Hi folks - I am currently reporting from Nashville, Tennessee, where I am attending the 29th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (aka CogSci07).
On Monday the 30th of July I took a plane from Manchester airport and after 8 hours of flight, I finally arrived in Chicago. I spent several hours at the airport before I took another flight to Nashville which is only one hour by plane from Chicago, so I've come a long way to get here...


I am staying at the Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville: 2881 guest rooms, 165 suites, and 740 atrium-view rooms with private balconies (cf. picture, click to enlarge).


When I arrived Monday night at the lobby of the luxurious resort, I was completely jet-lagged and craving for a shower and a bed. Being overly exhausted, it took me some time to adapt to the American way of greeting people when I checked in:


Lobby Gaylord Opryland Resort, Nashville, TN, 31/07/08, 19:18 PM.

Girl at the reception: Hiiii! How are you today?
Me: Hi! Well, I am bit tired actually, I just got off the plane all the way from...
Girl at the reception (interrupting): So I see you are attending that conference with all those psychologists huh?? That is soooooooo cool! Are you a psychologist?
Me: Yeah, I am a cognitive psychologist doing research on language processing.
Girl at the reception [giggles]: Wow! That is soooo cool! You know what? I started counseling two weeks ago! Now here's the key to your room, have a great stay at the Opryland, M'am!

Survival of the fittest schmooziest...

Schmooze, v. intr ;
To converse casually, especially in order to gain an advantage or to make a social connection.

Schmoozing is absolutely crucial in order to survive in the academic world. It goes without saying that conferences are the best places to make new (and influential) friends and put the schmoozing art into practice. Being new to computational modelling research, I already knew that the number of people (including members of the York lab) I would be meeting in Nashville was ... 2. Now, at a meeting like this with over 700 attendees, I must admit that the schmoozing part can become a little daunting. Nonetheless, over the last few days I have met a dozen people or so with whom I discussed research and computational modelling issues.

Thursday afternoon I visited the Psychology Department at Vanderbilt University to meet up with Pierre, who I had known back in Paris when we were both PhD students. He is currently a post-doc at the Vanderbilt Vision Research centre and showed me around whilst talking about his research on eye movements and rhesus macaque monkeys!! Now how's that for a change! Other than that, I have not explored life outside the resort: the conference days are long and exhausting. However, tomorrow I will get a chance to relax a bit at the resort and perhaps take a dive at the Magnolia pool...


To the right: Tennessee Ballroom C of Opryland's Convention Centre. In this room, a lot of plenary talks are given, as well as the Psychocomputational models of human language acquisition workshop that I attended last Wednesday (for more pictures, point your browser to my personal flickr site).

Not so long ago, I went to see a theatre play entitled Bollywood Jane at the Leeds Theatre playhouse. As coincidence would have it, I had just finished my reading of the short play from the late fifties A taste of honey by Lancashire-born dramatist Shelagh Delaney. A Taste of honey is a short and very nicely written play which deals with a range of social issues such as single motherhood, race and sexuality. It occurred to me that Delaney's play bears some ressemblance with Bollywood Jane. For instance, A Taste of honey is set in Salford (Greater Manchester) and features 17-year old working class girl Jo, whereas Bollywood Jane is set in Bradford and tells the story of Jane, a 16-year old girl who tries to come to terms with the rather grim reality of life. In lack of education, she has no good perspectives on a job and finds herself in permanent conflict with her Mum Kate, a 32-year old woman who is drunk most of the time and wants her daughter to pay her own way. Jane finds an outlet in the Bollywood movies and tries to escape from her cheerless life when playing out in sequins and saris, backed up by a group of glamorous and lush Indian dancers. After seeing Bollywood Jane, it made me realise that the typical British kitchen sink drama and the exotic Bollywood glamour go very well hand in hand. The combination of social drama, which is nothing more than a fairly realistic representation of life as it is in Nothern England, and the melodramatic and epic plots of Bollywood movies is unique. In a way, the play embodies a quintessential aspect of contemporary British society, namely the ever-growing influence of British Asians on popular culture.

