![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenI'm taking a break from essay writing - actually, I lie. I'm not. I have dispensed with essay-writing, as I had two plans to do this week rather than one essay for Politics. I write shite, omg! I did a vaguely okay plan on party dividing lines since 1945, and a hideously awful one on representativeness of parties since 1945. The hard bit is not writing a history of the Labour and Conservative parties since 1945, which would be of the boring, yes. Although there are some good bits in the books - one of them suggests Robin Cook didn't run for Labour leader in 1992 because of his resemblance to a "wee Scottish garden gnome", and another one, published in 1992, solemnly intones: "We must accept the fact that the British Labour party is doomed to electoral extinction."
Enough. I'm being boring. So before I go onto the maths, I'm taking a break and doing memes. First of all,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
daegaer gave me interview questions ages ago, and I've only just got around to answering them. Here goes:
1. Do you want to be Prime Minister when you grow up?
Well. After a point, I got fed up of people asking me what I want to do with my life, and now my stock answer is the sweetest smile I can muster up at the time and two words: "World domination." And when I'm being less facetious, I say I want to be Prime Minister. And when I'm being less facetious even than that, I say I don't know. My political ambitions are not very well-defined - I mean, I'm an Asian woman; being Prime Minister is not a realistic ambition for me - but one thing I do plan to do is to sit the exams for the British civil service and thereby exclude myself from political office for the rest of my life. Strangely enough, my grandfather always wanted one of his grandchildren to follow him into the civil service (the Indian Adminstrative Service in his case, although the name change after independence was purely cosmetic). I think he meant one of the boys, but never mind.
I do have such a tendency to ramble. Moving on:
2. What is your all-time favourite song?
I think it's still Konstantine. There's lots of songs I love, but that one is special.
3. What's the most unexpected fandom you found yourself falling into?
M*A*S*H. M*A*S*H is a fandom? I'm still surprised myself. But even more unexpectedly, it was my best fandom experience ever. TThere was a period of six months back then that was just my best time in fandom ever, because the people were so wonderful and the fic so fantastic and everyone so damn talented. And more than that, the people I met then are still with me now; they make up most of my flist, despite the fact most of us have moved onto new fandoms and other pastures new. All good stuff.
4. Is there any food you can cook particularly well?
Not really, but you can see my cultural influences in everything I cook. I loathe what you might call traditional British food - I mean, meat and vegetables, boiled, bland, no spices, urrgh. I like spices - chilli powder and turmeric and cumin and cardamon and ginger - and detest boiling things. Next year, when I'm living in either Cowley or Jowett, I plan to really get into cooking properly. Right now I've only ever really cooked for me, so it's going to be a fun challenge.
5. How many languages can you speak? Are there others you'd like to learn?
Good question. About one and three quarters, is the answer. When I was younger, I was bilingual with English as my second language - nowadays I speak English best, understand Hindi well but lack the grammar to speak it very well, and I have some basic GCSE French. I also did a lot of Latin at school, which I adored. I'd love to go back and learn Latin properly, as well as improve my Hindi and my French, as then I'd be able to speak to most of tbe world's population. After this degree, I'm thinking about making tracks. I might take a job with one of my aunts and spend a year living in India. I'd like that, and it would do my lingustic skills no end of good.
Now. Back to work. I'll interview the first five people who ask - the last time I did this I ran out of questions, hence the limit! - while I'm trying to do my maths. I feel like I've done no work today, though I obviously have. There is a document flying around somewhere entitled "What The College Expects From You", that always makes me feel very inadequate, because it discusses in very precise terms how much work I ought to be doing. Not "lots" or "a substantial amount" or even "day and night"; it actually specifies 40 hours a week. 40 hours a week is a lot. This week I counted. As it's now only two hours short of being a week since I started counting, it looks like I do, in a good week, 33 hours of work. See the inadequacy.
Anyway! Maths. In fact, differentiation and optimisation. Why, oh why didn't I do Maths A-level?
Enough. I'm being boring. So before I go onto the maths, I'm taking a break and doing memes. First of all,
daegaer gave me interview questions ages ago, and I've only just got around to answering them. Here goes:1. Do you want to be Prime Minister when you grow up?
Well. After a point, I got fed up of people asking me what I want to do with my life, and now my stock answer is the sweetest smile I can muster up at the time and two words: "World domination." And when I'm being less facetious, I say I want to be Prime Minister. And when I'm being less facetious even than that, I say I don't know. My political ambitions are not very well-defined - I mean, I'm an Asian woman; being Prime Minister is not a realistic ambition for me - but one thing I do plan to do is to sit the exams for the British civil service and thereby exclude myself from political office for the rest of my life. Strangely enough, my grandfather always wanted one of his grandchildren to follow him into the civil service (the Indian Adminstrative Service in his case, although the name change after independence was purely cosmetic). I think he meant one of the boys, but never mind.
