Working in the Lodge and Library

Just a quick update over what I have been doing over the past week, given my negligence in posting. In my defence, a great deal of time has been spent packing up all of my stuff and getting it into the loft, no mean feat given the amount of junk I have accumulated over the past two years, particularly the immense mountain of books. I am really glad that I started early - basically once I got my last two essays out of the way, I knuckled down to it. It definitely looked quite interesting, randomly picking cardboard boxes off Broad Street early in the morning - even the Big Issue seller in the corner was staring at me rather strangely. All in all, I managed to fill at least 9 boxes (some of them were small to be fair!) not to mention a big bag full of clothes and a suitcase. It was the usual messy of trying to plan and leave enough stuff clothes and things so that I could survive the intervening weeks living out of a suitcase.

The end of term also brought the usual mess of holiday plans, and this year it was particularly bad given that I might have had to come back for another University Challenge match in July. All in all, things were looking up - if our team lost our match badly, that will be the end of the road. If we won - then our second round match would be on the same evening and I would not be needed again, assuming we won that, until October. Only in the event that we were a highest scoring loser would I need to stay. Needless to say, and given what I wrote in my previous entry, the last option turned out to be the case, so I was stranded here until the 11th of July at the earliest. Not to mention the fact that I am staying for the Trinity 450th Anniversary Ball on the 24th June (Friday of 9th in Oxford lingo). Amidst the chaos, I had managed to wrangle a job working in the Lodge on the Saturday everyone was leaving, as well as in the Library for the time up to the ball.

I definitely enjoyed working at the Lodge on Saturday. It was definitely busy and chaotic, especially considering the fact that there were lots of parents coming at the end of term, to pick their children (and all their assorted belongings) up. I enjoyed the hustle and bustle of the work, of being able to interact with people and answer their queries. In an odd sort of way, it reminded me of guard duty in the army with much less stressful and onerous responsibilities.

On Monday I was roped in to help with a visit from President S R Nathan and his family to Oxford who was visiting an old colleague Professor Khong Yuen Foong who is currently a fellow at Nuffield College and coincidently enough the Phd supervisor of Taiye, who taught me International Relations (and who passed on my contact details to him). President Nathan had to pull out at the last minute, but it was still nice bringing his grandaughter, other relatives and assorted officials around.

I have always enjoyed playing the tour guide, be it around Trintiy or Oxford in general, partly due to my love of facts and trivia and the history that Oxford posseses, and partly due to my thinly disguised sense of showmanship. Visits to Trinity and Nuffield were arranged, along with a fine lunch at Nuffield which was attended by Dr Ngaire Woods, a famous IR professor at Oxford (and Balliol alumnus). That was followed later by a walk round Oxford with a tour guide, as well as an intriguing glance in the old library at Christ Church as a result of a random encouncter with the Christ Church Politics fellow (note for anyone passing the building - count the number of windows from the outside, and then count them again from the inside of the building you will notice and interesting discrepancy). Manisha, who is President Nathan's grand-daughter was very intelligent and precocious, with a strong interest in international relations and foreign affairs. Certainly IR textbooks did not count as high on my reading list when I was her age! Definitely a fun day out.

Tuesday and Wednesday were spent working as a library assistant - dusting shelves, checking books, relabelling books and a whole myriad number of different tasks. It was intriguing working through some of the shelves and finding the most random books there including a 20 volume military history of World War I, a Classics dictionary cum encyclopedia written in German, a short book on battle dress in the English Civil War (written by an old member) as well as what has to be my favourite, a book on root disease strains affecting rubber trees. In two days of work (well a third for most of the rest which I spent showing the Singaporean visitors around) we managed to finish off most of the lower library which was quite impressive all things considered. It was pretty good fun working - Jan the librarian is wonderfully eccentric and delightful and I have got to know two fourth years Tom Hiles and Tom Mayo quite well when I previously had hardly come across them in College.

Live To Quiz Another Day

Monday marked the big day - our appereance on University Challenge, something that I was looking forward to with equal amounts of excitement and trepidation. It was definitely with a great deal of excitement that I travelled down to Manchester with the team, catching the 7.30pm train out of Oxford, and things certainly seemed to be going well, with the train actually arriving early, certainly an unexpected occurence given the vagaries of British rail. Even more pleasing was our hotel rooms on arrival - though the Metro Travel Inn was one of those enormous mass hotels with long corridors of identical looking rooms identified only by the three digits on their doors, the inside proved very spacious indeed, with full bathroom facilities, and a double bed and couch. We went over to Justin's room for awhile and went through some quiz questions before retiring. I decided that the facilities were took good to pass up, so I took a really long luxurious soak in the bathtub - probably the first time in more than a year that I have had the chance to soak in a bathtub.

