10.07.06 naught week almost over

First things first.  There are officially 8 weeks of each term, and the terms have crazy old fashioned names: Michaelmas, Hilary, and Trinity.  Of course, just like everything else at Oxford, the official version is not actually accurate and has a bunch of odd caveats.  For example, last week was -1th week (two week before Michaelmas begins).  This week is naught week (zero week) also sometimes called zeroth week, and believe me there was plenty going at the university, school and college during this time.  Monday is the first week of term, which theoretically ends in 8 weeks.  But it doesn’t there’s a 9th week and a 10th week for exams too.  Ok, hopefully that’s clear.

Also, I should apologise for the lack of photos, Reba has gone off to Greece with her buddies and took the camera with her, so it’s just my boring writing until tomorrow evening when she returns.

The busy factor is starting to blow my mind, and school hasn’t even begun yet.  You often hear University staff remark, or read in whatever official mailings that “you can’t do it all” while you’re here.  What an understatement.  This past week (naught) included the following events, unless otherwise noted, they all run back to back.

 

Saturday Sept 30

(note: since I have to deal with the stupid 24 hour time system here, YOU have to as well, enjoy it)

11:00 tour of my college, Merton.  We learned all about the history, famous guests and scholars, got a tour of the library (the oldest still in use in the English speaking world), halls, etc.  Damn cool.

14:30 The Oxford Pursuit scavenger hunt.  Sort of a high faluting way of getting to know the town and some history while trying to bond with and wrestle for control with other type-A MBA people.  In the pouring rain.

19:30 Dinner with Reba, she was leaving for Greece later in the evening.  I picked up some fairly passable Chinese take out.

Had to skip the 15:30 graduate parenting tea in the Merton MCR.  “Parents” are students that have been at Merton for at least a year and can give you the lowdown on stuff, which is good because no one else will even attempt to.  The MCR is the Middle Common Room.  This is the graduate student only social hall, a really old room with a TV, stereo and… you guessed it!  A BAR!!!!  There is also a JCR (Junior Common Room) for undergrads, and some sort of Senior room for the fellows and whatever.

We finished the day with the MBA dudes out drinking til 2AM.

 

Merton MCR

 

Sunday Oct 1

13:30 stomped across Christ Church Meadow in the pour-assing rain to get to Merton for what was going to be a rain drenched tour of the city.  Turns out they cancelled it due to rain.  Figures.  I looked like I had waded through a bathtub.  Was also generally hung over and did jack shit, for various reasons.

Monday Oct 2

8:30 induction information lectures at the business school.  Lasted all day until 17:00.  Got to listen to a bunch of official types talk about the curriculum, online assignment submission system, career center, etc.  1/2 of the incoming class of 214 gave 1 minute each bios on stage.  That was painful.

17:00 ran across town to Merton where I had to sit in my suit in the Saville room (not as nice as it sounds) and wait for my name to be called, along with all the other “freshers” so I could walk up, shake hands with the warden, and sign my name in her big book of people’s signatures.  She was very smiley about it and said “welcome to the college”.  Neato!

19:00 ran back across town to the school for a welcome reception.  This is where they turn the normal studious and serious lobby area into a big frigging party room.  These people like to drink, and the wine was very free flowing.  I can’t say how much we went through, but it was cases and cases.  Some of last year’s MBA class were there, and the staff hung around guzzling as well.

We finished the day with the MBA dudes out drinking til 2AM.

Tuesday Oct 3

8:30 induction day 2 at the school.  A marathon 12 hours in the same room, and the second half of the 214 got their 1 minute.  This was murderously painful.  Can you say, “I am ____ from India, I work in IT, and I like Cricket and Football” 45 times in a row with a straight face?  I can now say that I’ve seen it done, but by 45 different people.  Met my study group, and we had our first meeting.  Interesting folks all around: a South African accountant, a marketer from Hong Kong, a couple of IT guys from India, a Canadian project manager, and me.

