in britannia

I've been slacking in my attempts to write about my life here in Oxford. A large part of it is that I am never sure if something is, indeed, interesting enough, not to mention that I'm so busy a lot of the time that when I think that I should throw somethiing up here, I never really get around to doing it because I have other things on my mind.

Well, phooey to that. I'm taking a good couple of minutes right now to indulge my fantasy that people out there are actually reading this and want to know what's been happening these last few days.

Last week, we opened the new Keble MCR officially. We've been planning this move for about 18 months, and I was lucky enough to see both the horrorshow that was the old MCR (an afterthought of a room, much like a bomb shelter, only not as friendly) and to get to experience the glory that is the new MCR. By the way, MCR stands for Middle Common Room - it is both a room, or in our case, three rooms, which are open to all members of the college graduate student community, but also is the collection of those graduate students as a standing body. Undergraduates have the JCR or Junior Common Room, and tutors and staff have the SCR, or Senior Common Room. We had two huge receptions last Thursday, both of which involved inviting all members of the college staff. The morning tea and cakes reception was amazing. We had a massive amount of all manner of typical English cakes and goodies, as well as huge amounts of tea and coffee. Most of the people who came to this were members of the college cleaning staff, kitchen staff, and grounds crew. Our college scouts were there, and they seemed genuinely touched that we would remember them in our celebration of the new MCR. Scouts are people who clean our rooms - yes, it sounds horribly elitist, but there are people who come around every day to empty the rubbish bins outside our doors and every week to vaccum and tidy up our rooms. The grounds staff and maintenance staff were instrumental in making the new MCR happen, from plumbing and wiring to carrying equipment and furniture and helping us move from location to location. My friend Sundeep asked one naively if he had been in the new space before. He looked at her and said, "dearie, we built this space for you."

The evening reception was much more posh, with excellent French champagne, cheeses and fruits and mineral waters. For this, we had to wear suits and ties, as our guests included the Warden of Keble, Senior Tutor, Senior Proctor, and Bursar, as well as collegiate academic staff. It really was an amazing evening, full of conversation about Keble, merriment, and revelry in the company of colleagues and friends. It was also really amusing to see the SCR members becoming progressively more inebriated as the evening wore on. I'd have pictures up of some of these things, but I'll get to why in just a moment. The aftermath of the evening reception were a full 32 completely empty bottles of champagne. Also, there were massive amounts of cheese. I honestly was not aware that cheese could be commercially purchased in wheels of this size: the brie was about two feet across and a good two inches thick. The English cheddar was 1.75 feet across and about 4 inches thick. The Stilton was only 1.25 feet across, but was about 8 inches thick. Massive blocks of cheese indeed. Quite a sight. Needless to say, there is still plenty of cheese in the MCR refrigerator.

On Saturday, I found out that I'd made the second VIII for Keble College Boat Club. I am thrilled - it means that I get to race and get to row a lot, but I don't have to do the compulsory training for first VIII. I'm also sitting 5th seat, which is one of the power seats. Unfortunately, being one of the better oarsmen on your team means putting up with people who are worse than you, which I'd not experienced before, since I'm usually the weakest member of the team. I actually like being the among the weaker members of a team as it allows me a goal to strive for. This is just me trying not to get frustrated. Oh well.

We had a race on Sunday, part of the Isis Winter League. Unfortunately, there was an alarm sounded while we were racing (almost 3/4 of the way done, no less), and we were forced to stop and scrap that run, and could not do another. Poo.

Finally went in to get my cycle fixed - double puncture. Who'd have thought... That's just bad luck, I think.

I'm having some computer issues, hense the lack of photos from the MCR bash. On Sunday, I downloaded the update for iTunes 4.7.1 as well as some Macintosh OSX security updates and program updates. I mean, I trust these vendors, right? So what happens? Well, my CD drive no longer reads music CDs. They spin up, they spin down, but iTunes won't pop open, the disc doesn't show up on the desktop, and I've got nothing. Data CDs are OK, DVDs are OK, but not music CDs. Also, my firewire port is semi-active. It will charge my iPod, but won't actually interface with the iPod, so iTunes again doesn't pop open, no iPod on my desktop, etc. Finally, and this is where the digital camera comes in: my USB ports do the same thing. So no flash drives, no digital camera, no interfacing with the palm pilot. Nothing. I'm taking it to the tech department today. The thing is, that none of those things really affects the way that my computer handles everything else. I can surf the web, I have email, and I have everything I need to write papers. But it's still really quite concerning, and I'd like to get the darn thing fixed, you know, ASAP. It might actually take my hopping on the bus for London one of these days, something I'm not really looking forward to, but which I might just have to bite the bullet about. What week it's been.

Of course, it'd have been easier to blog if I'd just thrown this stuff online as it happened. But I didn't, and I just had another backlog of news. Ooh! Today is the first OUO rehearsal of the term. We're doing Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique. This should be a lot of fun. :)

// posted by impressive_wang @ 8:26 AM