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.
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.
posted by Caleb Liu | 11:40 PM
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