The next day we had an English Breakfast in the hotel, something that I always find nice and probably one aspect of English cuisine I find rather endearing. Pity then the fact that I am not often awake early enough to have nice English breakfasts in College! After that it was off to the studios, where we were met by the wonderfully friendly staff members at Grenada and proceeded for the usual hair and make up. We found out that we were facing the London Business School team, which were made up of 4 people reading for MBAs and whose average age was 30+, something quite daunting considering the fact that we were all (mere) undergraduates. The London team also seemed to have a pretty wide range in terms of background, with their captain an actual practicing medical doctor, and another member of their team having done a BA at Harvard and MA at Columbia. Still, on University Challenge one can never really tell.

The people at the studios did really help to settle our nerves what with being so friendly, but it was still an incredible electric thrill when we entered the studios. It was a mixture of pure adrenaline, excitement and some fear when we found ourselves seated in those black chairs, in that famous set that I had seen so often on television - only this time of course it was my name in front below that of Trinity College - Oxford. But it truly hit when the famous theme music came on and Paxman made his introductions.

It was definitely a very close fought match. We forged into an early lead, but London were never really that far behind. Later on in the middle section, they got a series of starters where we were perhaps a bit slow to answer, and it was a see-saw battle all the way. I got the first picture bonus, as well as a question on Picasso and Justin got a superbly quick buzz on "rambutan" with me just a fraction of a second behind (go Singapore knowledge!) and we were only 20 or 30 points behind when Paxman announced that there was 4 minutes to go. Unfortunately, there were 3 starters of medicine/biology which the London captain had for lunch, and they pulled ahead to take it 170 to 130.

The match was actually far far more exciting than we had realized. Teams who lost in the first round still had a chance of qualifying for the playoffs as a highest scoring losing team with the top 4 highest scoring losers (out of 14 matches played) qualifying for the playoff. What we realized afterwards was that we needed to score 135 or above to be sure of a spot, and that 130 was just enough - putting us into a three way tie for the final two qualifying spots - and that we had actually assured ourselves of a trip back by the narrowest of margins. We did make a couple of mistakes during the match, but then we got very lucky with a couple of guesses as well - one guess of a bonus on Astronomical Units comes straight to mind - and that guess could well have garnered the 5 points that we had needed.

A very special mention must be made of all of our supporters who came down specially to watch us, even going so far as to catch a early morning train to make it to Manchester in time. It was wonderful to see that they had even made signs such as "Go Trinity!" and more interestingly "Trinity Blows Goats" (you can ask me about this one if you want the inside story) and the encouragement that they gave definitely helped us a great deal.

So, all in all, a fantastic experience, a real thrill and a dream fulfilled. And despite a defeat, we live to quiz another day.

All Good Things.......

Its sad but true, lots of my really good friends at Oxford are leaving the University and nothing has served to underline this more than all the post finals fun that has been going on. Admittedly, I have not done much in the way of waiting outside exam schools and thrashing people, though maybe I should have. There was a really nice garden party on Wednesday night organized by Leo, at the Christ Church Cathedral Gardens which was lovely. The setting of course, was classic Oxford, as was the fact that there was lots of wine, as well as a bar staff to serve it to us! It was a chance to see all the MUN people again before I left. I was even surprised to find Mathilde down in Oxford visiting. I heard she has been doing lots of stuff with Holger, Marc, Nathasha etc, and I am just slightly miffed at not hearing a thing about any of this.

But back to the point of all this. They say all good things come to an end, and that is definitely true. Its sad to see so many people leaving, with whom I have had so many good times. Particularly the MUN people like Holger, Marc, Matthew, Leo, Krizia, Chris K, Laura, Saul, Anjli but also college friends like Tan, my friends on the darts team and PPE seniors. Its the usual 'lets keep in touch' though as all things go, its always something that is very difficult to do. And certainly, all the finalists fun that has been going on has only served to underline to me how limited my time in the college is now.

But it is nice in a way, spending time with everyone before they leave. I went to see Anjli out of exam schools and we had a nice time first at the Turf, then (attempting) to punt later on, and I also went for a barbequeue organized by Holger and Agnes Chew, with the usual mix of MUNers and Catz people there.

So as they say, all good things must come to an end. And hopefully, it will be so long and farewell, rather than goodbye.

