Posts Tagged ‘academics’

carey get out your keys

{ March 18, 2011 @ 11:37 pm } · { Oxford, poetry, Topic-specific discussions }
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If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from university, it’s the art of putting my life away neatly, but no matter how many times I do this modernistic wrestle with cardboard boxes and parcel tape (accompanied by the mental soundtrack of ‘Oh my goodness why do I have so much stuff?’), I reach a point in the evening where I get unenviably maudlin and slightly unhappy. It’s completely irrational, of course, and the knowledge of that saves me from a complete descent into angst, thank goodness. I realised rather recently that for all my ferocious and sardonic opinions about politics and literature and people and life in general, I still reserve the sharpest and most self-deprecating cynicism for myself, accompanied by a minor dose of self-deprecating humour to keep the cut from stinging too much (just enough to metaphorically kick my own arse out of whatever mood I’m working up to). It’s a good way to live, I think.

For instance, I’ve been shoving stuff into boxes all evening and trying to put stuff into the space at the top of my closet, wearing a mopey face and singing along with Gackt (slightly off-key, I can’t help it, do I look like a baritone to you?) and thinking of Norwegian Wood (which I will talk about in half a moment). This litany of cheerfulness and joy was interrupted by my intermittently working on a prose-poem entitled such tenderness, Sebastian. (Fwinn, if you’re reading this, it’s your fault for sending me a postcard with Rimbaud’s face on it: you totally reminded me of how much I adore his prose-poems and in doing so completely set me off.) The central theme of this poem is ‘Sadists have it all wrong, I realised – the strongest power, my friend, is suffering.’ So you can tell, it was a happy poem.

(Incidentally, though – it’s good work, even if I do say so myself. I’ve been writing a cycle of poems about Sebastian since forever – and I’d got quite stuck. The re-read of Rimbaud was just what the doctor ordered, though it must be noted that I still only have a meagre three pieces which even deserve to be called poems, and that pales in comparison to the number of ideas I have and the myriad facets of the Sebastian mythos, alas…)

And then as I was sorting out my papers, I found my owl necklace! Sandwiched between a set of notes on Sartre and a set of notes on legislatures – the brown one which I had given up as lost, and then my face went from : ( to : D! in half a second, and I put it on, just for the whimsical pleasure of knowing it was hanging around my neck again. At that point, it struck me as rather amusing, the speed with which one’s mood can change drastically – and how tiny the change which brings it about!

The moral of the story is: don’t take yourself too seriously. Also, I think I’d quite like to be an otter, and kalamata olives are yummy.

But non sequiturs aside – it’s been a good, if busy term. When is it not? Economics has been an uphill climb, as always, but comparative government has been fantastic – so much so that I’m very tempted to write a politics thesis in lieu of a module. It’ll be something on Southeast Asia, and hopefully I’ll get the topic sorted in Trinity term and then I’ll get to go home to Singapore over the summer and snuffle out primary sources. Comparative government’s been great partially because the debate is live for me in a way that philosophy isn’t – don’t get me wrong: I adore philosophy and would die a painful and wilting death without it in my life: but while I have the intelligence to follow and argue for the philosophical debates, I doubt I have the insight to make significant advances in what sometimes feels like an intrinsicially theoretical subject – however, as Emily and I were discussing today – it’s not philosophy’s fault that it’s lost relevance to modern lives – it’s the fault of modern lives that we’ve lost touch with philosophy. Though, Emily, if you’re reading this: surely even in older times, such as the Victorian era that you were talking about earlier – philosophy was still very much the preserve of an elite set of intellectual and upper-class people? To refine the earlier statement, it’s perhaps a side effect of the cultural implications of democracy: that suddenly something is worth more or more applicable or just better if it’s applicable to, understandable by, and a concern of everyone rather than a subset of the population (which automatically renders most of the humanities kaput, as pointed out earlier in the day…)

But politics! The pertinent, immediate questions of how we organise our lives – the historical reach and impact of the theories and ideologies that dominate us and ride the collective minds of man, those immortal questions of rulership, by the one or the many, the limits of our emotional empathy and our collective identity, those thorny issues of empowerment and oppression. Mmmmmmmmmm. You’ll never convince me that political theory and the study of politics should be entirely empirical, despite the case of science envy that the humanities seems to have contracted, and despite the fact that the wonderful Matt Williams (Wadham DPhil, my tutor this term) made the theory and methods of comparative government far more fascinating than I’d originally expected it to be. (The metastudy of the study of politics, mmm.) But politics without a normative component is politics without the crucial deliciousness.

