15 April 2007

Terms, tours, nicknames, birthdays and ships.

Well howdy there people. It’s been a while and I apologise, but it’s going to be another while before I can write anything else, so here goes nothing!

The last you heard was the big beautiful snowfall, which was back in 4th week of Hilary Term. The last four weeks of said term went on with a typical mix of reading, presentations, rehearsals, performances, visitors, dinners... oh, and bops too. Remember that word? This one was at Worcester, preceded by a graduate dinner, and had a “bad taste” theme. No, really.

(Accompanying me and my tie-dye are fellow Rhodents Michiel and Jeni, from South Africa and Sydney.)

My rollcall of visitors since the last instalment has included Bec Wetherall on a European jaunt, Jessie Keath en route to Germany, Jim Partington coming back for more and Gus Lipman all the way from London. It was great to see them all and they seemed to have a good time! Jessie and Jim got dinners in the Worcester hall, a genuine musty-gowned Oxford experience that looks a bit like this:

Jimbo and I shared a girly cocktail beforehand...

... while Jessie made the pilgrimage to the Bird’n’Baby afterwards (the Eagle and Child pub, hallowed watering hole of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis). Here she seemed to hold up better than Shaggy Pete, a microbiologist from Brisbane...

... although she did cut my head off with my own camera (remaining intact is fellow Adelaidean, Tom).

Earlier, Jessie accomplished the rare feat of capturing my halo on film - possibly a result of the virtuous solid day’s work I’d just done in the ‘Bod’ (ancient abbreviation for the ancient Bodleian Library, whose most famous building is just visible through the saintly haze; it’s easy to feel virtuous studying in that place).

Gus managed to make it out of the big smoke to see a concert I performed in called ‘Musicals and All That Jazz’, a fundraiser for the NSPCC featuring many talented Oxford students in all sorts of music theatre tidbits – I got to fulfil a long-standing ambition and belt ‘Stars’ (from Les Mis) at an unsuspecting audience. A huge thrill.

I was also chuffed that my Suffolk cousins made the trip to see the show, as did my former Gallerie Consort colleague Renee and her husband Peter, from Shrivenham. Thanks guys!

Oh, almost forgot about one of Jim’s favourite memories from his visit. Tom Smith has been at Magdalen College far too long and has a room that is far too big – obviously, this makes it an appropriate venue for footy in the wee hours:

Don’t try this at home. I almost lost the ability to father children and Tom’s lampshade will never be the same again. Enough said.

Just so you don’t think it’s all been beer, skittles and soft tissue injuries, I also managed to get quite a lot of work done during the term. Especially towards the end. This included possibly the most rewarding – certainly the longest – oral presentation of my academic life. It was about the modern Darwinian synthesis and it lasted nearly two hours, largely because it kept getting interrupted by the sort of discussion and argument that represents everything good about Oxford. OK, it’s not exactly blog material (sorry!) but it is experiences like that I will treasure because they are, I feel, truly hard to come by.

Many fond memories will also come from my time with Out of the Blue, the singing troupe you may remember I was somewhat apprehensive about joining. While our repertoire still isn’t always to my taste, the fun we have performing is completely infectious, and having just returned from 3 weeks touring east-coast USA, the perks are pretty good too! We sang pretty much everywhere, from the Washington monument

to the Empire State Building

and Times Square.

If nothing else, the tour has left almost all of us with nicknames. We now have a Bags, a Bobo, a Sensei, a T-Turn and a Calamity, among others. Mine doesn’t seem to have settled quite yet; the two names for me with any staying power seem to be J-Bag and Treebeard. Moving right along... Among visits to Maryland, New Jersey, Yale and Boston, a highlight was our two days spent recording in a studio and otherwise lounging around Cornell Uni in beautiful Ithaca, NY. The weather was (apparently unusually) stunning, and I got sunburnt. On the left, standing on a large rock, is Joe, a first-year philosophy student also at Worcester.

Our host choir there – a terrific all-girl group called the Touchtones – took us ‘sake bombing’ at a Japanese bar. Rich shows his apprehension (can you guess what happens next?!):

We also shared a gig with them, which was advertised in true college style.

Our hosts in New York also deserve mention – a hugely talented and friendly bunch of seniors (Year Twelves, roughly speaking) from New Rochelle High School in West Chester. Here are some of them (Rich, Erica, Ross, Julie) after they put us up for an unexpected extra night on our way back through New York. Legends.