Books on War

I have not written much about the reading I have been doing for pleasure this term, of which I have done a fair amount - some would say more than I should have. I have loosely based my reading around the theme of the Literature of War, something relatively apt since I am studying IR in the era of the two world wars, and as its title suggests, the two major global conflicts play a large part in the course. I have managed to work my way though a couple of books, two of them by Tim O'Brien - If I Die in a Combat Zone and a collection of stories titled The Things They Carried. I also finished William Styron's the Long March, which I had picked up at a discount bookstore in London, as well as the second book in Pat Barker's Regeneration Series - The Eye in the Door. And of course, part of any War Literature list would be The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, the classic novel of the American Civil War. At time of writing, I just started on The Ghost Road, the last book in that series, as well as having plans on reading The Railway Man, about a man's experiences as a Japanese POW in WWII and of course All Quiet on the Western Front, the great World War I classic by Erich Maria Remarque.

To say that Tim O'Brien is a brilliant teller of war stories is similar to saying that Herman Melville was good at writing about sea voyages and whales. He is just simply a great storyteller. If I Die in a Combat Zone, his first novel, is a wonderful account of his time in Vietnam - a powerfully descriptive, blood and guts account of things. Where O'Brien excels though, is looking at the psychological underpinnings of the soldiers - what motivated them, how they overcome the shock and horror of war,the psychological effects of the jungle, the mud, the gunfire and the killing. The Things They Carried, though similar in vein, is a more philosophical work - and richer for that as well.

I must admit to not really being able to get into the Red Badge of Courage at all, inspite of, or perhaps even despite of its reputation as a war classic. Certainly, the depictions of the battle scenes were life like enough, and Crane definitely has a reporter's eye for the telling detail, and more importantly the psychological underpinnings of his charachters. He also has a fine enough ear for dialogue. Yet, I never really found myself being captivated by the novel - short as it was, and it failed to generate much in the way of excitement on my part. Why was this so? Well, as interesting as Crane's explorations of the psychological underpinnings of his characters were, I did find some of those passages a tad wearying to wade through and certainly the prose style and writing was a tad more formal to find completely comfortable (to the admittedly spoilt) modern reader, especially since it doesn't have the poetry or cadence, sparkle or wit as compared to a Dickens, Eliot or even Melville, justly so, the novel being the accound of a war and such. Ultimately, given that it was the first of its kind, and that Crane had never even been into a war zone, let alone participated in a war before this, it is quite a remarkable account.

The Regeneration triology had stoked my interest due to its incorporation of real life World War I poets Sigfried Sasson and Wilfred Owen. It was a set text used by my school for a literature of War paper was being thought instead of the Gothic paper that I had done, and enjoyed whilst I was sitting for my A levels. Owen I have been especially fond of since my first expose to him when I learned "An Anthem For Doomed Youth" in an English class when I was 14, and that along with Robert Frost's "Walking by Woods on a Snowy Evening" marked my first real introduction to poetry. Both poets have remained enormous influences and inspirations to me since. Sassoon was a particular inspiration to me during my time in the army, where I greatly enjoyed his unsentimental and unflinching depictions of war, army life and such - it was probably uplifting to see that someone else shared my frustration and indeed loathing of much that is involved in army life. T

he Regeneration triology, of which I read the second and third volumes most recently is a brilliant account not strictly of the war, but more of the equally interesting aspects of how society and individuals in the context of the war. In that sense, the second and third novels were quite different from the first, which centered around the experiences of Sassoon and the "treatment" he received under Craiglockhart hospital under Dr W H Rivers. Areas explored included the moral upheaval that took place during that time, as well as the lot of the conscientous objectors and some chilling passages about how they were persuaded to sign up (such as stripping them naked, pouring ice cold water on them and leaving them shivering and freezing with nothing but an army uniform by way of clothing). Homosexuality is another issue that is not shied away from.

But perhaps, one of the most fundamentally interesting question that Pat Barker looks at is why these men, many of them who were fundamentally opposed on moral grounds to the war, some of whom felt betrayed by the government and their superiors, went back time and time again to the front. It was the main theme of the first novel as Sassoon struggled to come to terms with his "Soldier's Declaration" and eventually decides that it was his duty to return. And it comes up again and again with people like Wilfred Owen, who returned despite shell shock and wounds as well as in the novel's main protagonist Billy Prior. Barker explored a vitally important area of the War, something going beyond the guns and bullets and barbed wire - you can call it the psychology and social side of the things, but it is no less interesting, and no less vital.