The total absence of new contents on my blog must have been quite a disappointment for those of you who have been visiting this link in search of any quirky details about my Yorkshire life. I do apologise to those of you who have been showing a keen interest in my life in York via other means of communication in spite of my total absence as a blogger… Thank you for keeping in touch and thanks loads to my family for having visited me in York!

So why have I not bothered with updating my personal internet space ? Was it perhaps my coming of age? Or the fact that too much things have happened over the past couple of months that I simply consider «not suitable for publication» (Oh dear –this makes me just feel like some frustrated reviewer who keeps rejecting other people’s writings)? I really don’t know, perhaps it was just a writer’s blog (no pun intended). However, for the records, let me just state in prose that everything’s well and even though it has been a rather hectic period from a post-doc point of view, I have certainly not been out of social activities over the last months, bien au contraire! I will give you an update of the highlights and adapt this blog accordingly. For now, why don’t you just point your browser to my Flickr site for some exciting new visual stimuli?

Last Saturday (January the 20th) Jelena and I took the train to Leeds to see an exhibition in the Henry Moore Institute. The exhibition was entitled Experimental Photography from the Bauhaus Sculpture Workshop. The photographs in this exhibition were made by students and teachers from the legendary German art school Bauhaus, which was established in 1919 in Weimar, and forced to closure by National Socialists in the thirties.
Although the photos were originally taken to document sculptural objects, it soon becomes clear that they go far beyond their purely documentary purposes and represent the cool rationality of the Bauhaus spirit in their own right. Some of the photos represent abstract studies of geometrical shapes and volume, others show sharply focused close-up photographs of plants or shells, reminding the New objectivity or neue Sachlichkeit photography that became popular in the twenties. The exhibition only comprised 26 photos and was held in a fairly small (and badly lit) room in the Moore Institute, but it turned out to be very nice and informative –especially for those with a keen interest in photography.

Later in the afternoon we headed back to York for yet another experimental session, not exactly of photography, but in sound that took place in the Minster (I got permission to take photographs in the Minster, click here for a sample set). The series of performances is called Spire and features contemporary musicians and composers that make use of the organ, electronics and even turntables. The concert guide states that Spire is about a magical exploration of sound and space. Now, I was not quite sure what to think of that, my earlier experiences with contemporary music being rather disappointing (Where’s the rythm? And for heaven’s sake, what happened to harmonic structure? Help! I can only discern beeps!)
However, the very fact that it all took place in the York Minster proved enough to convince me to attend the concert (thanks Jelena!) and I surely didn’t regret it. Real and sampled organ sounds were combined to create overwhelming frequency vibrations in different areas of the Minster. As we listened to the fusion of classic organ tones and electronics in the emptied nave of the Minster, it occurred to me that the next Dance Valley techno party might actually be organised in the Minster. I don’t know whether the Dean and Chapter would agree, but I reckon that the terrific acoustics and setting of the Minster could very well appeal to visitors of techno festivals…

Tallulah Bankhead used to say that "it's the good girls that keep diaries, the bad girls never have the time". It's not that I have been a particular bad girl, but a rather busy one. As usual, my work piled up before the holidays and I had to finish a certain number of things. I have been working on the word materials for the experiments on novel word acquisition and phonological variation that I am currently setting up with Anna Maria and Gareth. I also managed to submit an article, and in the mean time I really have to start thinking about my future applications in France next year. As a consequence, I have not been able to update my "bloc note" (French for "blog") and need to overcome my writer's block that is due to a lack of time, attention and quite frankly a feeling of longing to my familiar surroundings as well. Anyway, one new year's resolution for 2007 is to report on my blog on a more regular basis.
That's me on the left at York's ice rink (click to enlarge)

December was also quite hectic from a social point of view. I travelled to the Netherlands all the way to Wapse, a small town in the Dutch province of Drenthe, to attend my grandmother’s birthday for she turned 80 on December the 6th. The party was great, but I missed my flight back to Leeds, so I had fly via London, which was rather upsetting. I also spent a weekend in Solihull / Birmingham, the city where the Balti was invented (as well as Ozzy Osbourne). In the heart of the city centre called Brindleyplace we met up with Peggy who is currently a post-doc at the University of Birmingham and Luc, a researcher at Aston University. After a couple of drinks, Anna Maria drove us to Sparkhill, an area that has one of the largest Asian populations and contains, not surprisingly, the largest concentration of balti restaurants in the UK. We went to the restaurant that is referred to as a prince among baltis, the Royal Naim where I ordered one of the finest chicken tikka byriani I’d ever tasted...
From left to right: Anna Maria, Peggy, and Luc.

