Remember, Remember...

So I'm all moved in to my new place, a tiny little studio in a nicely done-up Regency terrace house near Baker Street, a few steps from Sherlock Holmes at 221b, not to mention Dorset Square, a placid little garden that was the original home of the Marylebone Cricket Club and site of Thomas Lord's first cricket ground (be still my desi heart!). So far, I've been living in Hendon with a relative (let's see, my paternal grandfather's first cousin, to be precise) who asked me, not entirely unpolitely, to shove off (he even offered to pay the rent!). The commute was a bit much (one hour each way on the Northern Line, the excrement-filled digestive tract running down the back of the London Underground's shrimp), the food was terrible and there was no electricity in half the house (including the bathroom), so I'm not too bummed about having left.

I am enrolled, for those of you I've failed to keep informed, at the London School of Economics, in what is probably my final attempt to stave off the increasingly violent passes that Reality's been making at me as of late. I've been thinking the past few weeks about how thoroughly narcissistic it is of me to think of going on to do a Ph.D. now that my father has retired (he and my mother left Dublin last month for Lahore, where they're now looking for a more-or-less permanent place so that they can decay with a little grace). It's not that I feel too old to be a burden on them (though I probably am) or that they've ever discouraged me from doing what I want to do (quite the opposite, as a matter of fact), but I'm appalled at the sacrifices they now have to make to support me. Not only have they had to sell much of what they've collected over the years, paintings, carpets and all, but my father has gotten another job so that he can finance me this year, and my mother is looking for one as well; surely, they deserve better than this at their age. Rationalizations aside, I'm thinking of applying to a few economic consultancies for research positions, but can't think of anything else I'd be good for.

And, yes, the news from Pakistan is terribly depressing. It's difficult to know what's going on with the media blackout, but this crisis can't end well for anybody. We've been yo-yoing up and down the same way for 60 years now, and you'd think we knew better, but it seems not. Perhaps the only difference is that now Pakistan's a political football for the 2008 White House candidates (not to mention the Tories and Brown-ites) to kick about, so every person I've run into manages to have an opinion on the situation, despite knowing nothing about Pakistan whatsoever. It's just too depressing to bear thinking about.

So happier news: two other Cardenaliens have landed in London, and not just any old Cardenaliens, but top-drawer ones... third floor, baby! I'll leave figuring out their identities as an exercise for the interested reader (bonus points for not using Facebook), but it's been very pleasant sharing a beer with a familiar face. Otherwise, the kids at LSE are fairly friendly, but not terribly interesting outside of the narrow scope of their departments: perhaps this is the issue many people have with postgrads? It's hard to engage them about books, history, art or even porn, but at least they're brainy when it comes to economics, as if that were a substitute. (The one exception was a perky Saudi Derrida-iste studying Communication(s), though she failed to enlighten me on how the old fraud's politics of friendship are a novel contribution to our understanding of the world.)

The courses themselves are interesting and/or challenging, even if the lecturers have no time for us and the general paradigm involves lots of self-study with books, no feedback on assignments and a single end-of-year exam that counts for 100% of the grade. I'm even teaching undergraduates, 40ish first-year economics students over three sections. It might be the highlight of my week, to be honest - it's really refreshing to be surrounded by bright-eyed and bushy-tailed youngsters, and quite rewarding. Perhaps I should go in for teaching...

And I'm spent. The Guy Fawkes fireworks stopped a while ago, and I should be turning in, in any case.