zip, zip, zip

Since last we spoke I posted, I have been in Cork... again! The Orchestra went down to Cork two weekends ago, for a concert. The experience was mostly similar to last year's concert in Cork-- we even stayed in the same hotel!-- with two main differences.

1. We didn't play at the UCC campus, but rather at St. Finbar's Cathedral.

It looks gothic and medieval, doesn't it? It was actually built in the mid-19th century! So only about 150 years old. It's a beautiful building, though the acoustics left something to be desired, very echo-y and hard to hear fellow players. That's the only picture I took of the Cork trip, anyway; the pictures from last year's trip pretty much cover the rest.

2. At the after-party, this time I got to be a part of the trad session! I brought my ukulele down, and it was a total hit among the orchestra. Early in the party, when people were taking turns singing or playing songs, I played an Amanda Palmer song for the orchestra; then, when the session started up, I played along, even though the ukulele is not exactly a trad instrument! It was a ton of fun.


The following weekend-- this past weekend-- we had another concert, in Galway. This one was at St. Nicholas' church, which is actually a medieval church and has a delicious lingering melty acoustic. I love playing there! The concert went well, too... though it was a bit sad for me, because now Orchestra is over until the fall. I love playing music, and having that outlet is something I look forward to every week. Oh well, I guess I'll have to tide myself over playing pop songs on the ukulele.


This coming weekend-- tomorrow, actually-- I am going to Dublin for a conference! The conference, held at Trinity College, is put on by the Irish Society for Theatre Research. In other words, professionals in my field! It's a big conference, one with multiple talks going on simultaneously, and will take up part of Thursday, all day Friday, and all day Saturday. Plus a dinner on Saturday night. I'm giving a paper, though not in an actual talk; instead, it's part of a "working group," a session with maybe 6 or 8 people talking reading each others' papers and giving advice on them. A workshop, basically. I'm looking forward to it; the workshop should be really helpful, and the conference itself sounds exciting. My advisor, Lionel, is actually going to be at this one, too, since he's organizing the working group I'm a part of. It'll be nice to have a familiar face in such a big conference!

Speaking of which, I better get back to reading those papers.

In which Ayla meets a Lord

Oh man, I've been meaning to post this for a week now but haven't really had a minute to sit down and do it. Did you know that grad school is time-consuming?!


Anyway. Most interesting thing that has happened to me recently: I met a Baron!

How this happened was through my PhD program, of course. My PhD, in "Texts, Contexts & Cultures," is part of an inter-collegiate endeavor, between NUI Galway, Trinity College Dublin, and University College Cork. Last year, we had two classes that were teleconferenced-- we had cameras linking all three groups together, with one professor, and we all interacted that way. Since we've all mostly gone off to do our own research, we haven't had as much to do with each other, but last week we had a big group meet-up down in Cork.

Originally the Galway group lobbied to spend the night, but that didn't end up happening, so we made the 3-hour trip there and back on the day. We left at 9:30 am and got to Cork for lunch, meeting up with our UCC and TCD comrades. After lunch, we had a couple lectures, then a couple workshops, which were lively and interesting. The point of these things is not really to teach us anything specific, because there is no way to have a lecture that pertains specifically to everyone's research, but rather to get us thinking in different ways about our own material-- always a useful enterprise. After the workshops were over, we made our way over to UCC's art gallery, where one of the Cork professors was interviewing Melvyn Bragg.

Melvyn Bragg is, as Wikipedia puts it, "an English author, broadcaster and media personality." He worked for years with the BBC, involved in projects that attempted to bring mass media to the working classes-- basically, to make it "popular." Since popular theatre is what I study, I was really interested in hearing him talk about his works. Eventually his involvement with the Labour party got him appointed to the House of Lords! (The House of Lords is kind of the U.K. equivalent to the U.S. Senate. Both governments have bicameral representation, but while in the U.S. it's the House of Representatives and the Senate, in the U.K. it's the House of Commons and the House of Lords.) In order to sit in the House of Lords, of course, you have to be a Lord... so Melvyn was granted the title of "Baron Bragg"!