Just before returning to France for Christmas, I have been skating twice at York's open air ice rink, located against the backdrop of Clifford's tower and the Castle Museum, and enlivened with a nice complilation of Eighties music (Last Christmas I gave you my heart...) The first time I went skating with Kim, the second time with Silke, Padraic (see pic) and Angel. It has been at least ten years since I put on my skates, but to my own amazement I still knew the drill! Having said that, the others were not so bad! Afterwards, we went to Padraic and Silke's place for some mulled wine and we tasted the home-made mince pies around the cosy fireside. Personally, I couldn't think of a better way to get in the mood for Christmas!

On November the 28th, Gareth, Jelena and I went to the Fibbers, York’s live music venue located in the city centre (and only five minutes away from my flat ). The Fibbers is quite an amazing place, since it opens every single night of the week, and hosts local and national bands performing a wide range of music types.

We went to see Mark Burgess, the former vocalist of the eighties post-punk band The Chameleons (yet another amazing act from Manchester). Burgess has recently formed a new band called Bird. The supporting acts included The Guild and Union of Knives (which I thought were pretty good –click here for some pics). The series of concerts was initiated by Burgess and colleagues to raise money for former Chameleons keyboard-player Andy Moore who has been diagnosed with a serious form of brain cancer.

Burgess (pictured on the right, click on it to enlarge) played for an hour and a half or so, and the concert was in one word *awesome*. The vocalist/lyricist/bass player had proven to be amazingly good and powerful after all these years. His bass playing was steady and rich, and perfectly matched the expansive and sometimes choral riffs manufactured by guitarist Yves Altana. Although Burgess' vocals were perhaps more measured than in his earlier days, I could still hear some of the urgency and angst that characterizes the typical Chameleons sound. As far as I am concerned, the absolute highlight of the show was near the end: the house lights went up, the crowd refused to leave, and so Burgess and his fellow musicians came back on stage to perform the superb song Second Skin, one of my all-time fav tracks from the classic Chameleons album Script of a bridge.

I thoroughly enjoyed a wonderful evening listening to fantastic live music, and as I looked at the rest of the crowd I came to realise that popular music remains such an intrinsic part of British culture, and continues to entertain people from all walks of life, irrespective of social background or age: it is exactly what I like about Britain.

The past week has been an interesting one: I had the rather exciting experience of watching an English Premier League Soccer match in Middlesborough (see post below), I travelled to London and Cambridge, and on top of that I also managed to catch a Blues concert here in York.

I arrived in London on Monday evening to spend some time with Catherine and George. They took me out for dinner in this fantastic restaurant that is called The Ambassador. On Tuesday we took the train to the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge where I gave a seminar to the Language Group about my previous experiments and current modelling work. After the talk, I had been taken out for lunch in the superb Fitzwilliam Museum. Whereas the others had to return to the CBU, I decided to visit the city centre that is famous for its ancient churches and colleges (some of the pictures I took in Cambridge can be viewed here).

Les Wilson and the Mighty Houserockers: Les is more...

Last Thursday I went to York’s Deep Blues Club with Padraic to check out the British Blues guitarist Les Wilson and his Mighty Houserockers. Les Wilson excels in playing bottleneck blues, applying his slide with staggering energy and virtuosity. However, I was not always convinced by the choice of song materials, as Les sometimes proved to have a keen interest in variety (oh dear!) and soppy lyrics (darling tell me true, what do I mean to you? or what about when I look into your eyes, I feel butterflies...) Also, I always feel too reluctant when musicians try to make the audience sing along. It might do for weddings and business parties, but not for the Blues! Nonetheless, it's always a good sign as soon as Buddy Guy gets quoted and I forgave Les by the time he played an awesome version of Damn right I got the Blues!

