A Discourse Upon The Ontology of Being

TODAY I dropped in on a lecture from a course entitled "Introduction to the Philosophy of German Idealism." We had not yet embarked on the full spectrum of Hegel, etc., but were sitting comfortably in Aristotle and then transitioning to Kant.

Presumably the subject of the lecture was ontology — the problem with philosophy as with many other disciplines, I find, is that one must be extremely careful how to use one's terms once one is no longer permitted the freedom of layman's terminology, just like I felt gingerly about the French language after reading a compendium of naughty idiom.

At any rate, the lecture was about how one describes what exists, i.e. is. There seems to be a fine distinction in that Aristotle does not bother to mention that we may not absolutely know or describe what truly exists, whereas Kant stresses that we know or describe only what we perceive.

There was a certain Socratean element, or rather an element of what I seem to remember my Uncle Pu introduced to my siblings and me when we were little: we would make a statement and he would ask us, "Why?" and then when we had answered ask us "Why?" again, etc. So in the lecture, rhetorically put questions like "What is whatness?" followed each other in quick succession, and I would be vaguely thinking, "This question is either very dumb or very clever, and I'm not always quite sure which."

Basically, however, we were looking at neat little lists of criteria by which one may define a thing, (relatio, modality, quantity, quality; universally or particularly; negatively or positively; etc.), which Aristotle and Kant drew up similarly yet differently; the professor was explaining to us what Aristotle and Kant meant by those terms.

My brain went on holiday part of the way through, and in its leisurely way ambled back again to the substance of the lecture, so it was all quite relaxed; and I'm not attending the lecture for credit or all that regularly. I have the creeping feeling that I will, however, need the knowledge from it.

Then I took the U-Bahn back to the bookshop and spent a quiet couple of hours wasting time on the internet. My first class was Foundations of Ancient History again, and this time the concentration in the spotlight was the Studies of the Ancient Orient, which in a weird roundabout way (which I don't feel like explaining) is like examining the wreck of the Tower of Babylon (Babel transposed to Mesopotamia) in linguistic terms.

Besides I've had two emails, confirming that my archaeology work course is from 10:15 a.m. - 3 p.m. on Fridays, and that I can join the History and Culture of the Near East seminar of my choice, namely on Thursday. So Monday from 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. is free for the bookshop, lectures I might want to attend unofficially, or any desired variety of loitering. And I needn't take off for the work course at quarter after seven as previously feared! (c:

Occam's Razor and the Throttled Lion of Nineveh

This morning I slept in and snuck into my Foundations of Ancient History lecture over half an hour late.

It was a representative of Near Eastern Archaeology who was lecturing this time, and he quickly went over the archaeologists responsible for digging at Susa (where the Code of Hammurabi was found as part of 2nd-century-B.C.(?) loot) and at Çatal Hüyük. When I came in, he also mentioned the relief of the lion-hunt at Nineveh, presumably the one which T. and I quickly but thoroughly enjoyed looking at in the British Museum some five years ago. Heinrich Schliemann was mentioned and, surprisingly enough, there was no verbal hopping with rage. Indeed he suggested that the concept of stratigraphy, and of the information which may be gleaned from observing the contents of the layers relative to each other, was then not yet developed. On the other hand he stated that any archaeological dig in fact involves the destruction of that which it studies.

Another point on which I am inclined to be more critical than he is with regard to reconstructing ruins. For example, though it may be presumptive to find fault, the fakeness of the Gate of Ishtar in the Pergamon Museum gets on my nerves; and I found Saddam Hussein's government's reconstructions of ancient sites in Iraq butt-ugly because they were turned into huge blocks of characterless, unworn, glaringly indistinguished mudbrick. A proper ruin has gravitas — just like a proper painting, which if it was indeed painted 300 or 400 years ago should have a patina to make one wonder if our common ancestor was in fact a dark-dwelling mole. I (let's say partly; it was an unfinished fragment) wrote an essay on Sir Arthur Evans for my Classical Archaeology course at UBC, and I vaguely recall that he had reconstructions built at Knossos, to help along the publicity and funding, much like what is theoretically organized at Pompeii except that a wall recently collapsed due to improper maintenance, etc. I was willing to overlook it there, going from the premise that Evans is one of the protagonists of archaeology and thus worthy of greater critical latitude, but still.