Books and Beer

This weekend has been pretty much one of books and beer. Saturday was spent reading for the most part, as I managed to finish two books that I took out from the Union library - Gilead by Marilynne Robinson and The Power Game by reknown International Relations professor Joseph Nye Jr. Gilead is that rare peach of a novel that is absolutely and utterly beautifully written. It is somewhat of a cliche to speak of prose stylists nowadays when praise for beautiful writing is a dime a dozen but Marilynne Robinson writes with a grace and clarity which is rare in today's fiction - her's is a story which is wonderfully slow and unhurried, and a prose which sparkles like a sun reflecting off of the water - and is similarly deeply illuminating. This, her second novel, was twenty years in the writing, and worth every minute of the wait. It has already won the 2005 Pulitzer and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was one of the New York Times best books of the year, all merited in this humble opinion.

Joseph Nye is an academic not writer by trade, and this is apparent in the workmanlike prose of his novel The Power Game. He keeps his sentences short and spare, and the whole aspect of it is pretty rudimentary - consisting mainly of basic description of action complemented by interior monologues. Stylish prose this is not: "I sat on a kitchen chair and rested my head against the table. The formica was cool against my brow but could not calm me. I saw explosions. I clenched my eyes tight." being a typical example. Yet, it was a pretty entertaining read and a wonderful expose of the power games that go on behind the scenes in Washington. I had heard Professor Nye speak about his book at the Union last term, and I even got a chance to speak to him personally at the bar afterwards, so that was definitely a factor in me choosing to read this. I remember that I made the mistake of telling him that I was thinking of going to apply to Princeton or Yale to do a International Relations degree - not a good idea considering that Nye was the former Dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard! The book was entertaining enough though - pleasure reading for intellectuals I would call it.

Sunday was mostly spent at the Union. Matt Dicks asked me if I were interested in a game of snooker, and I readily agreed, especially since I had hardly made use of my Union membership this term. The Union does have two pretty good snooker tables available for a mere 2 pounds an hour, so it was definitely something to take advantage of. We played two games in total, over two hours, and Matt was definitely quite a bit better than I was, especially in terms of potting, though the second game went down to the black. Met Sylvia Westall and some of her friends at the Union as they were playing snooker on the other table. Later on, made a somewhat foolish decision to buy a ticket for the Union beer festival which was 8 pounds for 6 pints. Matt Thomas and his grandad were there, as were Sam Geen, Steve Whittaker and Johnny Wright. A good 6 pints and a couple of hours later, I staggered back to college, grabbing a kebab on the way and sleep for a good few hours. Woke up later in the evening, and with sleep proving elusive got up and watched Punch Drunk Love on my computer. I am certainly living up to (literally) a cliche of Oxford life!

Spurs Success

I have been following the NBA finals through the web, and sometimes when I am up late, in 'real time' through Yahoo gamecast, which was a live summary of all the action and even a nice little graphic marking all the shots that have been made. I remember that I was a really big basketball fan when I was around 10 to 12 and I have still followed it intermittently since then, though football has taken over as my first love. My support for the Spurs actually stemmed from the Saegerts, whom I mentioned in a recent post, who lived in a town near to San Antonio and were close family friends in the year that they spent in Singapore. Previously, I had been content to just enjoy watching the game without supporting any one team, though my support for the Spurs was cemented when I watched two matches live in San Antonio at the old Alamodome (which has since given way to the SBC centre) in 1995 when I was 13.

The Spurs have just won through to the NBA finals, beating the Pheonix suns in a series that was incredibly interesting, if only that it marked a matchup of the best defensive and offensive teams in the NBA. In many ways, as much as I love the Spurs, its very heartening to see a team play the type of run and gun offence that Pheonix does as it harkens back to the old glory days of the late eighties of high scoring, free wheeling games, of showtime offence from the Lakers, matched by the equally remarkable Celtics - of Magic and Bird and Isiah Thomas, a young Michael Jordan, the days of exciting basketball which left such an impression on me. But what was remarkable was that the Spurs won the series in many ways not only through their much vaunted defence, but by being able to out-shine the Suns on offense. Nothing made this clearer than the 42 points they poured in against the Suns in the fourth quarter of game one to win the first match of the series.

In many ways, my renewed interest in the Spurs comes at a time with the Spurs being led by a new generation of players centered around Tim Duncan. David Robinson, for many years my favourite player retired in 2003, winning the NBA championship in his last match for the club. Sean Elliott, who miraculously played most of 1999 including the championship run, with a serious kidney ailment, had retired before then, but not before sinking probably the most famous shot in Spurs history in the form of the 'memorial day miracle' in the Western Conference finals. Avery Johnson, the tiny tough-talking point guard is now a coach no less. But the Spurs seem to have developed into an even better team with Tony Parker and Manu Ginobli their two super-quick, explosive foreign guards, and Bowen, probably the best one-on-one defenders in the league, able to shut down just about any player.

