Finally a New Post, Subtitle: Why I will no longer be traveling where I cannot drive.

Hey Everyone, and Sorry Everyone,

I have been bad about posting since christmas/coming back to school. I think my reticence was mostly due to the seemingly herculean task of explaining the absolute awfulness that was trying to get home in time for christmas. Now, at first glance this would seem pretty simple to explain, after all I had a ticket to get back in August (maybe July) so you would think, get on a plane would just about describe my journeys. However, this was not the case. Now, if you don't know my dad had knee surgery right around Thanksgiving (he is doing really well now), but leading up to Christmas mom asked me if I might want to try and come home early, if the change wasn't too expensive so that I could help out a little more. I said sure, since my original ticket was a week after my finals were over, and 6 days or so after my last choir duties. So mom said she would give Dell a call. Several hours go by, and then I get another call from my mom, I am now leaving Edinburgh on the 19th (original flight was on the 21st) and arriving in Cleveland on the 20th, after staying overnight in Amsterdam. I asked my mom if this was really worth the changing fee, and then she began to tell me about what would only be the beginning of my ridiculousness.

She told me that she had been trying to reschedule me ~4 days earlier, but they were having trouble finding a flight. When they finally did, they went to schedule all the legs, but halfway through found that the flight to from Paris to New York (Cleveland?) no longer had an opening. Fine, mom says just leave him on the original flight. This is followed by silence then an "Oh." by the Dell representative on the end of the line. Apparently, while they had been rescheduling my flight they had `lost' my other flight. Now, how this is even possible I don't know, but as you have probably guessed my mom was not going to let this stand so she said you will reschedule him to be home on or before the original date, for no charge. This seemed reasonable, and after messing around for a bit, they finally found the ticket mentioned above. So everything was fine right, still coming home early, albeit only a bit early, and the change was free. Sadly, that was not the end of things.

On the 19th I headed off to the airport, with very little money and no cell phone, because I knew it would only work for the couple hours that I was at the airport here. When I arrived at the airport and scanned my passport, no itinerary came up, but this didn't seem to out of the ordinary. Afterall, my passport had been through the washing machine once (in college, a story for another day) so it didn't always work. I stepped up to the desk, and after talking to the women found out that the only ticket they had me scheduled for was on the 21st. Hm. So I went over to the help desk and found out that since this was a Delta scheduled flight and there was no Delta desk at the airport, I would have to call their international office, and they would deal with it. Great. For those of you that don't know the 19th was the day that the entire east coast of the States was being slammed by blizzards. I didn't know this at the time, but attempted to call after looking up the Delta number on the internet (the help desk didn't have it?!) and proceeded to sit on hold for 45 minutes to a women who told me I `hadn't paid for my ticket' and then finally said she would transfer me, at which point I was disconnected. At this point I was getting a little worried as my flight was leaving in about an hour, and I assumed that if this was gonna be resolved it would have to be resolved quickly.

I decided to call home on a payphone just to figure out what to do. Well mom, promptly called Delta and was put on hold, while I sat on this payphone, worrying. After a bit I switched to the pay computer (it was a bit cheaper, and I could call when I heard something/try to get stuff done on the computer). About an hour later I hear from Em who thankfully was already home, that mom had been disconnected and just left the house headed to the Cleveland airport. She arrived and after another hour and a half (by which time I had given up on the airport, since there were no more flights that day), had arrived at a new solution. I was going to be leaving on the 21st and arriving in Cleveland on the 22nd after staying overnight in Paris. The new itinerary was EDI-AMSTERDAM-PARIS-CINCINNATI-CLEVE Alright, not ideal, but now we had a confirmed flight (which we thought we had all along) and there was no way I wasn't scheduled.

Back to my flat, bought a couple days supply of food (I had already cleaned out my fridge). So after a day at flat, I headed back to the airport for try number 2. This time upon arrival I notice that there is someone standing in front of the automatic check-in at the KLM desk handing something out. I stepped up to this person, and was handed a letter, saying that no people were going to Amsterdam from anywhere unless it was there final destination, since the airport was backed up from 2 days of cancelled flights and they simply could not hold new passengers. F@#%! It also said that to reschedule you would have to call a number on the sheet or call their phone number. I tried 2 phone numbers on their list both had a message saying that all operatives were currently on the floor at airports working and no one could answer. The website, equally was no help. I called home again, this time actually panicking a little bit. At this point it was only 4 days 'til Christmas, Emily was flying in the day I was supposed to arrive, I had basically no money with me, and I certainly didn't want to spend anymore time by myself at my flat.

