Reviews, Reflections, Recollections

Just a blog filled with my usual irreverent observations about life and all that.

Name:
Location: Singapore, Singapore

enjoys reading and is perpetually trying to find space for all of the books he owns in his room. He also enjoys films, and in particular, going to the cinema. Although a self-confessed trivia buff, reports that he is an insufferable know-it-all are completely unfounded. He enjoys a nice glass of tipple now and then, be it a pint of beer, a glass of wine or a single malt whisky.

Sunday, May 29, 2005

Ecuador Reunion, Long Conversations

It was just your usual run of the mill weekend. Friday was guest night, and I had a large group of people over, seeing as Douglas had two places that had to be filled. Peter, Jamin, Xinhui and Elly all came, along with Gillian and myself. It was a enjoyable enough meal, with a really lovely soup, and pheasant for the main course, though it was a really hot evening, making formal wear quite uncomfortable. After guest night, wandered off onto the lawns where it was the first night's performance of the Cavalcade, set to mark Trinity's 450th Anniversary. All said, it was supposed to be quite a big thing, involving such things as Morris Dancing, a specially written play about Cardinal John Henry Newman, and a Trinity Anthem, written by an old member whose son, Jason, is also currently studying at the college, and who is an orchestra conductor in Germany. I was disappointed to have missed both performances due to guest night on friday and the Ecuador reunion dinner on Saturday, but all told I heard that it was great fun.

Friday evening was spent in a long conversation with Xin Hui, whom went back to my room for a cup of tea with us having failed to find the rest of the people after guest night. It was one of those really random conversations which ranged from everything from Singapore politics, the predeliction for teenagers and especially Singaporeans to gossip, why guys always seem to be 'looking' while girls are often not, and lots of similar things. I do quite enjoy these long drawn out conversations that seem to stretch indeterminably into the evening. The previous Wednesday I had one with a bunch of Trinity people, in particular, Jason's father, who was here to specially conduct the Trinity Anthem. This was something that I had definitely not done often enough this term.

Saturday evening was another night out, specifically at Thirst for the Calvacade after party, but before that we had our Ecuador reunion dinner at YY's house down Cowley road. It was wonderful food again, and it was especially nice to have Debbie, Andrea and Justin's company as they had come down from Exeter and London respectively. It was definitely nice to see Zing again as well, as I had hardly seen her all term. It was lovely having delicious home cooked food - especially local food, as well as such fine company to enjoy it with. As per usual, I fulfilled my role, which was to provide the beverages for the evening, which was two bottles of wine - one a nice chianti, another a sauvignon blanc which was actually surprisingly dry. But altogether a most enjoyable evening.

Sunday was a late morning, followed by my first punting outing of the term - with Mary, YY, Andrea and Justin, just nice for a single punt. Went down the Cherwell around Magdalen bridge and past St Hilda's, an area I had not previously punted around as last year our punts were based off the river near LMH. It was a wonderful experience, with nice weather, and it was lovely seeing the ducks and swans all out on the river. One marvellous site was seeing a duck build a nest on a bunch of floating twigs on the river. All in all, perfect proof of the maxim from the Wind in the Willows that there is nothing half as much as fun as messing about in boats. Later on, had Andrea over for formal hall, but unfortunately missed the beginning due to the fact that there was some strange firm alarms. Not the best hall, but still I think that it was quite a nice experience. So all in all, your typical Oxford weekend - full of good food, good wine, and of course, good conversation.

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Football? Bloody Hell

Tonight was the Champion's League final between Liverpool and AC Milan and after missing the FA Cup final, I was not about to miss this match. Liverpool of course started as underdogs though they had more than proved their pedigree by knocking out tournament favourites Juventus and Chelsea in earlier rounds. Despite the fact that Liverpool are big rivals to Man Utd, I supported them for the match due to the fact that I really wanted an English team to lift the trophy and that AC Milan had knocked Manchester United out in an earlier round of the competition. Due to the fact that the JCR had been locked due to some drunken twat knocking out all of the windows on Monday, I had to go to a pub to watch the match. I went with Poonpong and Vattanac after hall, and ended up in a small cafe/pub near the bus station, after finding most pubs in central Oxford chock full of people. Watching football in a pub is actually a great experience - I certainly remember the atmosphere from when I went to watch England play in Euro 2004: it was wonderfully electric and exciting.

By the time we arrived, Liverpool were already down and struggling. Milan looked like the more incisive team with their three pronged attack of Shevchenko, Pirlo and Crespo wreacking havoc with their pace and movement. This paid dividends within 10 minutes of half time when a Liverpool penalty appeal for handball was turned down and led to a quick Milan break with Pirlo chipping the ball over a static Liverpool defence for Shevchenko to latch onto and rifle across the area leaving Crespo to turn the ball in. By then Liverpool were in deep trouble as no team had recovered from 2-0 down at half time to win the trophy in over 40 years, and this soon turned into absolute dire straights as Milan scored a third. The goal was made from a most sublime pass by Kaka from just about the centre circle as he turned Gerrard and sent a superb raking ball through to Crespo, curling it just beyong the despairing lunge of the Liverpool defender. If the pass was of the highest quality, so was the finish, as Crespo calmly flicked the ball over the stranded Dudek and into the back of the net.

