Well that was Nice...

So a little bit of quiet time on the blog for the last couple of weeks. My journey back from the US went swimmingly, the BA staff tended to my every need on the flights, and a shower (followed by a G+T) in the lounge at Heathrow soon had me feeling like a new man! My frequently disrupted sleep cycles at Uni have clearly set me in good stead because  I skipped the Jet-Lag step of readjustment to British life. One good night sleep in my own bed and I was back on Mean Time (or rather BST, but that's a little pedantic). After a week unpacking, catching up and tidying at home, I was just about settled in before I was off to Nice for five days with my family. It wasn't a particularly active holiday: the emphasis was on sunbathing by the rooftop pool at the hotel, catching up on fiction (new Pratchett is a worthy read). We did spend time exploring the old town, browsing the markets and most importantly enjoying French cuisine! Inevitably for one of my family's holidays, the homeward flight was disrupted, this time due to a French general strike triggering Easy Jet to cancel their flights. Such happenings are a theme of my family holidays, so we swung smoothly into action finding alternative flights to Manchester, so we only got home a few hours later than planned. Tomorrow I'm off to Wales to visit my Godparents and spend some time at the organisation where my Aunt works. I'll learning about the services available to the homeless and drug addicts; sure to be an enlightening experience.
Here's a few pictures from around Nice:

Take me out to the Ball Game!

In return for our charitable good works as a volunteer at the juvenile arthritis camp earlier in my stay, Matthew and I were offered free tickets and plus ones to see the Seattle Mariners baseball team play. Seeing some genuine "American sport" was one of my to-do's for the trip so this was too good an opportunity to pass up. I left it up to Matthew you arrange our guests so he invited along one his best friends from college, Jessie and the Jessie's fiance Julia. This was ideal as while Matthew isn't really a baseball fan (he had never been to a game in Seattle before), Jessie is a Mariners fan so he was able to patiently explain the rules, plays and team to me with the fervour of a true fan. It was a great evening out, complete with over priced refreshments, corny chants and the "7th inning stretch". The Mariners were playing the Colorado Indians, and I guess its just as well I don't have any particular loyalties as the home team went down 6 runs to 3. As you can maybe tell from my accommodation post I've been experimenting with the black and white mode on my camera. This was inspired by some monochrome photos of the cast of "Mad Men" using modern tech, the incongruous nature makes for a great image and I've found that the simple act of switching to black and white can really change the perception of a scene.  Anyway, enough wittering, a few pics:

A summer evening of sport

Grim industrial site

It was a splendid evening out. Jessie and Julia were great conversation. And one of the nice things about baseball is that with a 3 hour game, and a not overly vociferous crowd, it really is a social event too; you can have a chat and get some food from the concourse without feeling like you're missing some essential sequence of play. And when its free? Who can say fairer than that?!

Its my last day at work tomorrow, so I'm only in for the morning then a farewell feast at lunchtime and I have to spend the afternoon packing and cleaning my apartment.

The roof over my head

Given I am coming to the end of my stay now, I suppose its about time I covered a bit about where I've been staying these past 8 weeks. Aiming to keep things simple I arranged my accommodation through the University of Washington. They offer reasonable value apartments for students, researchers or interns who will be in Seattle for more than 4 weeks. For the first 5 weeks I shared the apartment with 3 flatmates. These were all older guys who were on a Physicians Assistants course at the University, they were friendly and sociable but they studied A LOT because of the intense nature of the theory party of their course (cramming basic biomedical theory into 6 weeks). A few pictures of my apartment and the general surrounding area:

The grass is aways greener...

Given my voracious appetite for books in the vacations, amplified by my lack of a computer for the first week or so, I felt I better join the public library before I blew all my funds on literature. I visited the Central Library, a modern monolith of literature (pictures below), expecting to purchase a visitors card for the sum of $25, a bargain from my perspective given how much I might otherwise expend on books. The librarian however, upon recognising my address as being that of the university, kindly registered me as a visiting out of state student, so I was able to join for free! For the past 6 weeks I've been able to indulge myself with Pratchetts and Cornwells to my heart's content as well as a guide to help smooth my transition to Mac.
The library building itself is a truly splendid place.

It has a lovely airy reading hall with periodicals of every genre.

The Gates Theatre for author readings and presentations.

A huge fiction selection with an extensive catalogue to summon books from peripheral libraries with the click of a mouse.

Moving between the library's 10 floors requires the use of a variety of lurid escalators and stair cases

There is ample provision of IT facilities: parades of computers which you can reserve or just turn up and gamble on grabbing a free one. And plenty of desk space with power points and free WiFi for bringing your own machine (as many do). There was even a brilliant audio centre with free audio books and podcasts available to download direct to your personal media player via these terminals:

Above the fiction floors is the "reference spiral". This topographically confusing section contains all the reference works in a continuous room looping up several floors. Finding the required shelf, or even a stairway to the appropriate 'floor' was quite a challenge.

Unfortunately it seems all this comes at a price: due to budget cuts/limitations all the public libraries in Seattle are closed this week . For me this meant I had to return all my books at the weekend and I am left stretching out a solitary Asimov I picked up in a book store and a Private Eye I have been saving for a rainy day. In some ways it shows that while the recession may seem bad in the UK, at least for now we can afford to keep our libraries open, and I really hope it never comes to this!