Sunday was the big college chapel choir event of the year, the Carol Service. We got to sing traditional carols, as well as some that I, being American, have never heard of, including "Torches," "Ding Dong Merrily on High," "Past Three O'Clock," and "Gabriel's Message," which are really amazing carols which I loved doing. Then we sang carols from the balcony at various points during the black tie formal dinner that followed.
There's a tradition called the "Five Gold Rings Challenge" in which the point is that every time we sing "Fiiiiiiive Gooooooold Riiiiiiings" (apparently the English all sing it wrongly), everyone in the choir participating drinks a glass of champagne/wine. I feel really sorry for one of the organ scholars, though, who got the blame when a couple of drunken choristers began randomly singing the First Noel (Brits spell it Nowell. What?). We apparently came very close to losing the tradition forever, which in terms of Oxford and how old it is and how old the tradition undoubtedly is, would be quite a shakeup. Overall, though, the choir was a massive hit with the classy Oriel diners.
Yesterday, at the last FISH of the year (although apparently it's been renamed "COD," whatever that stands for), we wrapped up everything neatly, then played a game of "pass the parcel." Interesting game. Don't think it exists in America. Afterwards, I finally got to be narrator for a game of Mafia. As it's (almost/sort of/kinda) Christmas, I made everything Christmassy, and that meant death by candy cane stabbing! Execution by electric Christmas tree! Murder by evil charity Santa in an alley! Execution by mistletoe noose! Reindeer stampede! Death by rigged snowmobile factory accident narrowly averted by the intervention of a mysterious figure dressed in a tacky Christmas sweater and a reindeer hat! Ah, what a game. It ended in a Mexican standoff on Christmas morning over a present. Everyone died.
I very nearly failed my four-week-long Functional Programming practical today. It turned out my fastSolveMazeIter function only solved mazes as long as none of the potential paths intersected on the same extension, which probably means nothing to you, even if you did it yourself, so I won't bother elaborating (although my function would keep doing so until it had either reached the target position or determined that the maze was impossible :D).
Since it didn't solve ALL mazes, even though it solved the ones given as examples, I had just over an hour to apply a massive change to my program. Thank the Lord, I suddenly got it working about a minute before this final session ended, getting the function to solve the "dalek" maze I created myself and got my "S" on the assignment! I think that means "Satisfactory," but at Oxford, it could just as easily mean "Slytherin" (not Slytherin...not Slytherin), even though I think the lecturer knows I'm not from Christ Church.
This evening I spent chilling in the JCR and in other peoples' suites, mostly. There were "Christmas Cocktails" tonight, apparently one of the biggest events of the year, but, not being a drinker, I didn't sign up.
Tomorrow I've got to pack up most of my room in preparation for leaving this Saturday (!), which I'm fine with doing. I mean, it's not as if it's going to take anywhere near as much time as any of the problem sheets I've done in the past two months. Piece of cake. Unfortunately, it seems like I really can't stretch clean laundry until the end of term, so it looks like I'll end up having to do laundry one last time tomorrow as well. Then I really want to look for gifts in the Covered Market. So many cool things in there.
I've passed the first challenge, navigated the first mazes, guys. And very soon, I'll be coming home!
Fare ye all well!
John Khouri, Maze-Making Mastermind
