Edinburgh
Why, blogger! I have neglected you recently, haven't I? How uncomely of me; how indecent; how beastly. I do apologise. I actually have done a few things since I last saw you -- my life, although not as proactive as I would generally like it to be, is being lived to the best of my seventeen year old ability.
Last month, on the weekend of the 22nd, I visited what I hope I will be able to call my future home. I went to Edinburgh, Scotland. I wrote about this on tumblr briefly, but what I found most interesting about this long-anticipated visit was the effect physically being there had on me. There are two aspects to any experience: there is anticipation, or the imagination stage. This is what you think a place may be like, what expectations you hold, how you've romanticised it. And then there is the experiential stage: the actuality of it, how it compares to your prejudice (or prejudgement, if you prefer). This is often displayed in the 'expectations: reality' dichotomy, so perfectly realised in that scene in 500 Days of Summer. My point is: the reality, the experience is of a different quality to the expectation. You can sometimes tell vividly which feels worse and which feels better, but sometimes you can only identify a difference, and that's how it was. The Edinburgh of reality was simply different to the Edinburgh of expectation, but not in a bad way. Not in a disappointing way. Just different. Which, to me, screams out the necessity of experiencing the reality, the realisation of your expectations or imaginations. There is a whole other side to the coin that you miss out on by looking only at others' images, only reading of others' experiences: there's a phenomenological quality to actual experience that is quite different to mere knowledge.
I still really liked Edinburgh and I really do hope they deign to accept me. To get into Edinburgh would be my final and ultimate academic success. Everything after that would be bonus.
But you want to know about the city itself. I loved it because, even though of all the universities places I've visited outside of my city it's the one I stayed at longest, I felt there was so much more to it when I left.With Oxford and Cambridge, anyway, I felt that I understood those places after I had left -- they felt like a tourist destination that I could check off my list. Edinburgh is a place that calls me back. That likely has to do with the fact that it's larger, but I'm a city boy at heart, so I expected as much. It's a beautiful city, too, with beautiful architecture, beautiful scenery, and that international-hub buzz you get from larger cities. At times it reminded me of Westminster, London -- which I was pleased about, because I really liked that part of London.
I don't know why, but I've found it difficult to write about Edinburgh, and I guess that's why it's taken so long for this post to arrive. I guess, it's just, I don't feel my experience with it is complete enough to write a summary like I did with the other places. I want to go back.
Anyway, I'm going to have to cut this short because I had a bath in the middle of writing it, which now makes it 1.38 AM, and I have school tomorrow. I just wanted to get back to writing on this blog because tumblr is extremely addictive and represents, in my mind, the imagination and thought, whereas blogger represents action and experience. I don't mean those are intrinsic properties of the websites themselves; I just mean that's how I've ended up using them. The posts here are long and somewhat detailed about the things I've done, whereas the ones on Tumblr are mainly of thoughts I have (although sometimes I use it for shorter accounts of things I've done). Tumblr drags you in more and ensnares you, and I need to distance myself at least slightly from that for a while. I won't deny myself of an outlet, but Tumblr is too addictive, so I'm going to try re-focus on the things I had as outlets before Tumblr, and Tumblr will take the backseat. That way hopefully I can reorganise my life and take back control.
But anyway, here are a few pictures from Edinburgh!
Last month, on the weekend of the 22nd, I visited what I hope I will be able to call my future home. I went to Edinburgh, Scotland. I wrote about this on tumblr briefly, but what I found most interesting about this long-anticipated visit was the effect physically being there had on me. There are two aspects to any experience: there is anticipation, or the imagination stage. This is what you think a place may be like, what expectations you hold, how you've romanticised it. And then there is the experiential stage: the actuality of it, how it compares to your prejudice (or prejudgement, if you prefer). This is often displayed in the 'expectations: reality' dichotomy, so perfectly realised in that scene in 500 Days of Summer. My point is: the reality, the experience is of a different quality to the expectation. You can sometimes tell vividly which feels worse and which feels better, but sometimes you can only identify a difference, and that's how it was. The Edinburgh of reality was simply different to the Edinburgh of expectation, but not in a bad way. Not in a disappointing way. Just different. Which, to me, screams out the necessity of experiencing the reality, the realisation of your expectations or imaginations. There is a whole other side to the coin that you miss out on by looking only at others' images, only reading of others' experiences: there's a phenomenological quality to actual experience that is quite different to mere knowledge.
I still really liked Edinburgh and I really do hope they deign to accept me. To get into Edinburgh would be my final and ultimate academic success. Everything after that would be bonus.
But you want to know about the city itself. I loved it because, even though of all the universities places I've visited outside of my city it's the one I stayed at longest, I felt there was so much more to it when I left.With Oxford and Cambridge, anyway, I felt that I understood those places after I had left -- they felt like a tourist destination that I could check off my list. Edinburgh is a place that calls me back. That likely has to do with the fact that it's larger, but I'm a city boy at heart, so I expected as much. It's a beautiful city, too, with beautiful architecture, beautiful scenery, and that international-hub buzz you get from larger cities. At times it reminded me of Westminster, London -- which I was pleased about, because I really liked that part of London.
I don't know why, but I've found it difficult to write about Edinburgh, and I guess that's why it's taken so long for this post to arrive. I guess, it's just, I don't feel my experience with it is complete enough to write a summary like I did with the other places. I want to go back.
Anyway, I'm going to have to cut this short because I had a bath in the middle of writing it, which now makes it 1.38 AM, and I have school tomorrow. I just wanted to get back to writing on this blog because tumblr is extremely addictive and represents, in my mind, the imagination and thought, whereas blogger represents action and experience. I don't mean those are intrinsic properties of the websites themselves; I just mean that's how I've ended up using them. The posts here are long and somewhat detailed about the things I've done, whereas the ones on Tumblr are mainly of thoughts I have (although sometimes I use it for shorter accounts of things I've done). Tumblr drags you in more and ensnares you, and I need to distance myself at least slightly from that for a while. I won't deny myself of an outlet, but Tumblr is too addictive, so I'm going to try re-focus on the things I had as outlets before Tumblr, and Tumblr will take the backseat. That way hopefully I can reorganise my life and take back control.
But anyway, here are a few pictures from Edinburgh!
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