When I was little, I was painfully shy. I had friends, but I didn't like a lot of attention drawn to myself. I cried when people clapped for me, and cried when people sang "Happy Birthday" to me. (Part of me still gets a little embarrassed today with the "Happy Birthday" song.)

While I had a number of wonderful birthday parties in my life, it is now in my twenty-seventh year that I can say that I've had the best birthday ever. I think part of it has to do with the fact that I finally got my act together socially, and have made more of an effort to do things and know people. This change has led me to make some wonderful friends, and for that alone I am very grateful. I don't really keep in touch with my small circle of friends from high school or college, but I feel like the people I have met in Oxford are the people with whom I'll want to stay in contact for life.

I am touched by the effort that my friends Chrissie and Chung went through to surprise me for my birthday. Not one, but THREE days of birthday surprises, plus a wonderful day in London on the day itself to finish it all off. It has been great fun living with them this year, and it will be sad when it all comes to an end this summer. I am also touched by the wonderful cards and messages I received from all my other lovely friends, and am delighted that I was able to spend the day (well, the weekend) in the company of such fabulous people.

I could go tell you about my day in excrutiating detail, but I realized that you could also read about it here, where I already spent ages detailing everything.* So go there, look at the lovely pictures, and marvel at my wonderful day in London. Try not to be too envious. ;)

So, if I could offer one piece of advice to you all as I advance in years, it would be this: get yourself some wonderful friends. They make everything else worthwhile.

Off to Dublin on Monday, dahlings. Stay out of trouble while I'm away...

K xxx

*The only thing I forgot to mention in my excrutiating detail is that I bought this gorgeous watch at the Swatch store in Covent Garden, and Chrissie bought this bracelet (click on the third bracelet in the third row if it doesn't show up). There. Now you know everything.

But wait! There's more!

Not only did Chrissie and Chung vandalize my room and throw me a surprise picnic, they also threw me a surprise dinner party with my lovely linguist friends!

Tonight, Chrissie told me that Chung wanted to try out the new kebab van (don't even think there is one, but it was a convincing story). All well and good, but things got suspcious when Chrissie kept suggesting I should shower and change before going to the kebab van. "It's kebab!" I thought. Surely they've seen people in a less attractive state.

In any case, I showered and changed and was slightly surprised by the fact that Chrissie was rather nicely dressed for kebab. So we hike up Cowley, and stop outside La Cucina, a lovely Italian restaurant I had been meaning to try for some time now. Chrissie said she wanted to stop in and use the bathroom, which was rather suspicious. She leads me to the back, and there were my lovely friends waiting for me.

We enjoyed pizza and wine and cake, and all in all it was a wonderful evening. I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

I am very lucky to have such wonderful friends.

Another long and drawn out story with a delightful ending:

So a few days ago, Chung had asked me to help him take a picture of himself for a journal article he was having published. He was kind enough to help me take a picture for another project, so I was very happy to help. He said we would go today, between 11:30 and 1:30.

As I mentioned yesterday, I was very suspicious about the timing of his request. So I decided to make a hair appointment for after the photo session, to ensure I would be out of my room for enough time.

The weather wasn't looking too hot today, so Chung told me he wasn't sure if we'd do the photos today. He said he'd check and get back to me. At 11:30, he knocked on my door, and told me that he wasn't going to do the pictures today because it wasn't too nice out. But he did ask if I could help him out with something else...

We went out in the hall and over to Chrissie's room. He opens the door, and I go in to find...

Chrissie and Chung had prepared a lovely birthday picnic for me! We were going to have it in the park, but the weather really was not picnic weather, so Chrissie set it up in her room. It turns out the whole "picture for a journal article" thing was a setup.

My birthday hasn't even happened yet, and it's already turning out to be one of my nicest birthdays ever, thanks to the loveliness of my friends. :)

More to come, with birthday tea in London on Monday (my actual birthday) and an informal "table tennis and vodka extravaganza" I'm planning for Tuesday. Watch this space!

xxx

So I knew for a while now that my friend Chrissie (and probably Chung too) had something suspcious planned for my birthday which involved my needing to be out of my room for a few hours. The way things were working out, I thought it would end up being tomorrow.