Anyway, I thought I’d discuss Norwegian Wood, but perhaps that’s a post for a day in the future, when people have watched the movies and are less chary of spoilers, and when I’ve re-read the novel itself and can do proper justice to the issues. (One word: sex. Sex sex sex sex sex, everyone’s favourite topic, no?) I just have to say: Matsuyama Ken’ichi has my heart forever and ever and ever and ever! He was wonderful as an actor, just as brilliant as the last couple of films I watched him in (I loved him in the Death Note adaptations, of course, but also in Ultra Miracle Love Story) and quite probably even better. He’s not conventionally handsome at all, but there’s a scene in the snow where just looking  at him makes me want to squee and hug a pillow (or him) and roll around, smiling all the while. His expression, his smile – impossibly adorable.

That being said, the movie portrayal of Norwegian Wood made me feel terribly inadequate as an Asian girl. I feel I should be porcelain-cute, have massive emotional and psychological hangups about sex, and speak an octave higher and say ‘ne?’ at the end of every sentence. Also, I’m glad to realise that I haven’t lost all my command of the Japanese language… Also, when the movie ended and I realised I was still in England instead of in an Asian country (specifically, Singapore, or even Japan), I had a thoroughly disorienting moment. *laughs*

And speaking of other countries – this time next week I will be in Berlin! There are no words for how much I’m looking forward to that! Expect lots of rambling about it!

the pressure game has no limits

{ February 6, 2010 @ 8:56 pm } · { Oxford }
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Sitting in my room on the sofa with my legs up on the table, near-lethal quantities of Darjeeling, Belle & Sebastian and Gackt and the Cirque du Soleil soundtrack for Varekai on the laptop, surrounded by Keynes and Trevithick and Mankiw and assorted books on politics. Having finished a proofreading task and my economics essay earlier in the week, my politics essay is performing a striptease in an attempt to grab my attention from blog ramblings. My mother keeps asking me why I have no boyfriend, the answer is that I spend most of my time locked in my room with erudite and intelligent men who are also unfortunately generally dead, and even more unfortunately, usually a bit boring.

This term at Oxford is going by faster than I’d anticipated. It’s the end of third week already, and it feels like I just came back and like I never left at the same time. To tell the truth, I cried when I had to leave Singapore and come back (sitting on the plane with the blanket over my head pretending I was asleep and weeping silent tears), because absence makes the heart so fond and I spent so much time bonding with friends and family during the holidays. Also because coming back for the second time, you don’t have that same sense of anticipation and adrenaline to carry you through the blues, perhaps. But the minute I got back into Oxford – the minute I stepped past the familiar little blue gate in Trinity – everything just felt so right again. (I have the sinking feeling that when it comes time to leave Oxford I’ll be bawling again. Or maybe not, because I head straight for Taipei for WorldMUN + adrenaline of being in a new and exciting country!)

I think this is what studying overseas and travelling gives you – a sense of your place in the world and a glimpse of how amazing everything is. I fall in love with places: much, much more than I do with people. I want to live as an effervescent bit of neon street lighting in Tokyo. I want to stay forever in the quietude and solemnity of Oxford. I want to turn my collar to the chill grey clamour of London. I want to strut down the aggressive, reaching streets of Hong Kong. I want to wake up in laidback, charming San Francisco (preferably with a hot boy in my bed, and this applies to every city I’ve just mentioned, any offers out there?). But then there’s Singapore, with eighteen years of associations, safe, comfortable, with its own quirky. If you can just tilt your head thirty-nine degrees to the left and make your heart do a handstand, every city is romantic and infinite. Solitude is glorious.