Before the interview, there was a wine reception that the TCC group was invited to. We were all standing rather respectfully and quietly talking amongst ourselves, when one of the professors hustled myself and a couple other researchers over to meet Melvyn Bragg. He came up, introduced himself, shook all our hands, and asked us all about our research! He was especially interested in mine, and we chatted about it for a few minutes. He's a very genuine, friendly, down-to-earth type of guy. But after he left, one of my British colleagues, Laura, turned to us and exclaimed "We just met a Baron!" Which suddenly made the whole thing feel rather surreal.

It's almost Christmas!

Taking a quick break from paper-writing to update... I am flying back to the 'States on Saturday for winter break! I'm really excited to get home for a bit (though not so much about the prospect of facing snow), but right now it's more stressful than anything. I have been quite busy lately-- "so what else is new?" you ask-- with rushing around trying to finish up my current chapter before I leave on Saturday. Last week, also, was largely taken up with academic schmoozing.


My PhD is part of a larger project, called "Globalisation, Empire & Culture." There are three PhDs-- Sean, James, and myself-- and one post-doc-- Fiona-- in this project, which is headed by Lionel, who is also my direct supervisor. Anyway, the project got a big grant from the Andrew W. Mellon foundation, which has given us a lot more opportunities for travel and reseach than we'd have otherwise. Part of that grant, though, went to funding a workshop/seminar week, where two professors from other universities came to give talks and workshop papers with us. The two profs, Dr. Hilmes and Dr. Putnis, were very cool and immediately insisted on being called Michelle and Peter. The talks and the workshop were very good, but they also took up most of my week.

Of course, another essential part of any academic meetup like this is the food. On Monday, we had an introductory lunch, where we all ate at the nicest campus restaurant. Thursday night, after Michelle's second talk, I got invited to dinner with Peter, Michelle, James, and (James's supervisor) Simon. We went to one of the nicer (and most expensive!) restaurants in Galway. Friday night, after out workshop, all of us went first to a pub for a couple drinks, then to another really nice restaurant, and finally to a fancy hotel bar for a glass of brandy.

Ah, the glamourous life of a graduate student. They don't let us out of the basement often, but we do get out, it's all fancy parties and rich food and brandy.


Ok, back to the Word-document grindstone. (My friend Cooper, who is a math PhD, says "Back to the math mines." But there's really no equivalent for a humanities-literature-theatre-history person, is there? Back to the theatre history mines? Doesn't work so well.)

on beer and music, not in that order (in which our heroine drinks beer she doesn't like)

I didn't post last weekend, did I? Oops. Well, I didn't do much last week. Since getting back from Canada, I have mostly been working a lot. I need to write the first chapter of my thesis by Christmas! Scary! And Lionel wants the first ten-or-so pages by October 23. I spent a year reading and researching, and still I don't feel prepared to actually start writing the thing... eesh...


Other than that-- which really takes up a lot of my time, even though it doesn't make for a very interesting story-- the only 'blog-worthy thing that has happened lately was last night. My friend Jenn called me up and offered me a free ticket to "an outdoor concert" in Galway for Saturday night, somewhere "down at the docks." I had not seen one piece of advertising or heard one word about this, but I agreed, because hey-- free concert! So I went along with Jenn, her boyfriend Brian, and our friend Brianne.

It turns out that the "free concert" was the Coors Light Peak music event. Like I said, I hadn't seen any advertising for this thing, so I had no idea what was going on or what to expect. I kind of vaguely imagined a small crowd and a small platform for a couple performers. It turned out to be a huge extravaganza-- a "music event," as they called it. There were dance bands, and rock bands, and at one point a drum line standing along the walls of the stage area! There was a pretty good-size crowd, as well, with lots of people dancing. The show itself took place by the harbor, with a serious outdoor stage set up. I was surprised by the location of the concert, but the signs all said that they were playing "in the heart of shipyards and ports across 5 cities." (The other cities being Limerick, Cork, Waterford, and Dublin.)

It's actually a pretty genius marketing idea on the part of Coors Light. Get smaller bands that will play for cheap or free, just to get exposure. Play in outdoor areas that don't typically host concerts. Give away free tickets... and then only sell Coors Light to the attendees. The drinks were €5 apiece, which isn't that much more than you'd pay in a pub, but also enough that I'm sure they made a huge profit.

