Oxford updates – January 2011
Gosh, another month goes by and neither of us manages to post even once. Oh dear. Well, I’ll try to recap a few of the things that have happened since I last posted:
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Fortunately, we did get home for Christmas – our flight from Heathrow may actually have been the first flight to Canada that wasn’t affected by the storm. We had a great Christmas home with our families, though it took me a few days to readjust to the different dynamics of life back in North America. It also took me a while to get used to driving on the “right” side of the road – while riding as a passenger, I found myself bracing for a crash as the driver turned a corner into the “wrong” lane.
It was great to see our friends and family again (in some cases for the first time in 18 months), and fortunately the weather didn’t decide to remind us what winter is really like.
Thanks are due to both our fathers, one who used Aeroplan points to fly us home for the holidays, and the other who put us up (along with Nelle) in the Maple Leaf Lounge before our flight back to the UK!
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Over the holidays, I assembled some of the more interesting pictures of places I’ve been in the last few years, and have posted them here.
- I got a dental filling on the NHS. Total cost? £45! This is definitely one of the things I’ll miss the most about the UK. Seriously, any prescription drug for £7.20?! And the taxes we pay here aren’t much different from those we’d pay in Canada. Neat-o!
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We saw The King’s Speech last night at the Ultimate Picture Palace off Cowley Road. The film was great, as predicted, and the theatre was pretty cool, too. It only seats 185, has plenty of legroom, and is 15% less expensive than going to one of the big chain cinemas in oxford. Plus, the clientele aren’t of the sort to check for texts on their phones every 15 minutes. I wish there was a bit more of a slope to the seating, though – I had a big-haired, tall bloke sitting in front of me and it wasn’t ideal.
(I feel like I should make one of my cultural observations at this point: the British are very proud of British things. So when a British film is critically acclaimed, one never hears the end of it. It reminds me of a BBC2 series last summer called “How to Build…”. The two shows I watched were “How to Build a Nuclear Submarine” (the HMS Astute, which subsequently ran aground off the Isle of Skye) and “How to Build a Jumbo Jet Engine” (built by Rolls-Royce, makers of the engine that exploded on a Qantas A380 back in November). I’m not saying the British don’t have a right to be proud of the things they’ve accomplished, but it can be a bit silly.)
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Photos from our trip to Venice in early December have been “developed,” so to speak, and are viewable here.
- I switched our web hosting to AN Hosting, who seem to be doing a good job so far. I’d been with Bluehost for two years, but wasn’t particularly impressed with their endless cPanel ads. Feature-wise, AN Hosting is a bit more bare-bones, but their support during the complicated switchover was excellent. Anyway, if you got any weird errors or noticed the site was briefly down a couple of weeks ago, that’s why.
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I planned a secret day out for Ori, with the intention being that she wouldn’t figure out where we were going until we got there. But, over dinner at the Mission the night before, I blurted out the name of our destination: Winchester. The surprise ruined, Ori was nevertheless very happy with my choice. We saw the Cathedral (namesake of the popular song) and lots of other things, too. Photos here.
- Finally, the Donut Kings are playing what will probably be their only public gig of the year on Tuesday, the Jazz Society Jam Session at Copa on George Street.
