Season Finale

Oxford chose to congratulate my victory over prelims with a rainy day.

I'm done with prelims and officially done with my first year of uni! I ended up finishing the last two-and-a-half-hour exam an entire hour early and walked out of the room alone, but that's all I really needed. I didn't really FEEL any different as I walked out (apart from somewhat gleeful that it wasn't that long), but I'm sure the joy of summer will kick in as soon as I touch down in SFO.

It's the end of the year, and so I thought I'd be retrospective on this blog post.

This year, I completed five preliminary examinations here at Oxford and handed in my work for six or seven practicals, whatever it was. I've watched almost five entire seasons of Good Mythical Morning. I've made many new friends and tried my best to keep in contact with old ones. I've been to Pret a Manger and Itsu oh-so-many times (about half of the people behind the counter at Pret actually know my name from my card, as I learned this morning). I've learned (and then promptly forgotten) probably around a hundred different pieces of music. I've done four rounds of stand-up comedy. I've gone to the gym probably around sixty times, and run for probably around an entire day. I've probably played about three days in total of video games, and I've probably spoken entirely in Spanish for around the same amount of time. I now consider myself fluent in Spanish, and I planned and taught a class. I ran a fundraiser, competed in dancesport, failed miserably at water polo, and became and unbecame the worst boyfriend ever. I drank five different types of alcoholic beverages, hated them all, and realized that it's because I hate the taste of alcohol. I learned to juggle. I got a college family. I learned that bacon is delicious. I lost a dear friend.

Here's my year in photos:

If there's one thing I would've done differently, it's my attitude toward the homeless. I never felt comfortable giving out money, but I also wasn't sure about giving out food or talking to them (I never knew what to say), so I tended to just avert my gaze and pretend I didn't see them. It never sit right with me, though, and after talking to a friend of mine today, I've thought about some ways I'll change my attitude and approach in the future.

I also didn't spend enough time with God. Looking back, I should've spent less time worrying about exams and playing video games and more time praying; rather than listening to Rhett and Link, I could have been listening to a sermon. This summer, I'm going to work to grow closer to God, which I'm afraid to say I honestly haven't done that much of this year, although I have had my faith tested a lot by the attitudes of the people around me. It's made me realize how untested my faith was before, and I've grown stronger in my faith as a result, so that's something.

By the end of the day, the rain had ended :)

Really quick, here's a shoutout to "the most perfect girl in the world, absolutely lovely and brilliant and everything!" Her name is Charlotte, and she requested a "really complementary shoutout." All year, she's lived in the room across the street from my room.

I'll be posting in this blog next October, whereupon I will once again Cross the Pond (and Live)! In the meantime, I've got a whole lot of swimming, catching up with friends, singing, reading, gaming, drinking Jamba Juice, praying, and enjoying the heck out of summer! I've also got a job as a consultant for a company called Cloudian, Inc, so I'll be doing that as well :D

Sincerely, and finally,

   John Khouri; Polo Wearer But Not Player, Sunglasses Pirate, Croquet Hooligan, Fwerryxior Fixer-Upper, Former Chocoholic, the Monopoly Man, "the Guns" Gourmet, Once and Always a King of Narnia, Official Birdwatcher of Oxford (...I guess I never did explain later...), Robber Resembler, Green Jogger, Expectant Lunch-Eater, Former Rhink Addict (since now I'm pretty much caught up), Sleepyhead, Returning Student, Maze-Making Mastermind, Doodler Dude, "the Stuffed" Endeavourer, Lord of Out-of-Time, the Comedian that Oxford Deserves (but NOT the one it needs), Unlicensed Tank Driver (again, SHH!!!), Sick-as-a-Dog (if the dog were wearing rockstar shades) Panini Snob, Newly-Rehatted Mathematican and Computer Scientist, Quite-a-Guy "the Wolverine" Zombie Apocalypse Survivor, Courteous Court Courier, Antarctican-Canadian, Confused American, Amateur Oxford Secret-Passageway Spelunker, Manly Master Chef, First Tenor, Master of the Yoshi, That Guy Who Vomits All Over People, Faux Welshman, Unchained Non-Alcoholic and Occasional Self-Appointed Designated Driver, Raconteur, Pineapple Juice Drinker, and, of course, an Oxford Man

P.S. You get 25 JP for each title you remember :)

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

Silence and Sports

First of all, I saw X-Men: Days of Future Past at the Oxford premiere two Thursdays ago, and it was amazing. Best movie of the year.

Hipster Wolverine at the X-Men Oxford premiere

Now that that's out of the way, I'd like to talk sports.

Last Saturday, there were Dancesport Cuppers. It was a ballroom dancing competition that included people who didn't have to be on the varsity ballroom dance team, which was nice. I was partnered by the Oriel captain with this girl (again, I don't use names without very explicit permission):

The four categories of dance were Waltz (elegant), Cha-Cha-Cha (sexy), Quickstep (fast), and Jive (cheeky). We did jive, which has a basic step that's pretty much just the basic step for West Coast Swing, which I've learnt over the years from having well-chosen friends,  except that you always start on the back step and you need to lift your feet higher when stepping.

