August 2007
 
Berry picking time!
Direct from the vine to the mouth.
Will the strawberry go into the basket?
Nope—directly into the mouth!
 
We all eat.
 
Finding raspberries.
Eating raspberries.
March 2007
Breakdance performance.
Our first huge party, appropriately themed, “Posh
or Chav?”
February 2007
The plants in my kitchen are happy to be indoors.
View from my office building.
Carmel, Catherine, Mark, Kate, Emma, Carl and I went to
the ballet, Coppelia. We sneaked into the front
rows after the first act.
December 2006
At Catherine’s Murder Mystery dinner party. As you can see, I have the look of an
innocent man…
My house had a wonderful outing on a beautiful
Saturday afternoon and evening due to Marco moving to Italy today
and me moving house on Monday. First, we went to the Trout, which is a really
nice pub on the outskirts of town along a river complete with fine drinks,
good food and wandering colorful peacocks. Then we went to a Chinese buffet
in the middle of nowhere followed up by a romp at the adjacent mega arcade
and bowling alley. Our hodge podge
house consisted of Yuri from Slovakia,
Marco from Italy, Meizhu and Shiping from China, and me from the US.
We all watch life move so rapidly and chaotically
before us, wondering what our future holds.
November 2006
Oriel MCR Guest Night.
Our clique.
My dates.
November
2006
24
June 06
This is my neighborhood--a very pleasant, quiet area.
Every day on my way to school/work, I have a 10 minute walk through a
beautiful park. My home is directly on one side of the park, and my building
is right on the other side.
Hot air balloon off in the distance.
Horses grazing by the side of the path. I call the center one,
"Cow-horse."
I go over a few small bridges,
where I can see people punting along the river,
ducks waddling by,
and people spending some time with the scenery.
More of the walk.
Closer to the campus side appear large sporting lawns.
End of my path.
Here is the Pathology Dept.
And finally my building.
It's a national historic chemical landmark (used to be for Chem).
Across the street is one of the libraries.
Here is one of the paths to get to the center of town.
A large college along the way.
A large building downtown.
Near the Radcliffe Camera.
9
July 06
I
went strawberry picking. Yum!
Here is one of the fields.
Beneath the leaves you can see the strawberries poking out.
Getting closer.
They also had raspberries just starting to get ripe.
And here's my wonderful basket of strawberries.
Shiping and I are happy pickers.
10
July 06
Andrew,
and I enjoying a couple of pints at a pub while watching the World Cup final
match between Italy and France.
Later, I headbutted Andrew.
Sunday evening on a stretch of Broad
St.
It's interesting starting a new life in a new country. Back in Berkeley my life had so much
depth. Girlfriend, pets, home, extensive friend network, complex routine,
etc. Now my life seems in contrast quite shallow. I work. I go to the gym. I
cook dinner. The end. But, I'm starting to get involved in a lot more
activities. At the gym I've been playing a lot of basketball and starting to
hang out with the guys who play ball there as well (a total of 10 or so). I'm
playing grass court tennis in the University Parks with a group from work. I
had to buy all white clothes to play tennis, which was actually kind of easy
because all the England World Cup shirts/shorts were 50% off. "Beckham
Team Captain" 90% off. I found a bboy group to
start practicing with. I've even joined a cricket team...
But at the same time I sometimes feel like I'm just going through the
motions, empty inside. The emptiness is from missing Carmel. Hopefully I'll feel better soon.
Otherwise I just gotta keep busy. No sticky
wickets! (An inside cricket joke that only the British and the British-ish like me will understand).
21
July 06
I
went on a typical Oxford
outing, which was punting down the river.
We tied two punts together to create a huge SUV-of-the-river punt.
More of our crew.
Lionel's punt gets dislodged.
Happy with wine and snacks.
Stuck in a tree!
Punting after taking a dip in the river.
A stop at a pub along the river.
Ducks rule the water!
A nice sunset to end a relaxing evening.
3
August 06
One
of the colleges.
10
August 06
In the
University Parks playing grass court tennis in the mandatory tennis whites!
Serving to Claire.
Returning a serve.
On my ass you can see it says England.
All England
football clothes were >70% off after the World Cup elimination.
19
August 06
St.
Mary's Church
Radcliffe Camera
Inside the covered market where I do most of my grocery shopping
University museum
23
August 06
We
had our last cricket game of the season last week. We did well having only
lost 1 game. Here are some pics of my first at-bat.
Here, I display the proper vertical alignment and elbow up of the cricket
batting style.
To the amusement of all, my pads all came off during my first run. They
thought I was just being a stupid American so they re-attached the pads for
me. On the next run, the pads fell off again and it was determined that the
pads were faulty and 15 years old.
Waiting for the bowler to make his move.
We were not scoring many runs so my teammates told me to abandon proper
conservative cricket batting style and go instead with baseball style to try
to slug it out of the park. Here, I completely miss the ball, but it was wide
and got past the wicket keeper so I got a run.
I got under this one nicely and got 4 runs with the swing--just a few feet
from hitting it out of the boundary for a 6.
Ah the American swing.
The illustrious Geography Cricket Team.
25
August 06
So
there is yet another game here like baseball called Rounders.
A bunch of us from work got together one afternoon and relived our British
childhoods through this game.
Stephen takes a whack while I play backstop. All of us cricket players were
terrible at batting in Rounders, but great in the
field.
Jesse fouls it off to the side. Jesse and I did our Ph.D.'s together and he's
just finishing up a short post-doc at Oxford
in my department.
9
October 2006
The
other weekend I did a 10k run for Cancer Research UK
at Blenheim Palace.
These are the palace grounds (http://www.blenheimpalace.com/).
Blenheim Palace (http://www.blenheimpalace.com/).
The lake we ran around (http://www.blenheimpalace.com/).
There I go.
Emma, Janice, me, Emily, Sophie and Rich all squeeze into Emma's car.
Yorkshire pudding with Sunday roast at the pub.
Happy runners.
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