At half time, even the most optimistic of supporters would not have given Liverpool much hope, and I even contemplated leaving the pub and heading back, but we decided to stick it out for the second half, a decision that would be richly rewarded. Football is such an amazing game, and is brilliant partly because it is so unpredictable, and nothing proved this more than a 6 minute spell in the second half. First, in the 52nd minute, John Arne Riise's cross at the second attempt was brilliantly headed into the far corner by Gerrard, leaving the keeper absolutely no chance. It was a true captain's goal from a man who gave everything he had, including filling in towards the end of the game as an emergency right back, his drive and courage never flagging. 2 minutes later, before Milan even had an opportunity to draw breath, Vladimir Smicer's shot from 20 yards squirmed through the grasp of Dida the Milan goalkeeper, who in all fairness was left unsighted and saw the ball late as Milan Baros artfully dodged the shot, though it was a pretty soft goal to concede. The miracle was complete just 4 minutes later, when a typical Gerrard burst was clumsily halted by Gennaro Gattuso, and a penalty was duly awarded. Xavi Alonso's poor spot-kick was saved by Dida, who had the misfortune to see it land in front of Alonso who duly smashed it into the top of the net. Three goals in 7 minutes, against one of the best defensive teams in the world - a defense boasting Maldini, Stam, Nesta and Cafu. Improbable? Most definitely. Unbelieveable? Yes, except for the fact that it had just been accomplished. The scores stood in Istanbul at three all.

The game then descended into one of cat and mouse with no team really able to gain the ascendency. Milan's pace, swagger and confidence had been destroyed by Liverpool's shock comeback but they regrouped, though they found Liverpool in the second half a much sterner prospect, with Liverpool defending far better. Liverpool on the other hand, settled down to a more patient approach, but never really threatened, something exemplified by their supporters cheering as they played keep ball in midfield as the match came to a close. They survived a few scares and the match eventually went into extra time. During the extra periods, the momentum once again swung towards Milan as they put more pressure on the Liverpool goal. Very often, Liverpool resorted to pumping a long ball into the path of a hopeful Cisse who had come on towards the end of regular time, though the balls weren't nearly accurate enough, even for someone with his much vaunted pace. Milan however were starting to look more dangerous, especially on the flanks, with substitue John Dahl Tomasson miskicking a half chance, and last ditch Liverpool tackling thwarting them on occasion. In the end, Milan had a superb gilt edge chance to win it, but Liverpool once again produced a miracle, this time in the form of goalkeeper Jerzey Dudek who saved from Shevchenko at point blank range not once but twice. A good cross was directed goalwards by Shevchenko but was blocked by Dudek, and fell back to the Ukranian striker who headed it back at goal from a yard or so out. Dudek somehow stick out a fist and parried that shot over the bar as well, a truly stunning and inspired peice of goalkeeping that probably saved his side. In the end, this unforgettable final would descend to the dreaded drama of penalties.

Milan of course had won the title on penalties against Juventus in 2003 and the question was, could they spoil Liverpool's comeback and win another shootout? Certainly their goalkeeper, Dida, had an immense reputation for saving penalties. Things could not have got off to a more dramatic start. Serghinho, under pressure from Dudek's attempt at doing a can-can on his line (something he said was inspired by Bruce Grobelaar the Liverpool legend who helped Liverpool win the cup in 1984 on penalties) ballooned his spot kick and was soon followed by Pirlo's penalty being saved by Dudek. Hamann and Cisse calmly scored for Liverpool, sending the keeper the wrong way. Milan looked in deep trouble now, and things certainly got interesting when Tomasson finally scored and Riise's penalty, which was headed for the bottom left corner, and was pretty sweetly struck, was somehow tipped aside by the goalkeeper. Smicer soon restored the advantage though, and when Shevchenko sent a tame strike down the middle of the goal, Dudek palmed it aside and the celebrations began.

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

A Dream Come True

If one thing has remained a constant in my life it has been a love of the odd fact, of general knowledge and of quizzes. When I was six, I loved leafing through the World Book Encyclopedia which my parents had purchased for me - I even attempted reading it from A t0 Z and got as far as AC before running out of steam. One of my favourite pastimes was regaling all and sundry about the latest bit of interesting information I had come across - one story related by my parents was how I intimidated my dad's Phd supervisor by quizzing him relentlessly about US Presidents, which I had randomly become interested in. This love of quizzes, has found expression in the odd pub quiz here in Oxford, not to mention my two year involvement in quizzing in the University. And of course there is the small matter of a certain gameshow that I appeared in. But one of the ultimate dreams has always been to appear on University Challenge, which is one of the most prestigious gameshows in the UK and in the world. UC for those who have been living in a cave for the past half century, is a competition betweeen all the different Universities in the UK (and the seperate colleges in the case of Oxford and Cambridge) and has a reputation for having some of the most difficult and obscure questions imaginable. It is definitely one of the most prestigious gameshows in the UK, widely watched and with a long tradition, and it has always been a dream for me to get onto the show. On Tuesday, that dream came true.

I had been told at the interviews the week before that they would call either on Monday and Tuesday to tell us if we were going to be on the show. Even from the beginning, I knew that it was always going to be a difficult ask. On average, about 200 teams apply for the show and at the interview stage they said that they were choosing the top 28 teams from over 100, so that left us with a one in four chance that we could progress. I was definitely apprehensive after the 40 questions they set us in the qualifying round, which though tough, were pretty fair. There were the usual ones that left you going "I should have known that!", and others where you just went "That was piss easy!" - as they say in quizzing there are no easy or difficult questions, only ones you happen to know or don't know. I did have cause for immense frustration about one question though - it asked what was the largest of the Dodecanese Islands. It just so happened that I was reading a book about the Versailles peace conference called The Peacemakers, and I was at the chapter regarding Italy's territorial claims during the conference. After the test, I went back to my room, and found on the next page, just a few sentences from where Ihad previously stopped, the following words: "in return Italy agreed to give up the Dodecanese Islands, including Rhodes, which was the most important one". You guessed it - the answer to the UC question was of course Rhodes! How frustrating is that? But that is the way it is with quizzing, with such an unlimited pool to draw from, one can never tell what it going to come up.

Sunday, May 22, 2005

Walking in Cornwall

This weekend was spent on a Walking trip to the Cornish coast led by Bianca, a Singaporean friend of mine. We set off at around 2.30pm on Friday afternoon, and due to very bad traffic, only arrived at our hostel at around 11pm. There were two walks planned for the weekend - on Saturday we were to walk from the Minack Theatre to Land's End, which is famous for being the furtherest point South in the British isle (but is actaully its Western most point); and on Sunday morning we were to walk from the Eastern side of the Cornish coast ultimately terminating at Lizard's point (which is the actual Southern most point of the British Isle).