But last night, around midnight, Chrissie IMed me, quite upset: we had forgotten to get an autographed Colin Dexter book for our friend Chung. She kept insisting that I go today, "as early as possible," to find out if we could get one. I reassured her that we could call, that Colin Dexter lives in Oxford and signs books all the time, and that we could ask them to hold one for us. But she kept insisting that they might run out, so I called last night and left a message to have Blackwell's call me back.

This morning, she kept asking every half hour if they had called back yet. It was getting rather annoying. Finally, they told me they would be getting some, but they weren't sure when. I decided to go down to ChCh and wait for a bit, to see if I could grab one. "Enjoy the literary festival," she said, which left me a little suspicious because she knew I was just going down there to check on the book. I was even slightly annoyed.

I finally worked it out with the Blackwell's people that they would set one aside for me when they arrived. I called Chrissie to confirm this, and she seemed distracted. "So, are you doing anything else now, or are you coming back?" I figured that since I was in town, I would eat lunch, and then quite at random I decided to go try on some dresses at Debenhams.

I just came back about a half hour ago, to discover this act of vandalism that had taken place in my room:

As much as I love this country, I must say that customer service REALLY SUCKS here. In their continuing quest to do things the "right" way, shopkeepers end up doing some really stupid things.

A lot of the time, I just suck it up and deal with it, figuring that I'm in a different country and should deal with different ways of thinking. But once in a while I just snap, and when I do, I feel really good. Allow me to illustrate:

Last year, my mobile phone stopped working. I took it to Carphone Warehouse, and they claimed that I had gotten it wet on the inside, which really seemed rather ridiculous. When I asked what they would do, the salesperson said that he would send it out to get it fixed, and it would take about two weeks.

I lost it right there. I snapped, "No. This is my only phone, I can't go two weeks without a means of communication. You need to do something NOW." I convinced him to sell me another phone, which was better but still rather stupid. An American mobile company would have offered me a refurbished phone, or would have thought to sell me a new phone up front, knowing that two weeks is a stupidly long time to be without a phone.

Today was the second time. The bookstore Blackwell's has one of those stamp card programs where you get one stamp on your card for every £10 you spend, and after 10 stamps you get some money off your next purchase. (There are different tiers, with different money off for each one.) If there were a similar loyalty program in the States, if you spent $18, the salesperson would give you two $10 stamps, no question. (Or, at the very least, s/he would point out something cheap to bring you closer to the next level to give you that extra stamp.) This would be true of any kind of store. At Blackwell's, they're much tougher about it - you spend £18, you get one stamp.

This happened to me the other day - I had £18 worth of books, and only needed one stamp to get £7 off my next purchase. I thought it would be logical to buy the £10 book, get one stamp, and use the £7 off my second book. But NO. I only got one stamp, because the lady told me "we don't do things like that, especially with the last stamp on the card."

I sucked it up and dealt with it. But today it nearly happened again, and I lost it.

I was at the Oxford Literary Festival at Christ Church, listening to Lynne Truss give a talk. Throughout the festival, Blackwell's has tables set up so you can buy the author's books after the talk and get them signed. I had her sign my copy of Talk to the Hand (which I got last year for my birthday), and went to buy two other books of hers: A Certain Age and Eats, Shoots and Leaves. The total came to £19.98.

Let me repeat that in case you missed it: the total came to £19.98.

AND THE SALESGIRL ONLY WANTED TO GIVE ME ONE STAMP!!!!!!!

First I said politely, "Don't I get a second stamp?" She marked it and said, "We're really not supposed to do that." I snapped back, quite rudely, almost immediately: "Oh come on. It's £19.98! We're talking about 2p here!" She gave me this kind of look, and I just walked away.

My friend Chrissie couldn't believe that I would say such a thing. (I don't usually get like that in public.) But I was very proud of myself, and hope I have made a small change in the rather ridiculous Blackwell's loyalty card system.

I know that politeness counts and manners matter and all that good stuff, but in the grand scheme of things, sometimes you need to be a little pushy.

