Trips Outside Dundee

Other than visiting RRS Discovery and the jute museum in Dundee, we also visited a local museum briefly introduces the history of Dundee. Then we began our tours outside Dundee, to explore some different aspects of this post-industrial world.

The first place we visited was Glamis Castle. I strongly encouraged people to go there because it was a really nice place and the guide did the perfect job. However, Sunday is definitely a better day to visit there because you will then have a bus go straightly to the castle. If you don’t mind transferring, I still recommend you to check the length of layover.

Actually, this was the biggest mistake we ever made over this trip. We hopped off the bus at a place called Newtyle and we were supposed to get to bus number 125. However, we found that we had to wait for about three hours, under the condition that we had no idea where this place was, or where to go. We couldn't even find a cafe around the bus stop. So we decided to walk to the castle, to save the time from waiting and doing nothing at Newtyle. Yes, we walked. It was about a 7 miles long walk and it took us for about three hours. We were so exhausted and almost about to give up. The road to glamis seemed endless.

An endless road to Glamis

Photo credited to Yi-Wei Lee

Glamis Castle

Photo credited to Yi-Wei Lee

The most frustrating thing was we actually arrived at the front door of the castle at the same time as the bus did. Not sure whether we were supposed to be happy or not. Anyway, at least we made it. The tour was so nice that I didn’t feel tired anymore. The guide told a few haunted stories and left you a lot of time to walk around and take a look at the rooms in the castle yourself. We also learned some interesting fact. For example, people didn’t lie in the bed for sleeping. They actually sat on the bed instead, because they believed only dead people would lie down.

We also gained some train traveling experiences. Pitlochry, a beautiful place with so many flowers and tourists. The restaurants there were a little more expensive than those in Dundee. But the city center was great, with a lot of small shops. The reason we visited there was the dam and fish ladder. Since we were studying the clean energy and discussing some new technology, we actually visited this place and got to learn how it works to produce electricity. The dam was a little bit strange to me. It had these two sides of completely different scenery and a bridge just like a dividing line of these two. One was so peaceful and I was amazed because it looked like a scene that you will see in movies. The other, however, was not as beautiful as the other side was, but we could actually visually study how whole energy thing works out.

Just like a movie scene

Photo credited to Yi-Wei Lee

We spent the weekend in London. We headed straight to London the day after the Pitlochry trip. Also traveling by train. And one of the most interesting thing I had seen over the weekend was this small protest at Harrod's. Around 3 or 4 P.M., we happened to see a bunch of people all gathering outside the department store. They were all yelling something likes “shame, shame, shame on you.” We were curious, so I took a flyer from a young lady. It looked like they were claiming that a luxury brand’s designer stole a symbol or something as his own trade mark. I never had a chance to see a protest before, so this was kind of a freshly new thing to me. We stayed for a while watching them, although I still don’t know what they claimed were true or not.

Tourism and Identity

Edinburgh
I had eaten haggis the night before, a minute's walk from the train station, and took a photo to prove it, to remember what it had looked like. The next day, walking through the bustling streets of Edinburgh, I desired to escape the American teenagers on vacation and masses of heteronormative white families with 2.5 children in tow. I wanted to hear the different sounds of native Scots, the daily grind of familiar faces at bus stops, and the whining children that exist anywhere in the world. In Edinburgh, the single mothers shopping, tired fathers taking kids off to school, and the people just enjoying a lunch break outside had all been seemingly swept away by a simulacrum of loud Americans looking for the nearest tour bus stop. And there I was, living in that simulated environment, after visiting the Scottish National Archives to learn more about the construction and communication of the Firth of Forth bridges; after discussing the transition from preserving original documents to creating digital copies. There was a strange contrast between the day before, spent learning about the construction of the Forth Replacement Crossing by looking at models as well as the cable-stayed bridge under construction, and the recognition that Edinburgh was a different type of construction as a tourist destination. Perhaps it was the lack of scaffolding at the tourist sites that made it different, something Amelia discusses in one of her posts this week.