Saturday began with a trip to the Minack Theatre, a famous open air theatre set into the cliffside near Minack rock. It was amazing partly for being the result of the vision and dedication of one amazing woman and her gardener, and it definitely would provide for one of the most spectacular backdrops for any stage production imaginable. It was extremely apt that the first ever production to be staged at the site was a performance of Shakespeare's The Tempest. By then it was nearing eleven in the morning, and the temperamental British weather reared its head as it began drizzling rather heavily as we started out from Minack Rock. Thankfully, the drizzle soon abated and gave way to much milder weather and even some sun. It was really lovely walking on the paths alongside the Cornish cliffs, and one did get a sense of the power of nature, as you looked at the many oddly beautiful shapes that the cliffs had been carved into from the sheer power of the waves alone. The sea breeze and salt air was indeed very invigorating, so perhaps it is not too incongrous that the English have always tended to head to the sea for a bit of respite from the grind of everyday life. Certainly, it is wonderfully therapeautic to walk in the countryside, with nothing but fields and grass, and fences and walls made of rough hewn stone with the odd little house. The escape from the cramp and crowded quarters of the city is only made clear when one does get out.

It was a lovely two days all round. Upon reaching Land's End, I bought myself a Cornish pasty (pronounced Pah-sty not pay-sty as you would someone who is looking very pale), to see if it were suitably authentic and thus better than the one's that I had in Oxford. For the uninitiated, a pasty is a pastry with a very think crust, filled traditionally with meat, gravy, carrot slicings and peas. I learned the very interesting story behind how they were invented - apparently many people used to work in the Tin mines, and their hands would thus be covered with poisonous chemicals, making eating lunch a difficult prospect. What would happen is that the pasties would be brought to them and they would hold the thick end of the crust, eat everything inside and then throw the crust away. Sunday was a truly beautiful day - we were definitely blessed by the fact that the rain which had been going on for much of the night and the morning, abated in time for us to set off. They say that the best weather occurs just after the rain has passed (thus the calm after the storm) and I can definitely vouch for that as there was some truly glorious sunshine. This portion of the Cornish coast was slightly more rugged, and had some really spectacular sights. We had lunch in a cove right by the shore, which was cut into the rock by the waves, and it was wonderful just sitting there, sandwich in hand watching the waves lash themselves against the rocky coast. As reward for the walk on Sunday, I bought myself a double scoop of ice cream upon reaching our destination (special Cornish ice cream apparently), which was delightful, as ice cream usually is.

For me, part of any hike is the company, and it often is a very crucial part. I know that some people go on walks to meditate on nature, to find their inner selves or something along those lines, and while I do understand that (after all I sometimes take walks like that myself), I am not sure that it is tenable over a two and a half day period. The group we had was quite an eclectic bunch, with a visitng student from Belarus, a girl from Ireland, a German Phd student and two girls from France making up the numbers, along with a fellow PPEist from the South of England, and of course my old comrade in arms, Charles Ng. Rounding up the group was Bianca and her co-leader, who was an American Phd student who was colleagues with YY, and our two wonderful drivers, James and Ben, who got us around so brilliantly. Overall, the company was pretty interesting - I got into the usual philosophical debates with Charles, about morality and God (what else!), and the whole animal rights issue with Mel, who was vegetarian, and more importantly had also done Ethics with me. All in all, good fun, especially the Saturday evening spent in a really cosy local pub near our Youth Hostel. So, all in all a very satisfying weekend out in Cornwall, which was great except for one thing - I missed the FA cup final between Arsenal and Man Utd, and worse still, Man Utd lost on penalties. Looking back on it, I have come to realize that I have been watching the FA Cup final for the better part of 1o years now. I remember watching Eric Cantona score the winning goal in 1996, and of course the 1994 final before that when United beat Chelsea 4-0 and Glenn Hoddle actually put himself on as a substitute, not to mention the year Chelsea beat Middlesborough, and I was listening to the match on the BBC world service while dad was trying to rush home and Roberto Di Matteo scored within a minute of the kick-off, and of course United win's over Newcastle and Millwall in recent times. The FA Cup has almost become a part of my personal history. But then, that is the beauty of football. Like the myth about receiving word about Kennedy's assasination (how people supposedly remember exactly what they were doing), so I can say when and where I was watching the match. But I digress. It was a nice weekend, and we all trudged back tired and weary on Sunday evening. Enough said.

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

On Quizzes, Dinner at Jesus

Tuesday was one of those quiet days where nothing much seems to happen. Its amazing how in Oxford you can just have days pass you by with nothing of consequence really happening, just staying in your room surfing the net and reading, which was pretty much what happened for me after a tutorial in the morning. The evening however involved going down to the Turf Tavern with Douglas to take part in the quiz. I had surmised that I would find Jon Ayling, Alex Pinder, Ben Pope there, as it is their usual haunt on a Tuesday evening and I was right, and I did manage to convince them to do the quiz. In the end, we came a respectable 4th out of 10 teams, posting a pretty decent score of 37 out of 60 after being stymied by the last round on pop music lyrics. It is a measure of Oxford students that the only three lyrics we got were from Louis Armstrong's What A Wonderful World, Erasure's A Little Respect (both written well before our time) and a face saving Eminen lyric (which was guessed from its abundance of profanities!).

Wednesday was the big day - our interview with Granta for a spot on the University Challenge television series. All in all, I thought the 40 questions they asked were very difficult, some of them bordering closely on obscurity, and I can but cross my fingers and hope that we did well. The scoring system is certainly interesting - it will be calculated on a team basis, so as long as one person on the team gets the right answer, then it will count towards the total score, but similarly, if all the members get the answer right, it will still only count as one point. Thus, a crucial factor is the breadth of the team, which I feel is decent enough. It has been a dream for me to appear on the show, and I do hope we will succeed - we'll find out by monday or tuesday, so fingers crossed.

