Sunday in Oxford

Dear Family and friends,
I am going to keep this real short. Firstly because it is a sunday and secondly because i am watching the Wimbledon finals as i am writing this. Let me get you guessing who this guy on the photo is. I saw this in the museum yesterday and just clicked.

talking about today, the first Sunday by myself in Oxford. A week has passed with a lot of learning, understanding and networking with family and friends. I dont want to use this spot to evaluate my first week just wanted to put down what i feel. All through this week I tell myself one thing, that I have a rare opportunity and I have to clarify my objective and stick to my books.

Having said that, Sunday is a day when i really dont know what to do when i am India. I am either travelling, or at home washing my clothes and cleaning the house. The past few Sundays have been spent in so many different places I have lost track of what i have been doing.

Coming to this Sunday, I had to do a lot of reading and decided to do it in the morning. As planned i went though with the readings. It was ll about refugee protection and the approach of the developed countries or the refugee host nations towards them. I read a case study of East Timor. This was new to me and gave mea clear understanding of Colonization, and its effects on the developing countries and the exploitation of the developing countries and the conflicts that surround religion, ethnicity and all you can imagine.

After the load of reading, I had visitors. Well it is good to have someone visit you when you are visiting their country. Gita and Janaki arrived in Oxford and treated me with a great lunch. I am so full even now after eating it. We had a great time together, we walked to the carnival saw a lot of different types of music and felt the multicultural spirit of Oxford.

We got back to my room and shared my goodies with them and they left. I later got to my room and watched the great wimbledon finals and saw Roger Frederer, fight back from the dumps only to lose again like a hero. Nadal was phenomenal in his game and proved that he had it him to win this time.

Before i conclude for the day I am going to watch a movie that is screened in the RSC. It is called turtles can fly. I will go now to watch the movie.

The party and beyond

Dear Family and Friends,
after the long week of study it was party time. We had all out studs geared for the party. We gathered at a hall and there was some good drinks and snacks. after a long time i had some Tortilla chips and Salsa.
We had the music going well too. But the problem came when we wanted some more music. especially when we wanted to play our own music. All our guys got the music on their MP3 or on an Ipod. Since the Technology has improved SOOmuch! and the people here had an old 3 cd player it was a bit diasppointing. So i am called to the scene to investigate and see if i can do something about it.

I looked into the system and found that it could adapt an add on system. So from the previous days experience of helping play the dvd player i got to the organizer and asked her to get me that player. As soon as i went and got it i played around and A la! got it playing some great african music, then some salsa and reggae and so on. The tone was set for dancing and lights were turned off to take the dance floor.

as people were just begining to loosen up a bit, Alejandro and Claire, took the dance floor by storm, they did the salsa as if they have been practicing for a whole decade. it was sheer joy to watch them perform. The next was the party photo photo session. All those who had a camera started to click at those who looked good and also wanted to take photos with the smart ones. the profs also joined the party and dance. the one with the lights, on is my tutor, he said, "these days people have to supply their own lights"

With all this I became the official DJ. They were all walking to me and asking me to play what they wanted, but the problem was i was stuch with a player that played one format only and the other that could not forward any music. So learning for Lipi a student a professional DJ, i just let one cd play and kept it silent till it reached the next song and till then i played the old player with a tolerable song.

Now the party was getting heated, a few crates of beer were over, wine bottles were getting empty. people were dancing
and drinking. Some forgot their bottles and were sipping from any bottle that they could find. All the drinking and dancing came to and end only abt 12:00 midninght after the Porter came and said, "it is getting too late, you will have to play the music a bit low". As if i was the boss of the party he told and went away. I kind of very slowly reduced the volume and tried to close the party. I really did not want to be the party spoiler. but i had to do it keeping the upcoming parties in mind. the group was great the cooperated so well and we shut down soon.

Now coming to today, I took the famous bus tour. It was terrific to take it. we had a complete tour of the city. I went to Museum of Natual history, I thought of ashel and anushka so much, i took a lot of pictures. When i went into the activity room i thought of little josephine and Debbie who played with me a great deal and they would have enjoyed it there. I have taken a lot of pictures and will post them soon.

I also went to the Ashmolean museum. There was a wonderful display of Egyptian, italian and british cultures. In doing all this i really missed the company of Flo, in fact this the first time I am without her company. I thought about how we would giggle at the Naked Statue of Appollo and the silly paintings on the wall, the chest of dead men and at all other trivia.

