• Herbs
    Amuses

    Herbs and spices

    I love Spring. It is the season I wait for every year. During the heatwave that – mercifully – just ended, I often remembered how wonderful it was. I can get lyrical about spring showers and emerald coloured grass and the Monet-style water lilies on the pond at the nearby castle. Oh, the smell of masses of yellow rhododendrons and singing birds and the grand oaks and the new fish in our little pond. And yes, the return of my old friend hay fever. Every year I forget how miserable those itchy eyes can be, not in the least because for me it marks the end of spring, and the almost beginning of summer.

    I don’t really have green fingers, but I enjoy our little garden. Lots and lots of roses, I add one almost every year. I have planted herbs rather than flowers, so everyday I can go outside and pick whatever I need – parsley, coriander,thyme, oregano, basil, rosemary, chives and of course mint. I have two kinds of basil this year, and one of them has sprouted wonderful pink and purple flowers. We had to remove the big rose rambler (well, Husband did all the work) because it completely overtook our garden, and the neighbours’. My fault. It did say on the wrapper not to plant in small garden … But now it is gone and fortunately the honeysuckle has already covered more than half of the porch.

    Inside the house things have changed a little because the beginning of Spring also saw Son moving back in. Combination of end-of-BA, Corona, Life and Comfort. Gone is my walk-in closet. Sniff. The three of us are embarking yet again on a quest to find things to enjoy across three generations. So far we have hit on walking, watching Lord of the Rings, politics and a communal drink after 10 pm. I make my own tonic these days, for a stiff G&T. You need some kind of bark for that, but anything can be ordered online these days.

    Moving even closer to the core of my life: my desk. Did I tell you it now sports three wide screens? That is excluding the laptop and iPad from work,and the laptop I borrow from my husband. Do I need that many screens? I certainly do. When I first went to university my room tended to be covered in open books and papers. Now it is the same, only electronically. I have treated myself to one of these fancy mechanical keyboards (called “DasKeyboard”). It is great. No more missing out on keys.

    Using this well furnished desk is another matter. Because of #Corona, the walls that I had erected between work and private and study have evaporated, leaving me somewhat bewildered. I really am no good at switching and multitasking anymore. Also, it is weird to attend an office meeting or university seminar with Husband doing stretching in the next room or Son sleepily drinking coffee in the chair behind me. Our house is not so large. So I am using fancy background in my Zoom and Webex and what have you – ranging from the Cheshire cat to apples, as a sort of shield between the world and my home. Apparently when I use the ‘apples’ background, you cannot tell the difference between my head and the apples.

    fresh red and yellow apples. Group of apples

    I suppose I should say something about the past 6 months that I have not been blogging. Things were not right, as you might have gathered. Well, they weren’t with most of us, because of the pandemic, so there is nothing very special about my particular case. But you know how it is: everyone is the centre of his or her own universe. And mine was not so habitable for quite a while. The usual pressure from work and study, plus some rather serious health problems in the family which I lost much sleep over, and to top it all, my employer, the Dutch Tax Office, managed to get itself on the wrong side of politics and people. So I have been in survival mode for quite some time.

    But: things are looking up. I have completed almost 3/4 of the research master in Philosophy and got some really excellent results back. Husband is fit as a fiddle. Son got himself a wonderful apartment and MA Law course in Leiden, which I was allowed to populate with household goods (spices!). Myself, I have changed positions at work, I think for the better. Back at the policy office, where I was many years before, and yes, still in Information Security. That will not change anymore, I think, at least not before retiring in about 10 years time. Or earlier if anyone will pay me to sit on a stone and think.

    I have many things to tell you about, because I have been producing lots of work as a result of very interesting seminars. Wide variety of topics: computational literary analysis, ethics and AI, advanced topics in philosophy of language and folk psychology. I am going to tell you about them in the next few blogs. Promise. But not now. I have just handed in my last monster-paper (some 11.000 words whereas it should have been 5000), so time to relax.

  • Amuses

    Spring!