When I called home (it was 6am there) mom guessed something was wrong pretty quickly and told me to get back on the computer, I was gonna look at train tickets to see if there was anyway I could get to Paris by the next morning to catch my next flight and she would try to figure it out from her end. I was confused because I couldn't find any trains (later I found out that the the rail was closed and people were stranded on both sides of the English Channel). Mom though messaged me and told me to call her back, she had found a series of flights that would get me to Paris and able to connect to my current itinerary, and she told me to go up to the gate and just purchase them and we would deal with getting Delta to pay for them once I was home. I walked over to the gate and told the guy that I needed a flight to Paris, and he says there wasn't one. I quickly thank mom for her fastidious nature and recite the flight number of the 3 flights she had told me about. He looks at his screen and says, that can work, but you will have to stay overnight in Munich, I gave him a look that conveyed my feelings and he sold me the ticket. Now I called mom and she realized that if I wasn't on the first flight of my itinerary they might not keep the other seats open so off to the airport she went, while I got ready to check in to my flight.

Now after mom convinced the helpful women working at the Delta desk that I would be in Paris and they should not cancel my seat everything was seemingly fine. I began my multiple days of travel. The new itinerary was EDI-BRUSSELS-MUNICH-PARIS and then the same from there. I began my wait for flights when i realized the first flight was not leaving on time. When we finally landed I realized I only had about 15 minutes til final boarding on my last flight so after rushing through security, I ran to the gate, only to be greeted by a whole mess of people sitting waiting for my second delayed flight. Yes! I wasn't gonna miss this flight and the next flight was at 6am the next morning, I basically couldn't be delayed enough to miss it. This second delay also gave me me money to be spent at a shop due to the `extreme delay' actually less delay then the other flight. This was useful as it would be my breakfast the next morning in munich. When we finally arrived in Munich I get ready to settle in for the night and decide to do some work on my computer. That is when I realize, I don't have it. It is in the Security check in Brussels that I had run through. S@^*! I was in such a rush to not miss my flight I had completely forgotten to wait for the next bin, which my computer had to be in separately (of course). So now I had from 12:45 am to 5:45 am to kill with a book I had already finished, and an ipod as my only useful means of communication. It only had about an hour left of juice in it so, i explained to my sister and mom what had happened, then settled in for the night.

After awhile, and being the only person in the airport I decided to play my ukulele. As it turned out this was probably the best part of my trip, playing and singing. Much to the amusement of the cleaning staff that walked by. Each one of them said something positive to me (at least the ones who spoke English were positive, I assume the others were). After awhile an older member of the cleaning staff came over. I thought he was gonna ask me what i was still doing here, or perhaps to stop playing music. After realizing that we shared no common language he presented me with a bottle of sparkling water and a cup and said "for you" then headed off. I smiled and thanked him them kept playing music. Then I realized he had decided to sit at my gate and listen to me play music while enjoying his `lunch' (I don't know what the meal is called that occurs at 3am). I had received payment for playing ukulele. Score. At this point I hadn't really slept and wouldn't accept for a couple brief moment on the flight over the Atlantic, because of worry. Most of the worry however was unwarranted, I did get a little freaked out in Paris when i couldn't find my flight or any delta gates at all, but eventually I made it and they were of course delayed so I wasn't going to miss it anyway. I eventually made it home mostly thanks to the amazing work of both my mom and my sister. I have more to say about actually being home, but those are happy things to write and I don't want to taint them with the horrors of travel, which I suppose means I owe you at least 1.5 posts as there is also the story of getting back to Edinburgh.

More updates soon, to make up for lost time. Pro Tip: Never travel with Jake to the UK

Love you all.

A visitor, and culinary fun

Hello everyone,

I had my first visitor! Tom Kane on his whirlwind trip of excitement stopped by for a couple days and distracted my from my work with worthwhile conversation. He has been traveling for like 120 days or some ridiculous amount of time. Anyway, having him here was great and means I can't wait til family members and friends make stops here!

I also got to cook for someone else for the first time in a long time. Highlights include: Making pesto from scratch with a mortar and pestle, keeping the Hilty tradition of quality french toast going (including homemade banana syrup), some kinda lame but filling burritos, and lastly beer which was purchased but still exciting to share with someone.