This term I’m feeling a bit more passionate about my work than I was last term – or maybe I’m just adjusting properly now! I do keep dozing off in lectures, but the other day I crashed a couple of second-year lectures, and they were absolutely awesome. Forget sleeping – I scribbled so hard that my hand seized up for a little bit there. *laugh* The first one was on international relations during the Cold War – fascinating because we studied it in JC, of course, but we don’t really do a proper historiographical / interpretive approach. The lecture related to a lot of internal material from the Soviet archives, talked a great deal about point of view, discussed Soviet Russia as an imperial power, and in that paradigm her relationship to Eastern Europe does change a lot, and you do get a good sense of how bewildered the Kremlin was sometimes. That, of course, goes back to a more fundamental question – how much of international relations and power in general is based on personality? You’d think that a country like the USSR could run two ways – that the bureaucratic machine would not allow for expressions of personality except at the very absolute top of the hierarchy, but then again I think if you went to the primary sources, you might be surprised. Similarly, that lends itself to thinking about the trends in today’s politics: why is it that American politics nowadays keeps looking for a saviour? I do see it as a leaning towards a cult of personality – it happened with Obama, it happened with Sarah Palin, it’s happening a little bit with Scott Brown. And I’ve been reading a lot about politics, and it’s just such a dirty, unpleasant but ultimately fascinating fact about life.

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. … It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

One of my favorite insights into the formation and continuance of government.

I love this feeling. I love being twenty (I know I don’t actually turn twenty until October, but I want to be twenty now, you have no clue how much I’m looking forward to my second decade of life), because it just feels like I’m coming into who I’m meant to be. I think I can consider myself a success if I can still feel like this at thirty, forty, fifty, sixty… I remember reading Michael Cunningham’s A Home At the End of the World and thinking to myself, sometimes the real tragedy is our bewilderment in the face of age. It’s a beautiful book, by the way, I recommend it to anyone who’s looking for a good read, but back to the topic… I love being able to discuss politics and philosophy and do Lagrangians in economics, I love finding my own sense of style and fashion, I love slouchy sweaters (I would ADORE a vicuna sweater from Loro Piana, if I can’t have a hot boy, I’ll settle for one of those, thank you very much), I love skintight jeans and dresses and leather trousers, I love cooking experiments, I love writing and reading. I love teaching myself what it means to be self-sufficient and self-confident, because I look back on my previous years and most people would say that self-confidence is not something that I ever lacked but sometimes I think, ‘Yeah, I was an arrogant little snot. I knew a lot about how to speak like I had life down pat but didn’t know very much about how to live with myself.’ Strength of convictions and all that jazz. I think the next thing is to teach myself how to be beautiful.

On yet another note: Claire and Jo and I went to watch Cirque du Soleil’s Varekai in London and it was so brilliant and so amazingly worth every single penny I spent on it. Talent is always breathtaking, more so when it’s a trapeze artist just winging towards you with one hand closed on a rope. Their whole body is a study in grace. You look at them and you think, ‘Every single step they take is a deliberation, an abstract.’ It must be the mark of a person whose brain has been immersed too long in academia, but the phrase ‘Platonic form’ kept flashing through my mind. But the point stands. You watch them fall and rise again at the last second and wonder how it’s even possible to trust yourself so much. You brace your hands against your mouth to stifle your gasps of admiration and you applaud until your hands are sore, because you look at these people and you wonder how many times they’ve had to fall. You look at them and think, ‘I’m not even half that graceful even when I’m not spinning upside down in midair.’ And the music! Cirque du Soleil often has absolutely amazing music – I heard the soundtrack for Alegria years ago and I can still hum the title song, and Varekai was the same. Ah, so good, so good. Constellations of life.

everyone’s perennial favourites:

{ November 19, 2009 @ 1:15 am } · { Oxford, Topic-specific discussions }
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Science and religion, ladies and gentlemen and Daryl! (Daryl, you get a specific mention because I know this sort of thing really, really gets you going.)