Aside from that the professor had a great deal to say about matters political, which upon the hearing I took with a large grain of salt, but whose essential impulse was not, I think, unadmirable.

In this context, and also out of admiration for a goodly quantity of hard work, he mentioned an exhibition which came to the Pergamon Museum until late August. Max von Oppenheim had founded a Vorderasiatisches Museum and it was filled with statues from a monumental dig at Tell Halaf. A firebomb struck during World War II; the firefighters came, and it seems that the impact of cold water on hot basalt stone is explosive in its effects. So in 2001 a team began to painstakingly set together the 27,000 fragments.

"Das 27'000-Teile-Puzzle" (Basler Zeitung, orig. Tages-Anzeiger, February 3, 2011)

***

In Greek we were at the speech lab, where the computers cooperated, and so we listened to a dialogue being read out. Some words were easy to understand and I took a great deal of pains to figure out the meanings of the words as typed out in our textbook. But at times the sounds of the words and syllables shifted like will-o'-the-wisps, so that one time I would understand them perfectly and another time encounter gibberish. Before that I extracted my trusty dictionary and looked up the definite and indefinite articles as well as the conjugations of εχω and ειμαι. Not much has changed over the centuries, compared to what one would expect; on the other hand, I've difficulty recalling the Ancient Greek plural articles, which were generally given to my Ancient Greek class.

***

There is a vote on the extension of our student transit ticket arrangement being held by the student body. The prices are to be raised in the following years, but it sounded like they weren't negotiable, so I took to the ballot-box and voted in favour.

***

Besides I walked to the Institute for Prehistoric Archaeology to discover the sheet which is to advertise the times and dates of a work course; I didn't see one, so will email the professor again. On the way back I passed the Kenyan embassy and, much to my amusement, the smaller home to the Lesotho mission tucked beside it.

***

Then I went to a history seminar where we traipsed over a library and had to write a statement about why archaeology interests us. It was embarrassing particularly because I'm not sure if my interest in it isn't kind of lame and fanciful (though nice), like saying "When I grow up I want to be an astronaut." Certainly not something which one wants to expand on to an adult expert. Besides the class was overstuffed in the little villa. I felt guilty because I was not supposed to be there, according to the formal rules, at which a great deal of winking is done by students and docents alike. I guess I'll hope for the best.

***

Lastly I decided to stick around for an Introduction to Theoretical Philosophy. I was peeved when a surprisingly vast horde of us (young and old, students and guest auditors) was locked out of the room until after the hour. Given the institution of the "academic quarter," classes begin and end cum tempore, a quarter hour off from the stated time, so there were some ten minutes left until class began. But I had been lolling around on my feet for a long time and was eager for a seat inside the hall.

First of all we were told through a passage from Kant that philosophy is not the reading of the ideas of another, but the practice and personal application of reason on our own — the philosophy past is the rubble upon which we construct our own ideas. Then there was a long and repetitious excursion through Philosophy's FAQs, and the professor underlined that philosophers barely ever agree on anything, even as to who among them constitutes a proper philosopher. Then he said, with quotations from Karl Jaspers and a nod to Schopenhauer, that man becomes aware of himself as he reflects on the world around him, and that the portion of the world upon which he does not reflect does not exist for him. And so on and so forth.

I was hungry and grumpy; ensconced in a kind of superior eyrie at the summit of the lecture hall; and very much inclined to reflect on the world through an oneiristic (if the word exists) lens — which is to say have a nap; but I want to give the lecturer and lectures more of a chance. The philosophers intended to appear in this course: e.g. Plato, Aristotle, Socrates(?), St. Thomas of Aquinas, Ockham, Descartes, Kant, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Quine, and Derrida. The course should generally be good for showing off — 'empirical' and 'Occam's razor' and 'straw man argument' are a start in terms of preexisting knowledge, and 'normative' would be too if I remembered what precisely it means or felt like consulting a dictionary; but there is no reason to settle!

