Beginning of the End of the Beginning

I apologize (and apologise) for being lax on my blogging lately. To be fair, though, I've been studying for prelims...I take it back. I'm not sorry!

For the past five weeks, I've endured my friends back home in California posting photos of themselves going to beach, followed by photos posted later in the week of them returning to the beach. At last, freedom is nearly upon me! But there are those here at Oxford who have already gained their freedom. We call them the Trashed.

According to Oxford tradition, when someone finishes their last exam of the year, their friends must burden themselves with bags of flour, silly string, and leis to "trash" them as they leave the Examination Schools, still wearing their subfusc. Basically, it looks like this: 

Since I won't exactly be able to dry-clean my formal suit before I go home, if some of my so-called "friends" attempt to ambush me outside of the Examination Schools this Thursday, I am going to smile at them. And then sprint as fast as I can.

I did have to take a small break out of studying last week, though, in order to reward the winner of the brownie raffle I conducted previously in order to increase the flow of donations for my silence fundraiser. I promised her the best brownies in the world. I think any rational person would say I delivered on that promise, too. 

I'd never actually made the brownies myself before, though my mum has made them on several occasions. While I'm not technically allowed to divulge the secret recipe (unless you donated twenty pounds or more), here's what they looked like:

I actually think this looks tastier than the cooked brownies.

Nice fudgy base.

Mmm…that's nice.

Fresh out of the oven.

Took them on an evening walk with a friend in the brisk Oxford air
so they'd cool faster :D

The kitchen I made the brownies in smelled strongly of deliciousness for at least twenty-four hours after I finished. It was a beautiful aroma. I thought it was hilarious how two different girls sampled it independently and both of them said, "There's a party in my mouth." It's a common reaction :D

Congratulations, Winner; you won it. 

But brownies would not be the only thing trying to prevent me from studying last weekend. I had not one, but TWO visitors over the course of three and a half days. For the sake of both their privacy, I won't talk about them on this blog, though.

Then I was also forced to attend Marriage Formal; formal dinner for the college couples. Now, for those of you who haven't been paying extraordinarily close attention to details in this blog since its inception and who don't already attend Oxford, "college parents" are second-year mentors to their first-year "college children." Together, they make up a "college family." I went with my lovely "college wife," and it was just lovely, because we're both very lovely as people.

Did I mention how lovely we are?

But wait! There were still MORE obstacles in the way of my studying last weekend! And that obstacle's name was Shakespeare; more specifically, Pericles (that sentence did not make sense…).

I was getting my nobility swag on.

I played the character Leonine in an Oxford production of Pericles by William Shakespeare. All in all, the whole thing was three days long; I got my costume on Saturday evening, I got my script Sunday morning, and we performed it Monday afternoon. We did it in the way of Shakespeare; we only had the parts of the script that we recited ourselves, "so that we could react to the news in character." 

Of course, that's not the real reason Shakespeare did that in his time. How can you react as anyone but yourself if you have no clue as to the context or who your character even is based on his interactions with others? How can you even find the proper voice and/or accent to match the character (although, of course, the voice is what matters, and the accent is only a part of it; see Hugh Laurie as Dr. House for the perfect example)? No, Shakespeare did it like that so that he only had to write down the play ONCE, then cut it into pieces and distribute them to the actors. To be fair, let's see YOU try to write an entire massive play twenty times over, word-for-word, on a deadline.

We messed up plenty of times, but we made it work by being willing to laugh at ourselves. The audience was always willing to laugh at us, too. Or is that just me? :P

And lastly, I was delayed in my studies by the paparazzi. I was asked to pose for a series of promotional photos for Oxford by some staff, because apparently Lebanese is fairly ethnically diverse for a college like Oxford? Interesting.

This is actually pretty incredible lighting for a photo.

Finally, it was time for me to go to war. It's traditional to wear a white carnation for the first exam, followed by a pink carnation for successive ones, and a red carnation for the final exam. I'm fairly certain I passed the two exams I had this week, and that's all that matters for the prelims, since, at Oxford, the prelims are graded pass/fail/distinction, and there's little chance of my reception of a distinction.

First exam: Functional Programming and the Design and Analysis of Algorithms

Second exam: Imperative Programming

The week that comes, though, will bring a new enemy, one for which I'm not entirely confident I shall overcome. Whatever comes, though, I know I've worked hard, and I trust in God's will for my life, whatever it is. Whatever may come, and whatever lies before me, what matters to me is that I'll be singing when the evening comes. 

Stay strong,

   John Khouri, Master Chef