Barges vs. Narrow Boats

Our friend Laura pointed out in a comment that as a Mississippi Delta native, there's a difference between what I call a barge and a real barge, as in on the Mississippi River. She's right. I should have used the term Narrow Boat, although the Narrow Boats are sometimes called barges, I assume because they have barge qualities: they have flat bottoms and float in very shallow water.

In the future, I'll refer to the English boats as Narrow Boats. It sounds cooler, it's more accurate, and Laura is a Mississippi Delta expert if ever there was one. And probably a barge expert. She's been around the barge a few times, if you know what I mean. This is not her first barge rodeo, if you catch my drift.

Thanks for the comment, Laura.


A barge, as in "you're not gonna see one of these in an English canal, parked near a pub."


A Narrow Boat, as in "you probably won't see one of these on Ol' Man River."

Averaging two fire-alarms a week

And that's just in our own residence hall, Shoreditch. If you count fire alarms that we could hear coming from other halls, the number is 5 or 6 alarms a week. The first one in our hall was mid-evening, but the one last night was at 1:15am. Every room has an alarm siren mounted above the door, inside the room. Which means it's about 10 feet from you when you're in bed asleep. When it goes off, it pretty much wakes the dead, not to mention everyone on this side of the campus. We jump up, throw on clothes, hustle down 5 flights of stairs, then stand outside until Security shows up, turns off the alarm, and OKs everyone to return. During the first fire alarm, the second day we were here, a couple from Taiwan told us it happens 2 or 3 times a week (and they've been here for two months). I didn't believe him at the time, but I do now. Makes you wonder how much fun it'll be when it's pouring rain, or freezing cold. Or both.


Robin holds her ears while evacuating via the stairwell during a fire alarm. I'm sure many students will have permanent damage to their hearing before the semester ends. I once sat on the front row of a Led Zeppelin concert, and it was like a soothing lullaby compared to the siren used here.

SuperSenior!

My pal/sports buddy, Ces (Robin's brother-in-law), is playing in a golf tournament soon with some college friends and wanted a "Super Senior" image for tournament T-shirts.

Being at Brunel without my Wacom pressure-sensitive tablet, or a desk (Robin was using the small desk in our flat), I was able to do a drawing in my European office, JTmobile Studio, also known as "the couch."


JTstudios, Euorpean office.


Drawing in Photoshop, from an unfamiliar position, with a mouse, doesn't improve one's drawings. Freehand drawing with a mouse is about half a notch easier than using an Etch-a-Sketch (the plastic box that turned millions of potential artists into disturbed children who hated drawing). Luckily, I gave up on Etch-a-Sketch before it permanently damaged me.

It's OK for this to be a crummy sketch, because I'll place it as a template in Adobe Illustrator and redraw it using vector drawing tools, which are much easier to control using a mouse than the pixel-based drawings you can do in Photoshop.


The Illustrator version. Time restraints and other deadlines (Robin's book) forced me to eliminate the golf bag with clubs spilling out that's visible in the rough sketch. Hope it works for you, Ces. It was fun.

Book deadline done!

This afternon Robin finished her book and uploaded it to the editor and production guru who makes sure all the files are properly made and ready for printing.

To celebrate, we took an afternoon stroll along the canal that I discovered this morning. The Tea Room had closed by the time we got there, so we went next door and had dinner at the Malt Shovel again.

Tomorrow we plan to walk into Uxbridge and do some shopping. Later in the week we may have to go into London to the Apple Store again. "Pleeeease don't throw me in dat briar patch!"

When we got back to Shoreditch Hall from dinner, we continued to celebrate and watched the movie "Sunshine Cleaning" on my laptop that I downloaded through iTunes a couple of nights ago.


A barge dog keeps a close watch on the canal and foot path traffic.


Looks like a veteran barge dog.


There are some dumpy, ugly barges that look like the're from a Mel Gibson Canal Warrior movie, but lots of them are great looking.


Robin: "Hey mister, why is it the women who always have to open and close the locks?"


Man: "In my case, it's because she's afraid of the engine." Fair enough.


We'll try the Tea Rooms later this week.