The evening was spent having a very nice dinner at Jesus College at the invitation of Charles and Derrick. They were given special high table food in celebration of their victory in Table Tennis cuppers and kindly invited myself, Bianca and Xin Hui as guests. The food was nice enough, though things started out with a very odd cold soup which I did not much like, but it steadily got better, though still not as good as Trinity guest night, but perhaps I am biased.

Monday, May 16, 2005

Charing Cross and Old Friends

Had a slow sunday sleeping in after the marathon mahjong session of the night before. Pottered around Adrian's place a bit before heading off to my favourite place in all of London - Charing Cross Road. For the uninitiated, Charing Cross is the mecca for book lovers all around the world, with a street basically dedicated to bookshops. It was made famous in a book and subsequent movie called 84 Charing Cross Road, charting the correspondence between an American bibliophile and a second hand bookstore owner. It is a measure of the times that many of these quaint old second hand bookstores have been forced to close (84 Charing Cross is now a fast food outlet) and that is a shame - one can spend hours just browsing the old and dusty shelves. Its sad that Charing Cross is now replete with many discount bookstores, though one must admit that they have a value in themselves - I certainly cannot complain at some of the bargains that I managed to find in their midst, including a copy of a book by William Styron for a mere 3 pounds, and Richard Pipes Communism: An Introduction for a mere 4 pounds and its not as if they are selling utter rubbish, but they do not have the same sense of timeless charm that the older shops do. The fact that they have licensed sex shops in the basement (no doubt the major source of their revenue) adds to the sense of disillusionment. Charing Cross Road is also home to the site of Foyle's, one of the largest bookstores in Europe if not the world, and definitely one of my favourites. Foyle's is an independent bookstore and not a chain, and is a huge sprawling warren of shelves - I love the way one can wander from the section on books on sport and games and find yourself in the section on electrical engineering.

After reaquainting myself with Charing Cross, I met up with Vernie for dinner. Vernie is an old friend from school who is doing a Phd in History at Harvard with Akira Irayae as her supervisor and she was in London for a week because she wanted to get out of the US and found a cheap flight. It was really lovely meeting up with Vernie as I had not seen her in ages, and we had a nice dinner at a pub. It was brilliant just chatting to her about all sorts of random things, and we shared opinions in a great number of areas - and its always nice to know that there are other liberal-minded Singaporean intellectuals out there! It was also nice to have another person to share my concerns about issues such as whether to return to Singapore or not, and it was very interesting to see that she shared my dream of being a so-called international citizen, comfortable in a city almost anywhere, a young cosmopolitan professional. Yet, admittedly, the more I have thought about it, the more uncertain I am about anything. If I were to ask myself the question of whether I would be willing to marry and settle down in Britain now, it would be a lot of considered and certainly less conclusive than before I had left for the UK.

Sunday, May 15, 2005

Parties, to London, Tate Modern and Mahjong

It's been a hectic but interesting weekend. Friday night saw a confluence of two big parties - Laurel's birthday as well as the quiz squad's annual "Quiz about Quiz" dinner and party. For the former, we had dinner at the Oriental Condor before proceeding to my room for drinks and general fun. The "Quiz about Quiz" is a wonderful spoof whereby its a proper quiz, but its set on all the wonderfully hilarious insider jokes that have happened over the course of the year, quite a few of which involved me actually, including one that involved a bet on an egg tart that somehow became a lemon tart. Things were aided and abetted a great deal by the generous quantity of wine that had been purchased, not to mention a punch made with a mixture of Sainsbury's Economy Vodka (never a good idea) and orange juice. As a consequence of setting up everything in my room, I arrived very late for Laurel's party, which was held in a function room in Catz which she had managed to book out. It seemed like it had been a really great party, and there were still quite a number of people there when I arrived, but it was unfortunately put to an end by the porters at 12 midnight.

Saturday involved a trip down to London to stay with Adrian and to meet up with Andrea. Met Andrea in the afternoon as we went over to the Tate Modern gallery. I really liked the way they converted the old bankside power station - which was an interesting enough design for a power station with its fluted red brick exterior - into an art museum, especially in the way they managed to preserve the sense of space, and create a design that blended in subtly with the original. As I have said often about modern art, some of it is undoubtedly inspired and the work of superbly creative people, some of it just seems to be completely and utterly pretentious and ridiculous. Some cases in point - one installation involved placing a glass of water on a small glass shelf. The thing is the artist claimed that it was not a glass of water - it was an oak tree and that he had somehow managed to transform the properties of the glass of water into that of an oak tree. The exhibit featured a short interview with the artist, something that resulted in convulsions of laughter on my part. Then there is Yves Klein and his famous canvases convered in his signature blue - which he even patented, caled International Klein Blue. Now, its definitely a nice shade, but how does a canvas, merely covered with a single colour, containing no other significant detail, constitute art? Similarly, I am somewhat dubious about the merits of works such as "a study in two shades of grey" that involved two large rectangular vertical blocks of different shades of grey on a white background.

Then again, there is some modern art which I do find interesting. I think that Jackson Pollock for one, did possess a special genius. For all the derogratory comments about his style of drip painting, which critics have associated with a child splashing paint across a canvas, I feel that his work is far less random that initially perceived. Pollock didn't just splash paint randomly - he saw subtle patters in what seemed to be utter disorder, and that is the feeling I get when looking at his art - a kind of gentle pull as the eye wanders over the canvas, looking for the pattern that one senses, yet one is totally unable to articulate.

