Today I read an essay by Umberto Eco analysing Casablanca by way of Roland Barthes, all about what kitsch means, and I loved it. I watched a fireworks show on Saturday and they burned a wooden man to the ground, after, and then the girls bought me a Happy Meal because I wouldn’t shut up. Today it was so cold I walked everywhere hunched in a green hoodie with a pair of headphones keeping my ears warm. Last week, I finally begin to understand what it means to choose, and I think I’m starting to grow up. Today I read a small section of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves; the first time in 2 weeks I have read a book that has nothing to do with my course. I re-discovered how continually awesome God is, if that makes any sense, 4 weeks ago.

I have finished my essay. I have done my readings for tomorrow. There is a David Foster Wallace story I just plucked out from my pigeon hole and I have all the hours of the night.

So much of this place, any place, is the illusion that you are doing all you can to have an awesome time because you will never have this again, because people tell you this is the Time of Your Life, Son, And Don’t You Forget It, but of course that’s not true. All time is the time of your life, and I’m counting down the seconds, with glee.

here’s to everything.

essay essay essay

‘Oh just write something about Tennyson and Browning’

‘Go crazy’

‘Really it’s okay’

Man I love this subject. Though ask me this again after my first essay crisis.

Also: God’s been very very good recently. And very…interesting. LOTSA THINGS GOING ON, HOMES

Climbed a tree today. Ran into an almost-naked guy yesterday in 10 degree weather (strategically placed duct tape). I hear the assistant dean ran into him too 5 minutes after I did. Apparently the massively tall brit guy across and upstairs ‘got into a spot of bother’ last week and got into a fight with some townies. We theorise the quiet Lithuanian math major is secretly a KGB agent. Nearly got run down by a van crossing the road. Everywhere there are the shells of bikes, wheels stolen and left to rust against walls. Decided to buy two locks. Senior tutors seem even worse organised than we are, I walk into his office for a tute and there’s books and food everywhere, his monitor is balanced on top of 3 thick copies of the Oxford English-Latin Dictionary and his keyboard is precariously wedged on top of a barstool. Oh, it also transpires he just came back from writing a novel about an interior designer named Alizia.

For while Alizia has a Design for everything from relationships to work to motherhood, the people who matter most to her refuse to fit. As the gloss she has put on her life begins to crack she realises there may not, after all, be a Magic Motto for everything. And where can she find happiness then?

He also wrote a highly scholarly tome on Victorian Poetic Forms. Hm.

Spent last night enthusing over the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and talking into the wee hours of the night.

This place is overflowing in alcohol.

how things are going

It’s so different here.

I’ve been abit dislocated for a little while, mostly because being asian and not having a british accent means there’s a little bit of a communication barrier. I’m doing pretty well all things considered, though things might take time.

But I gotta say, God is so incredible. It’s enough to make me want to chuckle, everything is so well-planned. Meeting people and talking to them at JUST the right moment, for you and for them. Having things just…work out even if the morning left you feeling a little cold and a little miserable.

I just spent the evening talking to and praying with a New Awesome Friend (about which I am very, VERY happy), my tutorials start next week, I have monday off to go shopping and finish my assignments and OH FREAK IT IS COLD HERE I need to learn to start buying food for myself. I woke up this morning and basically found fruit and cereal for lunch. Which is alright…if the weather wasn’t so miserable. Brilliant, sam chan.

#%$*&^

So it’s week one and already I miss the first English society meeting I wanted to go for, because I wrote it down but forgot about it. Twit.

At least it wasn’t a tutorial

Need to get organised

I know I keep on saying that it’s only going to be a couple of months and that it’s not a big deal, but really, deep down I’m thinking of times and eras and the fall of empire and the Industrial Revolution.

6 months on I’m less willing to leave than I thought I would be 6 months ago, but that’s okay. I believe, really do, that there’s something for me anywhere I go, because God works like that. Looking forward to meeting people and finally being able to have substance for lit that exceeds my convictions.

I used to think the future was like an onrushing train, quite oblivious in its inexorability, and at least irresistible. An iron-tracked wall of mystery. It’s more like a low swamp, fog, brambles, hobgoblins, and maybe a dim path I guess. Except you don’t walk or bushwhack through it, but you’re suspended high in the air over it, a vast sweeping expanse of complexity that isn’t really that complex anymore when you can see everything laid out like that. It’s a shitty metaphor but I don’t think I’m entirely here anymore.

There’s nothing I would change

See you on the other side

- <3 Sam

hardcore

I realise that I am moving to a community where outright geekiness is quite acceptable.

Today I registered my student account. It’s hosted on a local server that includes the word ‘Shibboleth‘ as part of its site address.

Nice secure server name, oxford tech dudes

Mm

I haven’t posted anything interesting in a good long while. Been quite busy. My reading list from Oxford came in just a couple days ago, and dear lord, it’s hella-thick. We’re starting with VICTORIAN, to my great dismay (mostly because it means super chunky books full of frills and ruffs and ABSOLUTELY no sex), though there’s some T.S. Eliot and Beckett thrown in there for contrast.

Tore through both the Beckett plays and I’m cracking open T.S. Eliot’s Waste Land. Just the introduction is making me feel very provincial and silly. I’m a firm believer in categorical punishments re: violence against the English Language In Writing so I’m wincing through a lot of the things I’m finding out.

You know, I’m increasingly glad I’m going where I am. Having your ignorance pointed out stings, but it’s much better than the alternative

-

Anyway, what with this, coaching, trying to learn new languages, drumming and helping out with R&G I’m pretty much full-booked till, ooh, next year I should think

paranoid

I get very paranoid whenever I send an e-mail to my college asking about lodgings or random things. I know these e-mails will never reach a lecturer, and they’ll probably be handled by an admin sec, but suddenly I get very tense about the difference between ‘who‘ and ‘whom‘. How many Ms in ‘accommodate’? (two) Should I inquire or enquire? (they’re the same)

It’s oxford

It’s Britain

It is one of the two best unis in the place that practically invented goddam english

Meh

So The Economist did an article on the over-subscribed US uni class of 2009 and rising student loans, as well as under-funding in most universities. It’s always rewarding keeping up with current affairs for those moments when the news you read intersects with your real life, even if the news is invariably shitty.

Oh well. I need to start reading up on the Tories and Labour soon. I barely know more about UK politics than European ones, but it’s going to be such a slog. Gordon Brown is so irredeemably boring. Don’t you current-affairs kids think the world was more interesting when Blair, Koizumi and Bush were around? More hopelessly incompetent sometimes, sure, but at least they had style

(well ok, Obama’s really interesting. I wonder what it would have been like if Sarkozy, Obama, Blair, and Koizumi all came to power at the same time. The world ruled by these young, hyper-charismatic types. Sweet. Maybe they could form a Justic League)