glasshouses are a popular
garden feature in the UK.  This one featured not just plants, but a
collection of lizards, geckos, snakes, dragons, frogs, turtles, birds,
and other exciting things.  New Zealand was represented - by the New
Zealand stick insect.  Ah well, at least we were there.  Their defense
mechanism of `waving in the breeze' was not very convincing when they
were inside a draught-free terrarium, but hey.

That evening I decided to try walking home from church - it only took
me 53 minutes, although I was walking fairly fast.  Glasgow isn't
really all that big once you get to know your way around.

Monday night (the 10th) we went to Creme de la Creme (a flash Indian
restaurant around the corner from my flat) for a surprise birthday
party for a friend from church.  It was great - the place used to be a
movie theatre, and so we sat on a balcony overlooking other tables
downstairs.  On the wall they had a small screen set up and to
preserve some atmosphere they were playing black and white movies - I
recognised a bit of Citizen Kane, I think.  The food was good, and the
cake was brought in with suitable drama.  An excellent party.

The rest of the week was fairly standard.  On Thursday night it was
full moon, and so Meeta and Lisa and I (flatmates) decided to go for a
drive.  Glasgow put on plenty of clouds and streetlights for us
unfortunately, but the moon was still impressively bright and a couple
of stars were even visible.

Just to keep things exciting, though, I heard about the coup in New
Zealand.  Unbelievable - I don't want to think of what having Jenny
Shipley as PM is going to do to the country, given what she did to the
welfare system and to health.  A government should be concerned about
*people*, not just the bottom line.

On a lighter note, I spent the weekend away on CU camp.  Well, it's
not called a camp in this part of the world - at least in CU circles,
it's called a 'House Party'.  It took me several weeks to figure out
that they meant camp, but they did.  As soon as I realised this, I
rushed to pay my money and get on the list.  In consequence, I noticed
the first thing about camps in Scotland.  They cost!  I paid #28 -
that's the equivalent of around NZ$75!  For the equivalent things at
EU in Auckland we've paid around NZ$30-35.  Still, plenty of people
happily paid it - I think there were about 70 people at the camp.

Here is an appropriate place for a language warning.  DO NOT use the
word `pants' in conversation in the UK.  Luckily I never did, and now
I know not to.  For some reason, `pants' means `underpants' - and you
have to use the archaism `trousers' for what I would call pants.  One
fascinating consequence of this weirdness appeared in the CU House
Party flyer.  In listing what to bring, it suggested that you bring
"Tracky Bots".  Now of course this would be a ridiculous thing to say
to a NZer, but a little thought convinced me that it simply means
trackpants... which would have who-knows-*what* connotation for the
locals.  Ah well.  It's nice to rest in the knowledge that us NZers
know English as she is spoke, and it's the UK that's got it all wrong.

Anyway, the camp.  It was held at "Auchengillan, Blanefield,
Stirlingshire" (hint: `ch' is as in German, roughly).  In practice,
this means "fifteen kilometres north of Glasgow".  It was a rather
nice campsite - I can see where the NZ$75 went, although why cheaper
places don't exist was not clear.  The interior of the dorms was all
done out log-cabin style, and the guys' and girls' dorms had opposing
balconies looking out onto a central hall with a floor-to-ceiling set
of windows on one side giving a wonderfully open feeling, rather
spoiled by the excessively floral curtains (so floral that the speaker
was compelled to comment on them).  The CU hired a bus to get us all
there.

On Friday night I went to my first ceilidh.  Yes, ceilidh - that's not
a typo.  A ceilidh (pronounced 'kay-lee, modulo the Scottish accent)
is an evening of traditional Scottish dancing.  What makes it very
different from a NZ barn dance or square dance is that it is very much
current - this isn't something quaint that you're reviving for fun,
it's very much a live part of Scottish culture.

The general idea is very similar to a barn dance, though.  You have a
live ceilidh band, which means a caller, a fiddle, drums, and whatever
else you need; and you have lots of people, some of them in kilts.
There are couples dances and set dances, and they have names like
`Strip the Willow' and `Gay Gordon'.  They have the same general
flavour as barn dances / country dances, but of course they're
Scottish, and it's very definitely Scottish music they're danced to.