Perhaps this strange desire for separation was also a shift in my desire to document, which may have been influenced by my lack of camera as much as my attitude toward the place. The tangible proof of my journey lies not in pictures, but in the whisky and rum from Cadenhead--the drinks themselves unique only because their origins are untraceable beyond geographic regions. But my motivations for buying the spirits weren't to prove that I existed on Scottish soil; I bought them because I wanted to try them, affordably. But such motivations are often invisible, indistinguishable from the gawking tourist who simply wants to take it all in and try new views and experiences to say, "I went to Edinburgh! I was there!" Yet I didn't want to have the same Edinburgh pictures as the 500 other people staring at the same thing, despite my recognition of the absurdity of trying to distinguish myself from the generations of locals, travelers, visitors, and tourists that have come before me and who looked at the same things. Perhaps it was as simple as wanting to walk into a store without being instantly labeled as a tourist; not wanting to defend my identity as an American non-tourist-student-researcher-3-week-resident; not wanting to deal with the assumption that I had only arrived that morning (because why else would I visit Edinburgh, I guess?), or that I was only there to tour the castle and overlook the rest as too real. I didn't want to be labeled as just an-Other tourist, someone to be easily dismissed as temporarily existing, with limited value, and not to be taken seriously. I just wanted to exist and enjoy the experience without being judged, says the American white guy in Scotland doing research towards his PhD and buying alcohol for the experience.

wet paint and the visibility of process

I've been seeing "wet paint" signs all over the place lately. Just this morning on our way to class we passed a few men with rollers and brushes re-painting the fence around the high school. Chalked warnings all along that side of the walkway warned pedestrians about the paint, marking a distance between foot traffic and the work-in-progress. In Edinburgh, too, there were placards placed outside several storefronts. I failed to take any photographs of them, so all I can give you are brief descriptive sketches of plain sandwich boards propped up under glossy window grates or simple laminated sheets of paper zip-tied onto open window shutters, all declaring "wet paint" and implying "please don't touch or smudge or disturb this area."

In Cockburn Street there was a man on a ladder, with bucket and brush, putting in a few lines of bright pink detailing behind the words "Pie"and "Sky" above a shop door. He was not accompanied (when I saw him at least) by any printed "wet paint" notice. His presence (and the ladder's) was enough of a warning, and perhaps the height of his hand-painted sign would exempt it from the need of any other.

Perhaps it is the few days of sun we had that's prompted so much repainting? Or maybe this kind of small-scale maintenance goes on constantly, and it's anyone's guess what's prompted me to notice it. The wet paint signs are a subtle and temporary form of redirection/crowd control. I am noticing plenty of other methods, less subtle, but presumably almost as temporary, for reasons beyond paint--airport hallways halved by plywood enclosures, whole streets closed off and walkways blocked by aluminum fences or orange cones. During my time in Manchester, a sidewalk diversion over/around a new tramway construction site seemed to shift several feet every time we walked back that way. There were men in orange vests and hard hats milling about, posted signs instructing cyclists to dismount and take care, and make-shift ramps from the existing pavement to the level where all this work was being done. Having recently read and written about Shapin and Schaffer's Leviathan and the Air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life, I started breaking all of these situations down using three technological categories: material (the fences, the ramps, ladder, paintbrush, the strewn-about tools), social (our training in walkways, the significance of orange vests and brawny workmen, our polite obedience to posted notices), and literary (the language and color of the posted signs themselves) tech.

Along with this, I thought about processes, and our tendencies to overlook them in favor of finishedness. We are often asked to overlook works in progress. Don't stop here--you might get paint on your sleeves. A tourist is not supposed to notice the unbuilt, unfinished sections of a city.

Well okay, a man on a ladder hand-painting a quaint pie-shop sign might add to the quaint ambiance of a place like old-town Edinburgh, but scaffolding around the grand, crumbly old castle will always be unsightly and unfortunate, right? We of course accept it as a necessary side-effect of preservation efforts and hope it'll all be finished and out of the way when we visit next time. It's a sort of trade-off.