Waltz

Cha

Quickstep (Oriel's team was tiny this year and so
we didn't have a couple doing Quickstep)

JIVE!!! :P

The dances everyone did were prepared by themselves in advance. Every round except our last one, though, I fumbled and ended up having to recover from a missed move by improvising our way to a part of the choreographed dance we could make it to without looking unnatural! The couple from Oriel doing Cha made it to the finals, where they performed solo in front of everyone; my partner and I made it to semifinals! It was a ton of fun doing and I'm glad I did it. I'm going to try to do it again next year!

Now if only I knew that one freshman who can Lindy....

Even though my partner and I didn't make it to finals, we WERE apparently the most photogenic couple, so there's that:

Speaking of sports, this week was the big Oxford rowing competition! Each college was pitted against the other in a weird "bumping" system I'm not entirely sure I can explain adequately. That's why we have Wikipedia.

Whatever the system was, Oooooorieeeeeel!!!! Head of the River 2014!!!

I thought this was a protest at first, but then I realized it was the rowing team
carrying a wooden boat leading most of Oriel College back to college from the river

To celebrate our win, our rowing team took the boat proudly and lifted it to the heavens in the main Oriel courtyard!

Oooooorieeeeeel!!

And then they smashed it into the ground!!

...So much for next year...

And then they set it on fire.

I explained to several people there how it wouldn't have taken an entire hour
to burn if they'd used gasoline to help the process along.

The rowing team jumped across the burning boat a few times together.

If this were Mexico, we would've saved the boat for the last evening, after all the exams
were over, and made it into a massive bonfire. Am I right, A-Team?

I learned later that it wasn't actually the boat they used. Those are made of plastic. Apparently we had so much confidence in our rowing team that we bought the boat ahead of time. I guess you can do that when the team captain is (apparently) an Olympic medalist in rowing.

I noticed a sign on the lawn had been trampled over in all the excitement, and I took some time to commiserate with it in regards to its abandonment.

Instead of watching the game, I had been competing in Water Polo Cuppers! The night before, someone posted asking for volunteers to replace the members of the team who told her that night that they would have to row instead, and I, being the good sport that I am, volunteered. I felt confident that all my time spent working out in the gym, running long distance, and doing series of high-intensity sprints would make me in good shape for most sports. I'd certainly found that to be the case when playing a casual game of football two weeks prior. Sounds reasonable, right?

In fact, I nearly drowned several times. Perhaps it was because my legs were already really tired from the long distance running and gym work in the preceding days, but I had more difficulty staying afloat in the pool than I've ever had in my entire life. Someone suggested it might be because I've gained ten or fifteen pounds of muscle since I've last swum, much of which is upper body muscle, and as such, it costs me a lot more effort to stay afloat, which is the excuse I'm going with, because it's the only one that doesn't make me sound really out of shape. In any case, I'm glad there's no rule against holding on to the edge for extended periods of time, or I might not be alive to write this post today.

We lost, by the way.

I'm currently running a fundraiser to help support a friend of mine who shall go unnamed (as with everyone I mention in this blog) and her mission in Birmingham. The big "hook" was that for a day, I would finally shut up; no speaking, texting, messaging, sign language, or even nodding for twenty-four hours. I also used the promise of brownies and brownie recipes to incentivize people to donate (much like GLAdOS from Portal). We've raised quite a bit of money. I don't know if we're going to reach the goal of six hundred pounds (and I agreed that if we reach that goal, I would have to get my chest waxed), but I'm definitely glad I can help support my friend in this way.

Good grief; I actually do appear to be turning into Wolverine...

The day itself was fairly quiet ( :P ). I spent as much time out of my room as possible so that people noticed the admittedly huge difference. It was really boring most of the time. At one point I regrettably had to resort to a brief nod because I was buying something from Pret a Manger, and the woman behind the counter repeatedly asked me if I was eating away, and she wasn't taking a smile as an answer.

Meanwhile, the employees at Tesco's all dressed up in '70s garb one day to encourage shoppers to donate to fight skin cancer. After seeing this guy wearing a suit that I actually own, I felt compelled to donate:

I went up to this guy and asked him, "Excuse me, sir? Are you feeling ill?"
Confused, he responded, "No, I don't think so. Why do you ask?" To this, I replied,
"Because you look as though you have some Saturday Night Fever."

Finally, I'd like to introduce you all to a friend of mine and an avid reader of my blog. As you well know, longtime readers, I never use someone's name on this blog unless the person specifically gives me permission, something that has never before happened (because I never actually ask). But in this case, he actually requested a shout-out in my blog, and so I am now obliging. I'd like to go on the record of saying, though, that I first made him say the phrase, "I, [his name], give you permission to use my name on your blog, The Across-the-Pond Life."

Allow me to introduce you to...Will!!!!!

He seemed very surprised when I picked him up.

Going forward, I've got two more weeks until my first prelim, then I've got two weeks of prelims until I'm done with the year! I've been seeing my friends post photos of going to the beach for two weeks now, but I'm staying positive and not-at-all-jealous (maybe a little).

And CONGRATULATIONS, TKA CLASS OF 2014!!!   (Mark 16:15)

Happy hunting!

   John Khouri, Polo Wearer But Not Player