Monday, August 29, 2005

Brain Melt - At least it´s over

The deed is done!! I went in for my interview this morning, nerves all afry (yeah that´s a new word ;-) They only talked to me for 12 minutes which was somewhat surpricing since the girl before me was in there for quite awhile longer...
Anyway, think I did o.k. Upon entering I was faced with a panel of interviewers, the ambassador, the japanese professor, the cultural attache and a gentleman form the Icelandic ministry of Education. The ambassador was just very sweet and the person who asked the most difficult questions was in fact my friend, the professor, presumably in a bid to avoid any possibilities of her being positively inclined towards me.
Think I did o.k. .. Obviously could have done better. Was asked questions like how did I intend to support the kids and were they healthy (wonder if a male appplicant ever gets those questions) as well as whether I thought my japanese was good enough for the task at hand. At least they did Not bring up Halldór which would have been a bother seeing as we are deliberately no where registered as living together, the reason for that being precisely that were I to get this scholarship he would then never be allowed to apply for any Japanese ministry of education scholarship ever.

Well, will know in the next two weeks whether I get this, if not I´ll just have to apply again the following year ;-P

Still pondering whether short interview is a good omen or a bad one, I did speak fluently and securely, the question remains whether I said the right things ...

No way of influencing it now, so focus will be on actually getting my thesis done now!!!

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Life, the universe and the rest

Living is tense in Edinburgh these days, with an eleven year old boy having gone missing on the way to school, then his body found a few days later parents around here are pretty tense. It happened not that far away from here and the kid was dropped off only a block away from his school, terrifying. Got a lecture today on how I shouldn´t allow Elena out by herself and apparently the park up the street has now become a danger zone......
Missed going to the Serenity premiere here a couple of days ago. Didn´t realise it would take here at the Edinburgh festival, otherwise would have secured tickets ages ago, by the time I realised the only tickets to be had were going for over a hundred quid on e-bay... makes one wonder about the whole going to school to aquire an education thing, maybe scalping is the way to go ;-) Regarding the whole education thing, stressing out on the whole thesis thing "school´s so much more fun when I don´t have to hand things in" ;-P

Am off to Iceland tomorrow for the aforementioned language test and interview, hoping you guys keep your fingers crossed for me, I soooooooo want this to happen....

So ... what do you think of "The Pros and Cons of Childbearing:
Perinatal and Postnatal dangers in 42 Questions"
as a title for the thesis ;-) It´s a thought, or "There and Back Again: The Liminal State of the Pregnant Woman" Any suggestions?

Yay, I´m indy !!



I took two highschool career tests (obviously when back in high school ;-), one came out that I should be an undertaker or a flowershop girl and veer as far away from further education as possible as that was definitely NOT my scene. The other on the other hand had me as some sort of adventure archaeologist missionary military officer ;-P

Makes one wonder if anyone actually follows these things!! Hope not, well the archaelology adventure thing was not that far off, but ;-P by the way I got this from Svava who incidentally also scored an Indy !

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Famous Bloggers ;-)

O.k. so I know I´ve been somewhat lax in my general postings lately (understatement what) but I just had to share this one, celebrity bloggers! And no, I´m not merely talking about Will Wheaton, as good as his blog is though ;-) Gwyneth has this weird newsletteresque blog, whilst Jeff Bridges has the sweetest, coolest blog ever, even though I can´t quite make heads or tail of most of it ;-) Barbra Streisands is all prim and proper, and somewhat ... well sometimes it reads like a lecture, a political one at that. Svava is going to go read Davids Duchovnis one for sure, although it does seem slighty single minded and leaves one somewhat guilty for not having gone to see his flop of a film. Lest I forget I´d better mention whatsherfaces blog, pregnant bimbo, hit me baby one more time...Æi you know her, Pamela actually seems to have a sense of humour for her self as well, making it a fun photobrowse although not very enlightening. Bruce doesn´t update often but Rosie (O´Donnell)has a fun way with words as well as being very endearing and personal. Tom Green is very good on the updating thing, and I guess it gives a good insight into his life, what with drinking pics and all ;-) George Takei of Star Trek fame is pretty up to date with loads of pics and reminicences.
But my all time favorite, of course, would have to be Kevin Smith :-D with his Boring Ass Life...Wonderful to find out that the famouse life just the same as the rest of us, albeit somewhat more hyperactive (wonder whether that´s why they´re all famous and rich...?)