*

P.S.: The wording "throttled lion" is cribbed from my sister.

The Year of the Elephant and Other Stories

This afternoon, before coming to the bookshop, I had my first Islamic Studies lecture, i.e. the prerequisite course to higher-level studies of the Culture and History of the Near East minor.

I had originally thought to skip it entirely this year because I like my Greek classes and there happens to be one at the same time, besides which the seminar would require a little schedule-cramming. But I sent an email to the Islamic Studies department and, though the response was helpful and its terms liberal, it did transpire that it would be best for me to take it.

So far I have not gone to a seminar. If the rooms in the large building wherein they are held are not too crowded, I am thinking of going to more than one. (I visited the building after class today so that I could figure out how to get there; or, in the worst case, how not to get there.)

***

THE PROFESSOR began with a more cerebral approach than customary. For instance he acutely and very quickly argued-without-arguing which historical approach is best — a social focus, political focus, or what-have-you; story, empiricism, or theory — and announced that (as the lecture title implies) he would focus on Islamic society at various historical points. A corollary of which aim is that he does not intend to take a strictly schematic, chronological or geological approach, rattling off what happened where in a list. — Since I haven't thought much about it, the only thing that came to mind by way of social history is George Macaulay Trevelyan's English Social History from Opapa's bookshelf. I looked into it and seem to remember finding far too vague to be of utility.

Nevertheless he began at the beginning and tried to portray for our benefit something of the Arabian peninsula before the birth of Muhammad and the spread of his prophecies. It was a nexus of the Byzantine, West Roman, and Iranian empires (re. 'Iran': Persia, he said, is in fact a smaller region) or more specifically of the traders who shuttled silk, gold, slaves, myrrh, balsam, etc. between them, over a land route to Syria and along the Red Sea to or from the Mediterranean and through the Arabian Sea, or over the Silk Road, to India.

There were orthodox Christian sectors who were in opposition to the state religion of Constantinople: the Nestorians and the Monophysites. The Nestorians are also denominated Duophysites because they believed that the spirit of God is separate from Christ, and the Monophysites comprised the Copts and others who believe that Christ is God and man in unity. In Iran there were Zoroastrianists, who were monotheistic on the one hand but believed in the dual presence of good and evil on the other. There were tensions between which trading points supported which state and consequently its religion.

Contrary to common belief, Islam is not a "faith of the desert," since only a relatively small part of the Arabian peninsula consists of dunes in which no plant may grow; and at the time of its inception the trade routes meant that there were thriving little towns and kingdoms like Sabaa (the Queen of Sheba — the professor emphasized — may not have existed, but her kingdom certainly did) all over.

Mecca, with its Kaʿba — whose provenance is rather vague, though it is now considered Abraham's toil, but significance great — was one of the trading points, and one of the places where poets met and talked and developed in a subtle long-winding way what we consider the classical Arabic language, ʿarabiyya.

It was ruled within the great Quraysh tribe. In the old sense of proper government, the chief of a tribe was, as the professor put it, primus inter pares. Every man who was a tribesman, not a slave or an outsider (for instance the Roma, or gypsies), was considered to have equal rights. The chief was the mediator and where necessary the representative of the tribe in negotiations and relations with other tribes; every tribesman had a right to protection. Slaves, who were widespread there as they were in Europe, had no right to protection.

One of the poorer men who was not happy under the heel of the fellow Qurayshes, despite this nominal equality and freedom, was Muhammad, who lived on the outer margins of Mecca. He was born around 570 AD (in this case I will say CE), which is a little subject to controversy because by others his birth is attributed to the Year of the Elephant — apparently the year in which what would become Yemen was conquered by Ethiopian troops — but the dates don't fit. He married the widow of a comfortably-off tradesman and ended up travelling up to Syria and becoming acquainted with the religious traditions of his neighbours. Then he was privy to enlightenment by God through his intermediary, the angel Gabriel; after running afoul of the authorities he retired to Medina. There he wished to form an umma, or community, with a Jewish clan in the area, which ended in blood and presumably tears. He decided that it was his aim to return to Mecca — he did, and (by this point in the lecture the end of class was impending — so 'tell-tale compression' of events, etc.) by the time he died in 632 CE his religion was officially observed throughout the Arabian Peninsula. It is this kind of state religion which a sector of Islam insists on endeavouring to reinstate.

