Chris Applegate of qwghlm is making me homesick. He’s uploaded a shot of MY street on Flickr. Not that I ever took photos of my flat or my neighbourhood the whole 6 years I lived there. You just don’t do these things as a local. But I’ve been acting the tourist in Santa Monica today, and will shortly be uploading some grossly overexposed photos to my Flickr LA set.

Plug for the other blog: blethering about Santa Monica.

It’s been a while since I last did a silly internet quiz, so I jumped at the chance to prove my geek-worthiness after reading badly dubbed boy’s geek post. A score of 9/11 left me feeling rather disappointed; I didn’t know who coined the phrase “science fiction”, nor could I remember a quote from Dune (although, in mitigation, I last read it 15 years ago).

There are probably lots of other geek quizzes out there that test one on a broader range of geekiness. Some other day, perhaps. Today, I plan to do some non-geeky things and hit the beach!

Update: I failed miserably to avoid being a geek today. Spent an hour in the Apple store on Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade.

I’m looking for a cool/cooler bag to get the ice cream safely from shop to fridge, and have come to the conclusion that Americans just don’t do small. But this has made my day. (Don’t mention the cricket.)

And the home of the car.

Service will resume shortly. Meanwhile, for your reading pleasure (or voyeuristic streak), I’ve put up a post on LA on the other blog.

Passport in hand, flight booked. I’m off in a week.

Things are getting a bit harried. And as fate would have it, everything is happening around the Royal Highland Show weekend. I’m on bull-washing and bottom-wiping duty again, which will probably tire me out enough to sleep the entire 11 hour flight. (Sorry about the carbon emissions, btw. I have been particularly good over the last 6 years though.)

So. Unless something phenomenal happens in the meantime (like Australia coming bottom of the NatWest ODI series), I’m setting this blog to stand-by until I’m back on the interweb (word stolen from curious hamster).

Lots of navel gazing follows. Stop reading now.

This move has started me thinking about residency, citizenship and where your true home is. I’ve pretty much hunkered down in Edinburgh over the last 11 years. In many ways, I consider this to be my home. But what with one thing or other (bloody PhD years), I’ve never qualified for permanent residency. So I can’t officially call it my home country, even though I know it better than the country I am a citizen of.

A few posts ago, badly dubbed boy commented about Rose (from Doctor Who) and how she was just like people who move away from home and return so different they might as well be aliens. I think I’ve become one of those.

I never intended to stay away when I first left. All I wanted was to get a flavour of living somewhere else. My wanderlust years. Then I realised what freedom I had here. Not freedom from parents and family; they’ve always been supportive without hemming me in. But freedom from fitting in, conforming, the 5 ‘C’s (don’t ask).

Here, I can have a partner instead of a state-proscribed husband. I’m not constantly assaulted with propaganda telling me to procreate. Most of my peers from home-home have moved on to the next grown-up step of their lives. They earn real money, live in nice pads, have well-behaved kids, and have become the equivalent of the British shiraz-quaffing class.

We’ve diverged from each other in terms of needs and wants. I’m still a dippy-hippy and my intention is to remain so (more likely in my field of work than any other). And to do that, I can’t go home anymore. I could never fit into the workplace there, wrong skill-set. Also, I’ve only recently discovered that I have opinions, sometimes quite strong, on the way my life is affected by government policies. I don’t want to lose that new voice. And to do that, I can’t go home anymore.

So why call it home? That comes from force of habit, calling it home during my undergraduate years. It isn’t really my home anymore. I might be able to visit it, but I can’t live in it. So, what to call it now? My country of birth sounds too distant. I lived 17 years of my life there, maybe three or four of them in a conscious state. It shaped me in many ways, although I’ve unlearned many of the good habits they tried to instill in me.

Whatever I end up calling it, there’s no doubt about where my true home is. Edinburgh may be cold and windy most of the year, but it’s here that I’ve had the warmest years of my life. (Eek, contrived metaphor!) And while I have a physical home in the form of my parents’ house at [substitute word for country-of-birth-that-used-to-be-home], I’ve made one for myself here as well.

So why leave? I guess wanderlust struck again. I’ve stagnated over the last couple of years. Every little thing feels like a chore, and I don’t have the impetus to do anything. I’ve stopped going out and socialising. I’m suffering from a serious dose of fear of the unknown. So I’m doing it again; bullying myself into trying something new.

A year ago, I would have refused to go to the US, even on holiday. I confused the country and its people with its current government¹. I’m neither pro- nor anti-America. I’ll take it as it comes, thanks very much. Besides, a change would do me good. I might even learn where my true home is.

See you in a few weeks.

Edit: ¹ Funny how others have commented on this recently (links to follow, my back is killing me and I can’t type for long).

Massive spoilers ahead. (I’ll stick a photo of Rose here in case anyone reading this hasn’t seen The Parting of the Ways yet.

Tonight, the Doctor finds redemption. That was, for me, the highlight of tonight’s episode. After his display of hysterical hatred of the Geocomtex Dalek in the Dalek episode, we were made to wonder how far the good Doctor would go to eliminate the Daleks, how much to the bad he would slip, how much he would become like the very thing he hated. A destroyer. Tonight, however desperate the situation, the Doctor held his hand. He could not find it within his conscience to destroy an entire world to eliminate the Daleks. He could not be an exterminator. This whole season has been about the Dcotor’s mental and emotional state following the loss of the Time Lords. From the very first episode, with the Nestene, we see a defiant character. He feels guilty about the fall-outs of the Time War. He’s had to make tough choices (but thankfully not in a Blairite way), and looking back now, this makes the resolution of The Empty Child all the more poignant. “Everybody lives.”

Jack too, finds redemption. From the first time we meet him as a buccaneer in The Empty Child, he’s grown. And while he still obviously thrives on adrenaline and has no qualms about using violence, he has shown himself to be capable of caring for someone other than himself. Like Rose and the Doctor, it doesn’t even occur to him that they can escape in the TARDIS. He’s willing to stand and fight. Although he might have an ulterior motive since he’s from the future and thus could be a paradox should the Doctor blast Earth with a delta wave. (Although, as the Doctor explains, there are outposts of humans elsewhere. Which allows Jack to be a good guy again…) And it is particularly touching when he bids both Rose and the Doctor goodbye in the exactly the same fashion. (And how many complaints will we get on Points of View for that one?)

On to Rose. What a deus ex machina! It’s the third wish scenario. Having said that, what a fantastically strong character Rose is. To have the bravery and strength to attempt to use something as vast and powerful as the Time Vortex. To be able to deal with the task at hand calmly and rationally. First, the message. Then the dispersal of the Daleks. And finally, just because she is human and has feelings, Jack. Would anyone else have the moral courage to stop there and not abuse the absolute power?

To take it back a little, it was also a very courageous and selfless thing that Mickey and Jackie did. They could have prevented Rose from going back. She was, to all intents and purposes, pretty likely to perish along the Doctor. She made it clear that the Doctor was fighting a losing battle 200,000 years in the future. Instead, they could see beyond keeping Rose for themselves, and gave her not only the freedom to go, but their assistance too. It’s nice to get some storylines that celebrate humanity.

Comments on the very end to follow. Liked it though. Very cool.

Fantastic!

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