Had to skip the 10:00 meeting with Merton Tutors, 16:00 meeting with the Merton welfare team, and 20:00 Merton bar crawl (going to all the bars at the different colleges) because of schedule conflicts with the biz school and sheer exhaustion.  I was really annoyed by the end of this day.

Wednesday Oct 4

9:40 health presentation at Merton.  This was funny.  I basically sat in the big dining hall at Merton, with 100 or so other graduate and undergraduate freshers and got lectured about not getting beat up by the townies, contraception, drug use, etc.  I had a brief meeting after with the Merton nurse, who weighed me and said that I am 15.5 stone.  Whatever that is.  It probably sounds worse in pounds, anyway.  Also, I was informed that I could not get my mumps and meningitis shots at the college and would have to go to the doctor’s office for my shots.  Apparently I am too old, and if I had a reaction to the shots, the nurse wouldn’t have the right “gear” to take care of me.  Whatev.

11:00 started putting my calendar and task list together for the term.  I now have 168 separate tasks in my todo list, mostly reading.  The assignments haven’t been given out yet, so I’ll add those as well.  Keep in mind: I only have 8 weeks to do all 168 readings.

15:00 had a pint and a chat about web projects with an alumus, Tom M.  Tom is starting a company and wanted to get an idea of what it would cost to do some web work.  I can’t go into the details, because I am under super-double-secret-sbs-handshake-lockdown oath to not reveal the details of our conversation or his company idea.  This is a bit funny, because this is probably the 3rd time I’ve had this double secret style conversation with people at SBS this week.  The ideas are all generally pretty good too, by the way.

16:00 meeting with the college officers at Merton.  This was a lot of fire safety, behaviour requirements, info about fines you can be given, etc.  The Bursar rambled on at length about different subjects in a super dry humour sarcastic sort of way.  He made everyone feel a bit weird by telling us how he’d been “given the sack” and would be leaving soon, and was planning on spending the rest of his days sitting in a dark room staring at his computer.  Seriously.  And then he told us how he has attended Merton as an undergrad in the 60’s, and how our experience as grad students would in no way be as “orgasmic” as it would have been as undergrads.  Seriously.  He may be crazy, or just weird, or just bitter, or some of all of those things.  He went on about fire safety as well.  These Brits are really worked up about fire safety.

20:00 champagne reception in Merton chapel’s antechapel.  Everyone from the MCR got dressed up and guzzled champagne in the chapel at Merton.  This is a huge church, apparently at one point it was going to be the general church for Oxford, but it didn’t for whatever reason and now it’s just for the college.  Pretty cool place to have a party.  Talked to tons of smartypants grad students, but they make me feel A) old and B) degenerate.  They’re all 21 or 22, and many are pooped out at 11pm, right when I get ready to go meet up with the MBAs for some more drinking.  The clean cut physiology grad students and etc. often just go to bed after this kind of affair, but as noted, on most nights, the MBAs go out drinking til 2AM.  However, tonight was an exception: we all went disco dancing, and it wasn’t too totally sausage fest lame, there were actually a few cute gradstudent-girls with us.  We went to a “hiphop” club, and everybody did the creepy bump and grind dance that is so popular these days.  I just can’t bring myself to do this… I prefer doing the retro rock and roll dance, if not doing some outright pogo-ing.  The sexy bootie grind dance just weirds me out, and I can’t really move that way anyway.  This also makes me feel old, but not quite as degenerate.

We finished the day with the MBA dudes out drinking til 2AM.

Thursday Oct 5

9:30 Freshers’ Fair at the Examination School.  The Exam School is the place where you go to take tests wearing your subfusc, but today there was no dress code and it was filled with booths recruiting for every student group at Oxford.  Ethnic, political, language, hobby, sport, gaming, food and wine, military, literary, music, dance, and just about any other type of group you could imagine were represented there.  I joined groups for dinghy racing, fencing, wine, hunting, entrepreneurship, and indie/alternative music, not that I’ll have any time for them.    A bit about the hunting group: fox hunting is now illegal here.  So instead of “fox hunting” per se, these guys go out in the woods and follow packs of trained beagles around and see what they scare up, I don’t know what happens if anything does get scared up.  Funny.  Even better though: they don’t have horses.  So, this group of dudes have to follow the beagles on foot, there were even pictures in the booth of the club in all of their fox hunting horse riding gear, with no horses around.  I can’t help but think of Monty Python’s “The Holy Grail” where the knights all gallop along on foot because they don’t have horses… How can I not join this club?