I have a lot more to say but will add it on my update soon.

the great debate

Dear Friends and Family,today was a very different day at the Summer school. It started with us perparing for the great debate. Well the topic was: Elimination of all forms of borders. Our team was to defend the motion. The build up to it was what i liked best. First we were in divided into three sub groups that concentrated on three parts of the topic. We had to do several readings for that in our subgroups. We were given time to build our arguments, discuss in our groups and also nominate a speaker for our groups.

The questions that we had to answer were so loaded that we had to really choose the right words to be precise.Our team was convinced that we weould win from the very begining. Our teamates Mioara and Olive, literally burnt the mid night oil and got us a 71 page document defending our topic. We then got together under a tree to discuss perspectives and nominate speakers.

WE had Olive who would intorduce and wrap up, Veysel who would build up, danelle would give in the vital points and Chris was to peak on our topic. Now the actual debate began. Jane Mc Adams the Director of the SS, and Jean Francois were the chairs of the dabate. They were also the tutors of the respective groups. Now our Olive set the pace with the opening remarks, it was brief but neat. Then Lara a good friend from the opposite side started her opening remarks. She had it all organized and presented her case very systematically. Our Veysel presented the case and the tradition followed. Things were a bit dull on both the sides till danelle started. she made clear arguments and pointed out that it was important to get done with the borders because it was a right to move. our Chris pointed out the need for a borderless world to promote equity and convinced the opponents that the world needs to be opened up.

The best was the wrap up, Olive summarized all the points and punched it with a line of human rights. While lara tried her best on the other side. Now it was time for the discussion, we stood our ground we wanted to win by all means. When it cam e to voting we had to close our eyes and then vote, at the end we realized that we had less votes than the other team. OOps we had lost by two votes. Our team was upset that two of our people cross voted and hence we had to suffer the loss. some of us were upset but it was a greatr learning.

the methodology made us read, disccuss and even debate our positions. I really wish i could do this in Loyola, in previous occasions i have tried so hard but also failed miserably.

well i will try again.

After this session we had yet another great session, this time we had the Tutors telling us what they were involved in. Starting with Richard, he was the Pedro aruppe fellow at the RSC. He explained his work on post conflict situation in Rwanda.

Zachary explained his doctoral work on the fundemental interconnections with the international protection, the accountability of UNHCR and the ability of the refugees to enforce accountability

Jean Francois my tutor, explained his work on teh spaces to protect and the concept of emergency. Refugee law, groups at risk and so on.

Maryanne, a psychologist by training explained her work on the urban refugees, climate induced refugees and psycho social interventions

Matthew Gibney, spoke on his work on rejection os asylum seekers and repatriation.

Finally Jane, told us about her work in international law and various other projects.

WEll to cut a long story short it was wonderful to hear the stories of the faculty, they were all involved in some study that was cutting edge. The language they spoke was so up to date and inwell informed that we from the developing world have to learn to emulate. We do work like donkeys and jump around like monkeys. others simply are in a deep state of slumber.

It was day with a lot of learning.

Will tell you more tomorrow.



Jea

Day 4 In the company of Marilyn

Dear family and friends,
today has been a long day. Before starting with today let me tell you a bit about what happened yesterday evening. A person called Tim who runs a professional band came and gave us a lecture on Oxford. his speech was titled Drink, Sex and Death. He highlighted the history of the city punctuated with anectodes that were very well researched. We learnt that the city was in fact controlled by the university. The most interesting fact was how a war broke out as a result of a petty fight outside an Ale house. In those good old days Oxford was known for it 's booze, women and debauchery. well the lecture was so much fun.



Now let me come to today's story: I was up very early to do my readings. With a lot of interest i read three articles and rushed to the toilet. today I beat the queue and got in for a nice hot shower. I had a good breakfast, guess what i had, yesds you got it right baked beans and potatoes. the most exciting thing today was the boiled eggs. i was reminded of the eggs we used to eat in Kathmandu and on the train to Calcutta.
The first lecture was on globalization and forced migration. Since I understood is well i was able to think with the speaker. I was eager to learn the western perspective of the phenomenon, and rightfully so i the speaker gave a good outline of the happenings. Yet i missed Prof Victor Louis, who foretold these things way back in 1994 when i was still in College. this was followed by our work in small groups.

We discussed four articles on forced migration in order to prepare for a debate. the theme of discussion was, " a borderless society " In our group we spoke about how it is possible to have a society without borders. When money has no borders people should not have borders as well. We also dealt with discrimination of countries and the legitamacy of the very existence of borders.

After this we started to prepare for the debate. We had to defend our topic, we used all that we read and tried to strengthen our arguements.

after all the reading and discussion I headed straight to the library. found some interesting books but did not find the time to read, I just made a not of them and started my long walk. As i went i took my Solly my southafrican classmate along. We passed by a flea market where he immediately bought a cd player for his family. We passed by the tower that you see on top, it is oxford's oldest building it is about a 1000 years old. then we passed by a beautiful christ church college.