On Saturday 18th November, Gareth, Padraic, Kim and I travelled to Middlesborough to see the Middlesborough-Liverpool match in the Riverside Stadium (click here for the offical match preview). It was the first time I ever attended a football match in a stadium. Contrary to my idées reçues concerning football, there were no large bands of drunken hooligans on the rampage, smashing everything in their path; instead the atmosphere proved to be very friendly and convivial.
Unfortunately, no goal was scored on either side of the field, but I did think Liverpool played rather well and created a lot of chances (alright, alright I only say this to please Gareth) -although Boro did have some good defending and magnificent goalkeeping…

My work is a great deal about understanding how we manage to perceive continuous speech segments in noise. However, my own speech processing system blatantly failed when I tried to understand exactly what the supportes were chanting. It was a good thing though that Gareth provided some on-line translation of the charming song entitled The referee is a wanker . So much for referee appreciation…





Gareth and Kim are having the time of their lives, whereas Padraic seems slightly more concerned about the outcome of the match...

Click on pics to enlarge; more pictures of the match can be viewed here

Some have pointed out to me that the "comment" function on this blog does not work. I checked it out, and this is just to notify that it does work. I suspect that some of you do not fill in all the fields when leaving a comment such as the "anti-spam" number field... So go ahead, provide your name and e-mail address, drop me a line and don't forget to fill in the anti-spam number!

I received a mail today from a student who seeks supervision for her Master’s thesis… Granted, I felt flattered, but line manager Gareth told me today that I am not even authorized to supervise MSc students. That is probably a good thing, as I already struggle to find the time for the modelling work, coming up with yet another brand new research project, working on a paper that is fairly close to submission, reviewing for a journal, preparing a talk that I need to give in Cambridge next week… wooooah! Do I need to make a point here?

Still, all work and no play makes me a dull girl, so in between acts I like to go out. For instance, two weeks ago we went to the National Centre for Early Music here in York to check out a highly original concert in a most beautiful setting, featuring UK jazz singer Juliet Roberts and two vocalists from Mali and India ; now how’s that for a change? In my opinion, sometimes fusion works even better for music than that it does for food….



Contemporary world collaboration Les Dangereuses: the picture shows vocalists Babani Kone from Mali (left) and Swati Natekar from India and their accompanying musicians.

When I spoke to my Mum on the telephone, I told her I really liked my flat and started to feel at home. My flat is furnished, but I have decorated it a little bit (although I prefer the minimalist approach when it comes to decoration). It will never compare to my home back in France of course, but this apartment suits me just fine as a temporary place to live.

It is funny how we can see things differently and even start to appreciate objects that we initially disliked. Sometimes I feel that objects need to be considered in a particular context in order to start finding them interesting. For instance, I abhored some of the furniture that came with my flat such as the standing lamp in the living room. However, when I look at it as it is, placed right beside the Miles Davis photograph which was obviously taken in the fifties, I actually started to like it as I came to realise that the lamp would fit so well in typical American interiors that one used to see in the late fifties…

Yeah, the lamp is low indeed! (Right, I am trying to be original here, but it really is not my problem if you cannot pick up contemporary jazz references...)

My living room (alternate take)...

Here's the kitchen that was renovated before I moved in...

...and for those of you who are really nosey, here's a final snapshot of my bedroom.







Click on pics to enlarge.

During my first week here in York I had some difficulties with my shower in that it did not provide any hot water. It turned out that I had overseen a couple of switches that were hidden in the cupboard right next to my bathroom. I have to admit that it took me a couple of days to understand that if you want to use electricity in Britain, keep those switches on! Now, that seems a pretty straightforward thing to do and yet…

When you see this threatening red-coloured button with the word NO written on it, you immediately think that if that switch is turned on, disasters are about to happen and that it is definitely a good thing that most home insurances include personal liability, right? It’s the kind of switch that only American presidents dispose of to trigger some kind of nuclear war, right? Wrong! It is actually saying ON -read upside down that is!

Crikey ! Look at this stunning red-haired beauty here to the left! I decided to leave this fantastic specimen back at home but I brought my acoustic guitar to play my Yorkshire blues away. I am actually thinking of taking guitar lessons so yesterday I went to the music store nearby my flat where I was given some phone numbers for guitar tuition.

Being in York doesn’t stop me from playing the blues ! I am currently practicing a couple of repeating riff blues such as Johnnie Lee Hooker’s legendary Boom boom and a tune entitled I am tore down (no worries, that title does not reflect my present state of mind, far from it).