In a large sense, modern artists were partly reactionary, and many modern art movements have striven to push the envelope of what is art, and challenge the boundaries of traditional Art. Thus, a group of them looked into the idea of movement, and created canvases with 3 dimensional properties, where the movement of the viewer would change what is being perceived. Other artists sought to challenge the idea that art was limited to being a 2 dimensional representation on a canvas alone with the artist limited to creating an illusion of space by working directly on the canvas - poking holes in it, tearing a rent in the middle and so on. One piece I thought wonderfull and subtly subversive, was an enormous canvas that seemed almost to blank at first glance. Upon closer inspection, one finds that there are subtle things that the eye fails to catch - a line running across the bottom of the painting, into the right border, subtle changes of shade as it progresses diagonally across, and on the left hand side of painting, a blob of paint that had been applied such that instead of being evenly spead out on the canvas, it stood out as almost a rough lump from the canvas itself. Thus, all these weren't necessarily hidden, but placed subtly, perhaps to illustrate the idea that things are not necessarily what they seem at first glance?

Later on, I had dinner with Andrea, her roomate Mary-Anne, and two of her friends in a little restaurant in Chinatown that served all the traditional Singaporean dishes. I had an immensely difficult time choosing from Hainanese Chicken Rice, Penang Laksa, Chicken Curry, Rojak, Char Kway Teow, Nasi Lemak, Mee Siam, Mee Soto and so on. It was as if I had entered culinary heaven. I have often stated that one of the things I miss unconditionally is that local food, and nothing serves to illustrate this better than an evening such as this. In the end, I reluctantly settled for the Chicken Curry, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I was definitely very impressed by how authentic most of the dishes were, though I must say that at 6 pounds (20 Sing dollars) it was equivalent to having a Chicken Curry at a place like the Raffles hotel back home!

To top off the "Singaporeaness" of the evening, Adrian managed to arrange a Mahjong session at his house with two of his other friends - one a Singaporean police scholar and another one a Hong Kong friend also studying at the LSE. We ended up playing two full rounds for 8 hours straight, only finishing up at around 8am, with the light already streaming in through the windows. I must say that it was a really good evening for me, as I won about 20 pounds in total, and I cleared up from the other three - who all lost money to me. The first round was especially kind to me, as I was up by as much as 27 pounds at one stage. All in all though, Mahjong is about luck and chance. Mahjong is definitely another thing I really enjoy and that I miss from back home.

Thursday, May 12, 2005

Routine Days and A Mention in the Telegraph

Its been a couple of routine days for me. Tuesday was spent on essay writing in the morning, faffing about in the afternoon before a tutorial at 3pm. I did get to eat in St Hilda's hall at the invitation of Anjli for dinner, an added bonus being that it was carvery night which meant meat and potatoes - something I am definitely not disagreeable to! After dinner, I headed off to the Turf Tavern, my favourite pub in Oxford, which I had not visited since the start of term, since it was still doing some renovation work in the first week of term. I had meant to do the pub quiz there, which happens every Tuesday, but I missed the entire first round. Luckily, I bumped into some Trinity people - Jon Ayling, Ben (who does history) and Alex Pinder, and we had one of those usual wonderfully stimulating discussions that involved things like what is conciousness and correspondingly what that meant in terms of its implications on animal rights and animal testing.

Wednesday was another pretty lazy day. I spent quite a part of it reading for pleasure - a very guilty pleasure indeed in the context of Oxford. I am currently reading Number9Dream by David Mitchell, who's Cloud Atlas I had greatly enjoyed. He writes with a brilliantly efferversent style, which people either find superbly exciting or highly annoying, and his tendency to create a highly non-linear story, with lots of narrative dead ends, and his blending of reality and fiction can cause palpitations in traditionalists. In fact, one reviewer caused quite a bit of controversy when he declared Cloud Atlas "unreadable" and refused to give an opinion on it. Still, I find Mitchell to be a hugely creative and talented author, though I agree that it doesn't work all the time, and he does suffer from a kind of creative exposion in certain situations - where you are just overwhelmed by the force and quantity of ideas being thrown at you.

Last evening also saw me attending Presdential drinks at the invitation of Mr Beloff, primarily because one of the Jardine Matheson people had been invited to high table. It was then that he mentioned that I had been mentioned by Anne Robinson in a recent issue of the Daily Telegraph with reference to my exploits on the Trinity Quiz team. I must say that it was quite flattering and somewhat embarassing, but I am very pleased to say that least. The link is here for those interested in seeing the article.

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Sleeping In, Monty Python and the SSL

Monday morning was spent sleeping in after another late night on Sunday. I basically messed up my sleep cycle after returning late from the ballroom dancing tournament on Saturday, so I spent a lazy morning lying in bed and getting up for lunch. Sunday night was spent chatting on MSN Messenger and watching Monty Python's The Quest for the Holy Grail. Now, Monty Python is one of those uniquely British phenomena: many of them are obsessed about it and think its the funniest thing in the world, whilst non-Brits will just shake their head in bemusement wondering what on earth those Brits are going on about. I have definitely had a few friends who just loved making the most obscure references to Monty Python sketches, so I decided to have a look and actually see whether it was as hilarious as I was assured it would be. Admittedly, the humour was very varied, from the quite slapstick, to the dry tongue in cheek variety that the British do so well, but I did find it very very funny. They seem to have that very rare ability to do the most outrageous things, which wouldn't necessarily be very humourous most of the time, and make it come out seeming absolutely drop dead laugh-out loud funny. Highlights must be the killer bunny, the knights who go nih, and of course those pesky insult laden Frenchmen henchmen. But I had better stop now before I become one of those Monty Python enthusiasts that begin to wax lyrical about it!

