When I got to Parker’s Piece* for our class football game, Anna and Chris were already there. Bettina soon joined us, and in fifteen minutes, there were ten of us.

‘Ten! Perfect! We can have two teams of five.’

‘How do we split it? Boys against girls?’

There was a short and lively discussion about the fairness of this arrangement, and how embarrassing it would be when the girls won.

‘I know! Let’s do Kyoto and non-Kyoto!’ someone eventually exclaimed.

‘Huh? Oh, you mean…? Would that work? It does!’

And so it was, that the five people from the UK, Trinidad and Tobago, Argentina, and Ireland (countries supporting the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to curb the world’s greenhouse gas emissions) played off against the five recalcitrant Aussies and Americans.

‘Okay, guys,’ said Chris. Chris is from Seattle and is obviously evil. ‘Remember, we don’t like Kyoto so we can play dirty.’

‘Nation’s right to pollute!’ hollered Ian, a stubborn Australian from Adelaide, as he charged after the ball.

‘Voluntary emissions targets!’ I yelped, running to the other half of the field in my ignorant and conservative manner.

After fifteen minutes of vicious football, Don arrived.

‘Hi guys, sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘Whose team am I on?’

‘Are you for Kyoto or against Kyoto?’

Without batting an eyelid, Don said, ‘Well, Canada’s on the fence for this one. But recently, it’s been rumbling against mandatory targets…’

‘Traitor!’ someone cried.

‘You’re with us, then!’ I said, triumphantly.

With six versus five, the global tide soon turned against the Kyoto Protocol. A passerby from Kenya was invited to join the pro-Kyoto side and soon, the game was back on the knife edge.

Who won?

Don’t know. We lost track of the score.

* Parker’s Piece is a historic place, famous for being the birthplace of modern football (or soccer). There is a plaque on the ground which reads:

“Here on Parker’s Piece, in the 1800s, students established a common set of simple football rules emphasising skill above force, which forbade catching the ball and ‘hacking’. These ‘Cambridge Rules’ became the defining influence on the 1863 Football Association rules.”

Source: BBC (2006)

During my second swing dance lesson in Cambridge, the instructors had us switch our usual roles so that leads (usually boys) would learn how to follow, and follows (usually girls) would learn how to lead. I regularly dance both roles so this wasn’t tricky for me (I have the opposite problem in that I sometimes forget if I’m dancing as a girl or a boy).

Of course, the teachers started us off with basic six beat and hand-to-hand charleston. Everyone picked up quickly.

‘We’re so proud of you all!’ the teachers said. ‘That normally takes at least twenty minutes. Do you want something harder? We can make it harder for you. Okay, let’s make it harder.’

‘Yes!’ said one of my classmates loudly. ‘Let’s do it…’ He lowered his voice. ‘…in a ring of fire!’

I sometimes have little fantasies about having my own domain name. I couldn’t justify the expense, really (the expense being A$13 a year, or COR, BLIMEY! £5, what a bargain). Blogger does me fine.

Anyway, I put ‘joan’ into a domain name registration search engine and it tells me that the following domain names are available:

• joan.asn.au
• joan.id.au
• joan.net.au
• joan.org.au

Not bad, not bad. But then the engine went one step further and told me that ‘the following domains are similar to the one you requested, and may be of interest.’

• globaljoan.com.au
• cheapjoan.com.au
• joanservices.com.au
• joanzone.com.au

ORRIGHT! JoanZone!

Earlier this year, we had a highly knowledgeable, experienced and opinionated lecturer for an intensive ten day unit. Let’s call him Johnson. In those ten days, we had to read the texts Johnson nominated and write essays in response. He wrote many of the nominated texts, which were littered with references to his previous work, as well as other writers who agreed with him. It is a long-running joke amongst my classmates to quote our lecturer, saying, ‘Johnson citing Johnson citing Johnson…’

As you might imagine, we got a one-sided view of the topics he covered. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it was an extremely worthwhile unit. I have never been so challenged, traumatised and elated by one unit. I’m just amused at the idea of him receiving 106 essays to mark, every one of them parroting his own words back at him.