I do have such a tendency to ramble. Moving on:
2. What is your all-time favourite song?
I think it's still Konstantine. There's lots of songs I love, but that one is special.
3. What's the most unexpected fandom you found yourself falling into?
M*A*S*H. M*A*S*H is a fandom? I'm still surprised myself. But even more unexpectedly, it was my best fandom experience ever. TThere was a period of six months back then that was just my best time in fandom ever, because the people were so wonderful and the fic so fantastic and everyone so damn talented. And more than that, the people I met then are still with me now; they make up most of my flist, despite the fact most of us have moved onto new fandoms and other pastures new. All good stuff.
4. Is there any food you can cook particularly well?
Not really, but you can see my cultural influences in everything I cook. I loathe what you might call traditional British food - I mean, meat and vegetables, boiled, bland, no spices, urrgh. I like spices - chilli powder and turmeric and cumin and cardamon and ginger - and detest boiling things. Next year, when I'm living in either Cowley or Jowett, I plan to really get into cooking properly. Right now I've only ever really cooked for me, so it's going to be a fun challenge.
5. How many languages can you speak? Are there others you'd like to learn?
Good question. About one and three quarters, is the answer. When I was younger, I was bilingual with English as my second language - nowadays I speak English best, understand Hindi well but lack the grammar to speak it very well, and I have some basic GCSE French. I also did a lot of Latin at school, which I adored. I'd love to go back and learn Latin properly, as well as improve my Hindi and my French, as then I'd be able to speak to most of tbe world's population. After this degree, I'm thinking about making tracks. I might take a job with one of my aunts and spend a year living in India. I'd like that, and it would do my lingustic skills no end of good.
Now. Back to work. I'll interview the first five people who ask - the last time I did this I ran out of questions, hence the limit! - while I'm trying to do my maths. I feel like I've done no work today, though I obviously have. There is a document flying around somewhere entitled "What The College Expects From You", that always makes me feel very inadequate, because it discusses in very precise terms how much work I ought to be doing. Not "lots" or "a substantial amount" or even "day and night"; it actually specifies 40 hours a week. 40 hours a week is a lot. This week I counted. As it's now only two hours short of being a week since I started counting, it looks like I do, in a good week, 33 hours of work. See the inadequacy.
Anyway! Maths. In fact, differentiation and optimisation. Why, oh why didn't I do Maths A-level?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2005-11-26 10:50 pm (UTC)Who's the old friend at Balliol?
1. So, it's the end of Michaelmas. High points? Low points?
2. You seem very interested in war and war literature. What interests you about it?
3. Why is Stephen Fry your greatest living hero of all time?
4. What's your favourite flavour of ice-cream at G&Ds?
5. What are you going to do after your degree?
no subject
on 2005-11-26 11:03 pm (UTC)Ashleigh Collins...small, dark hair, Northern accent? I use 'friend' in the loosest sense of the word; we were at school together.
1. High points:
Matriculation. OU3FS. Oxford being just as quaint and beautiful as ever I thought it would be. All the boys in long coats and scarves. Bicycling to and from the English Fac in the sunshine. Going for scones with Sophie. Meeting my tutor, who is the most fabulous woman in the world. Sleeping on Emma's floor after a night at the Folk Society. Showing my parents to The Turf, and being desperately proud of knowing how to find it. Walking over Magdalen Bridge with all the bells pealing. Having my photograph taken by random tourists and being so proud to be an Oxford student.
Low points: ...all this work interfering with my being an Oxonian, I suppose. I bet Sebastian Flyte never went to lectures.
2. The people! I don't know; I've always been fascinated. My father's incredibly interested, and I read an awful lot about it at a very young age, and it became my specialist subject, so to speak. And then I fell desperately in love with Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, and the rest was history.
3. Oh, God. I wrote him a three-page effusive letter explaining this; I don't know how easily it can be condensed, but I'll try: he's quite simply one of the most intelligent men I can think of, and he's just so nice. He's funny and kind to his fans and writes back to people personally and everything he tries his hand to, he's good at: acting, directing, writing, producing, presenting. There seems to be nothing he can't do. And he's pulled himself back from the brink so many times; he's my inspiration.
And of course he's adorable.
4. The one with Twixes in it! Or maybe Dime Bar Crunch.
5. Haha! Ahahaha. Er. I have little to no idea in the long term, but in the short term: do an MA, hopefully still at Oxford, and then move out to the USA until my girlfriend finishes her MA, and after that, we shall see. :)