A Disconcerting Uplifting Feeling

Yeah, down by the river, down by the banks of the river Charles,
That's where you'll find me, along with the lovers, fruggers, and thieves.
Well I love that dirty water,
Oh, Boston, you're my home.

--The Standells, "Dirty Water"

So I have a big announcement! This is the first (but certainly not the last) blog entry that I'm writing from campus! More specifically, from the very nice but vertigo-inducing Stata Center, which to me looks like a massive pile of crushed McDonald's burger boxes. Asthetics aside, it's a great building for grad students...it has a gym, a cafetria, library facilities, common areas, about a hundred winding staircases, a complete lack of square angles, and luckily for the purposes of this blog, abundant wireless access! I guess that's not so impressive though, since the campus bars also have high-speed wireless access points (but no hard liquor).

I've only been back for a couple of days, but I'm already very concerned about how I'm feeling about the city and the school...I'm feeling very, very good. The problem is that I spent so much time and energy worrying that I'd hate grad school again, and now I'm worried that all the worrying was in vain.

It's very strange feeling happy and at-ease in this city...so strange, that I almost feel afraid and not-at-ease. There are still plenty of things that I know will stress me out, like the workload in the lab and the not being able to watch Hockey Night in Canada every week. But the lack of HNIC will probably make Annie happy, which will make me happy and therefore not stressed out. And who knows, maybe learning how to build a laser (especially a frequency-domain modelocking laser...oooohhhh, sexy) will actually be good for me. For those of you who don't know, I'm totally joking when I say that I play with lasers all day. I actually don't know anything about lasers, other than the fact that you shouldn't stick your hand in front of the 10-Watt pump beam, and that you need to kick a 5-femtosecond Titanium-Sapphire laser to get it to start pulsing. I'm not kidding about either of those two things. But now I'm supposed to learn a bit more than "fire is hot" and "kicking is good", which was temporarily stressing me out, but upon more reflection it will probably be fine.

I don't know what's different this time...maybe it's that I've got more of a big picture view of the world now, so I realize that OCT isn't the most important thing in the universe. And maybe it's because I've learned to say "no" to my advisor (already did it once last week...you are officially reading the blog of the person who WON'T be TA'ing nonlinear optics this term!). Or maybe it's because when I looked out at the skyline as I was taking the T from Boston into Cambridge, I realized that this really is a beautiful and unique city, and I'm enormously lucky and blessed to have a second chance at things here.

Whatever the reason, I'm happy, and I know things can change but it really does feel different this time. Maybe this is one entry to keep in the archives, so I can look back on it in 8 months and say "what the hell was I thinking????" :)

Do you have the time to listen to me whine

About nothing and everything all at once?

I am one of those melodramatic fools,

Neurotic to the bone, no doubt about it.

--Green Day, "Basket Case"

Coming (Back) to America

So kiss me, and smile for me, tell me that you'll wait for me.
Hold me like you'll never let me go,
'Cause I'm leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again.
Oh babe, I hate to go.

--John Denver, "Leaving on a Jet Plane"

Well today was the big day...the day that I said goodbye to Vancouver, to my old job, to my apartment by the beach, to the Maple Leaf flying proudly in the Pacific wind, and temporarily, to my girlfriend. As the America West Airbus-320 (ironic, I know) climbed out of the GVR, I stared out the window at the mountains and the ocean surrounding the city that’s been my home for the past year and a half. I know there are a lot of things that I’ll miss about Vancouver...the natural beauty, the ethnic diversity, the delicious and reasonably-priced sushi, the ultimate frisbee, and the little chuckle I get from hearing Vancouverites refer to Alberta as “out east.” I also know there are a lot of things that I won’t miss...the traffic, the attitude towards drugs and crime, the unbelievable (to an Edmontonian) housing costs, and the ever-present fear of getting T-boned by a 17-year-old driving an SL55 with neon ground effect lighting. I guess that no city is perfect, but taken as a whole, Vancouver is a pretty great place to live. And as I came to that conclusion at about 25,000 feet (wow I’m already working in feet again) I thought back to a very simple question that my lab adviser asked me when I was visiting Boston to look for apartments a few weeks ago.

“What’s so different about Canada?” See, I told you it was a very simple question. My adviser knows how hard the first two years of grad school were on me, and he knows that a lot of it was because I had a tough time living on the east coast of the US. So his question to me was an attempt to understand the differences between our two countries that caused me, and a few other Canadian grad students that I know, so much stress as we tried to adapt to Boston. But my response to his question really surprised me...so how did I answer?

“Uhhhhhhh, well, I don’t know...it’s hard to explain I guess.” Now, I consider myself to be a very patriotic Canadian, and I certainly feel that there are significant differences between Canada and the US. Some of our core values (universal health care, redistribution of wealth, recognition of the value of different cultures within a federal framework) are clearly different than American values (you-get-what-you-pay-for health care, a tax system that disproportionally burdens the lower class, melting-pot mentality) but how do these value differences translate into concrete behavioural differences that one could describe to an American? What I eventually came up with was that Canadians are more relaxed, more laid-back, friendlier, easier to talk to, in essence, “nicer.”

But even that isn’t necessarily true...Calgarians are just as stressed-out as Bostonians, Torontonians are just as rude as New Yorkers, and our overloaded health care system has just as many problems as the two-tiered American system. Yet still, I and many other Canadians living south of the border feel much more at ease when we’re at home. When I thought about it some more, I came up with a few things that I’ve never heard a Canadian say...some examples would be “we need to spread the Canadian way of life around the world,” or “we need to protect Canadian interests in the Middle East,” or “Canada is in constant danger from international terrorists.” In fact, just writing down those three quotes felt absolutely ridiculous. Yet exchange “Canada” for “America” and you’ve got a standard sound-bite from Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, or Rice. And it’s not limited to the present administration...American politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike, have been saying things like that ever since the start of the Cold War. And at any particular point in time, a large number of American citizens would be in agreement with at least two of those three statements.

So what’s my point? Well, maybe living in a culture that perceives itself to be perpetually on the offensive (against communism, or terrorism, or crafty Canadian lumber companies) or the defensive (against communism, or terrorism, or crafty Canadian lumber companies) in some sort of global war leads people to emulate some of the behaviour of the soldiers that are put up on a pedestal for doing the fighting for them. Single-minded focus on indoctrinated beliefs, unwillingness to compromise or tolerate dissenting opinions, blind trust in the leadership of authority figures, and unflinching belief that the American point of view is the RIGHT point of view are all attributes that make for good soldiers. These, I realized, are also attributes of Americans that have the most negative affect on me. Of course not all Americans are like this, and the vast majority of the people that I deal with at school are reasonable, tolerant people who dislike the Bush administration just as much as I do. But maybe that’s the big difference that my advisor was asking about and that I was trying (unsuccessfully) to explain...America is a nation of soldiers, and Canada is a nation of hockey players. We work together, play hard, and aren’t afraid to drop the gloves...but when a fight breaks out, it’s over in 30 seconds and there’s never too much blood.

Oh the good ol' hockey game
Is the best game you can name.
And the best game you can name
Is the good ol' hockey game.

-- Stompin' Tom Connors, "The Hockey Song"