On the way back to Shoreditch Hall, we stopped by our friendly neighborhood convenience store, run by Ahmed (pronounced ahk-med). He's not in this photo. That's his grandfather with the red turban, and his grandfather's friend in the background. They hang out here in the evenings to keep Ahmed company, and to give him advice. This week I'm going to ask Ahmed if they mind if I take some photos and video of them.


Ah, relaxation.

A Sunday Stroll: a shady lane and barge boats

While Robin was feverishly working to finish the final pages of her book, I walked down to the Malt Shovel pub to check out the canal that runs next to it. A day or so ago, I was looking at the neighborhood on Google Maps and noticed barge boats on the canal. So I went to check it out.


I passed a shady lane that looked surprsingly rural. It turned out to be a beautiful, narrow road to guest cottages, big estates, new luxury homes, streams with ducks, and fields with horses.


A lovely Sunday morning, don't you think, Mr. Ed?


Returning from the shady lane, I doubled back towards the Malt Shovel, peered over the bridge wall and saw them - "Houston, we have barges!"


A barge approaches a canal lock. Out of view and to the right is the Malt Shovel and a Tea House. We'll check out the Tea House later for dinner.


When you approach the lock, your girl friend hops out, onto the bank, uses a crank to unlock the gate, and then pulls or pushes on the gate just enough to let water pour into the lower lock. It's heavy.


Ever wonder what the guy in the boat is doing while his sweetheart is cranking and pulling and pushing? Shoulda' known.


A successful negotiation of the lock. Not unlike the Panama Canal.


The bargers head up the canal full-speed, 4 mph. You're encouraged to keep it closer to 2 or 3 mph, but these kids are obviously wild and crazy thrill-seekers.

You can rent barges by the week, minimum of three days, I think. Available to sleep four or six people. Dogs allowed. It's on the list. Need volunteers to share boat.

All is quiet on the Brunel campus

But then, it's only 10 pm, Saturday night. I heard some students say there's a Jack Daniels party tonight, so, as Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin fame says in the title of the Rockumentary, "It Might Get Loud."

Here's a collection of tidbits from the last day or so.


We had dinner in the University cafeteria, located upstairs on the main concourse, Friday night. Not many people there, but pretty good food. Robin likes their curry and rice.


Each side of the school cafeteria has a large flat screen showing non-stop, high-energy, sexy music videos. Hey Brunel, Breaking News: these kids don't need excitement encouragement, they need enough downers to bring down to a normal operational level.


The cafeteria is upstair in the building on the main concourse. It doesn't look like a main concourse on Saturday, but there's usually more people here than anywhere else on campus.


There are a couple of small stores just off campus, within 4 or 5 minutes of our residence hall. This is where we do light grocery shopping (very light) and occasionally buy wine.


Just a door or two away from the grocery/wine shop is The best Kebob. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks popular. Or maybe being the only place open on Saturday night makes it look more popular than it really is.


The best Kebob. Big glass windows are ideal for video taping customers.


The kitchen in our flat. Those of you who've been to our house can probably spot the difference between this kitchen and the one we're used to cooking in. I mean besides the posters on the wall asking residents not to burn the place down.

Friday and Saturday in flat 137

We've barely left the flat far two days, still working to create the final examples in Robin's book that's due this weekend. I'm starting to feel like we're at the highest Mt. Everest advanced base camp, waiting to summit, and a howling storm is keeping us pinned down, unable to leave the tent.

Speaking of howling, I was reminded at 4am how much fun it is to be away from home for the first time and being a young, drunk student on a Friday night - singing, laughing, vomiting. Having graduated from a Baptist college, I never had this experience, but it sounded like a nice college bonding thing and I'm happy for them. I also hope they're sick as dogs today. Not because I'm mad, but just because it would be good for them. Peace, love, joy, happiness.

OK, I'll admit it. I wanted to send Clint Eastwood downstairs to deliver his line from Gran Torino: "If I have to come back here, it's gonna get bleepin' ugly." A disturbing movie, but it had its moments.

As soon as we get this deadline wrapped up, we've got some plans for the next week that should be fun. We hope to hook up with our friend Lynn from Oxford some evening soon. We've talked about going to Bath for a day trip. And we might try to get up to Birmingham to see Jay, the exchange student from Turkey who lived with us for a year back in 2000. And, I almost forgot, Robin's classes start this coming week.