Hilary Week 6

I had two essays due during week 6, but there was still time to attend a religious/scientific/philosophical debate, St. Anne's formal hall, and an international festival.

Classes:
Topics: webometrics // digital-era government and bureaucracy // online experiments // coding and analysis

One of my classmates who is a programmer and is not taking Digital Social Research spent about 4 hours over the course of two nights helping a bunch of us learn a lot of the basic programming that we didn't really do in class.

On Wednesday, one of my StX classmates and I enjoyed a free college lunch with our college graduate supervisor. I think her job is just to make sure we are doing okay and report any general issues we may be having.

I also met with my thesis supervisor since we had to hand in a 2500 word thesis proposal on Friday as part of our methods class. We also had to submit a thesis title and abstract. In addition, the formative essay for my politics class was due Friday, so it was a busy week of writing.

Formal Hall:
On Friday evening, many of my classmates went to formal hall at St. Anne's, a fairly modern college.
The hall reminded me of the reception hall of a synagogue - wooden walls, kind of 70s looking, inelegant chairs (and the white and blue paper table cloths may have helped this image).

Appetizer: caesar salad (there was avocado in it. who puts avocado in caesar salad?)
Entree: nut roast puff parcel (non-veg was salmon)
Dessert: creme brulee

We went to the St. Anne's bar after dinner to hang out and play some pool and foosball.

We eventually left to go to the GTC Ball Launch bop. A bunch of us put down a deposit on non-dining tickets for the Green-Templeton Summer Ball in order to get an 11-for-10 deal plus an early-bird discount. The theme of this year's ball is outer space (GTC has a building that used to be a working observatory). Balls are all-night (really...if you make it to 6am, they give you breakfast and take a 'survivors photo') black-tie affairs (white-tie if you go to one of the super fancy and expensive balls) with a lot of food, drinks, music, and other entertainment. Though the food in the GTC hall is great, we decided a dining ticket (for dinner beforehand) wasn't worth the extra money since there will be so much food at the ball itself. If I don't go to the StX ball (which apparently is much smaller and cheaper than most colleges since StX is so small), I'll probably have to find somewhere to go to avoid the all-night party downstairs and outside.

Activities:
On Thursday afternoon, I went to a "debate" on 'the nature of human beings and the question of their ultimate origin' at the Sheldonian between Richard Dawkins (a famous secularist) and the Archbishop of Canterbury. I thought I wouldn't be able to get in, since there were no student tickets when I tried to get one online. Some friends figured out that purchasing the tickets marked as for fellows or staff did not require proof of who you were, so it was worth doing that even if we would get turned away at the door (which obviously didn't happen).

waiting for the speakers - view from our seats on the windowsill

On Saturday, my Easter break travel group got together to book our plane tickets and decide on hostels. Many hostels offer 4-person rooms, which works out well since that is the size of our group. We met up with some people for dinner, and Elizabeth and I had intended to do homework in her room at Balliol at night so I could avoid the noise of the St. Cross bop (the only 24-hour library I have access to is in St. Cross, so that's unhelpful). Are you starting to sense a pattern of StX bops and bar events occurring on nights where I wanted to stay in or go to bed early? The boys wanted to go try some new banana beer at a pub, and since it was on the way to Liz's room, we hung out there until they finished their pints.

There was an international festival held at the Exam Schools on Sunday. I went with Marina, my Swiss classmate, and we ran into two other classmates at the event. We chose to go at lunchtime since they were selling food from around the world. I got a cheese pastry and baklava from the Turkey table, Ukranian kutia (the first course of a traditional Christmas meal made with wheatberries, honey, nuts, dried fruit, and other stuff), and Brazilian cheeseballs. Performances were held all day, and we were there at the time when the Indian Classical Arts Society was doing dances and musical performances.