The Entrepreneurial Spirit

A few months ago Cindy and I were at a used book sale (the annual Monroe County Red Cross book fair) on flat rate per bag day. I noticed a number of textbooks that I recognised from taking French for reading knowledge classes. As it was a flat rate for as many books as I could fit in the bag, I picked up some of these books, thinking it would be worth trying to sell them on to the campus bookstore. They didn't want to buy them a few weeks ago but told me to come back during exam week. When I did they still didn't want one title and another had actually dropped in value. Still, I've managed to sell three to people in my dept. I charged them less than I would other students but I've still made back almost what I paid for all of them. I still have 3 left but I've contacted the instructor for the first half of the summer French class, asking her to tell the students that I'm selling books cheap.

Hopefully the next project will work out even better. Cindy and I were talking about how she loves French cider but not American cider very much. We managed to find some French cider at the international grocers but it was the one she likes less (brut, she prefers doux; I'll drink either) and it was selling for around $12. Cindy's parents found this surprising as there it retails for €1.25 for the cheap brand or €1.40 for the good stuff. So I said something like, "If it's so much cheaper in France, we should bring some back duty free. It's just a shame that we can only bring 2L into the USA between us, which is only two 750mL bottles." But then I started wondering, "What happens if we exceed our duty-free limit? How much would the duty cost?" It's a little complicated because you have to pay a percentage of the value as duty but also federal and state excise taxes on alcohol. But to bring a case of cider back to Indiana should cost less than $5 in duty and taxes. So our plan is to buy a case, check it like a suitcase (with "Fragile" stickers) and pay the duty. If all goes according to plan, we'll get a dozen 750mL bottles of Cindy's favourite cider for about $25. Fingers crossed.

Summer Work

Good news: I've found some work for this summer and next.

June this year I'm going to a workshop in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We'll be developing history of science teaching modules for high school science teachers.

Next summer I'll be going to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I've won a fellowship with the Chemical Heritage Foundation and will be working there for two months, using their library and writing a paper (which should also be useful for my thesis).

Update - 7th May
More good news! Along with my Chemical Heritage Fellowship, I've just been offered another fellowship from the Philadelphia Area Center for History of Science. In fact, the Chem Heritage Foundation is a member institution, so I'll be spending a little more time as well as visiting libraries at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton. They say that this one 'may be held sequentially with fellowships offered separately by PACHS member institutions but may not be held concurrently.' So I guess that means staying in Philadelphia for three months. I've heard that it's a nice city; I hope so.

Serving Sizes

Tonight we had dinner out with a few people from HPS and Philosophy. We took advantage of the nice weather eating outside at a little place without undergrads where the food's not too dear. After dinner someone suggested that we go to an icecream place called the Chocolate Moose, a Bloomington institution. Knowing that it was close, most of us walked and enjoyed the summer evening.

The Chocolate Moose is a small, free-standing kiosk, about 5 meters square with a high pointed roof with a sign with a moose on it. There's always quite a queue because the locals love it. It's not the best ice cream I've ever had but I don't mind going there because it's good value. Because of this I knew I wanted a small but I while waiting looked up at the cups they had on display. I thought that the largest looked like a pretty big soft drink but then I realised that the cup wasn't for soft drinks, it was for sundaes, "blizzards" and milkshakes. I read the sign and it said "32 oz"; that's 950 mL! (For only $4.20 when made with softserve.) And my "small" was 16 oz, 470 mL! I was quite satisfied.

Humble Pie

This week is my week for being told what to do.

Tuesday I had a class inspection for the first time. About a year ago they told the associate instructors that we would have to be observed at some stage. I was proactive and went to the professor who I thought was in charge of the course I was teaching but he said he didn't know anything about it. Then we hear again that we'd have to be inspected before the end of the semester, just two weeks away. I had already passed the fun part of the semester but managed to turn Tuesday's class into a pretty comprehensive lesson. I haven't received the report yet but he seemed happy enough with my performance.

Tomorrow I have to present my qualifying paper in front of the whole department. I've already heard from my two advisors that it has gaps and will need more work before it's accepted; I'm sure I'll get plenty more people wanting to pick holes in it tomorrow. My plan is to go in there describing it as a draft; hopefully that way they'll try to make most of the criticisms constructive.

Taxing Times

I just did my US tax return. Because Australia has a lousy tax treaty with the states I get no special treatment as a student (Cindy, e.g., gets to earn the first $5000 tax free). And worst of all, international students can't claim anything much as deductions (not books, fees or anything; not if you worked for the money).