Of course, I don't actually like Coors Light. I bought one, just to have something to sip on during the show, but it tasted like watery pee. Then when I had about 1/3 of the pint left, Brian went and bought us all another round. I appreciated the gesture, but I also didn't want another one! So I finished the first drink quickly, which gave me a stomachache. I never finished the second pint. I'm not a beer snob, really-- I just don't like beer that tastes bad. And I happen to think that most lagers and pilsners, especially the big brands, taste bad. I'll stick with my ales and porters, thank you!

On the Saint Mary's University "Queering Ireland" conference

... and here I am, floating around yet another strange city. Story of my life these days, it seems. I just got in to Ottawa-- my flight from Halifax was so early it bordered on red-eye. The flight was at 06:40am, so I had to leave the hotel at 04:30. And since last night was the final night of the conference, everyone was dragged out to a bar, so I really only got about two hours of sleep. All I want to do now is nap and shower, not necessarily in that order, but the hotel check-in isn't until 3pm. And it's 8:30am right now. They let me stow my suitcase, though, and right now I'm having coffee in the hotel restaurant. I might take a walk around town and get my bearings, maybe do a bit of shopping-- I want a new coat, and I feel like Canada is a good place for coat-buying.


So my combination jetlag-sleep deprivation aside, it's been a fantastic weekend so far. The conference was brilliant, in both the American understanding of the word and the British-Irish colloquial sense. Great papers, great talks, and an overall great group. It was small enough that we were able to really get a dialogue going, and rather than being like lectures the talks ended up being more of a conversation most of the time. A conversation that was continued at the bar in the evening. The whole tone of the thing was very informal and friendly; I originally brought a suit to wear for my talk, but then after seeing that the other conference participants were overwhelmingly in jeans, I went for a much more casual outfit. At first I was rather intimidated, because after all I'm just a lowly unpublished graduate student and maybe 75% of the people at the conference were professors who have books and monographs and journal articles all over the place. But everyone was very friendly and supportive, and there wasn't any distinction made between the Doctors and non-Doctors. So, overall, it was an incredibly positive experience.

I also got to drink some truly excellent dirty martinis and sleep in the most comfortable bed I've ever encountered, so that was pretty nice too. The only regret I have is not really being able to see Halifax-- I got in late Thursday night, spent all day Friday and Saturday at talks, and then left early Sunday morning. What I glimpsed of the town seemed very cool, so I definitely have to come back some day, maybe even for a proper vacation!

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood!

Galway is in the grips of its semiannual week of nice weather right now! This means that it is sunny and in the high 60s-low 70s. Yesterday, I went to the beach with friends Jenn, Bri, and Jason and sat in the sunshine for about four hours. I wore a knee-length skirt and short-sleeved top, while Bri and Jenn actually wore bathing suit tops-- I thought it was too cold for bathing suits, but here you have to take advantage of any teeny bit of sunshine. Today it's supposed to be equally nice, though I have lots of work to do. (Especially since I spent yesterday sitting around the beach.) So, in order to enjoy the nice weather but also work, I am sitting outside a cafe with my laptop and books. It's a good compromise.

So why do I have so much work to do? Because I am going to a conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, this week! Not only am I attending, but I am also presenting a paper. It's a serious, big-deal sort of a conference and I am actually pretty nervous about the whole thing. And after the conference, I am flying to Ottawa to do a couple days of research at the Library and Archives Canada, which is like the Canadian Library of Congress. It's all very exciting... though it's going to be a pretty darn busy week. My itinerary is as follows:

-Wednesday 16 September: I take a bus to Dublin and spend the night at the airport Days Hotel.
-Thursday 17 Sept: I fly to Halifax, Nova Scotia, by way of Newark. (I have a five-hour layover in Newark, which is just annoying. If it were much longer, I could leave and maybe go get a bite to eat in Brooklyn or Manhattan with one of my friends that lives there. But 5 hours is too short to leave, but too long to easily kill with going through Customs and security. Oh well.)
-Friday & Saturday, 18-19 Sept: Conference! Haven't gotten the programs yet, so I don't know what day I'm giving the talk, but it will probably be Saturday afternoon.
-Sunday 20 Sept: I fly from Halifax to Ottawa. I am staying in a hotel in Ottawa, not a hostel, because I honestly didn't want to go on a research trip so soon anyway. Lionel talked me into it, and I decided that having my own room and bathroom would make the prospect much more palatable.
-Monday & Tuesday, 21-22 Sept: Research at the Library & Archives Canada. I'm just going to be sussing out their collection, seeing if they have much that can be of use to me, and making contacts. Then I can decide if I'll need to go back later for more in-depth research. I still don't want to do this right now, but I admit that the nerd in me is excited to see a national archive. My hotel is like five minutes away from the Canadian parliament and supreme court and all that stuff-- basically where I am staying is the Canadian equivalent of Capitol Hill. Neat!
-Wednesday 23 Sept: I fly back to Ireland. I'm getting in to Shannon at 7am on Thursday the 24th, so I should be back to my flat before 10am.