If we are lucky, the construction scaffolding will be decorated with a pretty skin. This one (pictured above and below) around the National Library of Scotland caught my eye while we were in Edinburgh this week. Mixed in with the apologetic explanations for the building's state are little visual vignettes about the library's contents. It's a little bit advertising, a little bit educational, a little bit quirky entertainment, all sharing one lovely blue background.

The workmen probably didn't expect this tourist to be taking such intrusive photos of their worksite and its shell. This is not the main attraction; it's an underbelly, meant to stay as much behind the curtain as possible.

Are there material, social, and literary technologies mixed in here, as well? Sure. They are everywhere. Technical and professional writing (and yes, I count the doodles on this scaffold-cover as technical writing--don't you?) seem to combine them all in the most diverse ways whenever machines/tools/material tech + groups of audiences all need to work together using language and rhetoric.

Our class had the privilege of learning about and observing the work-in-progress of a new Forth road bridge, plus the interesting historical and technical details of the trio it will complete when it is finished. I was struck by both the grand, plodding pace of it all and by the deep, unpredictable necessity of engineering adaptations that have had to happen as part of the bridge-building process.

We didn't see any "wet paint" signs or their equivalent surrounding the new bridge site. We were specially invited into the education center to notice and bear witness to this set of spaces, despite their unfinishedness. There weren't any apologies for the state of things; rather, there was pride and confidence surrounding the project's huge arms and legs and lifespan. The histories and futures of the bridges were presented beautifully. 

Our role in such a space isn't like the role of the tourist confronted with a scaffold-wrapped monument. Our job is not to spend money and send postcards home anymore. I'm not sure what it is exactly. Not quite tourism, not quite school field trip, or something. Our invitation to the Firth of Forth this week did not come without conditions. We were invited so far, and no further. We were only allowed so much. In some ways the educational center and its staff managed our movements just like wet paint signs, aluminum fencing, and orange cones do with touristy foot traffic.

Who knows if this will become a theme for me or not, but I am very interested in where all these boundaries tend to fall and why. The lines (or do I want to call them grades or levels or spectrums instead?) between allowed and not-allowed, between unfinished and finished, between open-access and top-secret... how do they compare to the line between wet paint and dry paint?

(unknown)

While the plan of not planning can take you to the more unexpected corners of a country, it can teach you a lesson in just how much to plan further on in the future with, say, other trips. Studying abroad in the UK has yet been my biggest adventure and I have yet to regret the decision of leaving a comfortable life behind to settle for a month in an unfamiliar place with so many unfamiliar faces. The residents of Dundee and all cities surrounding have been welcoming and comforting to myself and the Purdue Study Abroad group attending. Some more welcoming and excited than others, such as Ronnie at the Ninewells Hospital.

After about a long roaming tour of the Ninewells Hospital here in Dundee, I trust that I know the ins and outs of the hospital. From Frank Gehry’s “Maggie’s Centre” out back above the landscape to the hospitalization learning center for students underground, the Ninewells hospital is equipped with many features I was seeing for the first time. The atmosphere gathered an entirely new focus and theme regarding the student’s performance skills. Hands on activity is emphasized in an entirely different fashion with microphones about the ceiling and mirrored windows for supervision purposes.

Aside from the post-industrial aspects of Dundee’s newer technologies, we went back a few years or so to the Dunnottar Castle dating back to the late 16th early 17th century in Stonehaven, Scotland. Cliffs as high as 5 story buildings held the ruins of a castle so old, only sea gulls and pigeons dared to live in the dark fireplaces and cracks of its remains. Dunnottar Castle inhabited some of the most beautiful sights I had ever witnessed in life with shores similar to that of what you would find in a Pirate of the Caribbean film, large rocks where the sea meets to the shore for daring adults like ourselves to hop across for a simple look into the life under its waters. And the waters of Scotland, let me tell you about the waters of Scotland.