This little bit of cooking for someone else and the large amount of working that has been lurching closer has convinced me to do even more cooking fun for myself. Including making refried black beans (interesting note: refried does not refer to frying twice, but instead to thoroughly frying the beans, which isn't even that true of the cooking method, but whatever.) This lead to bean burritos being a solid lunch food for the past couple days, which also allowed me to (through a slight amount of forgetfulness) make sweet potato and black bean burritos. Which apparently are already a thing, but nontheless are super enjoyable. I am fairly certain a certain female friend of mine would find them especially exciting. I have also been experimenting with homemade past sauce and I think I may make lasagna when I come home with all the ingredients starting in base forms, i.e. one word ingredients (this is my new favorite thing in food packaging i.e. tomato paste ingredients: tomatoes).

For those few people that read my blog that don't talk to me or my mom regularly, you probably won't know that my dad just underwent knee surgery, hopefully he will be home sometime within the next 0-36 hours. He will be layed up for awhile, however, if all goes according to plan he should be ready to do some light partying for christmas and open house.

I hope everyone out there has an enjoyable Thanksgiving, and I will likely not be posting much for the next couple weeks as applying to grad school and getting kicked in the face by finals occurs, but after that I will be back in Lakewood.

In other news I may be spending a bit of time in Chicago right after New Year's so if you are around send me an email.

Massive Flip-Floppery

Hey Everyone,
I have been spending a lot of mental energy (that not spent on reading and critiquing philosophy) trying to make a decision about next year and what that means for this year. At the moment I am trying to decide if I ought to apply to grad school now, for next year, or if I should take next year off (with respect to academia) and possibly apply next year. Now there are pluses and minuses to both sides, but I have recently been entertaining the idea of teaching high school, which if I "took next year off" I could explore. I am writing this here, well one because I am highly caffeinated, but more importantly because I need to organize these thoughts and possibly get feedback. On the other hand it is obviously a decision that I have to make on my own (as all decisions must be made). Anyway, if you have thoughts I would love to hear them, and if not that is the main thing in my life that is not the same as it has been. Though there are a few other exciting things.

First, I have been cooking new-ish things a lot. For the most part these things are only new because I have to cook with new measuring styles and temperatures, which makes all recipes new in a sense. So far, I made chili, without any spicing (as in hot) materials (silly Scots) though I finally acquired some tabasco so that has been much improved. Today I made macaroni (baked not Kraft) which was ok, though I don't quite have the right pan, it is ok. I also made some pasties the recipe for which came from the ny times. They came out ok, the filling was delicious, but the crust was a bit hard to make and press out, without a rolling pin (which I now have). Finally, I have made risotto a lot, oh my goodness do I love mushroom potato risotto. I also made some butternut squash risotto which was good but could be made better, possibly with the addition of brown butter. One thing i am reticent about is baking, because it is the thing which requires the most exacting measures and i am not sure I can cope with that easily. Needless to say I am excited for being able to cook when I come home for Christmas for my family with utensils to which I am accustomed.

The other thing for those who are philosophically inclined, and/or have read my comps, I think I have found a way that modern physics allows for dualism (sorta) and at the very least allows for some degree of "free will" according to that conception of the world, this isn't yet fully fleshed out, but it does make my view of how the mind works a bit more possible. If you are interested in this stuff check out Roger Penrose's book The Emperor's New Brain, and 200 years of philosophy about the mind focusing on Descartes and my comps.

Hope all is well with everyone, your Scottish correspondent, signing off.

QUICK AWESOME-NESS

Hey all,
Just wanted to thank everyone that has sent me a letter or package since I have been here, thanks so much, it really makes it all better. Expect that I will be sending postcards all your ways in the next couple days. Talk to you soon.
-Jake