Whew. Just reading that makes me tired... oh well. I'll manage I'm sure. And really, if the biggest complaint I have about my job is that I have to travel too much, things really aren't so bad.

Ok! Back to work!

Jim's visit!

When last we spoke, a radiator had just fallen on my legs. (I still have very colorful bruises! And if I'm lucky I might end up with some scarring on my right ankle.) Since then, things have been considerably more exciting, because my lovely wonderful boyfriend Jim visited me!


Us in Salthill, above Galway Bay. I love this picture, despite my squinty-closed eyes!

Originally, he was only going to stay about four days. Then he made a Big Sale (or something) and his boss gave him the rest of the week off! So he changed his ticket and stayed a full week instead. With the extra time, we talked about going to Dublin or Cork for a day or two. We talked about taking a day tour to the Cliffs of Moher or Connemara. In the end, all we did was wander around Galway, go out to eat, and hang around in my apartment. And it was fabulous. Really, whenever I get to spend quality time with my love, it's a good time. ♥


I would ramble a lot more, but I have a history exam to study for... an exam. This actually really annoys me for a couple reasons. First, I'm a PhD! Ok, yes I took classes this semester, but we're not supposed to be actually evaluated on anything. That's what the PhD thesis is for. And, second, I'm a LITERATURE PhD. We don't take exams, we write papers! I wouldn't mind writing a final paper, I can bang that out in a day if you want. But taking an exam means I have to actually know things, like names and dates and places. As a literature person I'm used to looking up anything I might need to know, and then citing it appropriately. Actually memorizing things is just so foreign to me! Annoying.

Submission accomplished!

That is three copies of a finished Master's Thesis, one hardback and two soft, bound and submitted.

Yeah, it's good to be done. ^_^

Now, I have three weeks until my PhD courses start! Free time? What the hell am I supposed to do with that?

Leabharlann Naísíunta na hEireann

Did I completely forget to post on Sunday? I guess I did! Oops. I slept in, and then watched the Doctor Who series finale. It was 65 minutes long and had some awesome moments, some heartwarming beautiful moments, and some absolutely heartbreakingly sad moments. So there is my excuse. :-P

(I hope you appreciate the fact that I generally keep this 'blog fairly on-topic, regarding my adventures in Ireland. Because I could very easily write nothing but reviews of Doctor Who episodes, with perhaps the occasional Smallville review thrown in there.)


Anyway. Last week, I was in Dublin researching! There is very little to tell, actually-- as my friend Quincy once put it, "my life is very busy, but not very anecdotally rich." I was there from Monday to Thursday, though I didn't get to the Library until Tuesday morning. I spent seven hours at the library on Tuesday, seven hours there on Wednesday, and about three hours there in the morning on Thursday. I would get to the library when it opened at 9:30, after stopping at Butler's for a coffee (and a free chocolate truffle!), and work until lunchtime. I would go get a sandwich at a café somewhere, reading the paper or maybe my notes from the morning, and then go back and work again until dinnertime. All I did was read old books, take notes on them, and think about them. It was great. I really do enjoy just diving in to a pile of literature and seeing what ideas and themes come to the surface. Long and uninteresting story short, I am much closer to having an actual focus for my thesis. I am pretty sure it's going to look at the way the British legal system is represented in Whitbread's dramas. I haven't found anything in the critical literature that really deals with this theme, and I think it's a pretty important one. Exciting stuff! (To me, anyway.)

I met with Lionel this morning-- bumped into him, actually, as I was drinking my traditional cup of coffee outside the library. We talked about my work in the library, I showed him my photocopies and some of my notes, and he was very excited by this idea. I am incredibly lucky, I think, to have an advisor that is so enthusiastic about my work and believes in me so much. Especially since I'll be working with him for the next four or five years!