Monday afternoon was spent in the Social Science Library (SSL in student lingo) where I was forced to sit in and look at two books for my Middle East politics essay. One of the books was so obscure that I had actually had to stack request it from deep in the bowels of wherever they keep the millions of books that are on the library catalouges. It was the first time I had spent any serious amount of time in the new library building - I tend to just take the books out and read them in my room - its much nicer to have the material with you as you are writing the essay itself. Sitting there, I greatly appreciated the new facilities - there was ample shelve space, lots of new computers, nice desks and a new complex card swiping system to get into the library itself, but it somehow made me pine for the old Politics and International Relations library which was in a wonderful 19th century stone building right on George Street. This new giant glass monstrosity just seemed so much more impersonal. Anyway, the library was chock full of people, as it to be expected seeing that it is approaching the final examinations for many of the third years, and there was a palpable atmosphere of intensity and stress throughout the library. Some desks were cluttered not only with books, but enormous files and pencil cases and discmans, and it was evident that people had set up shop there for some time. All in all, I am amazed again at how difficult it is to work through material, especially if you are faced with the fact that you will not have access to it for the essay. I did manage to do some photocopying, but a good 4 hours in the library went by with the feeling that I had not really accomplished all that much.

The evening was another lazy one. I watch the final of University Challenge which was really good, though UCL didn't stand much of a chance against Corpus, and were trailing something like 110 to -5 at one point, though a late rally by them did make the scores slightly more respectable. Then, it was the usual routine of shooting a couple games of pool and having a pint in the college bar - it is amazing how fast the evening goes by just doing stuff like that. Though I really enjoyed it, you get the nagging feeling that in the context of Oxford you are somehow wasting an evening that way - you should be attending a talk (of which there were a fair number of interesting ones to go for) or watching a play, or a concert or something along those lines. Sometimes, I have found that it is important to just learn to take things slowly and to relax. Still, it has been a term in which I have not seemed to do very much, what with 2 weeks already gone, and hardly any lectures to attend. I am sure that there will be lots of things to do in the rest of the term though, and I shall definitely endeavour to put a skid into what has been a rather apathetic summer.

Sunday, May 08, 2005

Six Degrees of Seperation

Ever heard about the famous phrase "Six Degrees of Seperation"? I first encountered the phrase from a Lonely Planet travel programme which was called "Six Degrees" the title of which was obviously inspired by the phrase. I was randomly surfing the net and reading when the phrase suddenly popped into my brain, so I decided to Google it (one of the new words entered into the Oxford English Dictionary in 2004 as another random bit of trivia) and to check it up on Wikipedia. As a side note, it has always been completely amazing to me how the internet has completely transformed communications and information today. As a small kid, I was well known (or so I am told) for being insatiably curious, and one of my pastimes was to flip randomly through the World Book encyclopedia, looking up random facts. Now, if any random bits of information pop into your head, the resources are always there at your disposal 24/7 and completely instantaneously. The whole technology and information revolution have become concepts that have been made rather hackneyed from overuse, but it we were to just think of it anecedotally, I think we would really find how much it has changed things, in very many subtle ways. I personally cannot live without checking email at least once a day (and oftentimes more like a dozen times a day) nor without checking out the news on the internet. Yet, I remember that I only really had my first email account when I was 15 (less than 8 years ago!). I remember writing up a school project when I was 13 on an old 386 computer with a word perfect programme that did not even have a spell checker, and playing my favourite computer game by inserting a floppy disc and booting it up from DOS. That is completely unimaginable now. I could go on, especially about mobile phones, in particular and about the internet, but I think the general idea is clear, and I have no doubt that every else has their own memories - the more so the older one is. I mean my parents used to type up their essay on Olivetti typewriters for goodness sake!

Just in case you think that the above was a major digression, it isn't. The phrase the "Six Degrees of Seperation" it very closely associated with the idea of human connectedness. The idea is that each person in the world is seperated from any other person by no more than 5 intermediaries. Now, that might seem quite surprising and unbelievable at first - after all there are more than 6 billion people in the world and counting, surely we cannot be that closely related and interconnected. That hypothesis was put to the test by Stanley Milgram, an American Sociologist in 1969, who randomly selected people in the American mid-West and asked them to deliver packages to a complete stranger in Massachusetts. They were given the stranger's name, occupation and general location but not their actual address and were told to send the package on to the person they thought was most likely to know the stranger, and instruct the next person in the chain to do the same. At the end of the study, Milgram found that it only took an average of 5 to 7 intermediaries to deliver the package, inspiring the phrase "Six Degrees of Seperation". This experiment was repeated recently using email as a medium (and extending the scope to 150 odd contries) by a professor at Columbia, who found that it did indeed take on average 6 intermediaries to deliver a message to an unknown receipiant. The full Wikipedia article can be found here. I rememer that as a small child, I sat a ride at Disneyland called "It's A Small World After All" which I enjoyed immensely. There was quite a sense of nostalgia when I sat the same ride recently at Eurodisney in Paris, and finding out about phenomenon like the "Six Degrees of Seperation" gives me an even greater sense of how small the world we live in actually is. Indeed, Milgram called the whole thing the "small world phenomenon" - perhaps as the song goes, it really is a "small small world"

Save The Last Dance

This Saturday was the annual Varsity Match between Oxford and Cambridge, which was held in an obscure little hamlet near Cambridge. It represents probably the culmination of my ballroom dancing time in Oxford, as it is the final competition of the term, and from next year onwards I will no longer be eligible for the beginner's team, and besides the fact that it will be almost impossible to dance on the main team, there is the small matter of exams and finals. Personally, I didn't do particularly well, but then the level of competition in this tournament was really stupendous, so it is hardly surprising. Still, I must say that I have really enjoyed the experience tremendously, partly because of the way the team has bonded and the many friends that have been made.

For the competition, we all designed 'drinking' T-Shirts for wear at the after party, which invovled getting a white T-Shirt and using a marker pen to draw a design on it. I got all the beginner team members to sign the back of mine. Admittedly, quite a bit of the bonding took place during drinking games which we played at the after party and on the bus, but it was definitely great fun - it was amazing how ludicrously funny some of these drinking games are! I must say that I have really got to know some of the people on the Beginner's ballroom team very well and its a sad to see it ended.