Our next big adventure as a group consisted of fish, bridges, and airplanes just meters overhead. On our trip to the Pitlochry Dam, streams lined the streets and cottage houses along the way. The dam was quiet and content on one side while it’s process created stirring and blundering water over the rocks on the other side. Myself and two other group members walked into town after learning about the dam, discovering a bridge not so still with pedestrians walking across, and not to mention my first fish and chips since arriving in Scotland.

 Next up was the Edradour Distillery in Pitlochry which was my first experience at a distillery. This trip gathered a many first for me as it was my first hiking experience, my first tall waterfall (which was not man-made as I was expecting the entire time), and my first beverage tasting experience.  Above the treelines we stood on our hike to to the distillery taking in the range of green fields like nothing I had ever experienced. At 800 feet we continued to the distillery where we learned of casks worth a quarter of a million pounds alongside 3,000 other casks all stacked in one warehouse for the next several years.

Having not planned any of the trips thus far, Scotland has been an incredible exploitation of many firsts for me. There is much more to look forward to being only two weeks, or a third of the way into the study abroad trip here in Scotland.

Environmental Technology

Living Beyond the Living Room

The living accommodations with which we have been provided by the University of Abertay are far better than I expected. We have two toilets, three shower stalls, four bathroom sinks, a large kitchen equipped with two refrigerators, one dishwasher, one fully functioning oven, one large kitchen sink, and a microwave. Furthermore, each of us is also fortunate to have our own bedrooms (which is great not only for privacy, but to avoid being kept awake with one another’s snores) equipped with a twin size bed, desk, wardrobe, overhead shelf, and a small dresser. 

University of Abertay's flat accommodations at Alloway Halls in Dundee. (Photo by author)

Needless to say, our housing situation came as a pleasant surprise for all of us, however, I couldn’t help but notice our lack of what is perhaps one of the most utilized rooms in anyone’s home - a living room. There were no couches gathered around a television, with a coffee table in the center for us to prop our feet upon after long days of studying, researching, and exploring Dundee. Though I imagine each of us could access our beloved Netflix from our personal laptops during our downtime, I found myself somewhat longing for the idea of Disney movie nights with my flatmates, curled up on couches with blankets and freshly baked pastries.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining, and nor did I ever resent our lack of living room. It’s just that I am most familiar with bonding with friends and family in the comfort of a living room, convinced that I was in fact living. After accepting our accommodations as they are, I became somewhat thrilled at the challenge of pursuing life outside of the living room. Our community entertainment will not come from a screen during our six weeks in Scotland, and we must learn to live beyond the living room.

Since our arrival, I have seen and done things that could never be accomplished without a break from my comfort zone. I broke away from my introverted tendencies and made friends with complete strangers. I chatted with them in pubs, live music venues, bus stops, trains, and even standing in line at the grocery store (side note: lines are referred to as 'queues' here). I've distanced myself from my somewhat lazy habits and hiked through rolling hills, skipped the bus to walk through town, and climbed numerous steep inclines and seemingly endless steps (particularly in Edinburgh!). Instead of turning to a television or computer screen for excitement, I've visited the ruins of a 16th century castle, attended a live music festival in the city, and played lots of euchre (pronounced YOU-ker... it's a 4-person card game that is very popular in Indiana) with my flatmates at the kitchen table.

The beautiful countryside of Pitlochry... My group got somewhat lost on the way to Edradour, which is Scotland's smallest distillery, located in Pitlochry. (Photo by author) 

Live music being performed at Buskers, which a church-turned-pub in Dundee. Bands played at pubs all throughout the city for the entire weekend for what was called the Almost Blue Festival. (Photo by author)

Though a living room is certainly a friendly, comfortable place to settle down at the end of a long day, there is nothing that a living room can offer that would even come close to the vitality and exuberance I have experienced since I was forced to live beyond the living room.