Sunday, August 14, 2005

Going home

Well, I have my plane tickets for home, expensive going home for only a test and an interview but hopefully worth it. Have however found out that 10 people have been invited to be interviewed but according to last years numbers only 2 got the scholarship.... Oh well at least I´ll try and if it doesn´t pan out I´ll just try again next year. Just my luck though, last year only 9 applied for this scholarship and of the whole bunch only 5 of which were interviewed...

Anyways back to my questionnaire and statistics ;-P my favorite

Saturday, August 13, 2005

Moodswings

Friday, August 12, 2005

The Femminine Hygiene Song ;-)

femminine hygiene

Thursday, August 11, 2005

*blush* ;-P

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

The Academic attends her first fan con, a world con at that!

Although I ended up shying away from presenting a paper as was suggested to me at the world Con, I still ended up going. Come off it, how often does a World con just happen to be in your back garden, so to say?

I went with the intended focus of observing fan communities in person from a folkloric perspective (sounds good dunnit?)
... I kept up the appearances for almost a day, attending academic papers as well as specific fan community related ones, carefully taking notes and even commenting ;-P
then the transmutation began. I was already aware of the fact that Alan Lee would be signing his yet unpublished book there, the thought of which sent strange tingles to even stranger places.
Accosting poor Alan LeeBut as I stood in line, waiting for my turn, there began the aforementioned transmuting effect. My knees grew week, I constantly had to be drying sweat from my hands so as to be able to shake his without too much embarrassment and my two bags and coat became increasingly difficult to handle. When it was finally my turn I at least had the presence of mind to ask if I could have my picture taken with him (can anyone say “fan girl”) but as he very nicely commented upon me being from Iceland and him always having wanted to go there I found that all-over-a-sudden over half of my English vocabulary had dissipated and what little there was left I couldn’t actually pronounce, hence me trying to say that Iceland was a very picturesque place well worthy of an artists attention turned into incoherent babble followed by me fumbling around with my two signed books bags and .... Well you get the picture..
Then strangely enough as I left the hall I had this amazingly strong urge to scream or to shout....
My descent (or should I say enlightenment (has a more upward feel to it ;-) ) into fandom having already commenced I started vigilantly attending all panels which included Alan Lee in it bringing to my attention another concept artist by the name, or should I say the artist formerly known as Fangorn ;-) Chris Baker. He did the concept art fro A.I. both Kubric as well as Spielberg and has worked on a lot of Tim Burton Movies apart from being a scifi artist in his own right.
DSCN7196

Other highlights of the con would have to be the panel upon which Anne McCaffrey, Terry Brooks and Terry Pratchett discussed the pros and cons of fame, with Terry P pointing out that if a bearded man in a black overcoat and with a black hat wants to have sex with you it’s NOT him! ;-P Which was great fun, with them all recounting stories from before fame and after and various mishaps.

We attended the Masquerade which was an experience in itself, all in all very laid back, friendly and flirty atmosphere with some good costumes to be seen, my favourite being the vampire cheerleader ;-)

Then on Sunday night we finally attended the party hotel, a trip well worth it ? we started off by going to this wee Japanese restaurant in Glasgow centre, only to have Terry Pratchett sitting with a group next to us and Klingons waiting behind us in the line. (We later got to chat with said Klingons at the party) The party centre was at the Hilton Hotel and divided into rooms all of which seemed to be cities or countries shivying for to hold the World con at some later date. The Finnish room, in offering loads of pepper snaps and beer was an obvious winner ;-)
Among people with whom we chatted were an aerospace engineer couple from the States, an incredibly tall Mansonesque Kyudo player from Finland (currently studying physics at Oxford), a Japanese professor of American studies at Keio University and his wife of cos-play fame, a klingon couple from the States who’d left their 8 dogs in the capable hands of her mother, some very nice Finnish girls who sang sci fi songs in Finnish to Beatles tunes and Lady Galadriel, all in all a great group of well adjusted fun people (excluding perhaps the Finnish one)
DSCN7265
The finnish singers


Fangor (Chris Baker) and me ;-)And then I proved my fanishness by hovering around poor Fangor, introducing myself and asking whether I could have my picture taken with him (geek what)upon which he asked why, to which I answered due to your art, upon which he quizzed me, then grinned and hugged me ;-P