So I have to send the federal government a cheque for $265.20. (Cindy has to send them 32c!) I'm going to get back $48 from the state of Indiana but that doesn't help much. I suppose it was the US government that paid me in the first place so I can't be too annoyed about having to give some of it back.

Warm Angry Rabbits

You can't get decent hot cross buns in America. They do have a couple of packets at the local supermarket but they've got a strange custard-coloured icing cross on top and they don't look too promising. And they certainly don't have chocolate one like in Australia.

So, last year I found a good recipe and had some success making them myself (having a bread machine helps a lot). Here's the recipe I use:

1 1/3 cups milk
1 egg (beaten)
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3 1/2 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon allspice
2 teaspoons yeast
4 tablespoons cocoa
3/4 cup chocolate chips

Put all ingredients except choc chips into bread machine on dough setting. (Add choc chips when machine beeps.) When cycle has finished, shape into buns and allow to rise in warm place. Mix a couple of tablespoons of cornflour with milk. Score buns with serrated knife and drizzle cornflour mix over buns. Bake at 190˙C for 20 min. Serve warm.

That's what I did last year. I'm finding other recipes on line that are telling me to glaze them. I'm not sure that's necessary for chocolate ones but I might try it.

Australia Studies 101

Today I gave a talk to some American student teachers about Australia. They are participating in a Cultural Immersion Project where they travel to another country for eight weeks where they teach in a local school. I knew one of the past participants who got a lot out of it (she wants to go back to Australia eventually) so when I met the coördinator and she asked me I was happy to help.

There were more parents in the audience than students (they're about 21 years old but American university students get babied) and the parents asked at least half of the questions. Maybe the preparatory course the students are taking is working because the only very stupid question I got was from a mother. She asked, "Do you need to get your money exchanged or do they accept US dollars?" As I was picking up my jaw from the floor she continued, "Because they're very happy to accept US dollars in Mexico."

Well, I've got nothing in particular against Mexico but I had thought that Australia was in a better economic relationship with the US than they are.

Bloomington Stinks!

Spring is finally coming to Bloomington. The town does live up to its name - the streets are lined with various flowering trees.

The first to bloom are tall trees covered in little white blossoms. The only problem is that these blossoms stink, really bad! Apparently they're called Bradford pears and they smell putrid, like something between rotting flesh and bodily secretions. If you're ever considering a tree to plant for blossoms, go for a prunus or a cherry, avoid the Bradford pear at all costs!

Success!

I read a review saying that the American ones aren't as good but apparently they're imported from Australia. I won't be able to do proper comparisons because I only have original ones from Australia and caramel ones from America - incommensurable.

At least they are giving Australia full credit for the recipe, which should lend it some cachet with an American audience. (Nevertheless, Cindy and I both strongly disapprove of their use of the word "crème". Yes, accents make words look prettier and more exotic. But if you're going to put the accent there, you can't pronounce it like "cream"; crème is pronounced "crem".)

An Open Letter to Pepperidge Farms

I was so excited to hear that your company had decided to market TIm Tams here in the US that I immediately told everyone I knew who had any connection to Australia, posted news on my Facebook profile for all the world to see and then rushed out to buy some from my nearest Target. But when I arrived there I was greeted with only an empty shelf where Tim Tams had been and apologetic staff. They told me that they had sold out and there would be no more shipments of Tim Tams to replace them. But it's only the 16th March, you're not meant to stop making them until the end of March!

Where are my Tim Tams, you bastards!?

I asked the stockist to ask his distributor again for Tim Tams and he said he would but he didn't sound too hopeful. Now I'm thinking of driving an hour to Indianapolis to buy out the supply of the nearest SuperTarget.

I think your promotion was a bit too focussed. I only heard about them at the end of the promotional period. If only you'd released them to normal supermarkets I would have noticed them (Target is not the first place people think of when they want cookies). A word of mouth campaign will only work if you give people longer than a few months to learn where they are or if you distribute the product more widely. Still, my Target sold out their supply quite early so I guess you could call that a success.

Please keep Tim Tams as a permanent item! Once Australians have realised that there is a steady supply and that they don't have to hoard them, there'll be no more secrets and they'll start telling their American friends to go out and buy Tim Tams too, then you'll see the sales shoot up. I'm sure they'll end up more popular than plenty of your current niche cookies.

Update - 18th March, 2009
Good news! The grocery manager at Target asked the distributor and will be getting me a few packets of "car-mel" TimTams this Friday (there's no plain chocolate ones left). With the double-pack from Xmas that I still haven't opened, this should last me a while. I won't be driving to Indianapolis for biscuits, although Cindy thought it was a good idea.