I related to him my experience, how my library days were the sort where I would spend five hours sitting at a desk before realizing I should probably go eat something. Lionel smiled at me and said "You're going to have to write your parents and tell them 'I've found my vocation. I'm *sigh* an academic!'" I replied, "I think they've been expecting that for a while."

from a sunny Sunday in Galway

You know, even though it is generally a bit annoying to have a washing machine but not a dryer, there is something about the sight of clean sheets hanging on a line in the sunshine and blowing in the wind that makes me feel happy and summery and domestic.


In other news...

This week, I finished the first (draft of the first) chapter of my MA thesis! Yay! It's twenty-two pages long, 5,600 words, and as such is about a quarter of the required length. You know, 20,000 words sounded like a lot, but if I can write 25% of that without doing any original research, I have a feeling it will go by pretty quickly.

Anyway, it's more or less a literature review. I read about nine or ten books that are either directly or indirectly related to my topic and then wrote reviews of them, focusing on how they would be useful to me and pointing out areas where research hasn't been done-- basically, finding blanks for me to fill in.

Now, I can't really do any more for the thesis until I can go to Dublin for research. There are four Whitbread manuscripts at the National Library of Ireland, so I'll need to go there and read them, taking extensive notes. To do that, I will need to either get the money I applied for in my travel bursary or get paid for invigilating, so I can afford to spend five days in Dublin! Nessa gave me train tickets already-- apparently the Centre for Irish Studies has a stack of Galway-Dublin train tickets on hand for students who need to go there for research! So that is €30 saved already, but I still need funding for hostels and food.

It's cool, though, that the school will pay for me to do things like that. I mentioned to my adviser, Dr. Lionel Pilkington, that there are nine more Whitbread manuscripts at the British Library, but that I doubted I could get funding for two weeks in London for a MA project. He said "Well, you'll be doing plenty of that next year!" Awesome.


Oh, and if you like absurdism and dark humor, check out Blackpool. It's a BBC miniseries, with the Doctor David Tennant. I watched the first episode last night and I'm hooked.

a much-belated update

I'm sorry I've been so lazy about updating this recently. I have no real excuse, other than being rather busier than usual, and rather lazier than usual when I'm not busy.

Related to this busy-ness (and business)... I am going to be presenting a paper at an academic conference! It's the Postgraduate Irish Studies Symposium at Bath Spa University in Bath, England, on 25 April. It isn't a huge important conference or anything-- just grad students. And the paper presentation can only be 20 minutes, which is hardly anything. (That's about a 7 or 8 page paper.) I'm still very excited, though. It's a great opportunity to get some exposure to the academic world and get some speaking practice in a rather informal environment. I'm going to present a short introduction to my MA thesis work... which means I have to write a short introduction to my MA thesis work. >_< This came up rather suddenly, it's true, and is kind of nerve-wracking. My English final is due 21 April, and my History final is supposed to be due 25 April... but Nessa, the program coordinator for my MA offered me an extension on the History essay. I guess they want to make sure I don't embarrass NUI Galway with a bad paper. :-P

The other fun part about the conference is that it's all-expenses paid by the university. They are paying for my flight, my hotel, and giving me a per diem for food and pocket money! Two other girls from the MA are going-- Katie is also presenting a paper, and Grace is going along just to see the conference and for moral support. One of the PhDs is going as well, with a paper, I believe. So, I basically get a free weekend in England, and I get to present a paper at an academic conference. There really is no downside-- I've never been to England!


Other exciting news...

Last weekend, my parents visited! They got here on Friday 4 April and left early on Monday 7 April, when they proceeded on to Greece and spent the week in Corfu. I am very jealous. They just got back last night from their week-long adventure-- mom called me today and filled me in on their trip. It was wonderful having them visit, even for just a few days. We explored Galway a bit, shopped in the street market, had pints and listened to trad at The Crane, went to the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren, and ate a lot of seafood chowder and oysters. (Yum.)


These next two weeks are going to be very, very busy for me. I have papers to write, and a lot of research to do for them. I'm moving soon, by the first week of May most likely (to a gorgeous apartment across the street from the Cathedral.) Such is the life of a grad student!