Keychains

Some of you probably already know that I collect keychains as souvenirs. I've accumulated 30 or so at home, from places that I or other family members have visited. This trip, though, has proven particularly keychain-worthy. Today I counted and realized that I have bought no fewer than twelve keychains in the last three months.

From top left: Oxford University, Ashmolean Museum, British Museum (Rosetta Stone), Tower of London, Geneva, Florence, Austria, Spanish Riding School, Paris, Warwick Castle, Bath, Stonehenge. (The Stonehenge keychain is made from the same kind of stone as Stonehenge itself. It cost 8 pounds, which is equally outrageous whether you look at it as a keychain or a piece of polished rock. But hey, it's sort of like being able to touch Stonehenge...)

Done!

(Note: This post was supposed to go up yesterday, but I ran out of time to post it before I had to leave for the concert.)

Today I had my final tutorial, which means that my academic work for this semester is now officially over. As part of the residency requirement for the program, I have to stay in Oxford until the 3rd, but for the next few days I’ll mostly just be able to relax. After that we have time to travel before going home. I’ll be flying back to the US on the 14th, which is almost hard to believe in a way – the time has gone very fast.

Tonight the Wykeham Singers, New College’s informal choir, are having their concert for the term. I’ve had a cold for the last week and a half, so I missed two practice sessions. That means I have literally been over some of the songs we’re singing only once, in rehearsal this afternoon, so I’m a bit nervous. Thankfully there are lots of other altos (five of us total), so I’ll just do my best to follow one of them.

It’s odd to have tenors now. For some reason, we had absolutely no tenors at the beginning of the term. The choir director sent out an email, asking anyone who could sing tenor to please join. Instead we got three new basses (for a total of five), which didn’t help matters much. One of the two student directors can sing tenor, but only when he’s not conducting; the other is a soprano. So now we have a sixth alto singing tenor, and one actual tenor who has been to about two of the practices. It’s a good thing he can sing loudly, and that none of the tenors seem to have been afflicted with whatever nasty cold is going around. Two of the other altos and one of the sopranos are all in the same boat as I am: we can sing, just not very loudly, and we’re all trying as hard as we can not to cough.

We also now have accompanists (apart from the piano, which we’ve been practicing with all term). Some of the songs are a cappella, but others are intended to be accompanied by piano and double bass, and the rest by piano, double bass and drums. The drummer showed up at rehearsal today and discovered that there was no music for him. (We have plenty of extra books, but the composer didn’t actually bother to write out a percussion accompaniment. The instructions pretty much amount to “ad lib, and have fun.”)

So, in other words…should be exciting.

This is impressive... (AKA The Saga of the Pumpkin Bread, part 2)

Quick bread is much more forgiving than I would ever have expected. I stayed up checking on the pumpkin bread periodically until about 3:30 AM (at which point it had been baking, upside down on a cookie sheet, wrapped in foil, at 250 degrees Celsius, for about 90 minutes). The edges of the loaf were beginning to resemble real bread at last, but the inside was still soft and squishy.

At this point, or at any other point in the last approximately four hours, it probably would have been smart to take the whole mess, dump it in the trash, and simply go to bed. At least, that's probably what any normal person would have done. I, being particularly stubborn, decided to try one last thing.

I wrapped the bread back up in the foil. I turned off the oven. Then I put the bread back into the oven and went to bed.

Seven hours later, I came back and took it out of the oven. It didn't burn. It didn't even cook quite all the way in the middle. However, it was (by college student standards) edible. I ate about a slice and a half, and was informed by other members of the household that it was "good" or "very good." Particularly with cream cheese.

Either this proves that pumpkin bread is the single hardest thing on the planet to mess up, or it proves that college students really will eat anything.

I am seriously reconsidering the name "quick" bread.

A while ago, I had the brilliant idea to make pumpkin bread.

It turns out that most grocery stores in Oxford do not carry canned pumpkin, so this threw a monkey wrench into the plan for a while. Then someone informed me that there was one store in Oxford that carried it...but it turned out that it was well over on the east side of the city. (I live well down to the south of the city.)

Still, today I decided to make the long trek to Headington and buy canned pumpkin so that I could make pumpkin bread. It wasn't a trek, strictly speaking, because I took the bus...but calling it a trek makes it sound adventurous and daring. (Which it wasn't.)

When I got to the grocery store, I walked around until I found the canned vegetables, but I didn't see canned pumpkin. I asked a guy who was stocking spices where they had it, and he said that he didn't think they did carry canned pumpkin. Being a nice helpful person, though, he went to ask the store manager, who told him where to find the canned pumpkin, and then he went and found it for me and brought it to me. Turns out they keep it with the canned fruit, which I don't understand, because pumpkin is a squash and I'm pretty sure squash counts as a vegetable.