I surprised myself by picking up the steps very quickly and without
too much trouble - in one of the set dances I ended up having to
explain to my partner and the other couple what they were meant to be
doing!  The exact details of the steps don't matter too much anyway
most of the time.  But my major impression was that it was incredibly
fun - I had a wonderful time, although it was *extremely* energetic.
It was a weird feeling doing partner dancing again though - we do it
so rarely in NZ that it felt like being back at intermediate school,
having to choose a girl for each dance.  One adjusts, however.

The guy leading the band, Hoggie (didn't figure out if that was his
real name), was excellent.  He had a great sound system, and a most
impressive lighting setup, considering that he'd managed to fit it all
in his car.  It took up most of the hall while he was setting up and
breaking down.  It was interesting having it all up right through the
camp - at breakfast on Saturday morning, every time someone made a
loud noise the lights changed: he'd left them on the sound-activated
chase programme!  He also got us doing a couple of dances to modern
dance music rather than ceilidh music - now *that* was a weird
experience!

He ended the ceilidh with an Arcadian Strip the Willow, which involved
two lines, one of guys and one of girls, and what seemed like an
endless stream of people flying backwards and forwards and spinning in
all directions, slowly progressing from one end of the hall to the
other.  It was a truly impressive thing to be a part of!  (and hard on
one's arms).

On the Saturday Nigel Pollock from UCCF spoke, this time on Jeremiah.
It was fascinating stuff - Jeremiah was one of the prophets God sent
to his people, the Israelites, when Babylon sacked Jerusalem and took
them all off into exile.  This was an extremely hard thing for them to
handle - they knew they were God's chosen people, and they knew that
they lived in the Promised Land, and that God lived in the Temple in
Jerusalem.  How could he let the Babylonians come and take them from
their land, and even worse, destroy the Temple of the Living God?

What the Israelites learned, slowly, was that God *was* still in
control; that he had allowed this to happen for good reasons.  They
learned, too, that although they would be there for 70 years (and
hence all those who had this explained to them would themselves die in
exile), there *was* hope in the future and God had a much larger-scale
plan for them than they knew; and they learned that God was not just
the God of Israel, he was (is) the God of the whole world, and could
be worshipped in Babylon as freely as in Jerusalem.  These were very
important lessons for them to learn.  As God's people now, it's
important for Christians to learn these lessons too.

Nigel is an *excellent* speaker, and I took copious notes.  I look
forward to hearing him again!

Saturday afternoon we were coerced into playing football (that's
*association* football, of course, not rugby football), and much as I
hate to admit it (it's *sport*, for goodness sake), I found myself
actually quite enjoying running around in the mud trying to kick a
spotty white thing towards a square thing at the end of the field.
"When in Rome..."

Saturday evening involved karaoke, which was fun to watch at first but
got a bit boring.  One of the karaoke tapes they had was great,
though: Muppets Karaoke!  The video that went along with the songs was
much more entertaining than the regular stuff, although I was amused
by their safe interpretations of the songs - they even did _Splish
Splash_, but not how I remember it...

The best performance of the night would have to have been by the Irish
contingent (which numbered around 15 or 20), singing _Danny Boy_ with
true depth of feeling... ;-)

As if that wasn't enough, on Sunday night at church (immediately after
the camp) six teenagers were baptised, and to celebrate they held
another ceilidh!  I knew the steps (well, OK, sort-of) and again had a
great time, at least for those dances I still had the energy for!
Another friend had just come from a 21st for an expat Scot in London,
and was bemoaning the fact that the caller was English and she had to
teach him some very standard numbers.  This was the real thing.

I learned another thing worth knowing that night.  When a girl leans
over and says of someone on the dancefloor "now he's a real Scotsman",
she does *not* mean `gentleman'.  Not at all.  I thought such things
weren't discussed in polite company, but in Scotland things are
evidently different.  [hint: think `kilt'].

