Equivalences

France: where a respectable bottle of wine costs as much as a soda from a vending machine.

What a country!

Bank Account

Things that are harder than opening a French bank account:

• Listening to Metal Machine Music on headphones


• The Decathalon


• The Labors of Hercules


• Outrunning a tortoise after you've given it about a 100m headstart


• Poaching eggs (I've never had any luck)


• Lemmy from Motörhead

Seriously French Bank, can I please just give you my money? Is this really so difficult? *Sigh*

At least I should have my bank card next week, which will be a relief. Though I do find it funny that it's much easier to get access to a document from the fourteenth century than it is to deposit stuff somewhere right now.

Amusing

Best graffito seen so far, on walls of Bibliothèque Cujas's bathroom:

"Call me Duguit"

That's some high quality nerdage right there.

Candidacy!

So, at long last, I have advanced to Ph.D. candidacy. I presented my proposal yesterday - with two of my committee members videoconferencing in, no less - and it was accepted. I can now add Ph.D. candidate to my email signature. Woo!

It's been a long process. Whenever people ask me how long I'll be in grad school, I usually respond with something along the lines of, "about five to infinity years." At this point, I'm around halfway done-ish with that, as it were. Though one of the weird twists of grad school is that only now do I really get to begin working on my own stuff. I'm definitely excited about this, though. On Monday, I'm going to start digging through some trial records. Hopefully, juicy stuff will follow therefrom. Assuming I can piece together the logic of things.

Anyway, I'm glad to have made it this far and am looking forward to the rest. Especially since a lot of it will be in France!

And that's at least one post that didn't focus on food.

Arrival

Touched down in France. So far, I've had two bottles of wine, as well as a spinach and goat cheese tart. Going to be a good year.

And now to see if that baguette from the local bakery is any good.

Not My Finest Moment

Re-appropriating toilet paper from the library. But I'm leaving so soon, it makes sense! Seriously.

Cricket

It's been a pretty eventful summer. I've been cooking a bunch - lots of pizza, Moroccan ratatouille, and so on, lovingly documented in tedious detail on my Flickr group. Carolyn and I went up to Madison - jealousy inducing, as always - to see the Decemberists. Not exactly an undiscovered talent, I know, but it was my first time seeing them live. And it turned out to be a great concert. In a funny way, Colin Meloy is a total rockstar, albeit one who saunters onstage with suspenders and a wine glass. Oh and also I'm just about finished with that curious little beast called the dissertation proposal.

But above all, what I've been doing this summer is playing cricket. It just so happens that there's a healthy concentration of cricket enthusiasts in town, and we've been playing a couple times a week. Followed by beer at the Pub (the campus bar is actually styled like an English pub, one of the few wise entertainment decisions the university has ever made), this makes for good times.

In truth, it's a little odd that I enjoy cricket so much. I never liked, and never played, baseball much. But for whatever reason, cricket totally rules. The first few times I played, I had pretty much no idea what the hell was going on, leaving me feeling a little bit like I was in some live-action version of Worker & Parasite. I eventually caught on though. I still can't bowl (pitch, i.e.) to save my life, but I am getting better at batting. It's a lot of fun, even if the cricket lexicon sometimes sounds like an excerpt from Finnegan's Wake.

Anyway, here's a bit about some all-time greats at cricket. It can be pretty tough to figure out what makes these guys any good without knowing anything about the sport. But believe me, these guys are really, really good.

Youtube doesn't have a lot of good stuff on Don Bradman, but he's a Babe Ruth-level legendary figure. He averaged 99.94 runs in Test matches, which is sort of like Wilt Chamberlain averaging 50.4 points per game in 1961-'62, except over a career.

Sachin Tendulkar. I have no idea how he slams these sixes so well:



Bit of bowling to mix it up, so here's Shane Warne. The way he can control the spin on the ball is pretty amazing. Disregard ridiculous haircut:



Viv Richards. This guy is a pretty unbelievable badass:



I do want to watch it - ideally over a pint of Newcastle - when I get the chance. Sadly, I haven't been able to catch any of The Ashes. But I'll be watching for the 2011 World Cup!