Whence the sadness??

Well I don’t know how many of you have seen the Doctor Who finale that I referred to in my previous post, but I thought I’d elaborate on my rather terse posting. (Yeah spoilers ahead, also not a great amount of detail for people unfamiliar with the show, sorry!). Like most interesting parts of the Doctor Who series, the nature of different incarnations of characters and issues of time make it a real challenge to talk about this episode in a clear way, but I will try. (BTW, there are a few areas that would make great linguistics lessons about the nature of reference and referents.)

First off Rose gets the Doctor (actually, a Doctor, BTW a great example to use to show the difference between definite and indefinite determiners in English). Yup, that made me sad. Rose doesn’t get him (the Doctor) but she gets as close an approximation as she can. But she knows it is not the Doctor. The (second) Doctor also knows he isn’t (the Dr) W/who Rose wants, so he probably realizes that something is ‘lacking’. However, they kiss pretty passionately, so not the major source of sadness. The look on the (real) Doctor’s face as he gives Rose away is what started to do me in. Since he is a Time Lord, he can not give himself to Rose, but he could give Rose to himself, that is, the second Doctor. (whew! a great exercise on odd use of reflexive pronouns!)

Then there is Donna. The creation of the (second) Doctor was her act in the Tardis; she creates a half-human Doctor and in the process, she becomes half-Time Lord. Well, a human mind can not contain even half a Time Lord consciousness; she would die. So the Doctor does the only thing he can to save her; he wipes her memory of the time with him and returns her to her mother and grandfather . He tells them that she can never be reminded of her time with him, as she would die.

When Donna awakes, she is back to her pre-Doctor self; annoying, shallow, self-centered. She does not recognize the Doctor as he leaves her mother’s house. (This alone was an amazing piece of acting on Catherine Tate’s part IMNSHO; when she sees him she reacts as if he is a stranger, and in her selfish pre-Doctor way, he is pretty much beneath notice; boy that was tough to watch.) The Doctor then walks, alone, back to the Tardis.

All over the interweb folks have posted their love or hate of this episode. I don’t care about the details of adherence to the Doctor Who canon (yeah there are people who are really serious from that perspective) I am more concerned with the emotions that the episode elicited.

I am pulled between being more affected by how the Doctor ends up and how Donna ends up. Yes the Doctor is a Time Lord, destined to not be attached, etc etc, but losing two of his companions at the same time (including one to himself!) was particularly painful to watch. The ‘loss’ of Donna as a companion was very powerful. This two-part episode had the Doctor reunited with a few former companions; the joy on his face as he was with them all was beautiful. Given Donna’s condition, he can never be reunited with her (yeah I know, anything can happen, but…). Part of the joy of the Doctor’s reunion with former companions is recalling the past adventures; not an option with Donna. He is left, alone, with those memories; he can share them with no one as no one will ever understand, save the inaccessible Donna.

As for Donna…oy! The most amazing part of her life is wiped away from her memory (and therefore she goes back to her pre-Doctor persona). Her family and the Doctor know what she became, but that is not a part of her world now. Whilst Donna has no memory of who she was, and there for is not really suffering a loss, it is incredibly sad to me that her life-changing memories are wiped away. As one does, I put myself in both their shoes, the Doctor’s and Donna’s. I can relate to the loneliness (albeit self-imposed at times) of the Doctor; but I also understand some of the freedom it brings. It is harder to do the thought experiment with what happened to Donna. Imagining what I would be like if certain life-changing experiences were wiped from my mind is pretty impossible (maybe they already have been, but I won’t go there…). There are some key times in my life that turned left instead of right (like Donna did in an earlier episode, that led to her meeting the Doctor). If those times were gone, I would be a different person, perhaps better, perhaps worse, but not who I am now.

It makes me wonder what decisions about turning left or right await me…

Dr Who finale...

All I can say is ...

Wow. I feel sad in many complicated ways ...

Heinz banned advert

I caught the end of this advert last week on TV here. I thought I mis-remembered it, I LOVED the ending and wanted to see the whole thing. I looked on the web and couldn't find it. Well, the comment to my previous post (thanks Jim!) had a link to the ad and it made my day...until I found out that Heinz pulled the ad after a whopping 200 people complained. They said, 'We listen to our customers.' Feel free to send them another message they can listen to.

The ad is here. The story about the pulling of the ad is here; the video of the ad is there as well.

Bah :(

People, places and things

Note: This post contains an excessive use of parentheses (like this); don't know why, it was only way to express what I was attempting to communicate. Apologies to the punctuation-sensitive.


I am the type of person who can generally remember my dreams. Not with a lot of detail necessarily, but I have a good recall of most dreams upon waking, most days. Because of this, I am sensitive to patterns in my dreams; most patterns (if they exist) I assume are subtle, so I probably fail to see them. That is, until recently.