The previous night we actually sang as the intermission entertainment at an NHL ice hockey game – wow. If anyone knows how to do spectacle, it’s the Americans. Sadly (or perhaps luckily for my persevering blog readers), my camera was absent. Towards the end of the tour, my birthday was rung in quite rowdily at a party thrown by our lovely hosts in Philadelphia.

Despite the best efforts of my OOTB colleagues, I survived with my dignity intact; video evidence is available on request. Before I move on, if you want to see more of the group in action, check out *this* Sting song from our tour gig at Wellesley College or *this* Stevie Wonder number from the big competition in which we came 2nd before leaving the UK. [Warning: footage may contain traces of choralography.]

In other news, I have decided to use my two years at Oxford to take two separate one-year courses, instead of the two-year course I was originally enrolled in. This seems a better use of my time here (I didn't realise originally that one-year courses were permitted on the Rhodes), so I am transferring into the one-year version of my History of Science masters and I’ve applied successfully for a one-year MSc in Neuroscience for 2007-8. This is reportedly a great grounding in neuroscience theory and techniques, so I’m looking forward to it – though it does mean I will be writing a history dissertation over the coming English summer, so I won’t get much of a holiday. Hard life, I know. Oh – and I’ve also been elected (unopposed – note to self: re-learn how to say “no”) as president of the MCR at Worcester College, starting this term. The MCR is the postgrad student body and this means I get to sit on various College committees and send a truckload of emails. When will I learn?

So: two terms down, four to go (that’s three per year, the English way, for anyone who’s confused). The next one begins in 10 days and is called Trinity Term – appropriately so, because I am going to need the help of all three of them to survive it. Chances are you will escape further news from me until I come up for air in eight or nine weeks, on the other side of 19,000 words’ worth of essays, one 3-hour exam, one play, one major concert and many OOTB gigs, who knows how many committee meetings, and a visit from Anna and Gregor (yay!). They are already in the UK and I’ll leave you with some shots of us in the south, where we went with Aneurin on Monday and Tuesday. He and Gregor braved the Brighton waters, alone...

...and the next day we went to Portsmouth and saw HMS Victory, of Nelson and Trafalgar fame, first launched in 1765.


Stunning weather – now is the time to visit the UK, folks!



Bye for now and congratulations on reading all the way to the end, or for having the good sense to skip the middle. I love and miss you all.

09 February 2007

Dreaming of a white Oxford

The pay-off for the short days, grey skies and numb fingers has arrived – several inches of it. Amazing!!

When I got up this morning, I was greeted by that beautiful cotton-wool snowfall-silence and this view:

I thought my bike was impressively snowed in...

...until I saw these ones.

Central Oxford looked pretty speccy...

..the Worcester lake froze (note the little ducky footprints in the ice - poor buggers!)...

...Broad Street slowly turned to slush...

...the philosophers all put on wigs...

..the uni parks were a tranquil picture-postcard...

..until the peace was shattered by hundreds of snowfighting students (about 9am)...

...Christchurch Meadow disappeared completely...

...my Krazy Kanadian friend Kate decided to ski to our morning lecture...

...and Ryan tried to pretend that even record snowfalls can't keep him away from learning Chinese. He wants his mum to see this picture.

And, finally, the kids down at Magdalen built what can only be described as a very Oxonian snowman.

I bet he'd lose to an Aussie one though. Hehe.

Ah dear. I'm spent. Get a tan on my behalf, and I'll slide around the footpath on yours.

I will leave you with a word of wisdom from The Prof. We discussed English forerunners of Darwin this morning, including various 'radicals' of whose credentials Pietro is, well, sceptical. Remember to read it with an Italian accent:

“Revolution is like suicide, isn’t it, you either do it or you don’t do it, and when you do it, it is pretty obvious, isn’t it?”

Indeed. All the best to everyone!

05 February 2007

Sorry sorry sorry

OK friends, it's been a while - and I apologise. The title is not just a result of a habit-forming week spent with Emily and Mark (the wonderful sorry twins) over New Year's; I am, actually, sorry. Those of you who have indicated that you wanted to hear more news from me, sooner than I was providing it, have warmed the cockles of my heart (you know who you are). The rest of you are probably, sensibly, less interested in my life and more in your own, so please feel free just to look at the pictures. I would. That reminds me: my camera is back on deck, on line and on fire! Yay! Watch the quality of photography fail to improve as I stop stealing other people’s pictures! (Oh, shut up Jonny, get on with it.) OK.

