Stuff

Stuff! Stuff is happening. Stuff is happening all over the place. Well, it has a tendency to do that. But it's all good stuff. I am now so firmly settled into the rhythm of life here that it feels like about twenty years since I left home. Which I think is a good thing.

Anyway. First of all, the flat is rather wonderful. I actually wasn't expecting it to be as much fun to live here as it is, because it's a bit of a screwball layout, five rooms around a staircase, and the kitchen as a weird little protuberance over the Master's field. But it's turning out to be quite fun. I love being able to get up, wander into the kitchen and find someone else having breakfast; I like living with people and having my own bit o'space at the same time. I'm an only child, it's a new one on me. And so far no one has killed anyone else with their cooking, which is a good, good thing. The meals have all been a bit eclectic, really; the three people in this flat who can cook are me, Pat and Maria, who are Indian, Brazillian and Russian respectively, and well-versed in our collective culinary heritage. Tonight, we made chicken. Pat fried the chicken, I chopped onions, Maria made salad. Then Pat decided the chicken needed tomato puree, I added the onions and decided it needed chilli sauce. Pat put in stock, Maria put in chopped celery, I can't remember who thought the parsley (fresh off the plant, bizarrely) was a good idea. I have a jar that is already being referred to with initial capitals as Iona's Spice Jar. I filled it before I left home with haldi, mirch, garam masala, dhuniya and salt. (There are English words for all of those, but I can't be bothered to work them out.) These were added. The chicken was good, if a little multicultural in the sauce.

Speaking of my being Indian, I actually am. In a legal sense, I mean. I got all the relevant documentation in the post a couple of days ago, and it hasn't stopped being thrilling yet. I'm an Indian citizen again after a gap of eighteen years - I have dual nationality, two passports, two sets of voting rights. The new passport is green and has "Bharartiya videshi" on the front in gold lettering, and I am ridiculously pleased, perhaps more than I should be for something that's just a legal formality, but I can't help myself. It means something to me because suddenly it becomes real: I'm not not British, and I'm not not Indian, and I can be both, so there.

(In fact, something has happened recently that may raise a few more issues like this, concerning who I am and where I've come from, but more on that when I've quite decided what to do about it. Sorry to be vague, and I probably will elaborate later.)

Back in Oxford, it's getting cold. The lingering summer has changed, within twenty-four hours, into a crystalline cold snap. The city has acquired a new beauty because of it; the cold gives everything sharper edges, and the sun is out and the sky is cloudless and it's a pleasure to walk anywhere. (And I'm walking a lot of places.) I'm actually enjoying running errands, and I'm definitely enjoying noughth week. First week will be upon us soon, and thus I am also attempting to labour through an essay on Rawls' theory of justice, which would be interesting if he had not rambled repetitively for six hundred pages on the subject, whilst waiting for my Ethics tutor to spring something on me. The joy in all this is, of course, no Economics ever again. Ever, ever again. I am selling my textbooks to one of Pat's kids. For a profit, because I am that good an economist.

Pat's kids are quite nice, but they're the only freshers I've met despite the city being swarming with them. There are fifteen new PPEists. In my year, there are twelve - thirteen if you count Sky, currently in Manchuria running up an enormous phone bill - of which eight are guys and four are women. In the year below, there is one girl PPEist. Just one. My mind is boggled. That poor girl, for one thing, and how can the imbalance be so enormous? I've often wondered why PPE is such a gender-skewed subject - what's inherently masculine about it?

(And speaking of that, there may possibly be an anonymous column in next week's edition of Cherwell consisting of some gripes and advice for women in male-dominated subjects. I leave it to you all and your enormous squishy frontal lobes as to why exactly I am telling you this.)

So this is my life: cooking, theory of justice, moving my flatmates in - Claire arrived yesterday with hundreds of boxes and all the pasta in the known universe - and some writing. The main dilemma I've been having is whether or not to stick with Political Theory or switch it for Jurisprudence, a lawyers' module that PPEists are being allowed to sit if they should so desire. I am baffled as to which to pick, and my theory tutor, whom I like very much mainly because he was the only person to notice last term that I was on the verge of a breakdown, is off on sabbatical presumably writing another book. So today I went to meet his replacement, who has come from Magdalen and lives just below the attic I used to live in.

And seeing him, I'm pretty sure I'm doing theory. Er, yeah. Picture a stereotypical Oxford don. Picture one in all his eccentric, elderly, long-haired glory. Now endow him with a bright pink tie and the facial expressions of Hugh Laurie, and you've got my new theory tutor. His name is Chris, and the first thing he said when he opened his door was: "You must be Iona do come in have a seat oh dear I don't know anything about Jurisprudence shut up shipping forecast!"

He shouts at the shipping forecast. This is good. He also talks a lot - twenty-five minutes and I didn't say a word - but he just seems generally nice, and friendly, and was wearing the ridiculous pink tie because he had to go to the freshers' dinner(!), and he was delighted to hear I'd actually done my vacation essay and thought feminism would make a wonderful theory topic. And he only wants six essays this term. Yeah, I like him. And meeting him was a nice thing in a nice day, which as said before, was only otherwise marked by cooking chicken and justice. I was going to sit and eat the chicken and not do anything else, but in the end I decided to be socal and went out.

Actually, I went to steerpikelet's room-warming at Wadham and found most of ou3fs - plus me_ves_y_sufres, the newest recruit - on the floor in various states of inebriation watching the Doctor Who TV movie. Just as I entered, Sylvester McCoy was morphing into McGann and the room was on tenterhooks for the messianic moment of "WHO AM I?!" It was marvellous, and I poured myself some unmeasured Pimm's - and later vodka - and sat down to enjoy it. The evening passed in discussion of Venn diagrams (Apparently all goths are geeks but not all geeks are goths? And there is no intersection between Visigoths and the Roman Empire? And also Hannibal rode dinosaurs over the Alps against the Greeks and got bombed by the Luftwaffe?), withiel explaining the American TV pilot alternate universe theory of Doctor Who canon, anariel_di_gaia's bedside manner, and various people filling me_ves_y_sufres in on the year's worth of debauchery she missed. I sat back hugging the vodka bottle and just took it all in with quiet glee.

I have a feeling amchau rang me on the way out of the college - I explained about the unmeasured Pimm's, I think, and also the beauty of the full moon and the clear night, and foulds and chains_of_irony were probably corroborating me on all these points - and I wandered home underneath the sky feeling very happy about everything. foulds walked me home, and let slip the secret that he actually walks girls home in gentlemanly fashion because he's waiting one day to be asked in and shagged.

(I didn't ask him in.)

(But I am very fond of him regardless.)

I got in the flat to find Ben, Claire and Pat yelling something about codecs at Claire's laptop. When I left them they were watching the film version of Carousel and looking very happy. I disappeared to go to bed, or at least to watch Supernatural in bed. I've just seen "Scarecrow", and ( OMG COME ON )

Ahem. Yes. I am still loving that show. I am still loving life in general. Time for bed.