This is a really late post, and I must apologise for that. It’s been hovering in draft status for weeks, while I’ve been trying to live and struggling with trying to understand my work and myself. But intellectual curiosity is part of being an Oxonian, so I figured that I shouldn’t just let this post rot off, so, have a miniature discussion of two talks! First, John Micklethwait, the editor of the Economist, speaking on how God is Back, and second, Professor Peter Atkins, chemistry professor at Lincoln College, speaking on how science and religion are an irresolvable conflict.  Both were extremely interesting.

I think the main thing I took away from Micklethwait was the rise of Christianity in China, through the rise of a phenomenon called ‘house churches’. Which, as the name implies, is essentially the study of Christianity and its gospel in small groups. There’s apparently a law in China forbidding gatherings of more than twenty-five people, and this apparently prompts a rather amoeba-like fission, where, as a house church approaches 25 members, they split in half and go gather more.

The next interesting point was his mention of the profile of house church members, who, according to Mickelthwait, are generally young and well-educated: the rising class of China’s intelligentsia. Professors, businessmen, bankers, artists, writers – all of them are turning to Christianity in a surge that is posited as a search for a new and perhaps more spiritual ideology.

Lastly, the major point that I want to emphasise from Micklethwait is the possible effects that religion has on politics – both in terms of a country’s internal power politics and its relationship with other countries. He gives the impression that the Chinese government is a bit ambivalent about the current rise of Christianity. Some don’t see it as a serious threat to the current ruling structure, some do. I think it seems instinctively valid for a Communist government to worry about the rise of a potential challenging ideology (especially when you take into account the fact that Christianity is not the only religion to experience a surge in China – all religions are essentially surging there), but the specific form and mechanism of that danger doesn’t seem quite clear yet.

Right: to my own specific views, then! I think what was particularly good about the Micklethwait talk was that it expressed a different sort of religious profile. Marx’s “opiate for the masses” is out of fashion, clearly, because it’s not the uneducated masses that are getting on the religious bandwagon. I think it’s relatively uncontroversial that the sudden rise of religion in China is an expression of angst – the search for meaning in a society that hasn’t quite got a soul that it can reconcile with the sudden speed of its progress. At the same time, I can’t help but think that there might be a sense that Christianity in particular is part of the modernising trend. (China playing catch-up with the West?)

That leads to the rather interesting question of how Christianity is going to be interpreted in China, though. It does seem like such a Western religion (God as a bearded white man, etc, etc). I refuse to believe that Christianity is going to be bought wholesale by the Chinese, and yet at the same time, it’s easy to notice that Christianity in particular is an extremely adaptable religion, adopting leftover bits of pagan practice here and there. (Much like English acquiring bits of other languages, really.) I think that with Christianity in China, we’re going to notice not only the effects that Christian doctrine has on a population, but the effects that a population and its cultural history is going to have on Christianity, and that’s going to be fascinating.

Lastly, I really want to think about how we could go about studying all this. Perhaps its the academic slant in me emerging (that’s one thing that I’m really glad about taking away from Oxford), but how would one go about studying this kind of on-the-ground change? Micklethwait made quite a strong use of statistics, which I do acknowledge as an objective source, as objective as these things get. But then again, statistics is a fairly modern method of looking at my subject areas (though not so much in economics, perhaps, and I don’t think that statistics are ever going to make a serious dent in philosophy, but politics is intriguing right now as a field that is undergoing scientification (no such word, really, but I think you all understand me), and it is worth noting that the major important political texts that we consider classics were written by people who had a strong idea of what was happening on the ground. How does one get insight into the situation itself? (Makes me think that a career in journalism or diplomacy is probably the route to take if I do eventually want to become an academic proper… especially if i want to focus on politics.)