We soon reached the beautiful Thames. Today we wanted to stroll by the river so we got of the bridge and started the long walk. As we walked we met Ms Marlyn Skantz, a woman who was watching birds. She taking a summer course at christ college on the the Philosophy of politics. When she heard that i was from India she immediately said, " i have met your Mother Theresa, I have worked for her" She also said that, " Mother Theresa always said , if you need to work for the community you first need to take care of your self, then your family then your community then you can come for service.

We spoke a lot she had six children one was a lawyer, another was a doctor, one was a nurse anesthetist, one was a social worker, one was an architect/builder and one was into hardware/making CDs. Wow she had her whole family covered with professionals. She claimed that she never chose what her children wanted. the only instruction she gave to others was, "when you are out there be good and love others" it seems tha ther mother told this to her, "how can i not be nice to others when my mother as said so"

The discussion went on from the Present Pope to Obama.
Coming to her husband, he was taking a course on history of dectective stories. She was 76 years old and i guess her husband was a bit older. I learnt a lot from her, she invited us to stay with her if we ever visited Minnesota.

Well i need to get prepared to go to class tomorrow so i will stop for now

day 3 of the OXFORD Journal

Dear Friends and Family,
Day 3 started pretty early in the morning I woke up ant 5 am and started to read up the materials for the class. it was wonderful to read early in the morning in a conducive atmosphere. As usual I hurried for the british breakfast with cereals, baked beans and bread along with my favorite egg. I had a lengthy discussion with two friends Lara and Maya. Both of them went from eastern europe to Australia. They told me about all the culture shocks they had faced as aliens in Australia.

I then rushed to class to attend my tutorial. Today's topic was a continuation of the conceptualization of forced migration.
it maily dealt with, the Anthropoligical and legal approaches to the treatment of refugees. We had interesting debates and casestudies.

In my class we had great debates, when someone came up with a scenario we had examples from Turkey, Jordan, Liberia, Uganda, Canada, Ghana, US, UK, France, South Africa, Sri Lanka and India. The whole debate was centered around the construction of a home as being a symbolic factor. This was derived from the case study of the Iranian refugees in Sweeden.

The next point of discussion was on the changing nature of refugee treatment in the international circuit. Jeff Crisp's article was an elaboration on issues relating to how international communities were changing their refugee policies. Finally we learnt that there was never really a golden age of refugee asylum not even during the Rule of the Tanzanian visionary President Julius Nyerere. On the other hand there were times when the coast guards determined the status of people if they actually qualified to be refugees with what was called as "Colour of a refugee claim" With all the talk we got to lunch time.

We got to lunch, guess what we had, Salmon and potatoes with some banana and chocolate pudding. Heavy and bland for me but not bad at all. just had a good meal not minding what it was. (I had to add a lot of black pepper and salt to push it past my tongue. But i loved it.)

The post lunch session, the sleepy session as many of ate potatoes were falling asleep when a Stalwart Gaim Kibreab, was talking on Cpnceptualizing Forced Migration. It was a really interesting talk where he summarised the nature of the concept of refugees from mental images. He said that the perception of the world towards migrants and refugees changed after world war I when people had to flee and caused political problems and hence there was a need for the institutionalized response. Those states who were welcoming refugees and immigrants now started to choose the refugees who they wanted. they also found that they were becoming a threat to state soverignity.

well after that he summarized his theory as Nation states pegion hole people. (Dont worry if you cant understand this i will tell you when i meet you all)

the end of his lecture showed the primary causes, proximity causes intervening /enabling situations and sinally the outcomes the phenomenon.

after his lecture we all had to meet our tutors individually to prepare for our presentations.

today was a day filled with learning. even about the english climate: they said that this afternoon there would be rains and sure enough there were rains.

I have more reflections about the day but will wait to think more about it and tell you more.

by the way this is the apt where i stay block no 24 room no 2

Dear Family and Friends,

today was the second day of class. It gave me a real sense of what it means to study at Oxford. First let me tell you about the city a bit.
This is a city with plenty of old buildings. When you step inside thelarge imposing castle like doors you feel like you are in the 15th century. but when you enter the class rooms they are so high tech. with all the equipment that you need.
the streets are filled with cyclists who race their way. Men and women casually dressed and trying to take it easy since it is their summer holday. this building you see is right outside my campus. looks like a greek theatre, I really dont know what it is but jus thought of its photogenic features and clicked.