Regardless, I got the pumpkin, and I decided to make the bread tonight when I got home from choir practice. The bread went into the oven at 10:10, and one hour later, as per the recipe, I pulled it out of the oven and had a look at it.

It wasn't anywhere near done. The top was just starting to bake firm around the edges, and the center still sloshed back and forth a little bit as I pulled it out. So I put it back in for ten more minutes.

It still wasn't done. The top had begun to split down the middle like it was supposed to, but it was gooey and soft. So I put it back in for another ten minutes.

This process repeated itself until I was afraid that it would start to burn around the edges, at which point I took it out of the oven, let it cool for ten minutes, and then tried to remove it from the pan.

Turns out it was not only not quite done in the middle, it also was not at all done around the sides or bottom of the pan. It wasn't batter any longer - it sort of held its shape - but it was soft and doughy and squishy, and about a third of it stuck to the pan. So I put it back in the pan and back into the oven (with a slightly flattened top). About five minutes later, it occurred to me that I should probably put foil over the top to keep it from burning...

Then I discovered what apparently the other people in my house already knew, which is that the bottom heating element in our oven doesn't work (or maybe doesn't exist). Apparently this is also true of the house next door. It is supposed to have two heating elements, at least if the hieroglyphics on the dial are anything to go by, but it effectively only has one. At the top. I suppose on the bright side, this probably means the broiler works...but you can't broil quick bread.

The bread stayed in the pan for another 45 minutes, not making any visible progress except to get slightly less pudding-like around the edges. In desperation, I decided to take it out of the pan and try to flip it over so that the bottom would have a chance to be exposed to the higher heat at the top of the oven. Because I didn't quite trust my ability to get it back into the loaf pan upside down, I dumped it onto aluminum foil, put the foil onto a cookie sheet, and put that in the oven. (I also scraped about a quarter of the loaf out of the bottom of the pan and rearranged it on the new "top.")

30 minutes later, the edges were just beginning to dry out, and it looked like this:

I decided it was time for drastic measures, so I wrapped the loaf in foil, cranked the oven heat up as high as it would go (250 degrees Celsius - yes, I know that's hot!) and put it back in. This might be a bad idea, but it was 2 AM then, and it's 2:30 now, and I'm pretty sure any brain cells dedicated to actual thinking are already asleep.

It's been about 15 minutes, and I'm not really sure what it's going to look like when I check it again...

(For those of you who weren't doing mental math, I believe this loaf of bread has been baking for somewhere around 3 hours so far. And it was still VERY doughy inside 15 minutes ago. Think pumpkin pie consistency, rather than pumpkin bread. The fact that I haven't given up on it probably says more about my stubbornness and my ignorance of baking than it does about the possibility of actually turning this experiment into something edible.)

UPDATE: Half an hour on the wrapped-in-foil stage so far. It's still sticky inside, but it's not as doughy as it was, and it is actually hot enough to give off steam for once. I think this might actually be progress...

Mary Poppins medicine is real

Well...not exactly. It doesn't come out of a bottle, and it doesn't change flavors, but it DOES taste good.

The reason I discovered this is because I seem to have picked up a rather unpleasant cold somewhere. I haven't figured out yet whether this is the two-week cold that some people have gotten, or whether it's something different - but whatever it is, it can't seem to make up its mind. First it was a fever and sore throat, then the next day it was a stuffy nose, and now today it's a horribly runny nose and lots of sneezing. This has resulted (so far) in two pharmacy runs, to get different kinds of medicine.

Some things are similar over here, but others are different. For instance, they have Sudafed - but it's right out on the shelf, not a cardboard thing that you have to take up to the counter. Apart from that, all the brand names are completely different - and so are the flavors. Blackcurrant, lemon, or lemon and honey seem to be the popular ones here. Cough drops are much bigger, and taste worse - the ones I got were about the diameter of a quarter, and twice as thick - but they're VERY effective.

And they have something called LemSip, which is a cold medicine that comes as a powder and dissolves in hot water. (I was miserly and bought the generic version, not that it made a huge difference.) I was expecting it to taste pretty awful, but to my surprise, it's pretty much indistinguishable from hot lemonade. Mind you, I've never had hot lemonade, but I think this is what it would taste like if you heated it...

I love British humor...

For a little while now I've been seeing these bus ads around Oxford:
"There's probably no Dawkins. So stop worrying and enjoy Oct. 25th at the Sheldonian. www.premier.org.uk/craig"

I finally got a chance to read the small print on one of those ads, and realized what it was talking about: William Lane Craig is coming to Oxford to give a lecture on the fallacies in The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins's best-selling book. A little research online turned up the full story behind the ad.

Apparently, Craig offered Dawkins the chance to make a debate of the event, but Dawkins declined. Repeatedly. Even after being encouraged to debate Craig by several other people including a philosopher (and atheist) at Oxford, and after being made familiar with Craig's credentials (two PhD's, in philosophy and theology, and a reputation as one of the foremost modern Christian apologists). The tour website says that the invitation is still open for Dawkins if he should decide to make an appearance - and that if he doesn't, an empty chair will be left standing on the stage for him.