Enough of my own views, though – let me give a quick summary of the next speaker who talked about religion. Peter Atkins, who’s a chemistry professor with several best-selling chemistry textbooks to his name (apparently he’s pretty much used worldwide), spoke on the utter incommensurability of science and religion. I was quite amused at several points in his talk. He’s a mildly offensive speaker, so I did get the feeling that he was trying to court controversy, and I do think that his type gives atheism a bit of a bad name. You could probably label it frankness or honesty, but… hmm. That really depends on the individual listening to him. And I do think he got off easy, because when you’re talking to a bunch of college students, you’re talking to a demographic which is, if not outright atheist or agnostic, is at least generally more sympathetic to such points of view, regardless of their own religious convictions.

I won’t go too much into the content of his speech – it’s the same sort of straightforward atheism that (quite rightly, in my opinion) puts religion down as a complete sham and argues that there should be no space for religion in our discourse. I quite like that he tries to reframe the debate by emphasising that there are only some questions that are fundamentally important: mainly the question about how the universe began. He dismisses as rubbish questions about whether there is an afterlife and even what “meaning” our lives and the universe have.

To be fair to him, he does hold up some fairly harsh criteria for science to fulfill, and I am actually very interested in the way he says that any scientist who professes to hold religious beliefs is half a scientist only. He was quite careful to say that even as half a scientist you can produce brilliant and incredible work, but you haven’t fully subscribed to the philosophy of science, as it were… which is in its own turn interesting because the way he holds up science as the only and ultimate arbiter of knowledge makes me feel like his arguments against religion apply equally to the humanities, which should either move towards a scientific expression of their arguments or fall in the illegitimacy that he ascribes to religion… which I can hardly subscribe to wholeheartedly.

Having said all that, I shall now go get back to my Mill essay, and my game theory problem sheet… or, given that it’s so late, I think I’ll pop off to bed and wake early tomorrow to work instead.

Art Undressed, or, PORN!!!

{ October 26, 2009 @ 10:56 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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I really really ought to be continuing with my microeconomics work… but I think one of the wonderful things about being here is that I’ve begun to realize just when I can and can’t do work anymore, and I know that forcing myself to go on isn’t going to be the answer. So I figured it’d be a good time to make a quick blog post!

It’s been, in short, a pretty busy week. I know that last post I said that it was the second week I’ve been in Oxford, which was true, because Fresher’s Week is a week, but that was actually the end of the first academic week. So now it’s essentially Monday of 3rd week, which already means that I’m a through a quarter of my first term here. An eight-week term really does mean that work builds up, and the learning here is seriously independent. There’s no way to miss a week of work and make up for it at another point, which is why I really, really don’t want to fall sick. I think falling behind here is going to be absolutely agonizing.

I had my first philosophy tutorial on Mill and it’s really, really amazing. Two students to one professor, and I know you’re not supposed to be intimidated by authority and all that but you know you’re being taught by someone whose erudition comes from years of study and digesting and thinking about these issues and it’s not possible to be unimpressed. I had to read my essay out, and after every point we stopped and discussed the ideas which came out and really, really thrashed out everything, and you walk out reeling but in a really excited way. Ellie and I continued arguing about it all the way down the street. It’s not just the specific issue that becomes a lot clearer – by trying to answer the professor’s questions you really start trying to think in his mindset and because of that you come that much closer to what you have to be doing to really get to the heart of an issue and to the heart of what a philosopher was saying. Why would Mill say this? Why did he feel that this was a sufficient or insufficient answer? It’s great. I adore it, it takes so much effort out of you but in such a brilliant way.

I spent the weekend in London at UCL with Clar and really enjoyed myself! Oxford’s new and great and I’m making some pretty good friends, but Clar and I have known each other for five years and that’s really something that can’t be compared in any instance. It’s a case where you really can talk about random stuff or just not talk at all, and it’s great fun just being with her. If you’re reading this, dear girl, I LOVE YOU LOTS! *hearts* Also, Oxford’s an awesome place, but I do think that I’m a city girl at heart. London’s confusing and I like it lots too… also went shopping, which is of course always great. But I shan’t bore with details of a shopping trip. *laugh*

Went to the Tate Modern, and I was immensely amused. Clar doesn’t like modern art because she thinks it’s rubbish, I generally agree but approach it from a different angle. I don’t like any individual piece of modern art but am extremely amused by what it does say about our culture today, and what art is becoming as a whole. The cynic in me is laughing really, really hard. There’s a room in the Pop Art exhibition covering the work of Jeff Koons, and essentially:

It’s just him and his porn-star wife, fucking.