I might have left my electric guitar at home, but I got this one here on the right in return… Pretty good huh?


"Guitar" drawn by Stan, my advisor’s 5-year old son.

So y'all like to know how I have been doing since I left France and moved to the UK? It has been a week since I started as a post-doc at the Department of Psychology. I am slowly starting to realise that I am actually not on a holiday, but here for work. My first week here hasn't been a very productive one from a scientific point of view, but I try to be self-indulgent and relaxed about it, since moving to another country isn't really what I would call "peanuts". I had to sort out all sorts of things, such as getting a bank account, a phone line from BT, a home insurance, getting hot water from the shower, that kind of stuff. It's almost sorted out now, and I had forgotten how I could become euphoric when I actually did succeed to take care of what seemed to be the most trivial things in life back home... But I still haven't got a phone line though, which is getting on my nerves. Anyway, I'll keep you posted on my adventures in York, and pictures will be added as soon as possible. Cheers for now!

We just got back from our little trip to England. We first went to London to attend our friends' wedding, and then headed to York to look out for accommodation for my upcoming post-doc in October. Guess what: we found a flat located in a former nursery (see pic). I will be living right next to the historic city walls, which is very close to York's city centre: check me! It is quite easy to find accommodation in York, but most lettings are available right now. I guess I was just very lucky to have found something reasonable that will be available from October on, after only two days of searching. The administration procedures involved in rentals proved to be extremely straightforward and not complicated at all (like in France for instance). I just needed to fill out a form with some personal details to be faxed with a letter from the University, pay the agency fee of 120£ and that was it! No need to ask my family to put up bond for me; no questions asked about what my parents do for a living; I didn't even have to show my passport, social security number or electricity bills (those who live in France know what I am talking about). I looooooooove English efficiency!

Welcome to my brand new weblog ! Putting the Yorkshire Moors in the banner, here's a new design, new colours, new menu bar, but the contents of my former weblog remain the same. I did not transfer your comments on my blogspot weblog. However, if you want to leave new comments, just click on the [ add comment ] link below each post and make sure you fill in all the required fields (including the anti-spam number). You can also write me by clicking on the Contact Me in the Links sections (cf. upper right panel).

There's much more to come when I move to York next October to work as a post-doctoral research fellow @ the department of Psychology... so stay tuned for more! What the heck means a post-doc anyway? Find out more about this somewhat peculiar academic position right here!

The houses of the old town... all are red-roofed and seemed piled up one over the other (Bram Stoker).

After our visit to Goathland, we travelled to Whitby, a charming fishing city that lies along the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors at the mouth of the river Esk. This coastal town proved to be the perfect setting for Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, as he was particularly impressed by the somewhat menacing aspects of the immense stone abbey and St Mary's Cathedral looming over the city of Whitby. After a quiet stroll around the streets and harbour, one can easily understand why Stoker chose Whitby as the setting for his most famous novel...

The ancient village of Whitby first settled in the 5th or 6th century AD. In 637 AD, a Catholic abbey was built and rebuilt in 1077 in the foreboding gothic style of medieval times. Now the abbey ruins brood over the outskirts of Whitby, and as Stoker wrote, it is a most noble ruin of immense size, and full of beautiful and romantic bits.

Between the old town and St Mary's Church, there is a large graveyard with hundreds of tombstones that have been weathered over hundreds of years by storms blowing in from the North Sea. Most of the wording carved into their faces is no longer legible.

So here Vampires go for their holidays... not too bad! There's no need to visit one of the numerous tacky Dracula tourist shops near the beach to experience that eerie feeling that you get by hanging out at the quayside, amid the lobster pots, and the small fishing boats that moor motionless in the Esk river...

Visiting the North Yorkshire Moors, a national park with one of the largest expanses of heather moorland in the UK, was on top of my to-do list. This was not in the least because many people told me that the Moors are worth a visit for its sheer dramatic setting... Granted, most people have this romantic notion of the Moors because they have read Wuthering Heights in their adolescent days. I did too and being keen to sniff up that allegedly dramatic atmosphere, I convinced Javier to join me on a trip over the Moors on a cloudy Sunday in June. We took the Yorkshire coastal line bus and headed for a small place called Goathland. The trip took almost two hours, and near Goathland we were dropped off in the middle of nowhere: our bus couldn't continue because of work in progress on some of the roads. We were invited to join other passengers in a small white mini-van while some strange-looking personages were looking at us, and they somehow fitted in perfectly amid the desolate environment..., talk about dramatic settings!

