Arrival: "as much like Oxford as monkeys could make it"

Pictures, pictures! He held the camera in his hand and felt a giddy rush. Let me chronicle the world, he said. Later he sorted through them.

Here's my journey, up to now. Click images for a slightly larger view. (I took them all at 22xx by 17xx but obviously I'm not hosting something like that.)

I wonder if they cap my bandwidth each month, or just get angry if I use too much. Judging from the sustained 1 megabyte per second transfer I got downloading a patch earlier today, though, they're not in much of a position to carp.

There seems to be a high gap of white-space between here and the start of the table. Someone give me a clue? HTML and me, huh --

[Postscript. Some small edits Monday morning. I feel particular shame over my inability to reason spatially in a certain skew shot near the top.]

patience on the runway
	On the second flight of the day, Toronto to Newark, I had a window seat. In fact, an emergency window seat. The flight attendent quite earnestly asked me if this was all right. "As long as it's not used," I quipped. Here we're waiting on the tarmac. Later he explained how to remove the window. As it turns out, it was not used.
ascending to the heavens
	Take-off is pretty exciting when you're there, somewhat less so when you're not. Obviously, the anticipation and the power of the engine and the floor not being down anymore are integral to the experience. I guess this captures that last a little bit. Anyway, Toronto looks like a nice place from the air. If only its citizens didn't have that infernal gall of theirs. Vancouverites know better: their city is best, or maybe would be if Zurich vanished.
suspended o'ertop
	And here's proof. Take a look at that. No mountains in sight! They've got some water, sure, (it's not really near an ocean,) but where are the mountains? Without them, those dangling clouds are cute, not an antediluvian menace.
modern world at a glance
	My worldly American neighbours might find this charmingly rustic, provincial, even parochial. Just like the lady at the shuttle bus company who asked for my phone number (to look for it in the database: still trying to find my reservation at this stage) and, upon receipt, said with fatigue bordering on contempt: "Area code..."
not upside down
	I took a lot of clouds pics, more or less under the hope that one or two might turn out all right, interesting, etc. A few did the former but the clouds that day just weren't so exotic or photogenic. This is the fluffiest of the bunch. As you can see, its chief redeeming feature is the novelty that it looks like it's upside-down, taken at sea, but it's not. The clouds are below us, ho-ho.
clouds swim among clouds
	I'm on top of the world, looking down on Creation, bum bum, bum,...
not actually inside Miniluv
	Just after putting my bags inside, I snapped this shot of the sterile-looking hallway. There is one more pair of doors behind me, making ten in all. (Those keeping track will realise I mistakenly put myself "third from the back" previously. Shucks.) Fortunately, at this stage my large suitcase was propping the door open, preventing me from, say, accidentally locking myself out.
evidence those stains are not my fault
	It's slightly fuzzy, and the colours aren't totally right, but we work with the single shot we snapped before moving in. (I'm not taking another one and revealing to the world that even without any of my boxes I can still suffer the shame of an untidy room.) Still, the calm, cozy feel is apt. Careful examination will reveal that there are two chairs, not one, and pretty comfortable ones, at that. The closet and drawers are on the right, blocked by what looks like the door, still propped open by my luggage. All in all, much better than I had feared. Shortly afterward I tried to relax. Rather thirsty from the long trips through a sun-drenched world, I stepped out to fill my mug from the washroom sink. My luggage was no longer adjacent to the door.
idyllic Elysium
	Go down the humourless hallway, through the menacing firedoor, into the atrium, and look left. This is the pleasant slice of pastoral New Jersey that you will see. I went on a walkabout today [Sunday -- this entry posted early Monday morning], snapping photos as I went. It was very bright out, very summer-like.
brick and mortar, arch and lamp-post
	Not quite like the buildings back home. This is still on the grounds of the Graduate College. The architecture is entirely typical of more-than-every-other building on campus. I'm sure in a few months I will be quite oblivious to it, so a few shots to send Back Home are in order.
Tower of Babel Cleveland
	Jutting up to heaven, Cleveland Tower looks o'er the Graduate College. I assume there was a person named Cleveland, who possibly donated some money. Most of the buildings around here have plaques ready to inform us of the buildings' history. No doubt a cursory examination would have revealed the sordid story of this bright tower, but I had an agenda. Today I wanted to find a first-approximation of an efficient route to the math building, Fine Hall.
archaic meets modern among architects
	More or less, I planned to just "walk over there," taking what few turns I might need to. Alas, it did not turn out that way. Here I get distracted by an anachronistic juxtaposition.
just pleasantly archaic
	After just a couple of left/right decisions, I was getting onto the wrong track. My path-finding algorithm didn't seem to be so good. This makes concrete some of the jokes I was telling just yesterday: "Ah-ha! A solution does exist!" ("but it runs in n2 factorial time!" -- true story from commutative algebra. -- or something like that; I just remember hearing it from Zinovy Reichstein.) Anyway, I amused myself by taking some pictures along the way. This made me feel slightly more productive. However, given the sun I would have traded it for actual productivity.
more detour
	A slightly more-grand-than-typical building. I like the turrets. If I had turned right 'round about here, I would have been peachy. But I decided to circle back and try a different path after consulting with my map.
same detour
	But why would you do that, I hear you asking. After all, it's counter to the algorithm. The first reason is that there is a solid black line of a building where I thought I was on the map. The second reason is carefully hidden in this shot of yet another building I thought looked nice, the rube I am.
malformed, wicked lion-beaver-things, defend us!
	Here's detail on the guardian figures by the road of the shot above. I have no idea what those things are, but I'll just call them lions, because they don't look much like tigers. They don't look so much like lions from this angle, either. I think I just called them lions because I'm accustomed to seeing statues of lions. They're certainly not hoary marmots. Note, while we're here, the forbidding DO NOT ENTER (on pain of horrific things, they evidently didn't have enough space to elaborate) sign.
flying beasts, defend us!
	By this time I was keeping an eye out for that old standby, the gargoyle. It didn't take twenty seconds to find this example. I think it's some sort of lizard-snake-dragon-thing.
more ostentation
	This is one entrance to the Frist Campus Center (yes, that Frist), where apparently all the happening things happen, like the chess club. At this stage I knew again where I was -- this building is quite close to Fine Hall.
a fine hall
	At last, that veritable holy place. It's a huge building. I didn't take any shots from high-atop, on the theory that I had to save something for later. I was also rather hungry and wanted to get home. Consequently after collecting my snippets of mail from the box here I made my way to a small Greek diner I had noted from the Guide to Everything I received when I checked in. (It is aptly named.) I also found a helpful list of incoming graduate students. Apparently there are fifteen of us. Long-time readers will realise that this ameliorated a potentially awkward situation that had been on my mind.
en avante, lion-things
	On the way back, I found a quite acceptable route, very direct, west across campus, although not quite at the north/south level I'd want. It was not until I passed through these curious-looking statues that I realised I had very nearly been here before. The fools! Their sign was wrong!
sweet home again
	Finally, I returned home. All told I was out for a little more than 1.5 hours. It felt like a little longer than that. I'm still not quite on their time. Today otherwise I've been reading and resting. I took a brief nap, more or less by accident, which was probably not a good idea; but it did leave me alert enough to hammer out this update. It is now past midnight, Eastern. I'll have to change Sun-Drunken time to that of the East coast. I confess I'm still mentally subtracting three every time I look at a clock, even though they're all Eastern, but there was a time this afternoon when I took my watch at face value. The assimilation proceeds.