So all in all it was a great experience, only five trek costumes I could count but heaps of dragons, some pirates and admittedly loads of very strange grossly overweight people with American accents and often having pink hair ... The variety of the lectures and panels was such that often I was coming across the same people repeatedly although the guests numbered over 4000 and when I attended lectures with Halldor I saw people I’d never come across there. The papers ranged from purely scientific ones, with physicists and for instance one of the technicians behind the mars probe thing, through fantasy realms of hobbitesque proportions, through folklore, movies, TV shows and just abut anything interesting vaguely related to the genre. Me and Halldor even attended one panel on how to speak scifi fanish in Japanese as well as sword fighting 101 ;-)

Having attended I see in retrospect that I could easily have presented a paper there, I could even have presented my Buffy magic paper without a change to it, but there again it would have left me nervous and stressed and perhaps not free to enjoy it as much as I did. This was my first con and as such I thoroughly enjoyed it, but come Yokohama 2007 I will most definitely be presenting a paper or two!! Just you watch out ;-P
DSCN7259

Oh and as I came home to my e–mail I got the Amazing news that I’ve been short listed at the Japanese embassy in Iceland. Meaning, that as I am applying for a study grant to go to Japan for a couple of years to do research in the field of folkloristics, I’m now in the final draw. So later this month I go back home to take an English test as well as a Japanese one, and will then be interviewed... so keeping my fingers crossed :-D

Friday, August 05, 2005

I´m off to see the Ozzard, the wonderful Ozzard of Wiz...

Well I´m off to see Alan Lee at the 63rd World Con in Glasgow ;-) O.k. so I´ll be attending a lot of scholarly folklore papers being delivered as well, as well as documenting the living fan folklore all around me but deep down it´s all about getting Alan Lee to sign his book for me :-D Manic geekette laughter... Have loved his art for over two decades now, I think that warrants a slight excitement ;-)
And then there´s also the romance factor of attending a con for the first time with a partner equally if not more geeky as one self, involving three nights at a fancy hotel in a distant city. Ok perhaps not so distant but still it´s a getaway ;-P

So I´ll be posting fun pictures from the pirate gala evening as well as the masquerade after the weekend, until then ... Hugs

p.s. am also going to see Terry Brooks and Terry Pratchett .. Whohooo

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Jay Lenos Headlines

I tend to like Jay lenos headlines, incredible the mistakes printed and the blunderous things people say ........ and what with these being available online there's not much sense in actually watching the show ;-)

I'm back home!

After three days of relative nothingness my internal clock is finally appearing to be adjusting itself. A three day trip with the last night spent sleeping in an airport lounge is, for some strange reason slightly tiring, not to mention when accompanied by two kids and the compulsuory excess baggage, one always promices oneself not to repat the next time round ;-P
The trip to Japan was amazing!! The strangest of alll was how everything felt familiar, it felt as if it were a an everyday occurrence, that I'd only been away for a few weeks.. The kids loved it as well, giving rise to plans to come study there, of course they were being incredibly spoilt by their "grandparents" ;-) so their impression might be a tad biased. It was a wonderful feeling to be so weclcomed, and the kids were unerringly treated as favorite only grandchildren. Now I just keep my fingers crossed, any day now I'll find out whether I'm in the draw for the Japanese university grant. Personally I think my possibility is slim, the whole japanese exhange student and folklore enthusiasm works for me I know, but the single, divorced mother of two I am sure will deter some on the board. MMostly just because it is an automatic assumption in Japan that a woman who has children can not study....... oh well as I say fingers crossed.
We were very lucky with the weather whilst in Japan, it was moderately warm and whilst up north there was nearly no humidity. The last four days were spent travelling with Okasan, Otosan and Asuka. Wisiting An amazing Edo village, a fair ground, a monkey show and a famous heritage shrine, whilst staying at fancy Ryokans (Japanese style hotels) at night, and being so lucky as to have a Mazuri (annual festival) being played out both nights at the hotels and in the streets outside. The last two nights we stayed with my friends Ragga and Ester in Tokyo, whom I met in Japanese class at the University of Iceland. The funny thing is that just over a year ago we were having lunch together at Indokina on Laugarvegur (Reykjavik) and wondering where we'd find ourselves in a years time, Ragga wa heading off to Spain, Ester had just been admitted to University in Denmark and I was off to Britain to study. Yet, a year later there we were drinking japanese beer on ttatami mats in Tokyo.... goes to show you never can tell ;-)
Well, now it's back to work, one Masters thesis to be handed in next month and only two and a half week until the kids return from their dads. i'll be posting some more pictures soon, once I manage to wade hrough the masses I took ;-P But first, *blush* there is the small matter of ne Harry Potter..... I promice as soon as I finish that I'll get to work ;-P