7.13.2005
conference team
I work at Keble during the day to make a little spending money. Or rather, a little get-less-in-debt money. Or even, a little don't-go-as-deep-into-debt money. Whatever you want to call it. Keble is set up a little differently than many of the other colleges in Oxford, meaning that it has a lot of single rooms with ensuite bathrooms or, as is the case with my room, two rooms on a single staircase landing which share a bathroom. This may not mean a lot to you the reader, but it speaks volumes to people who want to host conferences. Not a lot of people who have gone to college would like to re-live the experience of dormitory life, and Keble's rooms are a bit more like hotel rooms than normal. So Keble actually hosts more conferences than any other college in Oxford. In fact, Keble was originally selected to be Hogwarts dining hall, but the one-off filming schedule would have meant turning away something like 15 different conferences which Keble has been hosting for years. So Keble said no to Harry Potter, and they went down the street to Christ Church and now Christ Church is even more famous and charging for admission to enter. Not that I'm bitter.
Anyway, I work in the conference team, which means hauling things or housekeeping or working in hall or as a guide. I've done all four. Housekeeping means stripping beds and making them up again, changing the instant coffee and sugar in the room, and dusting. I've gotten REALLY good ad making beds. It also means sweeping, mopping, or 'hoovering', which is what they call vaccuuming over here. The dirty towels and sheets get thrown downstairs where, with the rubbish, they're hauled away by men (always men: the housekeeping manager is a bit of a sexist when it comes to assigning jobs) with a cart. I've done that too. I was a guide on Monday, which meant standing around and directing people to the buildings on site. Not bad work. Finally, last night I worked in hall. This requires its own separate paragraph.
So Gerard, the hall manager, was an Oxford undergraduate who didn't manage to get a good grade. He got a 3rd degree, which is akin to a D+. I mean, it's the lowest degree you can get at Oxford and still graduate. Evelyn Waugh said that there are only two degrees worth getting at Oxford: a first and a fourth. The first meant that you worked really hard, applied yourself, and excelled. The fourth meant you had a lot of fun. They've done away with the fourth degree, so Gerard's third was pretty low. Anyway, he's a tyrant whose little fifedom is Keble Hall. He tries to run hall with the efficiency of a fine restaurant, and sometimes the food holds him back, sometimes it's just the complexity of serving dinner to 300 people at once. In any case, Gerard is an unhappy man. So he yells and screams and makes sure we're all in place. And then tells us that we are serving a choice of white wine: a sauvignon from New Zealand and a chardonnay from Burgundy. He even makes us say these words out loud, which is a good thing for some: there are a LOT of East Asians who don't speak good English on staff. Pouring wine and bussing tables is complicated enough in a fine restaurant, but in a dining hall, in which you're trying to get around people who are leaning close together to talk, it's virtually impossible to do well. I just ended up doing it rudely but effiently.
A word about the minorities on conference staff. The vast majority of them are Chinese in Hall, but those who work in housekeeping are both Chinese and Korean. I am the only Chinese-looking one who doesn't speak English with a discernably Asian accent. The guests for these conferences don't always know that, though, and the Americans especially talk down to all of us like we're children. In fact, a Texan came out of his room while we were cleaning the hallway last week and started to berate the Indian staff housekeeper (ie. not a student needing a summer job) about something. I came out and addressed him in flawless and American-sounding English and he totally backed off. Unfortunately, Suda was then berated by Texas-man's wife, whose comment while holding up a shopping bag full of fruit peels and assorted detrious: "this is trash. You throw out the trash. Then you bring me a new bag. When you do, then I'll give you some Indian coffee." really ticked me off. It wasn't just the words themselves, which are awful. It was the tone of voice: that sort of sing-song I'm telling you as slowly as I can stand to because it's like talking to a child tone that made me want to start screaming at her. I walked over and asked if there was any problem. "Oh. No problem. We're just working through the (and then she gets really slow, takes on a smirk, and makes hand gestures) language barrier." Language barrier? Suda speaks English very well. It's accented, but it's not 3rd grade, which is what this woman was insinuating with her tone. What made me even more upset was that these were people who had come from the United States for an evangelical Christianity summer school. As an evangelical Christian, I was embarassed by their behavior. And as an American, I was embarassed as well.
I'm not saying that they were all like that: far from it. But there were enough to make me want to tell them off. And I'm not trying to sound off of evangelicals either. On a not-too distant topic: I'm going to a lecture tonight at 7:30 on What Role Should Christians and Christianity Play in American Politics. Believe it or not, it's being funded and hosted not by some right wing nut, but by the Oxford chapter of the Democrats Abroad. Speaker: State Senator Roy Herron of Tennessee, who is a former minister, attorney, and is currently a professor in both the law and divinity schools at Vanderbilt University, from which he also received M.Div and JD degrees. This should be really interesting.
And on a side note, I'd been complaining a lot of a sore throat so I finally went to the Health Center to get it checked out. For the second time in three years, I'm on a full week's regemin of penicillin. Bad bacterial infection in my throat. I'm feeling palpably better after just 30 hours on the stuff, but the throat's still quite raw. If I'm not feeling much better by Friday, they'll have to test for mono, which I really hope they don't have to do.
OK. I'm starving, and the 1 hr. wait between taking the penicillin and eating is about to expire. I'm gonna get me some food.
Anyway, I work in the conference team, which means hauling things or housekeeping or working in hall or as a guide. I've done all four. Housekeeping means stripping beds and making them up again, changing the instant coffee and sugar in the room, and dusting. I've gotten REALLY good ad making beds. It also means sweeping, mopping, or 'hoovering', which is what they call vaccuuming over here. The dirty towels and sheets get thrown downstairs where, with the rubbish, they're hauled away by men (always men: the housekeeping manager is a bit of a sexist when it comes to assigning jobs) with a cart. I've done that too. I was a guide on Monday, which meant standing around and directing people to the buildings on site. Not bad work. Finally, last night I worked in hall. This requires its own separate paragraph.
So Gerard, the hall manager, was an Oxford undergraduate who didn't manage to get a good grade. He got a 3rd degree, which is akin to a D+. I mean, it's the lowest degree you can get at Oxford and still graduate. Evelyn Waugh said that there are only two degrees worth getting at Oxford: a first and a fourth. The first meant that you worked really hard, applied yourself, and excelled. The fourth meant you had a lot of fun. They've done away with the fourth degree, so Gerard's third was pretty low. Anyway, he's a tyrant whose little fifedom is Keble Hall. He tries to run hall with the efficiency of a fine restaurant, and sometimes the food holds him back, sometimes it's just the complexity of serving dinner to 300 people at once. In any case, Gerard is an unhappy man. So he yells and screams and makes sure we're all in place. And then tells us that we are serving a choice of white wine: a sauvignon from New Zealand and a chardonnay from Burgundy. He even makes us say these words out loud, which is a good thing for some: there are a LOT of East Asians who don't speak good English on staff. Pouring wine and bussing tables is complicated enough in a fine restaurant, but in a dining hall, in which you're trying to get around people who are leaning close together to talk, it's virtually impossible to do well. I just ended up doing it rudely but effiently.
A word about the minorities on conference staff. The vast majority of them are Chinese in Hall, but those who work in housekeeping are both Chinese and Korean. I am the only Chinese-looking one who doesn't speak English with a discernably Asian accent. The guests for these conferences don't always know that, though, and the Americans especially talk down to all of us like we're children. In fact, a Texan came out of his room while we were cleaning the hallway last week and started to berate the Indian staff housekeeper (ie. not a student needing a summer job) about something. I came out and addressed him in flawless and American-sounding English and he totally backed off. Unfortunately, Suda was then berated by Texas-man's wife, whose comment while holding up a shopping bag full of fruit peels and assorted detrious: "this is trash. You throw out the trash. Then you bring me a new bag. When you do, then I'll give you some Indian coffee." really ticked me off. It wasn't just the words themselves, which are awful. It was the tone of voice: that sort of sing-song I'm telling you as slowly as I can stand to because it's like talking to a child tone that made me want to start screaming at her. I walked over and asked if there was any problem. "Oh. No problem. We're just working through the (and then she gets really slow, takes on a smirk, and makes hand gestures) language barrier." Language barrier? Suda speaks English very well. It's accented, but it's not 3rd grade, which is what this woman was insinuating with her tone. What made me even more upset was that these were people who had come from the United States for an evangelical Christianity summer school. As an evangelical Christian, I was embarassed by their behavior. And as an American, I was embarassed as well.
I'm not saying that they were all like that: far from it. But there were enough to make me want to tell them off. And I'm not trying to sound off of evangelicals either. On a not-too distant topic: I'm going to a lecture tonight at 7:30 on What Role Should Christians and Christianity Play in American Politics. Believe it or not, it's being funded and hosted not by some right wing nut, but by the Oxford chapter of the Democrats Abroad. Speaker: State Senator Roy Herron of Tennessee, who is a former minister, attorney, and is currently a professor in both the law and divinity schools at Vanderbilt University, from which he also received M.Div and JD degrees. This should be really interesting.
And on a side note, I'd been complaining a lot of a sore throat so I finally went to the Health Center to get it checked out. For the second time in three years, I'm on a full week's regemin of penicillin. Bad bacterial infection in my throat. I'm feeling palpably better after just 30 hours on the stuff, but the throat's still quite raw. If I'm not feeling much better by Friday, they'll have to test for mono, which I really hope they don't have to do.
OK. I'm starving, and the 1 hr. wait between taking the penicillin and eating is about to expire. I'm gonna get me some food.