That was basically the end of the lecture. I've left a great deal out and I'm happy that there is so much more, because I like having a whole pile of facts and thoughts to sort through at leisure. I think I've remembered everything reasonably well, too, but this blog post isn't fact-checked, so reader beware and all that.

He is incidentally the only one of my professors who seems to read out a lecture from detailed notes or even a text — so far it seems a pithier and more content-rich and a little less condescending method than PowerPoint presentations and other methods which involve ex tempore commentary. I also liked that he clearly had lots of opinions and a lively interest in politics and controversies — during the beginning of the Iraq War he would probably have been one of those of us who talked about it with everyone he knew, read as many magazine articles about it as he could lay his hands on, sent letters to the editor, etc. — but that he didn't feel impelled to inflict them on us. Sometimes I come across people and have the urge to haul them home to meet the family, and as far as I can tell, he is one of them.

***

My other classes were Greek (we're reviewing the sounds/phonemes, thank goodness, because I don't know all of them that well, and am sort of giving up on knowing when to use which pronunciation of ντ, for instance; today when I was gone we in the broad sense of the term we also learned "have" and "be," and the definite and indefinite articles, and maybe something I've forgotten) and Foundations of Ancient History. That class began with 19th-century Danish archaeologists who came up for instance with the three-period system (Stone Age, Iron Age, Bronze Age) and ended with the, er, Schicklgrubrian reinterpretations and politicization of German and Scandinavian prehistory research. At the very end the lecture slid into the inevitable post-war repentance, discarding of the ideas formed in the shadow of the short mustache, and the rise of new technology, for instance radiocarbon dating.

Greek, in Exhausting Detail

Please beware of and forgive all and any factual errors in the following:

This evening I have Latin again, but in the meantime I have returned from the morning's Greek lessons and am sitting comfortably in the bookshop. In the lessons we reviewed the phonetics of the past two days, which is highly useful, and read aloud example words for consonant pairs like κλ and γδ, which looks complicated but in fact isn't.

This time our professor took the time to tell us the meanings of words, which with πνευμα (air, breath, spirit) and ενεργειεα was simple enough; there were quite interesting ones in between. Ανθοσ (flower) and αμυγδαλια (almond tree) were familiar but I hadn't known the Greek stem-words.

Though I have left out the stress accents (in Greek, the accent is called the οξεια) on these Greek words until I figure out the html encoding, there should be an acute on each one. Since 1982, Greek has adopted the "monotοnikó" (μονοτονικο) system whereby every accent is stricken from the written language except for the οξεια. In the absence of the rough and smooth breathing (the little curling apostrophe which sits on the first vowel of a word and separates the "ho"s from the "o"s), and circumflexes and grave accents indicating changes in the pitch of the voice, written Greek has become much less fussy. I wonder where the changes in pitch went — whether they were artificially imposed on Ancient Greek when it became the scholar's preserve or whether they did exist but have fallen into complete disuse over the centuries.

Earlier the professor gave a leisurely introduction into modern Greek history.

She reiterated that the Erasmus system of pronunciation (e.g. οι = ahoy!, αι = might) is artificial and demonstrably historically inaccurate, Erasmus having designed it purely so help his students learn to spell the words. I was a little miffed, since I like Erasmus's system and moreover have used it consistently for Ancient Greek — though it is admittedly best suited for communication within the ivory tower. But Russian or French and certainly Greek universities — for example — seem to teach a different Ancient Greek system.