Better news! The distributor said that TimTams will be coming back to America in November. Mark your calendars!

My present's not present

Cindy thought it would be fun to hide my birthday present. She knows how bad I am at finding things but apparently she doesn't care if I receive it on my actual birthday. Hopefully I'll find it before Easter.

No ear horn for me just yet!

Created by Train Horns

Erin can use this as evidence when she tries to tell Dad to turn off the speakers and he thinks she's hallucinating.

Medicines

Last night at French Table we talked about some of the medicinal products that you can't get here in the US. For example, I stocked up on butter menthols, Irish moss and Betadine gargle, after being frustrated not to have them during my last bout of tonsillitis.

Cindy said she was quite content with Canada Dry brand ginger-ale flavoured lozenges. But one Frenchwoman said that she misses a certain product for sore throats. But you only take this one when it's really bad, deep down in the throat, because it's not a lozenge or a syrup but a suppository!

Krazy Kookie Kapers

I figure it must have been Cindy who bought these biscuits, I can't remember them going in the trolley. I noticed before we opened them the words "double stuffed" on the packet but didn't think much of it until we opened them.

Happy Birthday Charles Darwin!

Today is Darwin's birthday, he'd be 200 years old.

To commemorate the occasion, I went to uni and taught my class on the history of evolution. (Of course I do this every Thursday but it's nice that it fell on this date.) I didn't bake a cake; there's 33 students in my class so I thought it'd be too hard.

Snow Day!

Last night we didn't go to the Runcible Spoon (as we do most Tuesdays) because there had been snow and there was a lot of slush on the roads.

This morning I received this email:

Indiana University's Bloomington campus is closed until noon today (Jan. 28) because of icy roads creating hazardous travel conditions. A decision on whether to reopen after 12:00 p.m. will be made late in the morning based on updated road conditions.

Here's why:That's the view from our bedroom window.


That's the carpark of our building.

And this is Fess Ave facing north, the way I walk to get to campus.

A new record - the most snow I've ever seen in one place.

Addendum - Noon
Classes have been cancelled for the whole day. I just received an automated phone call explaining that the only people expected to turn up are those whose jobs involve moving snow or cooking in the residence halls. Even then, it's only if they're able to make it.

Even more surprising, Monroe county has declared a snow emergency! Only essential emergency and public safety travel is permitted. Luckily we have enough food for a few days.

Bitching about the weather again

A week or so ago we had a record cold snap - the record broken was "the coldest it's been in Bloomington since I moved here": And it's not just that it hits a low overnight, that -21˙ above was after 9 a.m., the lowest temperature recorded that day was -23˙C!

And it wasn't much warmer in the middle of the day, when the wind-chill took it down to -28!

And now I'm having students ask if I'm going to cancel class because there's a winter storm forecast. They're predicting a lot of snow!It's the ice I really hate; you can walk on snow ok but when the asphalt get icy you just slip straight over.

Happy Birthday Rabbie Burns!

Robert Burns was born 250 years ago today,

Last night Cindy and I went to a Burns supper where we ate haggis, drank scotch and heard some poetry. I was asked to give a speech "long-winded enough to remind the guests that this isn't the office Christmas party, yet not so long as to induce cramping, dry-mouth, or ringing in the ears". This gave me a good excuse to wear the Henderson tartan tie I bought in Edinburgh last summer.

It was a good night. The haggis was surprisingly edible; there was enough oatmeal and the meat was cut finely enough that it didn't feel too offally.

Back

We arrived back in Bloomington without incident. We made all our flights, the only delay was the flight from Chicago to Indy. I had phone the friend who was picking us up to tell him we were running on time, then United promptly made a liar out of me, forcing him to wait for us for an hour.

A Literary Meme

I've been tagged by Lara.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE
4) Reprint this list in your blog. The premise of this exercise is that the (American) National Endowment for the Arts apparently believes that the average American has only read 6 books from the list below.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling.
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte.
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman.
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens.
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy.
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare. Well, quite a few during and since high school. No one needs to read them all!
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell.
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams. The first one was hilarious, the second quite amusing, but the third just got too silly.
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens..
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis. Wait, wasn't #33 the whole Narnia series?
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan.
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt.
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare. But #14 asked us if we'd read his complete works!
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I'm not going to tag anyone. Most people I know are too lazy with their blogs. But if you want to do it, knock yourself out.