Scrapbook II: Grey Days

Some more photos I didn't have a place for but wanted to share. This time around it's the grey days pictures, shading into night.

Scrapbook I: Sunny Days

 I've been going through my photos from the past few months and wanted to share a few that I liked particularly but that don't really fit together into any particular theme. So I grouped them into sunny-day pictures and grey-day pictures.

I threw this one into B&W just because I thought it looked nicer that way.

The same statue from two angles.

 

The one on the left has odd framing, but I like the impression of a stag just pausing on its way through London.

Thoughts on the perfect party

At the perfect party...

...everyone dresses up, whether in a silly costume, their softest pyjamas, or their best evening attire.

...there are enough seats for everyone, but no one stays sitting in the same seat the whole time.

...you meet new people and catch up with old friends.

...everyone is free to enjoy a drink or two, but no one feels pressured to get drunk.

...the guests compliment the hostess/host not only by saying the the food, but also by taking second helpings.

...one or two couples or groups arrive on time, and a few more later in the evening to add new energy to the group, and everyone leaves by midnight.

...there aren't too many dishes to do, and you can chill out after everyone leaves by standing at the sink letting the warm water run over your hands and carefully stacking clean dishes in the dish drain.

...no one talks about religion or politics.

...there are multiple spaces in which people can wander and plenty of nooks, balconies, gardens, sofas, kitchen counters that people can group easily around.

...one of the guests is a great photographer and snaps pictures of the evening for future nostalgia.

In other news, Happy Halloween! Hope you all get to attend or throw perfect parties today.

A collection of thoughts from a frustrated feminist

1.
When I tell people that I graduated last spring from a women's college or that I'm thinking about joining the feminist society at my new school, I get enough puzzled looks to make me feel a little self-conscious about it. I even met a couple of guys who responded by saying they were in favor of equality, not feminism. Really, did they think I meant that I hated men or wanted to institute some tyrannical matriarchy?

2.
The other day I went to a talk given by a prominent UK radio host. He was funny and interesting and I really enjoyed his talk, but at the end he told an amusing anecdote about a school where students relabeled bathrooms as "bathroom with urinal" and "bathroom without urinal" instead of men's room and women's room. The punchline was something along the lines of, 'if transgender students can't even figure out which bathroom to use, why are they going to university?'

This is very frustrating because I come from just such a school, and I've been lucky enough to talk to people who've given me a real perspective on arbitrary divisions like the one we draw between bathrooms with urinals and without. But so far I have always been on the receiving end of the education in society/gender awareness. And it's hard to start the conversation when I'm the one who's going to have to explain why that division is arbitrary and why that joke reflected an uninformed opinion from someone who clearly has never read Judith Butler.

3.
Earlier in the week, I was walking home from the university pub with friends after a night out. All the people we passed were undergraduate students heading to a party with the theme of middle school, so they were all decked out in variations on a classic school uniform. Except that almost all of the girls we passed would probably get detention for wearing their skirts too short. I don't want to generalize about a country I just moved to, but young women in England seem to wear their skirts and trousers shorter than even the girls in southern California. What's bizarre is that in California, people wear short shorts because anything else might be unbearably hot. But here, people wear even shorter shorts despite the fact that it's absolutely freezing.

I think it's actually the temperature issue, silly though it may seem, that makes me troubled with this fashion trend. When I see a girl wearing a short, flouncy sundress on a hot day, it makes me happy to see her enjoying her body and not compromising her physical comfort to someone else's standard of modesty. But when I see a girl walking down the street at 11pm in cold weather wearing a tank top and a skirt that barely covers her underpants, it makes me sad to see her torturing herself in order to conform to the norm.

I realize this is a flawed logic. Maybe the girl in California doesn't actually like wearing sundresses and only does it to fit in with her friends. And maybe the girl in England just loves the feeling of the cold wind on her bare legs. And maybe if I saw a guy on the same street in England walking around without his shirt on, I wouldn't think he was being stupid and shallow - it might even cross my mind to admire his fortitude and endurance against the cold. Which would be a total double standard.

Basically, this has been bothering and puzzling me. I really don't want to cramp or judge anyone's style, but there's just something about the spectacle of a hundred young women all dressed in skirts the same, very short, length that makes me cringe. Or at least furrow my brow as I try to figure out how I would like to respond to that.

So, I may go ahead and join the feminist society. But in the meantime, if any of you have thoughts on these issues, please share them in the comments! I would love to make this a conversation instead of just mulling it over myself.

September Things

1. Cooking

Since I moved into my share house at my new 'uni,' as they say here, I've been trying to balance grabbing quick meals at the cafeteria with lots of cooking time. For the first time in many years, I've moved out of the dorms and into a real person house, with a real person kitchen that I can keep my food in and that I only share with a few other people.