Friday night before that was another guest night, and it was definitely wonderful, with goat's cheese followed by a very fine risotto with the whole dinner being topped off by a wonderful steak. Guest night food is definitely top class and I definitely greatly enjoyed the food. The dinner was definitely made even more interesting as Douglas' dad came down for the meal and spent the evening. We had a great time, and shared some very good wine over dinner, including an interesting French Bordeaux and of course, the classic Chianti Classico '97 Villa Caraffagio which must be my favourite bottle in the whole Trinity cellar. Trinity does have a wonderful range of wines, and I think I enjoy that far too much than is good for me! What makes it worse is the fact that you can just sign for the wine and have it charged to your college battels account, so you don't really feel the pinch till later - its definitely the same problem with credit cards. Still, I definitely think all this fine dining, and good wine is easily taken for granted, and that we are a very privileged few in Oxford who are lucky enough to benefit from it.

Friday, May 06, 2005

Election Night

It was the British general election yesterday, so I got to cast my ballot, the very first time that I have voted in an election. Apparently, because I am a Commonwealth citizen with more than 2 years residence in the country (which is taken to be my college address), I am allowed to vote for an MP. This I definitely find rather strange because the same ruling does not apply to any Europeans (such as French and Germans), despite the fact that the UK is a member of the European Union and as such currently has closer ties with Europe than with most of the former Commonwealth. It certainly seems strange, and it was definitely debated whether non-citizens should be given a vote, and indeed the opportunity however indirectly of being able to choose the leader of the country, but I was the last person to complain. Seeing that my ward in Singapore has been an election walkover since before I can remember, or since it was created (whichever came first), my chances of voting in the general election in Singapore are pretty slim.

It was definitely a good night. I went to St Anne's for guest dinner at the invitation of Aisha, and Krizia, Leo, Anjli and Natascha also came. It was definitely fun meeting up with all these old friends again, and the dinner presented an occasion on which we could congratulate Anjli and Krizia on successfully finding jobs. How quick this seems to be, the passing of ones University friends into the so-called 'real' world of corporate finance and banking behemoths - it certainly leaves one to ponder the fact that you are more than half way through your degree, and that graduation is an occurence that is really not that far away. Upon returning to college, headed off to the bar, which was unusually crowded due to the fact that there was a 'bumps' dinner celebrating the College's sporting success in Rowing and Athletics in particular. To explain the term to the non-Oxford people, the word 'bump' comes from the main motivation of the rowing races in the term whereby the boats are placed in a straight line along the river, an even distance apart, and the challenge is to catch up to the boat in front of yours and to 'bump' it. You then start ahead of that boat along the river on the next day. Since the races go on for 4 days, a great achievement would be to achieve bumps on 4 consecutive days, in which the entire crew is awarded blades (which are oars). The Oxford tradition is that the rowers are really given an actual blade, which is about 7 feet (2 metres) long, which is nice I guess, but of considerable practical difficulty in deciding what one is to do with it!

The evening was then spent predominantly in the JCR with a whole bunch of other people watching live BBC coverage of the election, intermixed with some games of table football and pool. I definitely had a good time as I convinced Raj to give me 2:1 odds on a game of pool in order to win back a pint he owed me - the favourable odds given on account of me having had 2 glasses of wine and 3 pints of beer - and I won the match. All in all, not a bad evening, especially considering I won myself 3 pints. Sadly, though, the excitement on the pool table and the table football table (where me and Sam Geen lost a match 10-9 to Sinead and Jason) was not matched in terms of what was happening in the election. Labour did lose quite a bit of its majority, but still won the election quite easily, not that that was ever in doubt. One of the few real moments of the night came when George Galloway, a former Labour MP who was sacked after his pro-Iraqi and in particular pro-Saddam Hussain stance and who was a bit of a radical, won a Labour seat in London and proceeded to give the a harangue that was quite stunning in its vitriol.

Thursday, May 05, 2005

On the Joy of Browsing Books and Discovering them

Browsing in bookstores and libraries has always provided me with a great deal of pleasure. Seeing all the titles, lined neatly in their vast array, one gets a sense of awe, but for me never trepidation. Friends have told me that they are usually intimidated by bookstores and large libraries. They say they stand there and look at the vast accumulation of paper, of authors unknown, on every veritable subject and they succumb to a mixture of bewilderment and fear. I on the other hand, revel in this great unknown, this sea of almost limitless possibility. I love to pull the titles off the shelves, to ruffle the pages, to flip through to a random page and read a few lines, and of course to read all the reviews neatly printed across the back covers with their inevitable adulations. "Writes with the clarity of Graham Greene" one might say, or "It is a marvellous book, and essential read" or the usual words of praise: "lyrical", "authentic". "beautiful", "superb", "wonderfully moving", "sublime". I love walking around in bookshelves: I love the sense of mystery that is there - even in large chain stores with stock lists that are inevitably taken off the innumerable bestseller lists.

Then there is the bargains section. Walking to a bargain section is liable to fill me both with immense heartache and child-like delight in equal measure - wasn't that the Ian McEwan that I had purchased in hard back at full price when it first came out lying there now for a mere 5 dollars? God forbid that the book I bought just last month (and not yet read) is now lying there, to be claimed at a mere fraction of the price. It is enough to drive a person crazy I swear. But then, of course there is the delight of finding a set of faber and faber single poetry books including Sasson's War Poems, Plath's Ariel, Eliot's The Waste Land and others, 10 in total and all for a mere 10 bucks. A dollar a pop for poetry - unbeatable, and unbeatably wonderful. Standing there, one feels a warm little glow rising from the pit of your stomach as you find a novel you have always meant to buy but never got round to at a bargain. In that ecstacy of purchasing you suddenly tell yourself that you need yet another World War II history, or indeed a book on geography - after all for 5 dollars how can you not buy it? You tell yourself that you will regret it forever, that if you leave it and come back it will all be gone and you will be beside yourself with disappoint and so you succumb - and not to reluctantly either.