The place is so crowded with tourists, they do it the japanese way, stop at a building click click click, and the next. You will find tour operators who shout, "sight seeing, of the Old City, we will take you into the colleges and show you a piece of the history, come in , the next bus departs at 12:20. Sure enough the bus departs at 12:20.

The door you see is of Baliol. i will keep you guessing if you dont really know what it means. and the river is ..... you got it right, it is the Thames, pronounced as TAMES.


Now coming to the academic part of it. Today after a sumptuous breakfast of baked beans, bacon, fried bread, corn flakes, wheatabic and orange juice we were forced to learn.

Today's theme was centered around understanding forced migration. Prof Roger Zetter, gave a great lecture in the concepts and theory of forced migration. the elaborated on the ideas and issues that confront the areas of forced migration studies. Though many of us felt that it was hard core theory, it gave us a background to put things in perspective.

We then went into our groups. as you may have known in Oxford teaching and learning in done in what they call Tutorship. that is people learn in small groups and and the strength really lies in the one on one method. So as soon as we got here we were assigned groups with eminent tutors. My tutor is Dr Jean Francois Durieux, a man who has had many years of experience with the UNHCR and was also the chief of mission to Burma. He reminds me of Barry Hart my professor at EMU for Identity.

As you may understand we had a load to read the previous day, we were also given some time to read in class. Then we the students posed questions while the tutor tried to clarify them.

Later we were taken to the Library of the RSC. it was a great place. so many titles (30,000) on refugees. In loyola we hardly have 20 books on refugees and i am doing my doctoral studies there. what an irony!! we learnt about cataloguing and searching on oxlib and oxlis.

In about an hour we returned to the class to continue the session on understanding forced migration. we dealt with the Legal approach accompanied with James Hathaway's article. tomorrow we hope to continue with the Anthropological and Political approaches.

at the end of the day we are so tired that we really want to hit bed soon. But we have a film show at eight so i am heading for dinner and will get back just in time for the show.

getting to Oxford

glimpses of Oxford
























Dear Friends and family,

i just thought i could start a blog on my experiences at Oxford.
I took a plane from Chennai and reached Doha, then continued my journey to Heathrow. There i took a bus and reached Oxford.

Oxford is a great little Town/city. I got off at the Queens Street following the instructions that were given to me on the sheet. Then I asked around for the place a bit and found that very few people know about the Wadham College. finally a bus driver took out a map(i later learnt that it was typical for the people of Oxford to do it) and located it for me. Plus, he gave me directions saying, "go up the road, you will find a pedestrian, go across and you will find an alley. get into it, you will find a red light, go past it you will find a junction. go past it and you will see a red light. in case you have passed the red light you are too faraway."

I took his instructions and started pusing my 30 kg baggage on the streets of Oxford. as i was heading near the red light a man in jeans and a blazer walked towards me and said, "i know you, are you not from Loyola" i was completely surprised, i just said yes and he went on, "You were a friend of that Malayalee guy". Honestly i could remember only a junior of mine who was a malayalee. He said, My name is Ribu" So ribu told his story that he was an economics student of Loyola, he came to the LSE, went ahead to study at Cambridge and has his own company now.

he walked with me and go lost with me. we tried to search for the place but had a tough time figuring it out. finally when we found the place we realized that we walked about three times right in front of the gate.

I got to the porters lodge and got my key. they took me in and gave me a great room.

My first friend was Simon from Kenya, he helped me with the code to the room and then with the key as well. I later got myself registered and began to unpack. Soon i wanted to send my mails to my wife so i ran to the porters lodge and bought a cable. I paid 3 pounds and realized that my purchases had already started.

I got to my room and got the internet connected.

Soon i was hungry, i went with Simon and Co for dinner to a Kebab shop. we ate a place of chicken and potatoes got back and headed to bed.

Day 1.
eight was break fast time. We searched for the place but could not find it. finally we just followed our nose to the refectory. the tables, cups, saucers, knives, forks, plates and all that you need was so well arranged that i was afraid to touch it. The refectory looked like the One in Harry potter. we had an excellent breakfast(bread, egg, baked beans and a piece of ham).

then we went ahead with the registration. the first lecture soon followed. Dr Zetter, the director was very nice in explaining the nuances of the refugee treatment. though i knew most of what he was saying i kept quite and listened. many along with me listened and also slept because of jet lag.

the evening was a reception. I eat well and then went for a walk mainly to get some pictures of the city as a thunder storm is in place for this weak.

i was asked to to go to a pub as well. I did like the place but since i never drank i am unable tell abt the pub.

will talk about the tutors and tell you more tomorrow.