kaberett: Yellow gingko leaf against teal background (gingko)
First and always: Cambridge. Cambridge, which I've seen through enough different eyes -- town and gown, resident and caretaker, political and utterly independent of any given inhabitants -- Cambridge, which had me for two decades and change, and has me still. My parental home is a 1960s newbuild semi in Arbury; my college contains an archway that predates its foundation in 1350, that's had chunks carved out of the limestone by bicycle pedals over the last hundred-odd years. I've laughed, fondly and otherwise, at the new undergraduates with their shiny new college scarves and no idea how to cycle; I've dodged punt touts and helped my baby brother pass his hiring test to be a punt chauffeur; I've rummaged through the stacks in the University Library and put up and repainted street-signs. I know where the permanent graffiti is and I remember some that's been and gone; I've delivered leaflets at 6am on election morning and I've observed the counting of votes and I've walked across town at four in the morning from the Guildhall (where the outcome was known) to a common room (where people were glued to the news); I've walked across town at two in the morning (Homerton to Trinity Hall) very solemn and slightly wobbly with a viola; I've leaned my forehead against stone and felt where it's come from and been reassured by its solid indifferent presence; I've punted to Grantchester and back and eaten strawberries in the meadows in the sunshine. I've lost and found and found and lost religion and confidence and friends and trust and love. Cambridge is mine, or I am Cambridge's, and so it shall be forever, amen.

Zürich was next. I spent a summer soaking up sunshine, glancing up from my commuter paper to see the Alps crowned with glaciers as we crossed the river, looking out the window on my way to tearing down the stairs from the eighth floor to see the turtles and the fish in the pond way below. There are fields opposite the Spital Limattal -- apple orchards up the hill, but immediately opposite - by the bus stop - pick-your-own flowers and an honesty box. I found cafes and restaurants and friends and I learned a whole new language and I lived by myself absent a support network for the first time, and I explored and I fell in love with museums and was baffled by art and I swam in the lake and learned to like blue cheese on a Roman customs point in the rain overlooking a river with P. I miss pear bread most of all.

I didn't learn how to love LA. Mostly I got as far as baffled affection: for the sky that only ever got as dark as a glowing orange-purple, that turned opaque blanket of smog when you drove high enough into the mountains to see the stars, that left my lungs a wreck for six months; the fantastic street art and terrible public transport; the storm drains and dry river; the jacarandas and the humming birds. My experience of LA is less that, more a haze of heat & food & Caltech campus, with a dream-sequence weekend-long road trip up to the Bay Area somewhere in the middle.

And, of course, London. London, and its river-that-is-a-dragon. I would (as I thought) have hated moving here when I was 18; now I find myself delighting in how joyfully small it makes me, in exactly the same way I am small when I look at the stars or (closer to home) the Moon. I don't belong here but the river-dragon will let me stay a while, and so for now I will fling myself into proms and parks and concerts and gigs and museums and the poetry library; I will stand breathless with delight on the bridge at Embankment or at St Paul's; I will be a mirror for this city and the city shall be a mirror for me, and I will learn more about how people work and more about how I work and I will adore its trees and mysterious statuary and, most of all, I will learn.

(Honourable mentions go to Oxford and to Edinburgh, neither of which I understand, in part because of how intensely my experiences of them are bound up with how I relate to the people I love who relate to these cities; to my patchwork understanding of Heidelberg, all castle and computational linguistics and music and cheap beer by the river; to Rome; and to Paris, and in particular the sunrise walk between Gare de l'Est and Gare du Nord, and a toast to fifth-floor balconies and wine, and croissants by the Seine at dawn.)

fuck. yes.

Sep. 3rd, 2014 03:41 am
kaberett: Grinning emoticon. (:D)
my hands and shoulders hate me - as well they might, I spent most of yesterday pipetting and a startling amount of today typing - but I have DONE THE THINGS. Or at least first drafts of the things. And I think I found something out earlier this week at around this time of the morning. And I have an alarm going off in four hours in order to get the next batch of chemistry done so I can keel over without feeling guilty tomorrow evening (seriously if I am not in bed by 8pm local PLEASE shout at me) before, um, Thursday + Friday on the mass spec. (which if I feel proper rotten tomorrow morning I will convert to friday+saturday, saturday's currently free, so I can do that no penalties).

i am the human being of only-wanting-to-set-CHX-on-fire-about-twice, probably-has-an-appointment-before-2015, holy-crap-the-wait-for-phlebotomy-was-preposterous.