A still greater pleasure is to find something totally random and wonderful off of some shelf. Something obscure and unique, yet delightful at the same time. In this day and age, when I counted a total of 5 people no less reading the Da Vinci Code on one flight I took - a large number considering the small fraction of the people who were actually reading at all - the joy at finding a rare gem amidst the detrius is magnified fivefold. I remember just randomly looking at the travel section in Blackwell's when I found a delightful little parody of mountain climbing and expeditions - something that had only recently come back into print. Then there is how you can just randomly root around library shelves - in my case the Oxford Union library - and pulling a book off a shelf and reading a few lines suddenly decide why not and borrow it, despite never having heard of the author. It was a even greater pleasure to find out on returning the book, that the librarian herself had read and enjoyed it, and that it was she who had personally requested its purchase from the library. For, in conlusion, and I might hasten to add, the only greater pleasure than finding a great book, and reading it, is of course, sharing the joy of the book with others, and shamelessly recommending it to all who will listen.

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

On libraries and essays, and Oleanna: A Play

Its been another of days when nothing much of note has happened. I attended Quiz squad practice on Monday which was my first practice as squad captain. The usual suspects turned up and it pretty interesting. Tuesday was another typically unproductive day, though I did go and watch Oleanna at the Burton-Taylor which was a really interesting play, centering on the theme of power, and that of the role of education and the relationship between that of the teacher and the student.

It was interesting to see how the power shifted from the teacher to the student as the play progressed, in particular in each of the three acts. The charge of 'sexual harassment' also has a great deal of current relevance given the accusations made against Harold Bloom by Naomi Wolf, and the idea of censorship through political correctness has never been more blatant than with regards to the recent shaming of Larry Summers, the president of Harvard over his supposed sexist remarks about women having lesser abilities in some academic fields. Certainly, I found the dialogue to be crackling and the acting was superb. More than ever, Oleanna is a play of our time.

Other than that I have been working on an essay on the causes of the First World War which is really quite fascinating. Despite the fact that the topic is wonderfully interesting, I have had difficulty focusing and just getting down to writing the essay. I have been saying this for a long time but I am going to definitely try and start working in libraries more as there seems to be less distraction there. I managed some quite productive work when I was taking notes in the Middle Eastern Institute library the other day.

Currently reading: The Ascent of Rum Doodle in keeping with my mountaineering theme. Its a very British satire about a group of incompetents who are attempting to conquer the highest mountain in the world. The humour is very British and certainly quite dry, but it must be admitted that the author attempts to sustain a very thin conceit and parody for a long time. Lots of the jokes are repeated, such as that of champagne being used for 'medicinal purposes' and the expedition scout repeatedly getting lost and going round in circles, but this book certainly is very funny. It is the type of novel that is so unassumingly written, so completely off the boil, that one cannot help but succumb to its quirky humour. Though not "one of the funniest books ever" as Bill Bryson so charitably ascribes it in his introduction, it is definitely a book I enjoyed, and indeed anyone with any interest in mountaineering or expeditions will as well.

Monday, May 02, 2005

May Day Weekend

It was a pretty interesting weekend indeed for two particular reasons - firstly it was May Day with all its Oxford traditions and trappings, and secondly, I took part in a wonderfully interesting quiz match as part of the Trinity 450th Anniversary celebrations against the Trinity University Challenge team from 1971.

For the quiz match itself, it was certainly a fantastic experience, but also quite nerve wracking. It was held in the dining hall and over 100 people came to watch it, though the fact that Anne Robinson, who is well known as the host of the Weakest Link was the question master probably had something to do with that. Our nerves were not helped by the fact that we got off to a rather poor start and were trailing by at least 100 points around the midway stage. We did fight back strongly though, and by the end, we had pulled within a pretty close margin.

Things were not helped by the fact that the scorers weren't sure about the rules, and did not realize that you only lose points for interrupting a starter incorrectly and not when the starter question has been completed. There was also a bit of confusion when Anne Robinson, instead of giving a set of bonuses after the first question had been answered, went onto another starter instead. But there was little doubt that the 1971 team won, though by a very small margin - probably about 20 points, 210 to 190. All in all, it was fantastic fun and a wonderful occasion, though I will not soon forget answering incorrectly to the question of what Trinity's sister college in Cambridge was. Things got even better afterwards, when there was a wonderful buffet dinner.

It is an Oxford tradition to stay up on the entire evening of May Day morning, not that students need much of an excuse to stay up the entire night partying and drinking anyway. However, this year I had a much quieter May Day morning, though not necessarily any less fun - me and 3 other Singaporean friends played Mahjong from about 12.30am to 4.30am after which we proceeded down to Magdalen bridge, where hundreds of people gathered to hear the Magdalen choir sing madrigals from the top of the tower to herald in the beginning of May. I hadn't played Mahjong in a long while, so it was greatly enjoyable doing so, and I definitely had a really good run of luck. We used chips to keep track of the score, though we weren't playing for any real money, but I calculated that I would have won in the region of 16 pounds if we had been. Overall, I though that the whole May Day experience was overrated - the Magdalen choir was certainly not very impressive. Walking back from Madgdalen bridge was definitely quite an experience though - the whole high street area was turned into quite a carnival atmosphere - there were lots of groups in costume doing traditional english dances such as Morris dancing, and some Irish folk dancing.

In the evening, I attended a party celebrating the birthdays of Douglas and Graham, just slightly belatedly since their birthdays were actually in the Easter break. Kudos to Vicky and the rest of the 'biochemist' gang for organizing the party and for getting all the food ready, not to mention baking the two wonderful cakes, which was in the shape of a viola in the case of Graham and that of a medieval manuscript (with all our names written in icing on it) for Douglas. It was definitely a nice party, but I left after about 3 hours, because I just felt tired and needed some time alone.