I have had a bunch of dreams (I mean more than 10) recently (in about the last week or so) that are very much about where I am (in the dream) and where I am trying to get to, again, in the dream. Sometimes, I am in the US (but not in a familiar place, like a place I have lived) trying to get 'back' to 'Europe' (both in quotes because very undefined in the dream). Other times I have been transported to, or end up in, 'another place' and am trying to get back to 'home' (again, both undefined'). Sometimes, the destination I am aiming for is an amalgam of Boston and England and a bunch of other places I have been; other times, not. (Yeah, yeah, I am attempting to create my own sense of place: A 'room' of one's own indeed; now I am afraid of Virginia Woolf.) However, the dreams seem to be very much about the process of the finding, not the actually getting to the destination. While I have been trying to think about this in my waking hours, it seems I lot of my brain is using dream-time to play out these issues.


While these dreams are not scary in and of themselves, they leave me with a very unsettled feeling, most notably when I first wake up and try to figure out where I am (especially given the number of places I have stayed in during the last 3 months...). Perhaps the idea that I will be back in Boston in about 6 weeks and I will be sorting out my place there and probably leaving my last official residence in the US has got me (or my subconscious) thinking about place. Also, since my move here was very quick, my sense of who I am and where I am (personally, professionally, in relation to myself, in relation to new and older people in my life, etc etc etc) is still incredibly in flux, it is not surprising that stuff gets played out in dream-land. I only hope I find a balance between doing this in waking hours and having it take away from my much needed sleep.


I will be trying pay attention to these dreams going forward, however, they are very draining. I wake up and spend a good 15 minutes trying to sort out what the most recent dreams were. That in and of itself is a lot of mental work.



More as things progress...

Holland stuff

Hello!

As I said in my previous post I was in Holland. It was a great experience both personally and professionally. I reconnected with a few colleagues I had not seen in a long time, did (if I may say so myself) some of my best interpreting work in a long time and was treated to fabulous food and hospitality.

Some general notes. You know that myth about The Netherlands being full of people on bicycles? No myth, my friend; bikes are EVERYWHERE! Streets are designed with dedicated lanes and it really makes for a cool sight, many more people walking and biking in most areas than driving. (You can see a bunch of bikes in one of the pictures below...that is a small collection of bikes compared to some of the bike parking lots we saw!)

I landed on Wednesday afternoon in Amsterdam, went to the town of Den Bosch (home of the aforementioned yummy dessert!) by train and met with some people from the conference I would be working. We were treated to a fabulous meal by our host. The weather was perfect so we ate outside. The wonderful company and food and location made it a great first experience in The Netherlands. It was the time of year for fresh asparagus so I had an amazing piece of salmon with white asparagus in a dill sauce. Afterward we had our yummy dessert!

On Thursday we went (again by train) to Eindhoven where the conference took place. The conference was great, and the language issues fun to work out. I was interpreting ASL<->English. There were spoken Dutch<-> English interpreters as well as Dutch Sign Language Interpreters. Boy that was fun! :) After it was all over back on the train to Den Bosch where we ate at the fabulous Brasserie Méprise.

Friday, in the morning, walked around Den Bosch and then was treated to a whirlwind tour of a a few places including an assisted living facility/nursing home/elderly residence for Deaf people. A beautiful place designed with visual communication as the driving force behind the architecture. Also got to meet some very lovely elderly Deaf Dutch people (including our host's mother who is in her 90's and barely looks 70!). We then went to the Rotterdam Deaf club and afterward I caught the train back to the hotel airport and flew home on Saturday morning, tired but feeling really lucky about the life I have!

Here are a bunch of pictures (click for full size):

Here is the train station with the full name of the town (see why everyone calls it Den Bosch!?!)

Here is one of the smaller bike congregation areas:

A lot of the architecture (and design as well) juxtaposed the old and the new in interesting ways that I really liked.

I love the headless statue with headless mannequins (note the bicycle!)

Some canal pictures:






The Dutch are egalitarian when it comes to porn; no segregation here!

I love the name of this store:


Oh, look, it's a statue just stuck here in the middle of a back street!


Oh, it's a fountain, how cute!!!


Oh, look, um, oh my, what a big boy you are...

Great Balls of Yumminess

Oh get your mind out of the gutter!

I was in The Netherlands last week for work. I’ll post more later, but I wanted to post some VERY important information. If you find yourself anywhere near the Netherlands this is vital information.

I was staying in a city called 's-Hertogenbosch (yes you read that correctly – it means ‘The Duke’s Forest’). It is called Den Bosch by most everyone. It has a few claims to fame (besides its name). First, it is the birthplace of the painter, Hieronymus Bosch. More importantly (to me at least!) is that it is famous for a particular dessert, Bossche Bollen, The are giant (think softball sized!) spheres of choux pastry (think the stuff used for éclairs and profiteroles) filled with amazing whipped cream and covered in chocolate. Yummy? Oh.MY.God. The pictures do not do them justice! (I assume that the reason people in The Netherlands stay so trim in spite of these delicious treats is all that bicycling!)

As usual, click the picture for a larger version.

These two taken with my mobile phone so not great quality. But just imagine...



The Bollen in the window of the bakery in Den Bosch (Jan de Groot - FYI, linked page is in Dutch):


One of the people who I met got us Bollen from his local bakery (in a nearby town):

Good Day, Sunshine...

(Click on pic for readable version.)

This chart compares Preston and Boston in terms of sunrise/sunset times as well as total hours of sunlight. Note both the times as well as the total hours of sunlight!! (Ok, sure it is often grey here, but light grey!!)