She went into detail besides about the Katharevousa — which is a formal language created after Greece shed Ottoman rule, spelled καθαρευουσα, and which like modern Italian hopped back in time not in this case to the Middle Ages but a little further for inspiration. But if I've understood correctly, it created an unsettling gap, by separating Greeks into the hoity-toity world of the official constructed language, and the hoi polloi world of the demotic tongue, Dimotiki — δημοτικη. The popular language had in fact acted as a reservoir to preserve Greek over the centuries and folk poetry had kept what the written word had discarded, but in a different form from the tongue of Aristophanes or Pericles, whose preservation fell to scholars who left Constantinople as it fell in 1453 and to their Arabic colleagues and later of course to scholars across Europe who would no longer have been privy to the spoken traditions (for instance pronunciation) which would hint at the ancient forms. Katharevousa took over some of the popular language, but otherwise was a little estranged. Besides the Katharevousa is apparently not held in good odour since it is associated with the military dictatorship and its organs.

What I had not heard before is that the administration of Greece in the early 19th century had been pedantic and quite foreign in character. It was guided by Philhellenes from the remainder of Europe, many of whom were shocked to arrive in Greece and find that it was not a nation of (as the professor put it) lofty-souled, tunic-wearing philosophers. Instead there were guerrilla fighters. She also pointed out that due to the four preceding centuries of foreign rule, and a brutal extirpation of the regional aristocracy at the time of the conquest in 1453, Greece does not have any aristocracy; its handful of modern kings were invariably imports or descendants of imports.

Apart from that she explained the construction of Greek last names, which were introduced as such under the Ottoman government to simplify taxation and the military. Papandreou would mean, I think, the child of Andreas; physical attributes like black hair also lent themselves to names.

Midweek

This morning I went to the Foundations of Ancient History Studies lecture and arrived in excellent time, in the very large and already familiar lecture hall with down-folding blond wood chairs and the technical booth in the back at the top and the ghostly glow of a PowerPoint slideshow in front. It has a clever windowy antechamber which presumably guards from noise and conspicuous intrusions.

As it turns out the Foundations course will introduce a cluster of specializations, like Prehistoric Archaeology and Classical Archaeology, and even the seminars will rotate between the various sub-disciplines and therefore various buildings.

The professor, who looked rather like General Wesley Clark, laid out the course itself, up to the exam; his associate described the electronic resources. The professor defended the three-year Bachelor system enthusiastically, whereat I metaphorically speaking rolled my eyes.

Then I had a long interval to the next class, which I spent in finding the right room and in looking up (in an English-Modern Greek dictionary which was I think bought accidentally) the words which my Greek class materials use as phonetic examples. Someone else asked me for directions.

Greek took place in the speech laboratory today, so we sat among the cubicles with fairly rotten computers; mine refused to start up properly so I never even glimpsed the user desktop. But we spent most of the time finishing the phonetics and reading the sample words out loud. Ν can sound unusual depending where it is placed, for instance, so we spent some ten minutes with the computers in the end.

Since there was no Ancient History seminar and no evening philosophy lecture, and the career preparation advisor whom I had wanted to consult about the archaeology work course, etc., seemed very busy, I had the rest of the day off. Despite the respite, I still feel really tired. So I will continue my Greek homework and then rest in preparation for the class at 8:30 tomorrow morning.

A Student's Odyssey

Today I had the first day of my Greek pre-language course. We learned how to pronounce the vowels, consonants, and diphthongs, and were introduced to the textbook and two potential grammar reference works, by a very nice professor who is an excellent teacher. Knowing some Ancient Greek was an advantage, but some of the counterintuitive sounds were thoroughly irritating.

e.g. β beta
- letter name pronounced "béta" for Ancient Greek purposes
- name pronounced like Latin "vita" for Modern Greek purposes

ντ nu + tau (nt)
- pronounced like "ant" in Ancient Greek, as far as I know
- pronounced like "d" ("dog"), "nd" (and), or "nt" (ant) in Modern Greek

μπ mu + pi (mp)
- pronounced like "imp" in Ancient Greek, as far as know
- pronounced like "b" (bar), "mb" (amble), or "mp" (imp) in Modern Greek

Besides "nu" is pronounced "nee"; "mu," "mee"; "tau," "taph".