They’ve been sculpted fucking, photographed fucking, photographed fucking in various poses… there’s a shot where they’ve been transplanted onto a natural scene with waterfalls and rocks… there’s even a shot of his cock entering her pussy, a huge close-up of that with his fingers spreading her ass open. There’s really no other way to describe it. I could use the clinical (or politically correct) terms for the various genital paraphernalia, but then I wouldn’t be doing justice to the sheer, stupid crudity of the whole thing.

I suppose you could be highbrow about it. You could argue about the value of shock and an unashamed, unabashed look at the sex act which is self-mocking and self-referential. You could say that it’s ironic and makes a strong point about the way we see sex in our society. You could even say that it makes a statement about our voyeuristic culture and the link between sex, celebrity and art.

I still don’t see how it’s anything other than porn, though. Really, just go to Google, type in the word ‘porn’, find a free site, and screencap a shot. Then blow it up really really big on canvas and try and sell it to the Tate Modern. They’ll buy it – them and the National Heritage Fund (or something similar). Bonus points if it’s an amateur video that you and your partner filmed with a grainy scratchy camera, probably. It’s so ridiculously self-indulgent, and I guess that’s where I feel I appreciate modern art? If art is supposed to represent the spirit of our times, sure, this is it, modern art’s doing a fantastic job. Vulgar and banal and stupid.

It’s the Emperor’s new clothes, redux. Now, we’re all free to say that he’s not wearing any clothes. (Neither is Jeff Koons.) But now, no one’s pointing out that it’s really not cool to be prancing around naked.

But don’t worry, there’s hope for the future of mankind. I attended a talk by Lord Hannay, who was British ambassador to the UN, and he was discussing the problems that face the world and the role that the UN can play and how it should develop. It’s awesome because he has all these ideas, and while I do appreciate that there are very many obstacles to progress and to fixing things like climate change and nuclear disarmament and terrorism, his message overall was a fairly hopeful one: there is a way to go about fixing many of these things. It’s a matter, of course, of bringing together the political capital and clout and cooperation, but none of the problems that face us are beyond us.

I really appreciated the questions that got asked as well – the questions were fast and furious and incisive and ranged across a massive range of issues – issues on how to treat rogue states like Iran and North Korea, issues like America’s place in the world and Britain’s place relative to America and the EU, questions about the veto on the Security Council and whether the membership of the council should be expanded, about the settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, questions about bringing China into alignment with the rest of the world… a range of questions that really demonstrated that the people in the room had thought really hard about their topics and weren’t afraid to ask serious and genuine questions.

Later this week I’m going to troop down to Corpus and hear the editor of the Economist talk about the revival of faith in the world today. Daryl will probably be interested in this one, so I’ll make a post when that comes up.

Busy busy! I have the time to go out with friends and make new ones, to work and study hard, to see some porn, to attend fascinating talks, and to think about all the huge issues that the world is presenting to all of us. What more can I ask from university life?

all a little bit dreamy, and all astoundingly clear

{ October 13, 2009 @ 8:37 pm } · { Oxford }
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Right, it’s the Tuesday of my second week at Oxford, I’m starting to get into the swing of things, and I am so happy here.

It is an absolutely beautiful place, of course. Just being here turns running down the street to the bank into a minor romance; because the cobblestones are old and rough and uneven beneath your feet. They prompt my heart to leap as I turn into Trinity, and in the sunshine even the cold autumn air is something to be tasted and savoured, the sensation of a chilled nose tip to be pressed against my arm and enjoyed. The streets are for walking down in a brown dress and red tights; the air is for interrupting with an improvised tune. Oxford makes me want to sing and hop and run with delight.