What is most delightful about the bus ad, though, is that it's a parody of a atheist bus ad from 2009: "There's probably no God. So stop worrying and enjoy your life." The ad would have been cheeky enough on its own, but the story behind it is so much more entertaining...

Another interesting point that I came across: Dr. Daniel Came, the Oxford don who encouraged Dawkins to participate made a comment at the end of his letter about the ontological argument for God's existence, which Dawkins mocks in The God Delusion. I read The God Delusion as one of the three books we were assigned for the lecture series and wrote a critique of it, and Dawkins's response to the ontological argument seemed quite weak to me. Dr. Came puts it much better than I could, though, when he says,

"On the basis of your brief discussion of the argument in The God Delusion, it appears you do not understand the logic of this argument. The ontological argument moves from the logical possibility of God’s existence to its actuality. Douglas Gasking’s parody of the argument, which you cite, moves from a logical impossibility to actuality and so is not parallel to the argument. In addition, you do not discuss the more sophisticated modal version of the argument advanced by the American philosopher of religion, Alvin Plantinga. Admittedly, you do say that some philosophers ‘resort to modal logic’ in an attempt to prove the existence of God. But this is a bit like saying ‘some botanists resort to looking at plants’ and so can hardly be said to constitute an objection to the argument." (emphasis added)

(For the full story and the rest of the letter, you can go to http://www.bethinking.org/what-is-apologetics/introductory/dawkins-refuses-god-debate-with-william-lane-craig.htm.)

I am struck by the difference between Dr. Came's attitude (again, as an atheist) and Dawkins's. While Dawkins seems to feel the need to ridicule or make light of opposing viewpoints, and often presents them in the most unfavorable possible light, Came is willing to evaluate an argument honestly, on the basis of its strongest formulation. Unfortunately, the honest and reasonable approach doesn't seem to get much publicity these days.

Freshers Week

Freshers Week at Oxford is the week just before the beginning of the actual term, with lots of activities for all the first-year students who have just arrived. Even though none of the students in our program are first-year students, the program office took advantage of this extra time for several orientation activities, as well as giving us the chance to participate in some of the events.

I met with my academic advisor and one of my tutors on Monday. Both meetings were fairly short and not too eventful, although I did get the reading list for my first tutorial that day as well. The essay isn't due until next week, though, so I have quite a bit of extra time to work on that assignment. On Tuesday, we had our Bodleian Library orientation and got our cards, which are useful for a lot of things besides just getting into the library. (It's a lot like the Library of Congress, where you have to show your card to get in - you can't check out books. The Bodleian is one of three copyright libraries in the UK, which means they get a copy of every book published.) The Bodleian doesn't just have A classics reading room - they have THREE of them. One is all Greek literature...one is almost all Latin literature...and I think the third one was print copies of journals.

On Wednesday we had a tour of the library at New College as well as some of the other areas of the college: the Junior Common Room, the chapel, and the gardens. The New College library also has a classics reading room of its own, and unlike the Bodleian, they let you check books out. I've already taken advantage of that to get one of the books for my first tutorial, although to get access to some of the other books I'll need to go to the Bodleian.

On Thursday, the big event was Fresher's Fair, which is where all the student organizations at the university come and set up a booth and try to reel you in. Even though Oxford is a much smaller university than Mason, I could swear they have three or four times the number of student organizations. It was almost all set up inside the Exam Schools building, which is where a lot of the lectures are held during term, as well as (surprise!) exams. They routed you from one room to another - I think there were seven or eight rooms in all.

I've picked a couple of things to try out - we'll see how they go. One is the Oxford University Fencing Club - fencing is one of those things that has always seemed cool to me, but I've never bothered to try. Well, now I'm going to try it. Hopefully I won't be too awful...I went to their "taster" session on Sunday afternoon, and it seemed like fun.

The other one is a student-run choir at New College. (No, not the famous one - you have to apply to that one as a freshman, you have to be a guy from what I can tell, and it's insanely competitive. This one is a non-auditioning choir called the Wykeham Singers, named after the college's founder.) The first rehearsal was Monday evening, and was a bit harder than I expected - I can sightread music on the piano just fine, but I'm not nearly so good at it when it comes to vocal music. Thankfully there are a bunch of altos (no way I was going to hit the high notes in the soprano parts), so I was able to sort of follow, and they let us take the music home with us.

Tomorrow I have a meeting with my second tutor. My two tutorials are on Seneca the Younger and Virgil & Horace - my fourth choice and my first choice. I didn't get the tutorial I was hoping for in Greek, but at least I got one in prose and one in poetry. I think the term is going to be very interesting, all in all.