This week things have been a little bit more stressful, mainly because
I've been rather tired.  You can understand how I was feeling after
two ceilidhs in one weekend, and the house party.  Well, I had to get
up first thing Monday morning, and I spent the evening trying to get a
program to work for a friend, giving up (!) at midnight and having to
catch a taxi home.  Then on Tuesday night I went to a concert at a
venue in town called The Garage.  It was great - I went for the second
support, an acoustic guitarist/singer/songwriter type by the name of
Martyn Joseph and he was excellent, but the other support (Martyn
Stephenson) and the headline act, Janis Ian, were both good too.  In
fact, Janis was impressive - at first I didn't like her style, but
once I got into it she was very good.  Another late night.  Wednesday
was fellowship group, and now here I am tonight busy writing this
letter.  Ah well.

The main stressor has been that I've been worrying that I'm not
getting enough work done.  It's hard to work when one's tired, but
there have been other things that have been restricting my time
available.  One for which I think the positives outweigh the negatives
occurred on Monday: I GOT ALL MY STUFF!!!

Yes, that's right, on Monday all the stuff I shipped from New Zealand
(on the 5th of September, 73 days before) finally arrived.  The
shipping company could only tell me that it would arrive some time
that day, so I got up first thing in the morning in case it arrived
then (as often such things do).  At 8am our block had a fire drill -
unbelievably, the week before we'd got a letter stating

  "In accordance with the terms of your lease, fire evacuation drills
  will take place on Monday 17th November at 8am.  The drills will be
  organised by..."

And sure enough, at 8am to the second, the alarms went off.  I
couldn't believe they told us in advance, but there it was.  So we
spent 20 minutes sitting around outside sipping our cups of tea and
eating our breakfast, while the senior resident tried to get some guy
named Dimitri (who will shortly be on the receiving end of some
disciplinary action, no doubt) to come out of the shower.  Then I
spent the rest of the day doing very little, since I couldn't leave
the flat - very frustrating - until finally at 1430 everything
arrived.  Five boxes, a two-drawer filing cabinet, and my printer.
Yes, I know - but it's *fantastic* having everything at last.  I
checked over everything and everything was there and undamaged - even
this amber monitor I'm using now was fine, even though I'd just
casually surrounded it with a couple of bits of polystyrene and not
been too careful.

I've taken most of the stuff destined for my office in now - at last,
I have all my papers and reference books - and I'm slowly unpacking
boxes in my spare time in the evenings, and finding places to put
things.  I need to get a decent bookshelf - I have had one promised me
but I haven't claimed it yet.  All I have at the moment is the small
one they provide with the room and as most of you will know my
collection is rather larger than that!

I guess I should mention how my work is actually going, since some of
you have asked.  It continues to be exciting working in a place where
things are really happening - over the weekend (unfortunately while I
was away) loads of important people were in Glasgow to discuss the
future of Haskell, GHC, Hugs, and other bits of the functional
programmers' plan to take over the world.  I'm in an office of people
with whom I can discuss the details of what I'm up to and who can help
me understand the new stuff I'm learning.  And there's so many other
things happening in the department as well!

Despite my comments above about stressing and not doing enough work,
things are actually going alright.  I am fairly sure of the direction
in which I'm heading, and at the moment am busy doing the requisite
background reading.  In parallel, my supervisor is very keen that I
work on writing an actual program to test what I'm learning and to
ensure that I keep focussed.  It is an excellent way to work.  The
program I am working on directs the reading, and the reading enables
the work.  I am progressively sorting out the time management issue.

So that pretty much brings you up to date.  Since the last message,
Glasgow hasn't got any colder, but it has certainly got wetter; the
leaves have all fallen off the trees; I've done plenty more exciting
things; and I have settled down to a relative routine.  Sorry this has
been such a long message - congratulations on making it to the end!
Do keep on sending me news of how things are going in New
Zealand... the steady stream has slowed a little in recent weeks.  I
hope all your exams went well, and you're all looking forward to
exciting holidays.  Remember, any time you're in Glasgow there's
always space on my floor (just as soon as I clear these boxes away!).

Love and hugs to all,

--KW 8-)
----
PS: Please print this out and show it to anyone you know who would
    like to see it and who doesn't have email.
-- 
: Keith Wansbrough, MSc, BSc(Hons) (Auckland) -------------------------:
: PhD Student, Computing 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       :
:----------------------------------------------------------------------: