An Introduction To: Oxford, pt. 1
Michaelmas Term weeks 1-5
The 40 of us from Stanford were divided into Brasenose, Corpus Christi, and Magdalen—each with their own set of dorms, library, dining hall, and community. Term is eight weeks, but we stayed an extra week before for orientation and after for seminars, bringing my total time here to 10 weeks.
Apologies for the bad grammar. This is ridiculously late. Thank you for reading!
This is the first installment of hopefully a few more. Kind of writing in between coding and lunch breaks by a palm tree. As with most chapters in life, it's a lot to digest, but I'll get there someday.
Recs: St. Mary's rooftop, Bird & Blend, Gloucester Green, punting by Magdalen bridge, high tea @ the Ashmolean, Mad Hatter, Sandy's Piano Bar
10.03.2022—11.04.2022
I thought getting lectured by my mother was unpleasant, but clearly I've never experienced a verbal beating by a man in a bowler hat.
And that's exactly what Oxford was, in its entirety, just a physical and metaphorical and empirical beating by a man with an audiobook accent in a bowler hat.
It was a fresh weekend in October. Ore and I went to go look at some cows. English longhorn cows, to be exact. They were so fluffy!!! I tried to feed them some grass, but they were just extremely unbothered, which is what I like most about these bovine creatures. So resilient, so apathetic.
I won't go into the details of how we hopped Christ Church's iron-rung fence and I was millimetres away from slashing open my thigh. Nor will I write too much about how we were eventually discovered (having done this in broad daylight) and subsequently berated by a man with such poshness that it was difficult for me to take him seriously. I hid behind Ore the whole time.
But I couldn't help myself. The next time I saw a "Do not step on grass" sign in the Magdalen cloisters, I vowed to fling myself onto the nourished turf and crush those blades of protected flora. Once, upon reading "Quiet in the stacks" posted in Bodleian Library, I fortuitously let out a small "yip!" simply out of spite, to which a man with a monocle began to glower at me.
Oxford is chock full of these chokeholds, or what some might call traditions. I will never get over the first time I stood up for the High Table, a squad of distinguished lecturers wearing black capes. I just stood there as they shuffled in, gabbled in Latin, and somehow procured a gavel to bang.
This was what one got used to in Oxfordshire. A pack of shortbread biscuits for 75p at Tesco's and an Alternative Tuck Shop mango chutney tikka on sliced baguette. The slanted walk towards Jericho. Ladders in reading rooms that people seriously use to get books. Various bits and bops—maroon wax seals and philosopher busts. I now own two (2??) plaid newsboy caps.
Here is where C.S. Lewis pounded out the first chapters of Narnia (they've now marked his dorm with balcony flower boxes). In a room just down the street, Einstein gave three lectures on the theory of relativity in German. The hall was packed with English speakers and no translator was provided. At Balliol, a short walk from my assigned college, Aldous Huxley studied literature before going on to write Brave New World. Space no longer separates me from this sequence of significant events, only time—and isn't time just a social construct anyway?
But I am not one with the greats. See those portraits of pale men with ruddy faces and bow-tied wigs hanging in formal hall? That won't be me. I had strung together two thoughts for a 4K-word paper due the next day. I was sitting under the harsh fluorescent light in an underground bunker of books they call the Gladstone Link (Glink, endearingly). I had so many questions and my tutor only answered by carrier pigeon. Kidding, but it was quite a humbling experience. More on this in another instalment.
To escape their thesis sorrows, Oxonians like to throw the equivalent of an American frat party: a black tie ball. (I could've also chosen to talk about bops—Big Organised Parties, but I'm not going to…as they are lame.) I had the pleasure of attending two balls—a dodgy neo-libertarian celebration and the high-brow Oxford Union dance.
The neo-libs (I will admit I was scammed into this one) decorated with a life-size cutout of Margaret Thatcher. The Oxford Union, a reputable debate society that doubles as Greek life, hired an ABBA cover band, chocolate fountains, cotton candy machines, and an arcade. Clearly one had more of a budget than the other, but either way, there was endless champagne. Rayan, Amisha, and I got tipsy off limoncello shots—Rayan might have had enough to feed a small village. Amisha discovered a bubble wand and started blowing around glycerin. Just floor-length satin and emperor penguin coattails and hors d'oeuvres, copious amounts of them. An after party at a club called Thirst. It was a hedonistic lifestyle.
The Union's grand finale was a silent disco that took place in ancient wood-panelled chambers. Amongst Eton boys and carvings of Roman torsos, I screamed my heart out to "Titanium" (the Brits knew every lyric). We were sore for days.