Oh, but before I do get on with it, are you all still alive? It’s just that the other day I read the local headlines courtesy of the illustrious online Adelaide Advertiser and found that they read like this:
Pharmacies broken into over night
Today, 02:45 AM

Victims threatened in two holdups
Today, 12:14 AM

Suspect stabbed in home invasion
Yesterday, 11:30 PM

Man shot in head with spear gun
Yesterday, 11:18 PM

Shark spotted off southers [sic] beaches
Yesterday, 03:45 PM
So what with rampant sharks and a whopping crime wave in SA, and the worst serial killer since Jack the Ripper operating in Ipswich where several of my beloved English cousins live, I was starting to suspect that everyone I know and love was in grave danger of extermination over the Christmas break... But I think we've made it.

Anyway, in terms of, like, actual news, what have I been up to? Well, in the weeks before Christmas I stayed in Oxford, planning to get plenty of work done on the essays I had to write. Here's the view over Rhodes House towards the 'dreaming spires' which I was looking at one afternoon while failing to do said work and, well, dreaming...

At least I was in a library. Despite the occasional speccy sunset, when the place drains of students and the weather drifts toward the freezing and grey, Oxford can seem a less than chirpy place to be. I defeated the winter blues by getting in touch with lots of folks from home, which was great. This spectacular hamper of 'Strine Stuff from Mum helped too, bless her cotton socks!

Oh, and, of course, there are always a few other postgrads battling on through the short days, so we tended to find each other by email and occasionally trudge pubwards in the darkness... On one such occasion, Liz, whom you may remember from a previous episode appropriating an abandoned television, turned her kleptomania onto a (huge) box of coathangers found outside a clothes store - apparently hangers were at a premium in Somerville College. No longer! Ryan is trying to help. I think.

I spent Christmas with three wonderful families of cousins who live in Bury St Edmunds and Ipswich. It was fantastic to be in real homes with books on the shelves - and, importantly, family. Had a great week, though didn't yet have my camera back so I can't show you any of it. Then back to Oxford briefly to spend a day and a very fun night with Aneurin who was visiting from Deutschland. I think I managed to show him five pubs - but again, no pictures. On the 30th it was off to Scotland where Out of the Blue had a gig at Gleneagles, one of the ritziest hotels in the country. Whe-hey. Not a bad night, all up. Perhaps not our finest performance, but they loved us in the bar afterwards... And our rooms were, needless to say, amazing! They weren't this blurry in real life:

And here's the outside, looking a very Scottish shade of grey but grand nonetheless!

The place even has its own picturesque little train station. Unbelievable.

The best thing is that I now have a little monogrammed pair of Gleneagles slippers in my room. And some shampoo, and some body lotion. (Not even sure what to use that for - it's like soap, right?) Mum got a letter on Gleneagles stationery, too. I decided to leave the dressing gown behind...

Back to Edinburgh for NYE, but the Hogmanay street party was cancelled (reason being a celebratory storm featuring 100mph winds) which left literally hundreds of thousands of revellers to squeeze into pubs all over town. It was a good night! And then I got to spend a week with Emily and Mark in their beaut apartment in Morningside, resplendent with two cats and enough cat-pampering equipment to send Mum on a guilt-ridden shopping bonanza for Chloe, who only has one climbing gym. These are the cat-hammocks that hang over the radiator. Luxury!

Had a very relaxing week and saw quite a bit of Edinburgh...

...plenty of Emily and Mark (thanks so much guys!)...

...and the odd highland 'koo'. Whoa!

Eventually I had to come back to Oxford and face up to the essays. Got there in the end, dazed, sleepless and relieved... I am now great conversation if you're interested in Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch and how much they hated each other, or the creation of scientific facts as described by the faintly annoying anthropologist Bruno Latour. It is now fourth week, Hilary Term is in full swing and I'm doing lots of reading. For a change. The first big "bop" for the term was Australia Day; if you ever don't feel very patriotic about being an Aussie, just spend January 26th in England. Strange things happen...

Check out Snugglepot and Cuddlepie! (Hannah and Jeni, Aussie Rhodents who actually put effort into their costumes...)

Good times. But anyway, this has turned into a monster blog post. I will leave you in peace. You should all come and see Oxford for yourselves. Follow Jim's lead - he was here for a couple of days, so we climbed a church. Nice.

OK, done. I promise to be more regular and less long-winded in future. In the blog, that is. Send me an email, smoke me a kipper, and stay out of the sun. I am. :)