This makes me so happy, because walking downstairs and spending a half-hour stirring and chopping and tasting is one of the absolute best study breaks, especially when you've just moved to a cold place and going outside for a walk involves lots of clothes and cold hands. (That said, I do want to go explore the area more on foot. But that might wait til I get a good winter coat.)

But cooking in this particular house involves particular challenges. First, our fridge is very small. I marked out my fridge territory early, but it only consists of half-a shelf. One of my housemates calls putting away the groceries 'fridge tetris.' So I am developing mad skills not only in fitting lots of odd-shaped food objects into a compact space, but also in buying items that will either be used up quickly or be useful for a variety of different dishes. I really dislike eating the same thing every day, so I'm having to get very clever about how many different ways I can use carrot sticks or a tub of ricotta cheese.

Second, an English shop does not equal an American grocery store. I've had trouble finding something as basic (at least to me) as cornmeal in Marks & Spencer. There are really nice things about shopping there, though, like the fact that they prep your veggies for you so that you can buy a little bag of chopped butternut squash instead of having to wage war with an entire one when you get home.

Adjustments and annoyances aside, I'm having a lot of fun cooking. It's like a little game I'm playing with puzzles that occupy my mind during the walk home and, of course, delicious rewards when I solve the puzzle correctly.

Well that was long. Moving on.

2. Collared shirts and sweaters.

I've finally understood the brilliance of the fashion trend that has everyone buttoning up their collared shirts to the neck and pulling a sweater over it. Not only does it keep your neck warmer, it also makes it possible to vary your outfits in cold weather where no matter what cute t-shirt you put on, you also have to put sweaters and jackets over it. I do kind of like wearing nice things just for myself, knowing that I'm wearing a bright red t-shirt when all others see is my grey sweater. But it's also fun to let people know that you do actually change your clothes every day, and a cute little shirt collar peeking out of your sweater is a fun way to do that.

3. Conversation skills

If nothing else, the last two weeks have taught me that developing superior conversation skills is something I really want to do. When I say 'superior,' I don't mean I want to be better than everyone I'm talking to. In fact, if everyone wants to join me in making better conversation, that would make me really happy. What I mean is that I want to get beyond the inane and repetitive conversation that I've encountered so much recently.

First I was really just annoyed at how my conversations kept revolving around the same topics (where are you from, what are you studying, why did you choose this school, etc, etc, etc). And then at some point I realized that I'm half the problem. When people ask me those questions, I respond in kind instead of coming up with something more interesting or unusual to ask or comment on.

Yesterday I had an extremely annoying conversation about whether or not English food is good or bad. Here's a piece of advice. Don't have that conversation. It's boring. If the two parties disagree, you just end up arguing over it. If you agree, then there's not much to discuss, is there? Afterwards, I felt silly for not asking this person a good question, something specific that would get them talking about their course or about anything, really, that wasn't what was in front of us on our plates.

Realistically, of course, some people just aren't willing to talk about things that would interest me, because they find them boring. This particular person seems, from what I've heard so far not to enjoy learning, for example. There's not much I can do with that, because I love learning - and what is a good conversation if not a chance to learn something new about yourself or your interlocutor? But nonetheless, the experience resolved me to try harder to draw people out and be a more interesting person myself.

So, this has been a post about things beginning with C. You can now picture me holding conversations while cooking and wearing collared shirts.

Small talk and big ideas in the literature department

The first week of classes is over, and it's the weekend, and I just feel like one giant OOF. That was exhausting. I didn't even do that much this week aside from talk to a lot of people and read a lot of words.

It was mostly the talking that made it so tiring. I find it quite difficult to make small talk, and judging from my conversations this week, I believe 90% of other people do as well. Maybe there's a select few charismatic people and natural politicians who, when they arrive at a cocktail party or a drinks reception, spread their wings gleefully and launch into an easy stream of greetings and polite smiles, people who always have one sleeve stuffed with interested questions and the other with chuckle- or thought-inducing anecdotes. But the rest of us, it seems, must slog awkwardly through the too-long pauses and the I-don't-know-where-to-look moments.

My personal response in those situations is to pull out various phrases or observations I've made a million times before. For example, if you ever mention Tanzania to me, you will undoubtedly get the response: "I've heard it's very beautiful there." I don't know anything else about Tanzania, and in the terrifying situation of small talk, I can never summon the energy to ask a question or learn something new. There's two things about meeting new people. 1st, they all ask you the same questions, and 2nd, they haven't heard your stale answer before. So I can mostly get away with my scripted responses, but it still feels kind of, well, stale. I don't like it.

One thing I have been asked a lot this week is why I chose to come study at this particular school in this particular country - usually this is a reaction to my having said I'm from California. Most of the people I've met would love to do the reverse of what I've done, and travel from their homes to California, where the sun is always warm and the people are always chill. For a while, I floundered with the Why-are-you-here? question and all of its variations - Why are you studying literature? Why are you doing a master's degree? What do you hope to get out of this year?