    It has been a while, I know. Like everyone else, my life has been constrained by #Corona. Thankfully my little household (consisting of myself, Husband and a somewhat crumpled Son delivered back to us from London courtesy of digital teaching) is healthy. Many events that unfortunately did happen to other people have passed us by, so we are grateful. But things are strange. I did not feel like writing for a while. Too much hassle. Work, study, family life, all across one desk, Have been doing lots of walking though. May is such a beautiful month. It has green colours such as you never see in the rest of the year. My little herb garden is filling out nicely.

    Have a look at this beautiful video. You cannot hear the birds or smell the incredible honeysuckle rhododendron, but to compensate, Husband, who created the video, has put some very nice music with it. There is also a flash of me in there just in case that is what you really needed 🙂 This garden is our back garden (well, about 500 m from our home). We are incredibly lucky to be able to walk here every day.

    So why write this post today? Well. It’s my birthday. In Holland it is Remembrance Day, the day before the 2nd WW ended – now 75 years ago. I always avoid TV on my birthday. And there is a #Corona bonus: no social event and no travelling to work means that no one is going to tell me horror stories about what happened to their grandfather or his village during the war. Call me insensitive.

    pasta with pesto

    I have planned my own birthday dinner as a present to myself. It is a quick-as-a-flash P-dinner: Pasta, Pesto, Pecorino and Pinot. And also mushrooms (“paddenstoelen” in Dutch). And (P)olives. As for vitamins, Son has prepared a large bowl of Sangria with fresh fruit. It is sitting in the fridge positively teaming with life. Must be the cointreau and brandy it is laced with. Anyway, Son is taking a digital exam today (one of three, and then his law degree will be completed), so we must wait until he is finished before we can party. He is playing happy music so I have a feeling we won’t have to wait too long.

    I have taken the day off so I have treated myself to some papers by my Professor which I first read over a year ago and now start to understand (I think 🙂 will see what I think next year).

    Later tonight we will watch one of the Tolkien films (well, part of a part coz they are very long). We decided we did not want to watch anymore #C talkshows, so Tolkien will keep us busy for a few weeks. Oh, those beautiful New Zealand hills and those round hobbit houses, I want to live in one of these.

    I might as well tell you what I am up to these days. University has gone digital, which in my case means that I can attend lectures I could not go to before. I am doing four courses, two in Nijmegen and two in Amsterdam, but of course in practice all four are now video- and internet based.

    • Philosophy of Mind, on what they call “folk psychology” which is not what you think it is. It is about mind-reading, or what we do when we predict what someone else is going to do, say, feel etc.
    • Ethics for Artificial Intelligence. This is about how to engage in a fruitful conversation on ethics for the New Digital Era. A topic which in my day-job receives no attention whatsoever, so it is great to get handed a framework. I think it should be integrated into the TOGAF framework which guided digital architectures and have arranged, both with the Open Group and with my professors, to do a research brief outlining my ideas
    • Advanced philosophy of language. This is about “belief” statements, such as “Trump believes Corona can be cured by imbibing disinfectant”. Very technical stuff, all about how such statements can be misunderstood and why. For this course I have to redo all the philosophy of language, particularly logic, that I did not like when I was an undergraduate (and young!) and more (coz they have added stuff whilst I was away). Very good for the soul, as my Professor put it once. Yes, like medicine. But it has to be taken, I felt, to get the background I need. So I shut my eyes and think of .. well.
    • Computational linguistics. This is about how to get characteristics from large bundles of texts. Like authorship, use of emotion words, and even lies. Basically it is like doing detective work whilst playing around with tools. I am enjoying it immensely. I am planning to do my research paper on the documents the Dutch Tax Office has filed with the Dutch House of Representatives, you know, reports, answers to questions etc. It will be interesting to find out how many authors write these documents. Suppose it is only one?

    If I complete the above in the next 2.5 months, I will have obtained all of my 80 seminar-based ECTS except for 2 points (must get those from somewhere), Then there is only my “state of the art” paper and my thesis to go, which is another semester at least. So there is still a chance I will complete the Research Master within 2 years, but if it takes longer, that is fine too. I might need extra time coz I am starting a new job – same employer, same job, different position and also, it seems as if suddenly many more people are interested in “security”, which is what I “do”.

    I am going to leave you with a bit of virtual birthday cake. Stay safe and happy and healthy, and I will do the same for you.

    close up of lime cake on stand
    Not for me today – I gain pounds just looking at it! You can have it all.