AND all of these vowels or diphthongs are now pronounced like "eek!":

iota (ι), eta (η), upsilon (υ); (omicron + iota) οι, (epsilon + iota) ει

AND alpha + iota, αι, is pronounced like the epsilon — "meh."

THE professor argued that Greek is a what-you-see-is-what-you-get language because it has so many compound words (e.g. symphony = with + sound). But I find it quite ambiguous, as I told my father at somewhat obnoxious length today. Taking the example, "with sound" can as easily signify a modern "talkie" film, noise, or singing in unison.

*

ANYWAY, I think that the Rost-/Silberlaube is mad at me after the remarks I made about it yesterday; I spent maybe an hour trying to find a room in it that didn't exist, and after literally roaming over the rooftops I stumbled across the right room through mere chance since class schedules are posted beside classroom/lecture hall doors. But I do know where the Habelschwerdter Allee is now, from having to consult further maps.

Then I decided to pay my father a visit and roamed all over the wrong part of his building, dismayed and bewildered because none of the rooms looked familiar from a similarly peripatetic adventure last week. In the morning I also went for an, er, circuitous walk, which I will skip in this post.

The irony is that at least two people asked me for directions today.

T. HAS kindly and justifiedly bought me a very own alarm clock, which I should set soon, and one of the drawers around Papa's desk donated the battery. Tomorrow I have three classes, from 8-10 a.m., 12-2 p.m. and 6-8 p.m, if I decide to attend all. The important one is my Greek, from 12 to 2. As optional homework I have written out a good copy of part of my Greek course notes; besides I've sketched out a schedule for the next five university days, but it will require ironing out.

LASTLY, I like riding the U-Bahn, partly because I like the people-watching, and because I have not been packed into it like a sardine yet; but I like the stretch around Dahlem-Dorf best because it is overground, at the bottom of a green embankment.

A New Beginning

It's the night before my first day of normal classes at the FU — one is an art history lecture, and the other an introductory Latin course which I intend to audit this semester and properly take the next. So I will be gone most of the afternoon and evening.

On Saturday I sent an email to the professor in charge of a paleontology work course at the university; depending on the response I will be part of a group learning how to archive and preserve remains from a prehistoric dig every Friday. Since I have wanted to do that since before I was ten years old — and, if it isn't congenial after all, I'm happy to have a chance to test it — it is feverishly exciting.

In general I feel pleased, bent on getting my way (as in taking the courses I want to take despite scheduling obstacles), and nervous.

***

Updated:

The first lecture was a fizzle, since I left the bookshop in time, found the building without difficulties thanks to my habit of drawing little diagrams for myself (a habit inculcated by unhappy events relating to past job interviews), and found the proper room by a stroke of luck. It appears to be a fairly large lecture, too, which makes me happy because I like being an anonymous student and not having to do group work or talk to people unless one or both of us feels like it. But as the hour struck, a student came into the class and said that the lecture had been cancelled for that day.

So I went all the way back to the bookshop again and was there to greet Mama when her time came to take over. The prehistoric archaeology professor has answered my email and said that it would be fine if I participated in her work course, if I am really interested in washing and labelling finds. So I went to the campus in the middle of pleasant suburbia, via a "long and leisurely" bus drive through the incipient rush hour, to "scope out" the terrain. Instead I found, to my howling dismay, that there was a compound of some thirteen buildings in which the course could be held. In fact the identity of the building was revealed in the course index, but I had foolishly skipped it over as an irrelevant detail. One of the buildings I went into didn't have the tentative room number — it had the room number before and the room number after but not the one in between, which left me figuratively hopping with suspense. But now I know the right building and that was not it. The date of the first meeting is also unknown and will be revealed through an "Aushang," which apparently means an update to the institute's website.

Then, somewhat disgruntledly, I travelled back to the U-Bahn station Dahlem-Dorf and betook myself in search of the Rost- and Silberlaube for Latin. This is a huge building which appears to be the core of the campus in terms of teeming with students. I looked for the Habelschwerdter Allee in vain on the U-Bahn map, but being fairly certain that it was down the railroad tracks and then left, and being confirmed in this by a sign, I went down to the Thielallee (pronounced roughly teal ull-lé). I entered the Laube, still not knowing where the Habelschwerdter Allee is, though it must be admitted that it wouldn't be difficult to find out.