This transition for the team marks a transition for me as well. Gone are the days when I could just about name every single starting lineup for every single team in the NBA. All the old names, spoken so reverently before, have faded into the past. Even Michael - reverently called just MJ as if the acronym need no further clarification - has finally retired after what some would say was a disasterous comeback that took some of the lustre off of a magesterial career. Instead of Ewing and Olajuwon and Robinson, Jordan and Pippen, Malone and Stockton we have LeBron James and Amare Stoudamire, Yao Ming, Dwayne Wade. Nothing emphasizes it more than the retirement of Reggie Miller after 19 years with the Indiana Pacers. In many ways he was the last of the old guard, a player reknown for his drive, his clutch shooting, for his showdowns with Jordan, for giving it to the Knicks at Madison Square Garden. And now he too is gone, another legend, though remembered by some.

Here is a link to an interesting article about the current Spurs team:

Caleb's Quiz

No, this does not involve any startingly difficult general knowledge. Its one of those quirky fun quizzes, this time about quite an interesting, unpredictable, often odd subject - that of Caleb.
Want to see how well you know me, and particularly how I have spent my time in Oxford? Try this quiz here.

Saegerts Come to Oxford, Visits All Round

It's been wonderful having the Saegerts over the past few days as they dropped by Oxford for a couple of days before setting out on a choir tour that includes performances in St Paul's Cathedral, Edinburgh, Westminster and Wales. It was quite delightful and wonderful to see them after such a long time - it was probably 10 years since I had last seen them when I went over to Texas during the winter of 1995, and even longer since they had lived that year in Singapore. Altogether, Joel and Merry hadn't really changed all that much to my mind, Merry her usual bright efferverscent self, and Joel still possesing that quiet, dry wit. Elise seemed quite different, but that probably goes without saying - we have both matured a great deal since we had last seen each other obviously, but this still serves to underlie how much one changes over one's adolescent years, something that it taken for granted but not really reflected upon, at least till old friends come to visit.

I invited the Saegerts to formal hall on Tuesday because I was busy that afternoon with lunch at the Old Parsonage Hotel with Jim Reid and Neil McNamara who had both come down to Oxford to speak with the head's of houses. Lunch was the usual lovely affair, the Old Parsonage definitely being one of the classiest restaurants in Oxford. I had a delighful soup, flavoured just so, and grilled mackarel, which is tad too bony for my tastes. The usual suspects were there - Rebecca, inspite of her impending finals, Janet and Bianca, and also a welcome surprise in the form of Wendy Tng, who happened to be in town. Janet and myself are considering making a trip to Amsterdam to stay with the Reid's in 9th week. After formal hall, me and Elise went off to the Turf, while her parents went to watch the President's concert in the chapel. Tuesdays at the Turf is turning into a bit of an institution for me. I bumped into Daniel Trott at the Turf who was there with a couple of his friends, who then went on to underline how ridiculously small the world is. One of his friends was an American who hailed from North Carolina - really near to Duke which was where Elise and Laurel were studying. Another of his friends was French American and studied at the Lycee International, which was the same high school that Laurel went to. It was a startling set of coincidences considering that Laurel was coming to the pub that same evening as well. I just love the total inexplicability of it all, the random things that life manages to conjure up.

Elise stayed the night and it was pretty much a quiet Wednesday not aided by some ghastly weather. Some Hwa Chong students came to visit Oxford and I helped to show them around Trinity in the midst of a drizzle. Owing to the inclement weather we brought them over to Blackwell's where they for the most part managed to entertain themselves. Seeing that they were humanities students, that was probably not too difficult, but still its refreshing to see that they are still quite a number of Singaporean students with a passion for reading and a predeliction for books that I share. Later on, myself and Elise braved the rain to go to St Catz to listen to Patrick Marber interview Cate Blanchett. It was quite an interesting experience as Cate was a wonderfully candid speaker and she touched on everything from how she started out on her acting career, her views on critics and whether she reads reviews of her work, how she handles fame, her eclectic choice of roles and so on. She was definitely as elegant in real life as she is on screen, though it was interesting to hear her speak with her slight Aussie accent, as one had grown accustomed to hearing her in a whole plethora of accents in her film roles.

Later on in the evening, I had dinner with the Saegerts and their friend whom they had been staying with in Oxford. Dinner was at the Oriental Condor, which I definitely enjoyed as it is one of my favourite chinese restaurants in Oxford. I had been a couple of times to the extent that the staff members recognized me as I went in. I definitely enjoyed the food, but perhaps chatted away a little too much - one must never forget the rule with chinese meals: its a free for all, so grab it while you can! Altogether, I greatly enjoyed talking to the Saegerts and their guests, and it was with a twinge of regret that they as well as myself, had to bid our farewells.