Living history today in Oxford

There are no ostentatious white ‘Look Right’ signs painted on the streets in Oxford as there are in London. This leaves your average tourist fretting over which way to look when they step off the curb for the first time and immediately retreat back onto the sidewalk. You see their faces cringe and the folds of rumination ripple across their foreheads. Must think hard now. ‘Wrong side again … which way do I look? What’s wrong with this freakish country that they can get away with using the metric system but drive on the left side of the street? At least they speak English or else I don’t know what I’d do with myself.’ But really, you’re more likely to be hit by a bike than a bus when crossing the street.

Once you’ve learned your left from right, other things start falling into place, too. Those red tubular things on the sidewalks that could easily be mistaken as unnecessarily large fire hydrants are really ‘Royal’ mail boxes. No walking on the quad until Trinity term because the laboriously manicured lawns are for show. No guest policy. Don’t look blankly at the store clerk when he tells you something is 5 quid (that means pounds).

For the health unconscious, fish and chips will surely coat your arteries with enough grease for about a month, but it is hardly en vogue any more. The British did have an empire that the sun never set on, and that means enough ethnic foods and variety to disguise their otherwise disreputable dab into the culinary arts (hey, give them a break; they had a kick-ass navy).

Sure, we all eat in the cheap, government subsidized dining halls with fellow Oxonians, but the daily, fresh-baked baguettes and ciabattas in quaint brasseries are gastronomical wonderlands during lunch-time. Of course, no Oxford experience is complete without a stop at the infamous kebab vans around downtown. This is the British version of fast food. All these vans appear at night in apparent synchronicity offering virtually any kind of kebabs you fancy with mayonnaise on chips. Don’t forget to notice the pillar of rotating meat in the corner of the van where the chicken or beef in your kebab is scraped off with a knife. It’s sketchy food at only two pounds.

But life in Oxford is much more. Every week I would walk past the same hobos singing their hearts out with stringed accompaniment (usually great American hits like ‘All Along the Watchtower,’ a la Bob Dylan) on my way to the Bodleian Library, where more than six miles’ worth of books are stored. The antiquated architecture of the library is overwhelming and awe-inspiring, but the faint odor of old books quickly induces you to sit back and gawk at the collections. There isn’t much time, however, for idle contemplation since another dreaded tutorial is around the corner.

‘Write, write, write, all day long, write, write, write while I sing this song. Gonna make this essay good gonna make it superb, o where o where to insert this cool adverb.’ I sing that inspirational song every week to get myself psyched up for the intimate tutorials, which basically involve reading my essays out loud in front of a professor who’s an expert in every subject I’ve written on; and then silently awaiting the complete annihilation and dissection of the essay, starting with the adverbs. So I may be exaggerating a bit.

Albeit intimidating at first, the tutorials have become my preferred way of learning. Writing essays has become habitual even. Before I know it, my essays will have undergone a transformation from cottage cheese to churned butter. You soon learn that the tutorials are not morale boosters nor are they self-esteem destroyers. Mutual respect and rapport can develop between you and the professors.

It’s not at all uncommon for students to socialize with their professors in the numerous pubs around town. As a matter of fact, two of our professors took us to a pub the first week to get acquainted and insisted on buying two rounds of drinks for us while one of them started rolling homemade cigarettes on the side.

Pub life is so intrinsic to British social culture. Instead of Starbucks or Espresso Royale, you find yourself in the infamous Turf Tavern with its motto of ‘An education in intoxication.’ Not only does it have distinct character, since it is nestled behind a narrow and seemingly dead end alley past the ’12 Monkeys’ stencils, the pub has been graced by the likes of C. S. Lewis, T. S. Eliot, and yes, even the Clintons. Literary ideas were developed in those pubs and history was made.

Sure, if you’re bored enough you can always indulge in frivolity such as Chelsea Clinton hunting around University College or at the local gym, where she’s apparently a frequent customer, though hounded by the all-imposing Secret Service.

But none of us came for frivolity.

As with traveling abroad in general, it has always been my intention to expand my outlook and perhaps for the very selfish reason of testing myself. It is as much a process of self revelation as it is of learning about others. And what better place for mind expansion than in this international seat of learning? You realize that the world is much more prism like refracting different hues and colors; and it is only up to you to absorb whichever befits you.

I always enjoyed walking home from the Turf Tavern at night when even downtown Oxford gets relatively desolate. The looming clouds lit up by the moon swarm gloomily over the Bodleian, conjuring up eerily daunting sensations in me. With a quick few steps around the corner I become suddenly doused in street light and find myself staring at a stretch of a cobblestone street. There’s never any traffic on this street at this hour. All I hear are the pitter-patter of my shoes against the stones and my own thoughts.

I can never recall my precise thoughts but the feeling is always the same and pronounced: It is that the world on this cobblestone street and in Oxford is now, and not tomorrow. And I like that.