Anyway post-blowing the minds of the MTV producers, I flew off to Amsterdam for the weekend to meet up with Ivan and a friend of his… We had a great, albeit brief, weekend in the original city of sin. We visited the Van Gogh museum, walked along the canals, saw some monuments, wandered interminably through the red light district (thanks for that Ivan), which literally has red lights everywhere, and may or may not have smoked some quality marijuana (I will neither confirm nor deny the previous statement).
Overall it’s a really cool city and, despite the legal drugs and prostitution, it actually felt sort of clean and healthy. Everyone cycles everywhere (Ivan can attest to almost being run over several times), there’s no rubbish on the streets (the canals are another story), the architecture is cute (though some building seem to be gradually falling into the canals), public transport is clean and safe (well not so much for stupid tourists who stand on the tramway tracks), and the city is generally bright and airy. Basically I’m a big fan of Amsterdam and I definitely recommend checking it out…
I got back to the UK on Sunday evening and hopped over to London for a couple of days for a series of lectures/panels on the G8 and on ‘why does Bush care so much about Africa?,’ which was particularly interesting because the title was not meant to be facetious… As you can imagine, some of the Africans in the audience def got a little riled up during the Q&A.
After all the excitement in London (which included a reunion with my friend Casey who I haven’t seen in FIVE years), I’m now back in Oxford sitting at my desk in the office, where I’m clearly getting a lot of work done. I’m basically just killing time before leaving early this afternoon. The office is quite chilled out… classic NGO, highly educated, slightly hippie vibe, where the whole "9 to 5" thing is open to interpretation-- for instance half the office randomly decided to go to Wimbledon on Wednesday afternoon and we’re all going to Shakespeare in the park next week.
So work is cool and the Oxford social life is gradually getting there. I've met some really cool people (yeah I'm talking about you Muthoni) and my housemates are a rather eclectic but very cool bunch… Mandy and Nick, who have been together for a year, just finished university at Oxford Brooks and now have jobs in Oxford until further notice (it’s the kind of place you can get sucked into, think Northampton/Amherst). Beth finished Uni last year and bartends at a very trendy bar near my house. Her French boyfriend Ben, who works at the same bar, basically also lives with us. Then there’s Marius, an Afrikaner from Jo’burg who I think is unfortunately developing a crush on me, and Maria, a Spanish student with severely limited English (luckily Mandy was a Spanish major).
Our house is cute, with a nice garden in the back where Beth and her bf practice flaring (flipping bottles around Tom Cruise style). As previously mentioned, I live in the studenty, quirky, multicultural area of Oxford… Just a little sampling of stores on one block to give you an idea: a Brazilian art gallery, an antiques store, a tattoo parlour, an internet cafe, a discount hardware store, a little hair salon, and an über trendy tapas bar. Plus there are tons of restaurants in the area, and alongside the fastfood places and the more traditional Italian/Asian stuff, there is some more exotic fare: Jamaican, Polish ("the vodka specialists"), Indian vegetarian, a Vietnamese noodle bar, and more Kebab take-aways than are strictly necessary.
Ok all this food talk has suddenly made me realize that I haven’t actually eaten today, besides nibbling on some fair trade nectarines in the office… Off to lunch and then London for the weekend!
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