Today I read the following words etched into my table during a lecture: "Popol Vuh" and that really made my day. This was extremely odd though; apparently some student knew about this text and found its name worthy of communicating with his fellow students.

But that aside: what you all (and I mean you, the proverbial halve paardekop) are waiting for, is obviouslyy, the revelation of a new purpose for this blog that I promissed last wednesday! It has transpired I am one of the few who actually took the mission seriously (but then I found the idea of relieving my conscience from feelings of "I really should write X an e-mail / old-fashionned letter" very atttractive as well) as I was one out of two admitting to having started a diary - out of thirty. It appears that what we need to learn is to reflect on our days, and (obviously) train ourselves in the arcane art of the Anthropologist's Eye which "makes the strange familiar and the familiar strange." Hmm, I wonder whether I'll not be too lazy for this (see lack of posts recently), only time can tell, I guess.

(this bit below you can skip if you want, it's long and boring info on what I heard and did last wednesday)
I did eventually do some "Participant" Observation, inspired by the lecture earlier that day, during the compulsory weekly Research Seminar. This compulsion is actually not that bad as it is a great way to bring all post-graduates together, and afterwards we all get to go to the UCL Senior Common Room, which is pretty nice (think: slightly up-dated English Social Club), as you mere mortal student can only enter this exclusive place when accompanied by a teacher. Class distinction must indeed be alive and well in England mutters the one who is looking to be confirmed in stereotypes to himself, but then: this is no worse then a Lerarenkamer, except maybe a bit fancy and UCL is a pretty big university. Hmm, all this making strange familiar, all this scientifically correct kills my prose .. Anyway, last seminar had an interesting figure to speech, never mind the topic, which was interesting - although open to criticism (WHY COMPARE THESE TWO SOCIETIES? WHY?!?) - our researcher had a rather severe speech deficiency, allthough no-one seemed to notice (politeness, it seems, I need to learn something still), resulting in a mix-up of, no less than the following letters: v w l and r . Hence 'wife' and 'rife' for life. Needless to say it was somewhat hard to understand, so one's mind wanders resulting in a nice drawing of a teacher with, well, something in his mouth .. (that's the participant observation bit) .. From what I undestood, though, the man had done his research among a cult in Trinidad who wanted to return to a pre-European African life-style and who therefore rejected, amongst others, money and clothes. How the man must have done his work for Science I do not want to envision, esp. given his, erm, slight, erm, corpulence.. This feeling does bring up some good questions on our ideas on nudity, though, but these seems perfunctory ('plichtmatig' voor de eventuele woordenboekzoekers) to me now because I am lazy [I actually did try to analyse Western ideas on nudity here but I deleted them as they were shit, and indeed rather perfunctory]. His other research was in Albania in a mountain village that returned to the pre-Communist times. And now he was comparing 'ways of forgetting' (of slavery/western society and Communism respectively). He never quite explained how, or what his results were, but this is 'work in progress' after all.

On another note: Anna brought up in her blog the issue of Poppy Appeal, which seems to have started given the first poppies sighted on natives' breasts today by the undersigned. For those less-versed in British Society (harken to the words of this Masters of Truth who shouts down from the mouth of the cave (he's too lazy to climb down all the way; moreover, as Plato already reasoned, he might get killed in the end by the incredulous "holbewoners", isn't it Albert? If only they had weblogs in those days...)), Poppy Appeal happens around 'Poppy' or 'Remembrance' Day, 11th of November I believe, when the end of the First World War is remembered with two minutes Silence, not unlike our 4th of May, I guess. The name, by the way, refers to the poem "In Flander's Fields" by the scotsman (corection: Canadian) John McCrae; apparently the shells and bombs tore the earth in such a way that the long-dormant poppie seeds prospered among all death and destruction. Anyway, I agree to a large extent with her argument against the poppies, but thankfully already in the 1920's the anti-War movement introduced the White Poppy! Surely that's something to consider? I might, if I ever encounter anyone selling them, I still need to find out how one acquires them (apart from buying over the internet. You see? I did actually read the website).

I know Anna reads this and I shall throw latin at your thoughts, may they enlighten. You know the source, as you quoted from the same epistle 28 by Seneca.

Hoc tibi soli putas accidisse et admiraris quasi rem novam quod peregrinatione tam longa et tot locorum varietatibus non discussisti tristitiam gravitatemque mentis? Animum debes mutare, non caelum! (source) Translation for non-freaks here.

Amen.