18:30 drinks with Dr Alan Morrison and Dr Kate Blackmon, fellows (I think) at Merton.  Basically, myself and a bunch of grad and undergrad freshers got suits on, and went to Dr Kate’s private study at Merton, where we chit chatted politely while Kate and Alan tried to get us loaded on sherry.  Alan’s English, but Kate’s from Chapel Hill, and reminds me of Maryanne Garland, for those who know her.  By the way, she’s also one of the officers who was lecturing us the previous day about rules, regs, and NOT over-imbibing at Merton.  This was fun.

19:00 pre-dinner drinks in MCR.  More sherry and grad students in fancy dress.

19:30 Matriculation dinner in Merton Hall.  Harry Potter eat your heart out!  We all filed into the ancient dining hall and sat at assigned seats at long tables with benchs underneath scowly painting of famous Mertonians in wigs.  The grad/undergrad-students were all busy talking when the Fellows (including Kate and Alan) came marching in.  Everybody hushed and stood up for this, kind of like when the judge enters a courtroom.  Then we all sat down.  Then we stood up and the Vicar (?) said a prayer in Latin, and then they served us a 3 course dinner, which was actually pretty good.  There was a brief speech at the end by the Warden, who is sort of Professor McGonagall-ish in a way.

We finished the day with the MBA dudes out drinking til 2AM.

Friday Oct 6

11:00 totally stupid “tour” of the careers center at SBS.  This consisted of filing into the careers center, some semi bitchy presentations by career center staff on what not to do with your 2 allotted 1/2 hour sessions of career advice per term, and direction to the various leaflets and pamphlets laying around.  I’m not sure, but I’m getting the feeling that the careers folks may not be my favorite Oxonians before too long.  I’m reserving judgement for now, however.

Afternoon – got the study group’s sharepoint site up and running, finished typing in the tasks and calendar items for the term, uploaded the tasks/items to the sharepoint for the rest of the folks in my section to download and import, set up the shared google calendar for the study group.

18:00 dinner with Sasha, Orly and their visiting pal whose name I forget.  Their son Nir was also there.  This dinner was great, and we had a really excellent time, and Nir is a very cute little guy.  The best thing about this night is that it was the first time I’ve had dinner with 3 Israelis and had PORK CHOPS!  I found out that Hedgehogs and Porcupines aren’t kosher either, but I don’t think Sasha will be serving these anytime soon.  Apparently the Arabs in Israel eat a lot of Porcupines, Sasha says they’re pretty good!

20:00 went to the Wadham College Bop.  A Bop is a school dance, and the theme of this was “school uniforms” …basically it was the sexy catholic schoolgirl look for the girls and whatever the dudes could work out.  This place was gigantic, filled with 1000s of undergrads, totally drunk.  The funny thing about colleges here is that they not only don’t restrict alcohol use among the students, they actually encourage it by having a bar in the college!  Sometimes more than one!  This was was giant drunk undergrad dance party sexy dance fiasco, and honestly, Sasha and I were a bit out of place.  We each had a Guiness and split.

We finished the day with the MBA dudes out drinking til 2AM.

Saturday Oct 7

Actually read something for my Monday classes.  Crazy, I know.  Pretty neat article about vision, core ideology and envisioned future at businesses by the guys who wrote “Built to Last”.  It’s great to read stuff firsthand that I’m typically exposed to when it’s being thrown around (usually incorrectly) by corporate types. 

Tonight there are a bunch of options (again)… the “start of term” cocktail party at the MCR, the JCR have a bop, and Andrew wants to go to the Turf to check out the beer festival.  I also need to quit writing blogs and finish my reading.