If the belt of a treadmill were ever stretched out to represent the true distance which one walks on it, the corridors of the Rost- and Silberlaube would correspond to it in terms of length and of the feeling of futility which it instills. The room numbers are e.g. xx/xxx, in which the first xx indicates which cluster of rooms is meant, and the first x of the xxx indicates the floor number (1, 2, 3). My cluster was for some reason dark. I may be exaggerating, but it seemed like the only light was coming from inside the rooms, the exit signs, and the neighbouring hallways. For some reason that also really peeved me, though from an environmentalist's perspective I salute it.

So my Latin class convened in a horseshoe of desks which filled, and filled, and filled some more. After minutes of entering, seating, chatting and finally befuddled silence, the professor arrived and said, bravely, that it was interesting how the computer system told her there were twenty-three students in this class and how it strangely appeared that there were rather more, and then cheerfully and I think a little nervously launched into her first lecture. She was wearing black jeans and a blazer, reddish hair loose, appears to be in her 40s, has a warmth which I think comes from Polish or Czech parents, and has quite a nice voice and interest-retaining teaching style though I find her grammatical elucidations rather confusing. But I was in a straight-out bratty mood and rather peeved that we were covering material I had already learned on my own; and the Domina ancillam vocat sentences were a base "homage," I indignantly thought, to the old German Latin staple Ludus Latinus.

Anyway, we learned the hoary basics — that one can play around with the word order in Latin, that the nominative case applies to the subject and the accusative to the object, and that many words ending in -us are part of the o-declension and that words ending in -a (except, I thought with dim recollections of textbook paradigms returning, for the neutral plural) are part of the a-declension. There was some interesting stuff about where to emphasize words, involving long and short vowels; it was altogether very close to the Ancient Greek quirks which I know and therefore love, and did not love all that much in the process of having to prod my brain into getting to know them. I want to make vocabulary flashcards but I feel tired. Maybe tomorrow — after my packed 8 a.m. - 2 p.m. schedule is over.

Then I went home in the pitch dark, which made me a very unhappy camper. But on the whole I figure that I will grow more of a backbone if there are petty daily discomforts to grapple with and the lesson learned how to deal with them with sense and some small measure of dignity, though grumbling has also been fun. I've taken a shower and made my bed, and now I intend to rest in it; and that feels inspiriting.

Phyla, Panini and Paperwork

To supplement the course of botanical inquiry I've been on lately — mostly reading a book on plant systematics which should help me keep the classes, orders, families, etc. of flora straight and enlighten me better about the tiny characteristics which distinguish them — I decided to look around YouTube and quickly found an apt lesson on classification and evolution from a course at Berkeley. So I spent roughly an hour on that, including the times I had to pause and repeat it so that my notes would be more accurate, and since then have begun copying down a diagram of the outdated higher orders of life, in the back of our Oxford English Reference Dictionary. We covered those quite thoroughly in Biology 11 and most of the evolutionary elucidations were already familiar from that class and previous science classes, but then I came across brachiopods (which were probably not brought up at all, probably because most species survive only in fossil form) and so have been launched on a certain-online-encyclopaedia session. I might review flatworms and nematodes, too, which quite lastingly put me off 1) ponds and 2) soil, if one grubs around in them without washing one's hands afterwards.

***

My sister purchased a panini grill, or a hot sandwich press if you prefer, and is very enthusiastic about it. As far as I have observed, it does not reach a very high relative heat because it is adapted to the conventional electrical outlets; secondly, frying things in fat and achieving a strong Maillard effect (if you'll forgive the pedantry) greatly improves their flavour. My sister presumably bought it because one thing she liked about the first two years of university, even when they were otherwise dire, were the grilled ciabatte with salmon and our choice of topping from the residence cafeteria. They were freshly assembled and if we liked grilled in a press with generous splashes of olive oil.