Combined with this slightly intimidating questioning at the hands of students and professors and people I sit next to on the bus, I've been feeling a little cowed by my fellow students of literature. When we introduced ourselves in class, they all seemed to have an "interest," that is, a special area of literature or line of inquiry that fascinates them. In other words, they have the seeds of specialized academic careers, whether or not they choose to cultivate them.

I on the other hand, am here to study literature. I'm not here to indulge my special interest in representations of madness and antique science or treatments of body and space in modernist writing. I like books and I love writing and I want to read more books and learn to be a better writer. But it sounds a little silly to sit in a classroom full of graduate literature students and announce that I like books.

It also, I often feel, sounds silly to announce that I'm a writer. I guess I sort of assumed that everyone in the room must harbor the same aspirations to write and that to set myself apart as a writer would be presumptuous, especially since I'm not a very prolific one. But then I started really thinking about what my focus is. If person X is reading books in a search for a brilliant representation of madness, what am I searching for?

I believe I'm searching for clues on how to write and how to live. When I like something and underline it in a book, it's either because I want to be able to recreate that in my own writing or because it resonates with something I've felt or experienced or know to be true. In other words, I do have an angle when I read, just not a theoretical one. I have likes and dislikes, but I only really know how to talk about them in terms of the mechanics of writing or the effect on the reader.

So now I know why I'm here. I'm here to learn a new vocabulary and become a more versatile reader, to get the historical and social and theoretical context and add another dimension to my experience of books. And that in turn so that I can be a better writer, editor, critic.

Too bad now I finally have an answer, the cocktail parties are all almost over.

More sunny Oxford days

We've been blessed with a few more glorious summer days, so I took tried to spend most of the last two days outside. And just as one of the best things about rainy days is sitting in a cozy armchair and reading a novel, one of the best things about sunny days, I think, is lying in the grass and reading a novel. So out I set, first to the bookstore:

On the way, I admired this cool wall/poster thing they set up outside the construction site of the new Bodleian library extension. It showcases very awesome stuff they have in their collection:

Then I bought a new book, whose cover alone has been catching my eye in various bookstores for months. Spoiler alert: it's quite good so far.

Then I wandered around Oxford a little, threading through clumps of tourists and wedding parties, and photographed a few little details that caught my eye as I went:

 Brain-coral columns and four types of pavement.

 A lovely door that won't let me in to a lovely college (note chain holding it almost shut).

  Puppy and lion gargoyles.

 Oh, what's that? Just a sign announcing the presence of a film crew shooting scenes for the final season of Lewis, the Oxford mystery show. I saw the actual shooting a few weeks ago, stars and all. This time just the sign. 

Finally I arrived at the park, picked a nice tree, settled down under it and opened my new book. There was a tennis tournament happening across the lawn, a smattering of tennis players in white, the comforting thunk of tennis balls meeting rackets, a white marquis tent, and an old-fashioned jazz band playing just loud enough that the strains of music wafted over to where I was sitting. All sorts of people were out and about, playing pick-up soccer, having picnics, taking naps on the grass. The sun was warm, the breeze cool. Perfect bliss. It must be said for cities (despite the bustle, or maybe because of it) that their parks can be really absolutely wonderful.

How I went to England and my life turned into a Chinese sitcom

One of my neighbors here is a student from China. What we have in common is that we spend a lot of time in the communal kitchen making our respective lunches and dinners. The strange thing is that she is always cooking for her boyfriend, and they spend the entire time talking to each other in Chinese (I'm not sure what variant).

So there's me, making pasta or rice or something, often listening to the radio for some music and a bit of news about the latest Olympic medals.

And there's them, making an elaborate, three-part meal of stewed green beans and pressure-cooked duck and baked salmon, talking very animatedly in Chinese.

What's so strange about this experience is the contrast between the cacophony of languages and voices - the girl chattering away, the guy laughing at whatever she's saying, the BBC radio announcer exulting about another Team GB gold medal and/or the (usually American) singer crooning on the radio, the sizzle of meat, the rattle of pots and pans, sometimes even the rain pouring outside - and the silence that is me, not talking to anyone, just listening to all of this.

As a student of languages and a generally curious being, I find it interesting to listen to the modulations in the couple's voices and try to guess what their talking about, especially when they slip in an English word or two, like "Facebook." It also feels bizarrely like I've walking into a movie without subtitles. But I also hope that if I meet some other international students when I arrive at my new university, we'll be able to get past the stage of polite greetings and I'll be able to join in the conversation. It sounds like fun. The boyfriend laughs a lot.

I guess I could muscle my way in and start a conversation. But then I wouldn't get to imagine a crazy secret Chinese-language life for them, and who wouldn't want that? It makes cooking dinner into a much more interesting experience.