So the weekend isn't even over yet, and so far it's been pretty great. A rundown:

A few days ago I got an email from the director of the Comm. School at my old uni (where I still teach, so he's technically my old boss). He told me he was going to be in London, and asked if I wanted to meet up on Friday or Saturday. We worked out Friday, and he said he would take me to a play and out to dinner. Awesome!

It was the first time I had traveled to London by myself. I got off the bus at Marble Arch and spent a few hours wandering up and down Oxford Street. In addition to having some really cool stores (Selfridges is my new spiritual home) it is also the name of the street where my dad grew up, so it has some personal significance for me. Then I navigated the tube all by myself to Leicester Square, where I met my boss. We had dinner at a lovely Indonesian restuarant in Soho, coffee at a corner coffee shop* and then went to a play called Someone Else's Shoes.
He actually chose the play quite well - it was about advertising and globalization, which as you know are what I studied in grad school there. And there were no seating arrangements, so we got to choose where to sit - and we got front row center seats. And trust me, with the gorgeous male lead, front row center was the place to be! ;) It was great fun.

Today, for St. Paddy's Day, Chrissie and I spent the day in town doing all sorts of shopping. Our shopping included lots of book shopping - Waterstone's was having a sale on children's books, so I bought a lot of great books for PJ and Maggie. We then went to the street show Luminox, a giant fire display on Broad Street in honor of the 1000th (yes, that's thousandth) anniversary of the city of Oxford.

After the show, we went to O'Neill's, one of the specifically Irish pubs, and got some Guinness. It was a crazy ridiculous idea to go to an Irish pub today, but it was worth it. Usually, on St. Paddy's Day, they give out Guinness hats and badges and stuff, but I was too late to get one. So, I traded my unfinished Guinness for the badge off of someone's hat. (I didn't want it anyway - I drank a lot of it, but I just can't really drink beer, especially not whole pints of it!)

A year ago today, my fellow Master's students and I were handing in our theory papers and heading out to celebrate. I can't believe how fast a year has gone by, and I hope I continue to have as much fun in the years to come here as I still do every day.

*The view at the corner coffee shop was, ummm, interesting. I'll leave it at that, and let those of you who are familiar with the Soho area of London fill in the blanks. ;)

Wow. Less than two weeks to go before I hit the big 2-7.

It falls on a Monday, which is very inconvenient. But still, I'm very excited. This year, I'm going here, to do this. Other plans for the week are still up in the air, but that is the big highlight of my birthday.

Cheesy nostalgic posts to follow as the cold, hard reality of entering my late twenties sinks in.

xxx

Through a matter of wacky coincidence, three of the five children in my family have birthdays in March, with two birthdays only a day apart: my sister Kelly (the second of the five) and my brother PJ (the fourth). I am writing right now in the surreal cusp between their birthdays: it's March 8 (PJ's birthday) here now, and still March 7 (Kelly's birthday) in the States.

This year, Kelly turns 26. We'll be Irish twins for 19 days, until my birthday. PJ will turn 14 in a few hours, so he and Maggie are the same age right now.

As I said at this time last year, it's times like this when I wish I could be home to celebrate.

Happy birthday, Kelly and PJ! I love you!

So last night I went to a lovely black-tie dinner for graduate linguists at Christ Church. We did not eat in the hall, but rather in the neighboring McKenna Room. While I was in there, I saw a number of lovely portraits. But one portrait in particular proved to me that I do, indeed, go to Hogwarts. Here's some photographic evidence.

Here I am in the McKenna Room, with two portraits. The top portrait is Henry VIII. Let's zoom in on the bottom portrait:
Now is it just me, or is that not Professor Snape???????

*Sigh.* This place is awesome.

I did my first trip in an airplane, which happened to be my first international flight, when I was a senior in high school. I loved that trip so much, and promised that I would come back to visit many times.

I never followed through on that promise, unfortunately, and I lost touch with many of the friends I met there. But now, nearly ten years later, things are looking promising. It looks like I'll have a chance to go back there finally.

It will be a short trip - about four days long. And I'll get some work done while I'm there.

I don't want to reveal my destination just yet, but I'll fill you in very soon. ;) Watch this space!