Thursday, October 11, 2007
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Wallis I
Many churches are built out of a volcanic rock, giving them this unique look.
Gaston.
What should be one of the main attractions on the island, a colourful cave that no one goes to.
A Tongan fort; now it doesn't look like much because it is so overgrown. But imagine for a second the place without the vegetation; everything you see behind the wall is also part of the fort. In fact that whole hill is the fort. It's a massive pile of rocks that some people hundreds of years ago carried there.
Wallis II
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Balliol Ball
Sunday, February 11, 2007
A feel good article
Time-Traveling in Oxford , England
By HENRY SHUKMAN
OXFORD'S first museum was a kind of cabinet of curiosities (elephant molar, sawfish bill and so on) known as Tradescant's Rarities, displayed in the 1630's, and later housed in the city's second museum, the Ashmolean. In the late 19th century the Pitt Rivers Museum was built, a neo-Gothic brick hall crammed — crammed in a way no other museum on earth is — with tribal treasures from around the world. There are cases of shrunken heads, canoes of every design hang from the ceiling, crowding the vaulted space, and unnumbered axes, plows, arrows, swords, pipes, staffs, tunics, paddles, shoes and all manner of witching paraphernalia occupy glass cases, drawers, cabinets and display windows. The building heaves with the collective juju of the known world, gathered by Victorians as they traveled their vast empire and beyond.
But even this museum is as nothing to the cabinet of curiosities, the embarras de richesses, that is
Within the mostly lost medieval city walls, within this labyrinth of Gothic architecture, there are paintings by Botticelli, Uccello and Frans Hals; there is a genuine dodo's beak; early astrolabes from the Arab world; the room where England's first cup of coffee was drunk (in 1637 in Balliol); Convocation House where Charles I's Parliament met during the Civil War; buildings by Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor; and more fine silver and glassware for lavish college feasts than you could find in any royal or imperial palace.
One beautiful building after another — and all of them built of Cotswold sandstone, which changes color with the light, from pale cream to an apricot glow. You can lose yourself here and forget there ever was a century other than the 16th — except when you have to emerge briefly to get across the High Street, which with its "sublime curve" has been called the most beautiful street on earth. In late dusk, when the sky is luminous and the streets are already dark, the stone walls acquire the sumptuousness of a bowl of oranges in candlelight.
I grew up in
A guided wander, then.
Coming from the train station, a first stop is
J. R. R. Tolkien ("Rings") lived here, and used to meet his friend C. S. Lewis ("Narnia") in the Eagle and Child pub round the corner. From the 1930's to the 60's they met with friends weekly, often in the pub, and called their gatherings the Inklings. Lewis recalled the "golden sessions" they enjoyed by the fire. It's still an oak-paneled hive rich with the aroma of yeast and hops, with my favorite beer, the local Old Hooky, on tap. (Ale doesn't get hazelnuttier.)
In the Ashmolean Museum, where Beaumont meets St. Giles, go upstairs to the Italian Renaissance room for a squint at works by Mantegna, Bellini and especially Uccello and his mystical "Hunt in the Forest," where hounds leap into the darkness of a seemingly endless wood; then down again, and up Magdalen Street to Broad Street. Lined with three colleges and rows of 18th-century shops (among them the labyrinthine Blackwell's bookstore), it ends with Wren's Sheldonian Theater, with its distinctive white cupola and 12 startled busts of Roman emperors.
You're now in the heart of
If you happen to be in town on a Wednesday during term time, Queen's College has free organ recitals at lunchtime in its Rococo chapel (designed by Hawksmoor), a short walk down the High. The large stained-glass windows cast glitters of colored light on the plain stone walls while the gathering in the pews will be as somber as a group of scholars bent over a manuscript, as they unravel the intricacies of a Bach fugue.
Then head up cobbled
New College's Cloisters with their ancient ilex tree; Magdalen's herd of deer; Corpus Christi's slightly wild organic garden by the old city wall, where you can see nothing that wouldn't have been there 500 years ago; Merton's library like an inverted ship on Mob Quad, the oldest academic library in the world (1373); Christ Church's Tom Quad and Great Hall, famous now as Hogwart's Hall in Harry Potter; and the Venetian moments of stone and water created by unexpected channels. The profusion of trees that make Oxford look like a forest from the air and caused the French poet Mallarmé to complain of Oxford's "green sickness," the oaks in Christ Church Meadow, the willows along the rivers and the unlikely Mediterranean pine tucked in a square at the back of University College, in front of a white stucco villa like an ice cream about to melt. In the end, what can you do with this city but sing its praises?
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Oxford. Normal or weird? II
Living in Oxford, I am finding normal what others would find weird. If you're ever considering coming to Oxford, be it for study or to visit me, then here's what to expect:
I don't notice the guy, while I remember the one at UQ vividly.
Because tourists love where we eat, sleep, and study.
Balliol has a championship croquet ground. I am going to become an expert comes Trinity.
And yes, cellos appear out of nowhere. This is at the king's arms, a very typical pub five minutes' walk from my room.
Oxford: Normal or weird?
A mexican wave of people who've just matriculated.
People being led around the city by a piper.
A nice view? In Oxford, this is a rather normal one. The building to your left is the Bodlein library, a dreary place for all who study there. And ahead, you see colleges where students battle both the Oxford flu and the Oxford workload.
I don't see this everyday, but it seems like none of the people on the photo care.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Snow in Oxford and Jen's birthday.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
More Burns night
Scottish dancing. Very good fun; the dances were a bit like you see in historic pieces, only a bit more rowdy.
Late in the night, people party on.
During Burns night dinner. I am adding this picture because I didn't have any dinner pics, and it was the main event.
Master's dinner and Burns night
Now, an even more outlandish event is Burns night, in memory of an eighteenth century Scottish poet, we took out our dinner jackets and bow ties, looked slick, and mingled, slick people with slick people, for a whole evening. Did I mention the piper? Coming into hall, we were greeted by bagpipes. Leaving hall back to the MCR, we were led by the same piper, through the streets, a hundred or so of us in our dinner jackets and black tie dresses, while people stared.
Here is Will and Patrick. Will is my neighbour, and although Patrick lives out, I see him often.
With Phil and Will.