I don’t think this magic will ever fade for me. As I wake up and watch the sun rise over Balliol from my bedroom window – as I tromp down the High Street to lectures in Examination Schools – as I wander into the Union for a debate – as I give a little squeak of joy at my first (and second) sighting of a compact brown-grey squirrel (possibly the only creature to walk with impunity on Trinity lawns) –

Oxford is sombre, atmospheric; her reality is everything I dreamed of and so much better.

Being in Trinity is a huge part of that, really. I can’t wait for Trinity term in the spring, now in Michaelmas all the lawns and flowers are being re-dug or some other gardening term. I know it’s so that they’ll flower better come Trinity term. It’ll be glorious. Trinity’s lawns are the stuff of postcards and TV series.

And the food! The food! Forget every single stereotype about lousy college food. Also forget tempting saints; saints are for wimps. The food at Trinity would tempt God himself. Formal Hall requires us to wear academic gowns (I look a bit stupid) but for less than four pounds you get a three-course meal that is easily the equal and probably the better of a lot of restaurants. The other day I had fried Brie with cranberry sauce, steak with green peas and potatoes, and black forest gateau. Words fail me, they really do. You have to bite it. At self-service lunch, you get things like turkey escalope with mushroom sauce… like poached salmon with cream… like chicken wings with garlic and Thai sweet chilli… rice is always available on the side… the brownies and apple crumble are to die for… Trinity is essentially providing me with some of the best meals I’ve ever had… and while multiplying by 2.4 always breaks my scholarship-student heart, it’s ridiculously cheap prices.

The work is challenging, yes, and I know that the tutors really haven’t hit us hard with everything yet, but I’m enjoying myself and I have promised myself to continue enjoying it. I am keeping up with the math in economics, and my tutor is an awesome, if slightly scary man. I am horrendously rusty at essay writing but I know I can do it anyway; it’s only a matter of getting back into the right frame of mind. I am anticipating formal logic and learning it and I hope to do well at it, because I do think it’s an immensely sexy discipline. My philosophy tutor Edward Kanterian is absolutely quintessential – he shares a study with fellow philosopher Mike Inwood and they just have piles and piles and stacks and stacks and shelves and shelves of books. Old books new books falling apart books haphazard books. They also have crumbs on the sofa and a used teabag on the floor, so there you have it. I also love picking up random books in Oxfam, and I could die of happiness in Blackwell’s.(I hope to keep my room relatively tidier, however.)

I also feel like I’m discovering and honing bits of myself that I really like, and perhaps doing a little rediscovery here and there. There’s the fact that life here is so hugely autonomous. I have so much control over what I can do, and to my surprise I’ve turned out to be ridiculously organized. I plan the next day’s schedule the night before, down to the hour. I follow it. (Largely.) I leave myself time for work, power naps, laundry, dishes, CCAs, slack. I have so much control over the food I eat, and it turns out that I eat huge amounts of fruit and wholemeal bread, and relatively little junk. (Though Sainsbury’s does do some amazing brownie bites, and I can’t help myself from time to time…) I’ve rediscovered how excited debating makes me feel, and I’ve definitely decided to devote myself properly to it again. Truth to tell, I was more than a little tired of it after JC: our results at MIDCs were infinitely disappointing, and I just wanted to stop for a while. Being at the Union – watching the debates and attending a quick crash course in British Parliamentary style – it just woke it all up again.

And with regard to social life – haven’t found any soulmates, but I’m not the sort of person who requires very, very close friends, anyway. I get along well enough and can confidently say that I know about a quarter of my cohort, though for the other sixty people or so, I’m not even sure I know their names. I know and like a lot of the second years, who are awesome and nice and really intelligent. Some of the seniors are a bit weird as well, but it’s awesome. For the bop (college party), a senior shaved his arms and legs and went as a woman. *laughs* It was awesome. A PPE third-year also has what he calls Naked Thursdays at his flat in Woodstock Road. No prizes for guessing. First week was a bit tentative and I won’t deny that it was a bit difficult for me – coming from a different culture means you talk about different things and have different references – but I’ve settled in and found my place and feet.

How beautiful can life be?