Every time my parents decide to go on holiday for Christmas, I somehow end up living abroad that year and having to double the amount of flights it takes me to reach my turkey with all the trimmings. This year, I have flights booked from Edinburgh (my hometown) to Vienna (where I’ll be spending Christmas with my family), but spontaneously relocating to Chicago has turned what was … Continue reading A Viennese Christmas
I’ve been working in Chicago for almost two months, and I just had the pleasure of attending my first fancy conference. Go me. Let’s set the scene. I actually don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet, but I work for this super feisty non-profit called the Lake Tanganyika Floating Health Clinic (LTFHC). Like the name would suggest, they are, in fact, building a floating hospital on … Continue reading To the Summit
At the end of my last post, I was somewhere in up-state Wisconsin on a coach that was 4 hours behind schedule with a US phone that had run out of battery and a UK phone that was about to follow suit, knowing that, even if everything from now on went to plan, I was going to be dropped at a bus station approximately 2 miles … Continue reading A Wausau Wedding
Back in the golden days of dirt-cheap budget air travel, when Ryanair wasn’t yet the dreaded last-resort carrier it is now, you could fly from Glasgow Prestwick to Milan Bergamo for around £30 return, including taxes, with no extra baggage fee, no check-in fee, no nothing. Those days are sadly long-gone, and with Prestwick Airport on the verge of bankruptcy – seemingly being kept afloat solely through … Continue reading 86 Hours in Milan
First set of MSc exams FINISHED! I won’t say they were easy, but I’m pretty confident I didn’t do too dreadfully. Naturally, the whole MPP cohort celebrated with a massive piss-up at the Highlander bar where we drank them out of both gin and tequila. It’s a lovely, crisp, sunny October day, and I’m feeling surprisingly non-hungover considering last night’s antics. Just as well, really, … Continue reading Parental Visitation
So our program, and we shall be known from this post onwards as MPP (Master of Public Policy), is very nationally diverse. From about 100 students in total, there are about 45 different nationalities represented. To celebrate this diversity, and so that we can all get to know a bit about each others’ cultures, there will be “international dinners” held sporadically throughout the year, where we … Continue reading First International Dinner
It seems like somebody in management thinks we haven’t had enough brain-stimulating discussions and alcohol-fuelled frivolity yet this week. They have thus decided to crank things up a notch and send us to Washington, DC. Not complaining. Naturally, in the home of US politics, everything is bigger and better. For starters, the building is more impressive. We’re at the headquarters of the CATO Institute, reputedly … Continue reading A Day-Trip Most Magnificent
the lost scot 