Some places defy expectations. Providence is not one of them. It is, as you might think, a comfortable corner of the world replete with beautiful brick buildings, a pretty river and lots and lots of students… at least in the immediate vicinity of the Rhode Island School of Design and Brown, where Randi and I were very kindly hosted by Rachel last weekend. (And some of the students are, y’know, those kind of students. I walked past one woman explaining to her friend how she’d ‘problematised’ something, which is still my most hated academic tic of all time. Please, please stop problematising things.)
So it was that we had a relaxing Rhode Island weekend in ‘mostly sunny’ Providence: eating lots of things with lobster inside, taking a boat tour up and down the river (on which we made up 50% of the tour’s audience) and celebrating Rachel’s completed thesis with sangria. Congrats!
Providence, Rhode Island. Categorically not an island, but at least there’s a river.
My arty bridge shot
My arty ‘need a haircut’ shot
Students!
Somewhat smug police cars
Randi & Rachel (plus sangria)
Oh, and we also saw Zootopia, which was… astonishing. Forget the trailer I’d seen beforehand, which is ludicrously unrepresentative, and marvel that Disney have sneaked out a full-throated social commentary on bias and prejudice… all while being legitimately funny the whole way through. I don’t know how to describe it without making it sound po-faced and terrible, actually, so ignore me and just go see it yourself. If nothing else, as I watched the credits roll it became hilariously clear what a giant cultural gulf divides the country: Zootopia‘s ‘Mammal Inclusion Initiative’ on the one side, Donald Trump on the other.
(Exhibit #2: outside Planned Parenthood in Providence stands one lonely protestor, silently holding aloft his ABORTION KILLS placard. I wonder what he’d make of it all.)
I really did want to end this blog with lavish, heartfelt praise for poor unloved Amtrak, because my train from Boston to Providence really was fast, comfortable and cheap. Unfortunately, my train on the way back was delayed, so with a heavy heart I ended up bailing on my return journey and taking a $60 Uber to ensure I didn’t miss my flight. Which is sad, because it yanked me prematurely out of my Northeastern fantasy of a railway-loving America. Maybe Disney could do trains next.
Do you want more ability for complex thought? Would it be nice to be able to express feelings through talking? How about a stronger sense of right and wrong?
If any of the above appeals to you, you might want to consider turning twelve, as this blog did yesterday. Happy birthday blog! And thank you to those who came to its low-key pizza-and-wine birthday party last night 😉
I don’t have a photo of my non-corporeal blog celebrating, so have my twelfth birthday instead
The future is not all plain sailing, however. Expect ‘more moodiness’, ‘less affection towards parents’ and even ‘sadness and depression’. So if you’ve been reading this blog since the beginning, you might want to sit out the next couple of years until it comes out the other side of adolescence.
When I first started working, our company was expanding so rapidly that we were constantly being reshuffled around the London office more quickly than they could knock down the many walls in the way. One day, during my team’s spell in a particularly featureless back room otherwise untroubled by fellow humans, a cheerful young man named Sam knocked on the door and introduced himself. He was a new starter in a different department, but he just thought it would be nice to say hello and meet us in person. So I always liked Sam, and was particularly excited when he finally visited Chicago last weekend. Our initial plan was for Chicago-style pizza, but Randi made a face, so we upgraded to the legendary burgers from Kuma’s instead, and everyone was very happy indeed.
Excited to eat
Spacey McSpaceface
Later in the week, Randi and I made a return trip to the Adler Planetarium’s ‘After Dark’ nights, and this time it was Beatles themed! (Indeed, at the end of the night I had to disappoint one drunken man that I was not, in fact, the drummer from the tribute Beatles band who played. Although I was somewhat flattered, since the drummer looked about 12.)
Together with James, our biggest achievement that night was the construction of Spacey McSpaceface: an inspirational craft capable of protecting the integrity of a marshmallow astronaut in the depths of a vacuum box. More or less. (Dear Mr. Kanj: I’m sorry that we had to ask the helpers whether we should be fearing explosion or implosion.)
(I got a little paranoid the flag was upside down, but it wasn’t)
Finally: Randi and I kicked off this weekend with delicious southern-style chicken (plus punch… punch is usually welcomed) with Saujanya and Nolan. Apparently this didn’t exhaust Nolan’s tolerance for us, because the next day he joined us at Todd and Carolyn’s to watch me watching Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark for the very first time. For years I’ve been going around telling people I’d never seen Indiana Jones in the hope that they would show it to me, and Todd finally took the bait, for which I’m very grateful. Now, onto the next one soon…?
I’m stretching out, shoeless, on a sofa at the back of a fancy coffee shop. You know the place: the furniture is deliberately unmatched, there’s a chalkboard in the loo and the lamp to my right is inexplicably made out of cork. Aside from the two women to my left, who are thoughtfully conducting their conversation at a volume loud enough not to exclude anyone in the room, most people are quiet as they sit concentrating over glowing MacBooks. So as I guzzle down my unnaturally tall cup of English Breakfast tea (what will it take to stop people pouring the water in first?) this feels like an appropriate venue to confess that after years of merry isolationism, I’ve finally jumped ship and bought myself an iPhone.