An event filled week

Hello All,
This week has once again been filled with some excitement. As some of you know, (though I am pretty sure not all) I have been in a bit of a funk specifically with regards to future studies and work in philosophy. I have been reading a fair bit about philosophy grad school (Phd programs) and a fair amount of the information out there is...less than encouraging. Additionally, some of the information out there says that "taking a year off", which previously had been my plan, is not a great idea, unless the interceding year is spent doing something relevant to philosophy, which of course is difficult given the huge dearth of jobs in the field outside of academia. So I had a couple meetings this week with professors (and one next week) and talked to them about applying, they thought that I should be applying this year, but they thought my chances weren't as bad as I had initially thought, and further, if I don't get in this year they said I could transfer to the Masters of Philosophy (a title not a subject matter, at the end of that program I would have an M Phil in Philosophy) program, which is a year longer, assuming I had performed well up until that point in my current MSc program, and then I would have a reason to be taking an extra year, a higher degree, and still could apply to grad school next year with the additional bonus of likely being able to spend the year in the states and just having regular video conferences and 1-2 meetings in Scotland throughout the year (this is unconfirmed, but seemed like a good backup plan to me.) Further, when I talked to one of my professors he asked me why I wasn't currently applying here to work with him as a phd student, which I was pretty excited about, I should have mentioned that this is the professor that I am planning on asking to write recommendation letters for me. Apparently my research interests are similar to his and he has 2 Phd students currently pursuing degrees with research in this area. Like I said, this is all exciting to me, and making me feel like my chances of getting into grad school this year are much better than they were last year.

In other news, I tried out for a choir yesterday (boy was that weird). I did some sight-singing (it has been awhile) and did some range tests, sang a little bit of a solo and talked to them about the calendar of their group. They are called Cadenza, and are a local choir that performs every year during the Fringe Festival and a couple other concerts throughout the year. Anyway, I got an email today inviting me to join them. Exciting! This choir is 50 voices, and does a mix of music pretty similar to the choir of which I was a member in high school (symphonic mixed for those from Lakewood). It isn't a capella, but I am not convinced that Scotland really knows what that is and it is good to have some singing to do.

Lastly, for those people that don't know, yesterday was Emily and my anniversary, we met/started dating 2 years ago (thanks Abi). Admittedly, talking on skype wasn't the ideal anniversary date, but I am so glad that she has been willing to put up with my year abroad and also excited that I (and anyone else around the Hilty house for christmas time) will see her in December! She is well and working hard on her own grad program in New Orleans at Tulane, in Latin American Studies. Currently she is trying to decide through a complex chain of later affecting decisions (something like writing a grant proposal, for summer research, which should inform her project, so she should know what that final project is? Hope I didn't screw that up) what her topic of her dissertation will be. So happy anniversary to her/you and I hope your weekend was good, and I promise I am doing my best to be in the same continent as you next year, and if things go well maybe even the same city!

Well, I think that is about all the news I have for the week-ish. Hope everyone else is well. I hear the weather back home is actually worse than it is here, and that Minnesota already has know, Scotland for the win. Love you all, will write again soon.

Birthday's and Crags and Nerdy-ness, Oh My!

Hello all,
I was informed by a certain family member that I need to be posting more on this blog, especially considering that a lot of stuff has happened in the intervening days since the last post, so I will bow to his/her wishes (note the ambiguity of gender meant to confound my readers).

First of all, I made it through my birthday, I am 23 now so to any family member that this makes feel old I apologize, though I am excited to edge ever closer to the elusive car rental age. My birthday started out a little lamely as I woke up at 7:30 or so, in an attempt to procure a bike. It seems that in Edinburgh the only way to get a used bike at all is to wait outside this place called the Bike Station (actually a pretty cool place: http://www.bikestation.org.uk) on Saturday morning. The Bike Station opens at 10:30 and has ~30 bikes each week for people to potentially buy. Now, just to give an example I got there at a bit before 8 and I was 16th in line. The person who was first got there at around 6:30. By 10:30 there are usually 80 people in line for the first 3-4 weeks of the school year and then it comes down to smaller numbers as the weather worsens and more people have bikes. So, if anyone is looking to start a business a used bike shop in Edinburgh with a steady supply from somewhere would be a good bet. Luckily, being where I was in line afforded me the opportunity to purchase a bike at a mostly reasonable price, and though it wasn't exactly what I wanted, it is good enough to get me to and from school which was the main objective.

So having spent the first 4 hours or so of my birthday embroiled in bike acquisition, I came home to find a few flatmates eager to hang out. So we talked a bit and decided the best bet for the day was to check out Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags (both of which are located in Holyrood park, which is ~30 minutes from my house and 15 minutes from the city center). This actually amounted to a pretty fun couple of hours. The end of the day was a fun little get together surrounding a cake made by one of my flatmates, who hasn't cooked much, but made a truly valiant effort, and really made my day feel a lot more like a birthday. Overall, a very fun day.