Anyway, I feel nostalgic about the cafeteria too, but we do have a cast-iron pan to 'grill' food on even if it leaves no stripes on the food. So what I feel more nostalgic about is, for example, having fish and chips, chicken fingers, enormous sticky cinnamon buns, Belgian waffles and nacho chips without having to bake them, and a salad bar though the time I assumed that what looked like feta cheese was feta cheese was frightful, and having several flavours of ice cream at hand at all times of the year if I feel like having some, etc. In fact I ate quite healthily but the possibility of eating sinfully was highly exciting. (The 'feta cheese' was tofu, by the way. In one of my Foods and Nutrition classes in school we had cooked it two ways to show that it isn't horrible; as I recall it we ended up with a tofu stir-fry and warmish slabs of the stuff inundated — purportedly 'fried' — in maple syrup, which indeed weren't terrible but gave the tofu all the dynamic interest of a flavourless piece of gelatinous white bread.)

Possibly the least delicious thing I had came from the prepackaged food section: a little tub of pineapple cottage cheese, which I tried as a novelty. Either I am genetically engineered not to like it or it is really abhorrent in a neutral sort of way. Once the wasabi sauce that went with the sushi packages also gave me something like stomach cramps (nothing worse) and I figure that was because though I'd eaten wasabi several times it was still too unfamiliar to my Teutonic digestion.

* (Continuation, in which I say a lot of tactless things:)

As far as university present is concerned, I have my student card and transit pass and e-mail account now, and soon I can register for my courses. That registration process is worrying me a little because the FU has regulations the way that the seashore has grains of sand, so it sounds terribly uptight and labyrinthine and I always worry about getting into trouble because someone in the university administration might not have enough common sense to see that even if I make a huge effort to research and ask questions at the right spot, there are some arcana or even obvious things which cannot be found out, deduced, intuited or otherwise perceived by the ordinary mortal who is not up-to-date on which office is handling what, how, and when this particular year. For instance, the structure for one of my minors has changed this year without notice, splitting into four specializations, and (though cautiously optimistic that it will turn out for the best) I'm hopping mad that there was no notice. Anyway, I'm grateful for many things, but even the mildest bureaucratic surprises (what a terrifying combination of adjective and noun!) tend to make me explode in irritation.

*

I know that I'll have to let go my idealizing allegiance to UBC and its administrative practices eventually and transfer it to my present institution. But the highest echelons of the FU also horrify me because of their blather about becoming business-aligned and 'elite,' etc.

If you have to talk about becoming 'elite,' you're not it; though to be fair a former president of Georgetown University was also recently dropping 'prestige' all over an article in the Huffington Post (?). I go to university to learn well, to train the mind and my ability to research and process information in a productive way, and (this time) to hide from reality for four or five years; and frankly I don't want to be a shining example of intellectual superiority or careerist ambition, either on my own behalf or on the university's, because that would make me a terrible person.

If the FU presidency has a monomania for the American university system, it could at least take a better and more astute look at how humanized as well as successful it is — and that what drives it are (as far as I can tell) not managerial acrobatics but the lashings of private money that flow into it.

For instance I think that UBC is good because of geographic position i.e. at a kind of nexus of Asia and North America, because of the somewhat exaggerated payment it extorts from non-domestic students, because of its liberal environment, because of its capacious endowment, and as far as I can tell because it treats its students and employees reasonably well.

I think it's more in backward states like Texas where troglodytes like Rick Perry are demanding that airy-fairy students have success in the business world and get jobs right away. I think it's incredibly dumb, too, to blame one's university on not getting a job. People who do get jobs right away probably do it through their own or their family's connections; and for people like me who'd rather jump off a cliff than acquire influence, I should gather job experience during the studies or the holidays or take extra pains to find positions where any university graduation as well as the ability to write well, informedly and coherently is already sufficient qualification. Frankly I think that employers who demand a diploma without a pertinent reason are snobs or lazyboneses who can't be bothered to test applicants' talents properly; but that's the way the world apparently works.