Around 12h00 we arrived in Goathland, a village consisting of one single street, three tourist shops, and a hotel, surrounded by endless moorland. I would not single out Goathland as a particularly pretty village, so we asked ourselves whether the huge throng of British tourists was really justified... I had been told that Goathland was used as a backdrop to the British television series Heartbeat, and apparently this was the sole reason for people to visit Goathland; very few of them actually headed to the Moors for a rambling session.



Pub The Goathland Hotel (picture taken by Javier).

We had our lunch in the local Goathland Hotel were I tasted a delicious Cumberland sausage, and we observed how the "Heartbeat" pilgrims consumed their Greene King IPA pints and Yorkshire puddings.
After 20 minutes of Moorland rambling, we decided that we had sniffed up enough of the dramatic scenery and decided to return to York.



At the bus stop, however, we were told that either we could take a bus to Whitby or stay in Goathland another four hours due to suspended bus services. It didn't take us long to decide that a visit to Whitby seemed definitely the best option...
The picture shows Goathland station and the steam railway that links Grosmount with Pickering. It follows the route of the 19th century line that originally connected to Whitby.

Shame on me, I have not updated my weblog for over a week and I'll be heading back to France tomorrow morning! It just goes to show that time flies like an arrow, especially when you are enjoying yourself!
I had planned to post comments on the Yorkshire Moors, the Mysteries of Goathland (why the huge throng of tourists? Don't tell me it was because of the Heartbeat television series?), the Cumberland sausage, Bram Stoker's favourite coastal town Whitby, the odd girl at the bus station who bluntly asked Javier why he would visit a place like York, he couldn't keep a straight face (and neither could I)..., but I haven't found the time. My last week here in the Department was rather hectic: I ran a series of simulations on the Granada dataset and did some reading on computational modelling, I travelled to Glasgow to spend time with Lisa because we are bezzie mates, I prepared a lab talk for the Psycholinguistics Research Group that I gave yesterday, and last night I went out with the people from the Department who I would like to thank because they made my stay an unforgettable one! I will upload some pictures and promise to post the comments in due course, but for now I really need to prepare my suitcase...

Up until now, I have encountered all sorts of wild life in Heslington and even beyond that, weird forms of artificial life whilst struggling with neural networks that simply recur and recur (resistance is futile), I have been looking for Morrissey in Manchester but I didn't find him (I probably should have gone to Salford Lads Club), I even got the Yorkshire Blues and turned all moody and maudlin in the Faversham (but I loved it), and on top of that I almost felt sorry for my husband who spent his postgraduate years in Leeds (but I realised that he could drown his sorrows in the Fenton)... All very well, but what about York (I can hear my Mum saying)?

The mini guide of the city that I was given at the railway station says that York is Britain's favourite city. Hmm, that sounds slightly suspicious coming from a guide produced by York tourism bureau, a company responsible for promoting the city as a visitor destination. Nonetheless, York has certainly got me under its spell.

Yorkshire's county town, which is the hometown of Guy Fawkes (Remember, remember the 5th of November, for those who have seen or read V for Vendetta) disposes of the largest gothic medieval cathedral north of the Alps -the Minster, and is generously endowed with medieval buildings interspersed with Roman and Viking remains.

Top it up, please!


The whole idea behind this weblog is that it is supposed to reflect a fairly realistic view of what it is like to stay in Yorkshire. Suddenly two words spring to mind: Football & Beer, perhaps even more so during the World Cup.

Having said that, even without any World Cup, I would say that those two words describe rather accurately some aspects of life in the Northern part of England (see picture showing classic pub interiors during the World Cup in the Fenton, Leeds).

So you thought Tetley only does tea? Well, just to prove you wrong, Tetley does beer as well, and what's more, it is a must for the discerning imbiber (erm)...



That's more like it! Cheers!