Trinity - Week 3

Week 3 involved lectures, multiple dinners, and a lovely stroll through Port Meadow.

On Monday afternoon, I went to a lecture on the future of journalism at Exeter College. Speakers came from The Guardian, The Independent, and the BBC, and some of them were Oxford alums. The main topics were how the hacking scandal affects journalism and the implications of the Internet on quality reporting and news economics. One of the older journalists said journalism is now like acting - you hope your kid won't go into it, it's impossible to break into the top news outlets, young journalists are being exploited with extremely low pay, and the people who will succeed will be the ones who are really passionate about it.

We had our weekly Trinity thesis seminar on Tuesday. The morning lecture was on 'thesis pitfalls,' and student presentations were in the afternoon.

Some of us went to formal hall at Balliol on Tuesday night so one of my classmate's visiting girlfriend could experience a formal hall.
appetizer: salad with "half-dried cranberries," walnuts, cheese crostini
entree: grilled eggplant (called aubergine here), potato and leek (or some sort of other green veggie) tart, roasted potatoes
dessert: milk chocolate terrine with raspberry sauce

After dinner, we went to hang out at the Megaron, the bar in Holywell Manor, the Balliol graduate complex. There are no bartenders at the Megaron. Instead, they have a small self-serve bar that runs on an honor system. There is a small cash box that you can use, and every Balliol member has a page in a binder where they can check off what they've taken, and that amount gets charged to their battels (bursary accounts).

I went to sprint ergs on Wednesday and got better times than I had the previous week. When I left and was still in earshot of the erg room, I heard the 'coach' (not quite sure how that whole thing works) say that I could be good based on how my rate had improved.

Later on Wednesday evening, I went to a BBQ at the Chabad House for Lag BaOmer since Chabad was the reason I got to go to Poland and the Rabbi messaged me to ask how Poland was and to invite me to this dinner. It was a fairly small crowd, and they were playing a Yeshiva Boys Choir DVD on the TV. I don't think I had heard of Lag BaOmer, but I did know there was a time when boys can get their first haircut; turns out this was it. It started raining, which made for a fun bike ride home from the other side of the city.

I went to an exchange dinner on Thursday with Lincoln College. An exchange dinner is a dresses and suits affair where a small group from one college is hosted by another college for drinks and dinner, and then the guests host the other college during a different week. We first went up for drinks in the Lincoln MCR, which was a fairly small room. I learned about some Lincoln tradition where they throw pennies onto the quad, and schoolchildren run after them. Back in the day, they used to throw hot pennies down. Someone also pointed out the connecting door between Lincoln and Brasenose. Legend has it that a Brasenose student was being chased by a mob, and Lincoln porters wouldn't let him into the college, so he was murdered at the Lincoln gates. As some sort of apology to Brasenose, Lincoln opens the connecting door once a year and invites Brasenose students for free beer. They put ivy into the beer, however, because they don't want to be too nice to Brasenose and give out too much free beer.

We then went down for dinner in the hall, passing the open kitchen on the way in. The hall was of the standard wood-paneled and portraits variety. There was even a portrait of a chef hanging in the center of one wall. The food we received was like regular hall food, but waiters served it to us on fancy Lincoln College plates.
appetizer: mac and cheese

entree: escalope of Quorn (fake meat made with mushrooms) or turkey with mushrooms
Lincoln people said this was like regular hall food, but sometimes they get nice dinners with candles on the table.

We then went back up to the MCR for port and dessert, which was some sort of strawberry mousse cake. Afterwards, they invited us down to their college bar.

We had a day full of activities on Saturday since two of my classmates had friends visiting. I initially had booked a punt from St Cross, but the river was flooded because we had been getting massive amounts of rain. Instead, we met up in the afternoon to get sandwiches for lunch to eat outside, and then we picked up some ice cream from G&D's and walked to Port Meadow.

Port Meadow is a giant flood meadow where cows run free along the banks of the Thames in northwest Oxford. We intended to go to the Perch, a pub about a half an hour walk into the meadow, but it was closed for a wedding. Instead, we sat outside along the River Thames for awhile. There was a lot water from the recent floods.

We then headed to the Brasenose common room to relax and watch some Seinfeld before getting Thai food for dinner. We often go to a restaurant called Angrid Thai, which people always complain about even though the food is fine for the price. Afterwards we took the visitors to the famed Turf Tavern and introduced them to ginger beer, which does not taste like ginger ale. It is not as sweet and has way more ginger.