Lent Term in 1000 words or less.

Hi folks. I realize it’s been a LONG time since my last post and while I don’t suffer from the delusion that any of you wait for my next post with bated breath I still feel a little badly for having disappeared for so long. So just to put your minds at ease, I’m alive and well. Lent Term (um, Spring Term in Canada) has flown by disturbingly quickly and I’ve been struggling to keep up. Here’s a little summary of the last couple of months.

Just as people were getting settled into their post-Christmas routine we were hit by what I call the ‘Great Blizzard of 2009’ (in reverence for the ‘Really Great Blizzard of 2007’ when I was stranded at the U of S, etc, etc, etc.) It started snowing so I took a picture to make a kind of gag post…something along the lines of ‘Look! We got snow here too!”


In the end I think we got 7 inches of snow in the course of an evening which is more than London has seen since the early 60s. The city ground to a halt as public transit was closed down. The city was super ill-equipped to deal with the snow so while there were a few salt/gravel spreading trucks careening around, there wasn’t a snow plough to be seen. Something like 30% of Londoners didn’t even try to get to work the next day. Schools (including mine) were shut down and whoever had managed to make it in was sent home early as snow clouds were rolling in once again. I guess the British economy lost something like a billion Pounds Sterling (roughly $C 2 billion) for every day of the ‘crisis’. It was nice to walk around the next day and seeing kids (not to mention my Asian, African, etc. classmates) who had never seen snow before running around and making snowmen, snow angels, having snowball fights, etc. etc. etc. It was almost a carnival atmosphere and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many Londoners smiling in the streets!

City Hall and the Thames

Bundled up with hot chocolate and a fire in my IBM 'hearth'

OK, enough with the weather…it’s not like most of you aren’t used to snow! I guess it was just telling as I stood there waiting for a bus (that never came…yes, I got stranded this time too…sigh) to see cars struggle to drive by. The drivers really didn’t know what to do with themselves and most of them had 6 or 7 inches of snow covering the whole vehicle except for the arcs made by the windshield wipers.

A couple weeks after the snow had melted, Kendal, Heath (a friend of ours from church who’s doing a Master’s in War Studies), and I went on a day trip to Oxford. The ‘real’ purpose was to attend a couple lectures (one by the former head of MI6 –James Bond works for MI6– and the other by a US military officer who literally wrote the book on Counter-insurgency), both of which were excellent. The fringe benefit was to get to wander around a historic and beautiful city. Oxford is the English-speaking world’s oldest university (I think it celebrated 800 years recently) and almost anybody who’s anybody in the UK went there…that is, if they didn’t go to the LSE… =)

The city was amazing and as a student it almost felt like treading on hallowed ground…a little corny, but true. It’s a lovely and storied place with amazing architecture and a distinctive flavour but by the end of day I felt a little bit like a fish in a tank, always bumping into the edges, or something we’d just seen a few hours earlier. And it was full of rich kids. The last event we went to was attended by a bunch of ruddy cheeked boys wearing tailored suits and school ties. Quintessentially British. And a little envy inducing. I mean, it is Oxford after all!

All Souls' College where one of the lectures was held.

Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford

"The Old School" I'm not too sure what this was but since it was in Oxford I can only conclude it must be 'The' original old school.

Christ Church College of Harry Potter fliming location fame.

One more incident and I’ll wrap up. A couple of weeks ago I went to a lecture given at Westminster Palace (of Big Ben and Houses of Parliament fame…and where I happen to be sitting again at the moment…). I have to be honest, I wasn’t really as interested in the topic of the lecture as I was in the venue. Anyhow, after the event I got to chatting with a fellow who’d also been in attendance. It came up that he works for RUSI (the Royal United Services Institute –Britain’s ‘Think Tank of the Year’. It specializes in military affairs and deals closely with the UK Ministry of Defence which just happens to be its next-door neighbour.) I told him I was just about to submit an application for an internship there. He asked which department I wanted to work for and I told him “Military Sciences”, to which he answered “I do the intern hiring for that department, drop by my office for a chat tomorrow.” Well, that ‘chat’ turned out to be an interview and I’m now happy to report that I have an internship lined up for the summer/fall. In addition to the regular internship grind (‘file this’, ‘photocopy that’) it sounds as though I’m going to be able to do some really interesting work in a field in which I’m very interested. It could only be better it were a paid internship…or a full time salaried job!

Well, that about brings us up to the present. The term is in its dying days and my sister gets here on Friday to visit me and to take a spin around the continent. I’ll post again with pictures and stories when we get back.