BUT. I have lunch ready to go for tomorrow, i have washed my water bottle so it's usable, I should... really put my wheels on to charge, wow, no way am I walking anywhere worth a damn tomorrow, I can still write terrible code when half-asleep, I've tamed the work inbox to some degree, head of group apparently likes the short piece of writing I have done on thallium+lead=bffs???, and I have SENT OFF A FIRST DRAFT OF THE POSTER. Which, er, I need to print on Monday. did I mention my supervisor's on a boat somewhere off the coast of Taiwan working 12-hour shifts with fuck-all internet? yeaaaaaaaaaaaah. did I also mention I was supposed to have this two her by the 21st of August? yeah, well, medication happened, it was a bit shit, this is kind of why I'm thinking about going part-time. on the upside, I wasn't supposed to have the lead+thallium doc to her til the 11th, but that's already happened...

... and it was sunny and I ate fantastic food with [personal profile] sebastienne and geeked gender and reading and brains and life goals and fanfic and shit and it was pretty awesome, and i made pasta bake for dinner, and I should really do the washing up again one of these weeks before my housemate entirely justifiedly stream-of-consciousness glib metaphorical murder??? ) (either my s key' gone very sticky or my hands are even more fucked than i thought) (wrist braces + antiinflammatory gel tonight OH my) and I read a bunch of tiny bit of fiction by queer PoC so that was pretty awesome

and i have taken bedmeds and, via hand-care, SLEEP.

ps i still really like Scribus

also feel free to place bets on how long it takes me to disappear into avoidance and pretending i don't have a work e-mail address again
kaberett: a patch of sunlight on the carpet, shaped like a slightly wonky heart (light hearted)
Thank you so much for letting me play with your ideas. Mass spec time largely done now - data! - but if you still wanna leave something please by all means do and I'll try to get to it. <3

Poetry
Ficlets
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kaberett: Yellow gingko leaf against teal background (gingko)
This may, at first, appear to be a story about elephants; pray do not be alarmed.

The reason for this is that my aunt is a spinner and a knitter. In my grandparents' house upon a hill in Bath, on the tiny single bed in the tiny room overlooking the garden, that used to be my aunt's and is now my grandfather's study; from which one can see the blackcurrant bushes and hot air balloons; is a knitted elephant, about the size of a child's torso, all in yellow.

This elephant is named Custard, and as is the way with elephants, he is much, much older than I.

My favourite thing about him was not that he was just right to hug, nor even his ears, but the stories my father would tell me (or tell us): about Custard and his friend the yellow dragon Ogwurt: ogwurt being, of course, our childish mispronunciation of yoghurt.

Or, rather, the stories he would tell us about Ogwurt And Custard, because that is how we referred to them and that is how we would ask for them.

They involved jungles and snakes and Ogwurt flying above the trees following Custard's passage by the trembling of the leaves. They were adventure and communication and more-or-less the only time my father ever told us bedtime stories.

This perhaps goes some way towards explaining my abiding conviction that dragons - especially if they are yellow - are friendly and kind and a little bit inept; and why stories with dragons in feel rather like an unexpected and bittersweet homecoming.
kaberett: Toph making a rock angel (toph-rockangel)
Korra starts on the 13th! That's less than two weeks away! Elementary starts on the 26th! By which time I will hopefully have moved house, my very word!

Blanket fort! Squee!! Entirely too many exclamation marks!!!

What are you excited about!

(Please no spoilers. Anything not in the Korra 2 trailer counts as a spoiler for me. But I don't really care about anything except those two shows. Well, that's a lie, I do care about some things, but not in ways that are likely to be an issue for spoilers in comments.)
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
The Temeraire series is going to be entirely responsible if I fail my degree. It's the Napoleonic wars, right, only with an air force.

Made of dragons.

In which (some) women are treated as people.

I'm also mainlining Dianna Wynne Jones at the moment, but, er, from my point of view, NAPOLEONIC WARS. With DRAGONS. No contest.


For the first time in ages I am desperate to write fanfic: in particular I'd like to play with the Cambridge scientists mentioned as Doing Science on the dragons. No idea where to take it beyond that sketch outline, though, or really how to turn it into a story. But any fic recs will be gratefully received...

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kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
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