You can only hold out against the tide for so long.
Aside from this development it’s been a quiet couple of weeks, with much binging on niche British documentaries (I, for one, am now a lot better informed about the inner workings of the Crown Prosecution Service) as we waited for some variant of either spring or summer (not fussy) to arrive. Two weekends ago, I saw Mai Dang Lao, directed by one Marti Lyons and set during the overnight shift at a 24/7 fast food drive through. (Did you know that over 70% of US fast food revenue comes from drive throughs? No one else seems surprised by this fact, but if that sounds like the kind of number you want to have in your head, may I recommend The Rise and Fall of American Growth which I’ve just finished ploughing through.) Anyway, the play goes down a darkened Zimbardo-esque path of “what will people do once empowered to do it?” while remaining pretty funny – it got a little self-aware for me at points, but enjoyable nonetheless.
Randi’s mum has also been in town quite a bit, so we’ve had several good dinners out together, and we’ve also managed to catch-up with gone-but-never-forgotten Lauri after work one evening with Todd. Making belated use of a Christmas gift from Robert, Randi and I also dined at La Scarola, a place which always shows me a quite ridiculous (but very welcome) favouritism. The couple ahead of us were quoted a two-hour wait, but after spotting me, we were waved through to a table within five minutes. I wish I knew what has ever qualified me for this treatment, because then maybe I could replicate it elsewhere. (For the record, though, La Scarola is always delicious.)
Finally, last night we saw The Deltones at iO with Karol, which I’ve had on my list for a long time. One of iO’s regular shows, this is a completely improvised musical, and it’s predictably hilarious. Last night’s topic was EDM. Also very good was the regular improv warm-up act, Smokin’ Hot Dad, and I clearly need to do a better job of hustling for more visitors to Chicago so I can find more excuses to go.
Back in January, I was having lunch with Ellen at work and explained my Iceland dilemma: my family had snagged a package deal for a long Easter weekend trip, and I was deciding whether to join them. Her “you’re an idiot, why is this even a question?” face was telling, so I did. Great decision.
Welcome to Reykjavik
I arrived on Saturday morning, joining Randi in our AirBnB after she had already spent a couple of days touring, riding horses and befriending our host’s cat. (Once again, my heart beats for AirBnB and the quirky, joyful extra dimension it adds to travelling.) Notwithstanding my foolish lack of sleep on the overnight flight, we set off on a two hour walking tour of Reykjavik with a great guide who came armed with a fiercely dry sense of humour.
Now Reykjavik is not a big place, and strictly speaking, you don’t really need two hours to walk around it and take in the sights. Indeed, the recent tourism boom seems to have taken Iceland a little by surprise, and so to fill the void of major sightseeing spots our guide turned to such topics as the country’s school system, tax rates and parental leave policies. Don’t get me wrong, these things were right up my street, but given the wind I would have appreciated it just as much indoors.
After meeting up with my family, we headed to one of Reykjavik’s many outdoor public pools for an authentic Icelandic bathe. (Not to mention an authentic Icelandic forced naked shower beforehand: this is not the Anglo-American way.) I loved these baths, and wish very hard that some geothermal heating might hit Chicago in the near future.
Finally, that night we headed out on a coach trip hunting the Northern Lights, which were soon located! We soon discovered that fancy cameras are much better at capturing their colours than feeble human eyes: I saw mostly white shimmers across the sky, but will allow photographs to falsify my memory after the fact.
Northern Lights
Misbehaving on the coach
Sunday was our big Golden Circle excursion day, and our guide Siggi drove us around in a monster jeep which – as he cheerfully informed us – was the product of a Frankenstein melding of two smaller vehicles. But it proved more than capable of bouncing through the snow and ice while we visited the Gullfoss waterfall, exploding geysers, a field of super-friendly horses and the border between the American and Eurasian continental plates. But the absolute highlight of the trip was the snowmobiling session! After first letting Katie prove out the theory that you don’t actually need to know how to drive a car in order to master a snowmobile, Randi promoted me from passenger to driver on ours, and I’m pleased to report that no injuries were sustained.
Casual family gathering
Can’t drive a car; can totally drive a snowmobile
Remember the SkiFree monster? Here it is.
We decided to wait downstream of the exploding geyser
Katie summons the horses
After a French farewell dinner with the family on Sunday night, Randi and I tried out another public pool on Monday morning and took a final walk by the ocean before heading home. There’s a definite atmosphere of quiet, Nordic utilitarianism to the city, and walking around made me think sympathetically on Hillary Clinton’s famous “we’re not Denmark” line. Not that we don’t have much to learn from Denmark, or Iceland, but you can’t just transplant a culture from an island of 320,000 people and hope that it sticks.
Still, this was definitely an Easter weekend to remember, and served up some unforgettable landscapes. Come join the Icelandic tourist boom now before they get fed up of us all invading their country!
The Sun Voyager
Beth E . Dubowe-Lawrence on China, Part 3: Chongqing & Chengdu: “Again an awesome adventure to share this with you” Apr 21, 19:13
