Overheard in Oxford

The following is a compendium of partial conversations I have been collecting. To be sure, they are merely fragments and are taken wholly out of context, but I think they illustrate rather nicely the conclusion I have arrived at in my few months here in Oxford: this is an exceptional place. Not in the sense of academic rigor and intellectual avant-gardism, but in the sense of its being terribly out of touch with the rest of the world. Here goes:

Professor, in a large but mostly empty lecture hall: Hm. My voice sounds like God in here. That’s nice.

Student, on a cell phone: So, what did you do, m’lady?

Boatie: Rowing’s like having kids. It changes your life.

Student A: Wait, who was that again?
Student B: Um. Really?
Student A: Yeah, I can’t remember.
Student B: Y’know… heretic? Destroyed the Church Catholic…?
Student A: Oh right! Well, see you.

Student, in the poshest accent possible: When my family were in Zanzibar…

DPhil candidate: There was this kid, Robert, in my undergrad. We called him “Gyno.” In the first week we all went around asking what everyone wanted to do after Oxford. He said he wanted to be a gynecologist. You just never recover from that.

Old woman: The ducks were coming in and trampling my plants, so I moved them. It didn't take them two days to find out where I'd hidden them. Bloody ducks, they nearly trampled half my plants to death.

Student A: It’s like transhumanism. It hurts at first, but in the long run it’s good for you.
Student B: That’s not how I conceive of transhumanism at all.
Student A: That’s because you overvalue your identity.

Student: It’s been a weird day, John.
Porter: Don’t worry. It’ll go back to normal tomorrow.
Student: Yeah? How do you mean?
Porter: Raining. Miserable.

Student: It’s great. We get together on Wednesdays and have wine and exotic cheeses and discuss the world’s problems. Like last week we did military interventionism, and this week it’s something on sex workers in China.

Student: I can’t believe it! They’re actually making me move out for the holiday. I have to vacate my room by noon Friday so the great unwashed can use it when they come for their little interviews.

Guy in a café: Edward Skidelsky is another, who argues that liberalism has just about committed suicide. You get more and more wars, more and more degradation, more and more drug-taking…

Woman on a cell phone: Yeah I’ll tolerate her f---ing existence on the planet. But don’t ask me to bake a cake for her, ‘cos I won’t.

Student: I dunno. I think Foucault has a lot to say about, you know, real life. Like, the power relations immanent in going to Ali’s Kebab Van instead of Hassan’s.

Student A: How do you get a hundred hippopotamus into the Bodleian Library?
Student B: No idea.
Student A: They fly in. They’re angel hippopotamus.
Student B: Wait. What?
Student A: That kind of thing happens here all the time.