Onto the titular nerdy-ness described. This actually encapsulates 2 separate events both of which I found pretty exciting. First, I was hanging out with one of my North American Friends, (did I mention that >50% of my friends here are from NA. The few Scottish folks I have met outside of class will come into the story later.) a girl from Connecticut who is doing what must be one of the hardest masters programs at the school. Anyhow, we were talking about nerdy things that we do and I made a claim that I have made many times before, that I am probably the nerdiest person that you will ever meet. Turns out this girl has me beat, admittedly not on every level, but she speaks freaking elvish! We traded stuff back and forth and though I might have her on a few esoteric bits (tech theater, sheer volume of nerdy games played and depth of rules reading) she definitely comes out ahead with respect to nerdy-ness overall.

Secondly, and as promised, I met some Scottish folks, but you may be asking yourself, how outside of class would Jake manage to meet people actually from Scotland in Edinburgh (a surprisingly tough thing to do). Turns out, that Scottish people play magic, and so do I. That's right my obsession with small rectangles of cardboard is finally paying off. I went to a prerelease tournament (what that means is unimportant, just know that I was excited enough about it to research on the internet where to go) and started talking to a few guys about magic. They in turn invited me out to a pub to play more magic after and 5 hours later, a little drunkenly, I had a new set of magic playing friends. Small sidenote, Magic + Drinking = fun times. I have actually since hung out with these guys and gotten onto an email list of events, so hurray for friends outside of staving off culture shock and being in 3 classes together.

With respect to other news, I have finally had all my classes, 2 of the 3 seem really interesting and the 3rd could get there, but felt a little bit like stuff I had done before. I also have decided to audit a class on Algorithmic game theory and its applications just in case that paper I worked on last summer needs to get expanded for a journal, hurray for potentially getting published, though admittedly in a field which is not my main academic one. Meh.

Alright well there is another week of my life encapsulated pithily into blog form. Hope it was enjoyable, and if not (or even if so, but you want more info) tell me what you want to know about in the comments.

Learning a bit about the city and a lot about Sainsbury

Hello again all,
Welcome back to the receptacle of thoughts from my journeys here in Edinburgh. A lot has happened since I last updated, hence the lack of updates in the meantime. For one, I have registered for classes, or more accurately I have been registered for them by my director of studies, apparently we can't do that on our own. At the moment I am trying to decide if I want to audit any classes, but before I decide that I have to look at the course offerings of like 5 other departments, so for the time being 3 courses a semester, 1-2 reading groups, a lecture series or 3 and starting to think about my dissertation is where my mind is. In other news I have registered with a doctor, registered with the college and confirmed my attendance with the college, all of these are required and take place in separate buildings, so if you ever come to school in the UK make sure you get a list of all the things you have to do with very specific titles as this might get confusing.

I have also finally met all my flat mates (at least the ones that have shown up so far) there are 8 of us, all international students. Chris from Vancouver, Bernoit from Paris, Paul from somewhere in Romania, Alim (sp?) from somewhere in Rumania, Wanarok (sp?) a second year phd candidate from Thailand, Bruce from China, and an Indian chap who arrived last night who I only spoke with briefly. I have also met a few people from my program and a few other programs from the apartment building where I am staying, of which a surprisingly large number are from North America. I guess the taught post grads (PGs), of which I am amongst the number, are more than 50% non-UK. Most are also 25 or older, and there is higher number of girls than boys by 1-2 thousand, though you wouldn't know it from the taught philosophy kids. Anyway, in other maybe interesting maybe not news I have purchased a pay as you go cell phone that can receive phone calls from the states for no cost to me, so if you are absolutely aching to talk to me you can try to call, (email me or mom for the number) and I will either answer if I hear it or call you back on skype if the number is left.

Oh man, I almost forgot about Sainsbury! Sainsbury is the everything store that is just about 1o minutes by foot away. It is a bit like Target but with more produce, however, unlike Target you can literally find anything you want there. It is no longer a useful question to ask can you get that at Sainsbury, only what aisle is that item to be found. I have already been there like 3 times as I am having a notoriously hard time listing all the things I need food and otherwise. Alright well that about sums it up until class starts next Tuesday, but I hope everything is going well for everyone not in the UK (well in the UK too i suppose) and I especially hope Josh and Kat's wedding goes well this weekend if I don't get a chance until way after to say this Congratulations you guys! I will try and Skype home sometime this weekend to say hey to everyone, but if I can't get through love you all and hope it is a great couple days, I know it will be.