Well, classmates, in my dissertation research, I have found another author who references himself even more than Johnson does. Meet Leonard Brookes, economist (I think), former head of Forecasting and Energy Policy at the the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority and various other energy-related institutes and research councils. I came across him as an author of a journal paper, in which he cited eleven of his own works and various papers by other authors that cite his work.

Most interesting is the fact that he authored the Open University‘s energy unit. I have found a 1998 paper by a research fellow from Open University. The fellow must have been entirely convinced by Brookes; it is striking how closely his conclusions mirror Brookes’s.

I can’t tease him too much; I’ve done the same myself.

However, I hope to avoid it in future. Academic worship is neither attractive nor convincing. Constant self-reference is also… well, something you can only get away with when you’re a venerable academic-type.

George Monbiot is an environmental and political journalist, who writes for The Guardian. My values and beliefs align closely to his, although he is more radical than I am.

He has some careers advice on his blog, which warns me (and you):

Even intelligent, purposeful people almost immediately lose their way in such [corporate/institutional] worlds. They become so busy meeting the needs of their employers and surviving in the hostile world into which they have been thrust that they have no time or energy left to develop the career path they really wanted to follow. And you have to develop it: it simply will not happen by itself. The idea, so often voiced by new recruits who are uncomfortable with the choice they have made, that they can reform the institution they join from within, so that it reflects their own beliefs and moral codes, is simply laughable. For all the recent guff about “corporate social responsibility”, corporations respond to the market and to the demands of their shareholders, not to the consciences of their employees. Even the chief executive can make a difference only at the margins: the moment her conscience interferes with the non-negotiable purpose of her company – turning a profit and boosting the value of its shares – she’s out.

I had a session with the careers advisor this morning. Both he and I agreed that becoming a chartered engineer should be my key priority. However, Monbiot says, “…be wary of following the careers advice your college gives you.”

Nor does this mean that you shouldn’t take “work experience” in the institutions whose worldview you do not accept if it’s available, and where there are essential skills you feel you can learn at their expense. But you must retain absolute clarity about the limits of this exercise, and you must leave the moment you’ve learnt what you need to learn (usually after just a few months) and the firm starts taking more from you than you are taking from it. How many times have I heard students about to start work for a corporation claim that they will spend just two or three years earning the money they need, then leave and pursue the career of their choice? How many times have I caught up with those people several years later, to discover that they have acquired a lifestyle, a car and a mortgage to match their salary, and that their initial ideals have faded to the haziest of memories, which they now dismiss as a post-adolescent fantasy? How many times have I watched free people give up their freedom?

Oh dear.

Last Thursday night, I was sitting on the grass chatting with my friends until midnight. Spring had come and the night was warm.

Now, it’s pouring with rain. I’m bundled up in my goosedown puffer jacket (sometimes called a ‘duvet jacket‘ or ‘fashion travesty’).

The good thing about the rain is that it helps me stay inside to read dozens of journal articles (oh my god, there are so many).

Damjan came to Cambridge this weekend and we happily did not much. A friend came over to cook Turkish lamb pilau with us, with strawberries for dessert. We also watched Iron Chef, Giant Lobster Battle. Iron Chef is the best.

Turkish Lamb Pilau

• 500 g lamb, chopped to mouthful size
• Small handful of pine nuts
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 large onion, sliced
• 2-3 cups rice (the recipe book says 250 g rice but I just added enough until it looked all right)
• 500 mL stock (I used chicken but lamb or vegetable is better, apparently)
• Handful of minut, chopped
• Some cinnamon (I shook the bottle three times. The recipe suggests two cinnamon sticks).
• Salt and pepper to taste

1. Lightly fry pine nuts without oil. Remove from pan.
2. Fry onion and cinnamon in oil until transparent.
3. Add lamb. Fry until browned.
4. Add rice. Fry for a minute. Add stock.
5. Simmer with lid on for 15 minutes or until rice is soft. You might need to add more water.
6. Mix in pine nuts and mint.

We served it with cherry tomatoes, grated cucumber in yogurt (‘tzatziki’), grated carrot in yogurt (‘carrot tzatziki’), and cloudy apple juice. We had stuffed olives too but I forgot to take them out of the fridge. More for me, then.

I cooked something yummy from my favourite and only cookbook: 101 One-pot Dishes. It was originally ‘potato and mozzerella frittata’ and it fed 6 people. I adapted it to make ‘potato and reduced fat mature cheddar frittata’, which fed one person.

• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 2 small-medium potatoes, sliced
• 2 eggs, beaten with 1 tsp salt
• 1 tomato, sliced
• grated cheese
• pepper to taste

1. Fry potatoes with oil for five minutes.
2. Spread potatoes across the base of the pan. Pour over the eggs so that potatoes are covered. Simmer for 15-20 minutes.
3. Add tomato slices over the top. Sprinkle the shredded cheese.
4. Grill for five minutes. Add pepper to taste

Google displays targeted ads alongside your messages in Gmail. I regularly get automated notifications from Facebook whenever someone posts me a message.

Jenny wrote something on your Wall.

To see what Jenny wrote, follow the link below:
http://url.com/xyz#wall

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

In the absence of context, this is Google Adsense’s best attempt at responding to such emails:

Berlin Wall?!

It’s the scattergun approach. I guess they’re hoping something might stick.

Fish and chips at the Lake District. The observant of you will have noticed that there is actually a photo of chicken and chips. That was mum’s dinner. I had cod. See also the evil look on my face just before the packages of piping hot yumminess are opened. That is the look of ‘I love fish and chips and I don’t have to feel guilty about it at all because junk food on holidays doesn’t count because it’s unavoidable and now officially sanctioned by mum and dad.’

In the last eight months, I have met and read about many talented and idealistic young people. A few of them have even said they would like to be Prime Minister of Australia or the leader of another country so that they could make real fundamental changes in the world.

We should feel encouraged by such passion and activism in society’s youth. For me, the first thing that comes to mind is ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth.’ My second thought is then, ‘That’s not really fair, Joan. Democracy isn’t like a kitchen. The more people engaged, the better.’

The third thought, which is there all the time, is ‘You’re on a bandwagon, Joan. It’s a tired old thing, naive and egotistical. Why don’t you get off and let the others save the world? There seem to be plenty of leaders out there, some of whom will be effective.’

These past few weeks, I’ve been thinking hard about why I’m an engineer. It often seems futile, designing sludge drying beds for water recycling or developing a green purchasing policy for a company. There are economic and technological systems that need reform out there. Can an engineer ever do more than tinker at the edges?

I was in bed on the edge of sleep and asking myself, ‘Why do you want to work on the big picture problems, Joan? Is it ego? You don’t trust anyone else to make the ‘right’ changes? You look down on the very necessary and difficult work of on-ground implementation? You don’t want to be a faceless worker bee?’

Then I imagined myself in a happy perfect world in which I didn’t have to strive for change. I think that day-to-day I would be content, dancing, visiting friends, eating, taking photos. But without an overarching life goal, I don’t think I would be satisfied.

I haven’t quite got it yet but it’s something to do with ‘meaning’ and ‘purpose’ There’s something about making a lasting, fundamental difference in the external world that motivates me. It is intrinsic in the fabric that makes up ‘Joan’. It might also be a search for approval but not (I believe) power and fame.

Understanding this makes me start to understand that others aren’t like me. Plenty of people go on with life without trying to change the world. I often get upset with these people (most of society). To me, it seems selfish to aim for nothing more than to earn enough money so that you can go on annual overseas holidays or have weekend parties or relax in the garden or buy a new car.

But maybe (surely) other people have different things that provide their lives meaning: religion, family, friends, travel and experiences, science and discovery, winning, playing, their business…

Still, I think that there are a lot of people who live their lives without meaning. Sam de Brito wrote about a woman who ‘started to cry as she spoke about the goat track her existence had become; a worn, weary path between bed, her desk at work, the couch, then bed again.’

Does my life goal to ‘make a difference’ make me morally superior than the person whose life goal is to ‘step foot in every continent of the world’ or ‘put my children through private school’?

Rationally, no. Intuitively, I still have trouble accepting that intelligent and caring people can be comfortable not acting on global issues of justice, equity, ecological damage, and the future. The corollary of that is that anyone who isn’t an activist cannot be intelligent or caring. Again, rationally, this can’t be true but… I still feel it.

I wonder how many formerly idealistic people are laughing at me now? Here I am, just another naive young thing waiting to be processed and brought down by real life.