Daphne, I just wanted to say that this is incredibly freaking cool that you’re doing this. Good work, and good luck!
Indispensible. It’s called a Young Persons Railcard, but don’t be put off by the name if you don’t fully qualify - all full-time students can get one. It costs about £18, gets you a third off most rail tickets, and will pay for itself within a couple of long journeys.
It’s from an abbreviation of the Latin form of “Oxford,” which I can’t recall at the moment.
Another useful Latin abbreviation is 'Tab. 'Tabs are students or Old Members from The Other Place, the place to the north of London whose name is not to be mentioned in Oxford. It’s short for “Cantab.,” which is the Latin abbreviation stuck next to the monikers of those unfortunate enough to be graduates of The Other Place. Heh.
Oh, BTW, Daphne, I’ll be sending info soon.
Ask some history professors at Cornell if they know two visiting professors from Oxford named Felicity Heal and Clive Holmes. They taught at Cornell for some time. Dr. Heal was (is!) my supervisor at Oxford, and Dr. Holmes is her husband!
This 80% increase was my experience last month while I was there.
Examples (you can see how each is reasonable, if it were dollars. And these were not just in London or bigger cities, but pretty representative whereever we went):
- (small) bottle of water at a gas station: 1.50 pounds
- postcards: anywhere from .40 to 1 pound
- bag of cookies: 2.25 pounds
- average pub meal: 8 to 9 pounds
- (and as embarrassed as I am to admit it, but will, to further make my point) cheeseburger meal (includes fries and drink) at Burger King: 4.50 pounds
- t-shirts (at souvenir shops): 10 to 15 pounds
P.S. I stand corrected on the pronounciation of Ipswich. But I did intend to spell Greenwich correctly - just can’t type.
I’m afraid you were getting screwed. All of those prices are somewhat extreme - Britain is expensive, no doubt, but not that bad. Even in Oxford, it’s rare to see post-cards for more than 50p, a bag of cookies from Sainsbury’s will cost you 99p, and for £9 you’d damned well better be getting a pint with your meal. The price for T-shirts sounds reasonable - souvenirs are expensive wherever you are in the world, alas. In the Radcliffe Arms (take note, Daphne_Black - it’s in Jericho, and has the best value pub meals available in Oxford) you can get a full roast dinner of a Sunday for £4.50, and normal pub meals for that or less during the week.
Once again, thanks everyone!
“Oxon.” is from Oxoniensis aka Oxfordshire, that one I know (Classics, eh).
Re: the railcard - does this help if I want to travel anywhere in the UK? Does it count for the Chunnel? It does sound like a good deal.
Re: the expense. Sounds pretty steep overall, but that’s more or less what I expected. When I was in Oxford for two days last summer, I sadly recall a five pound plate of nachos that was just awful 
(What is the key-code for the pound symbol on a Mac anyway? That might be useful.)
According to the various student info I got, if I take Oxford Tube after 3 pm, it’s only 5 pounds round trip.
Pelicans, puffins, and zebras, oh my!
Oh, and thanks, Ethilrist!
Random Oxford Q: is Formal Hall worth it, fun, something to do once or if you have visitors?
Cheers,
Daphne
“It’s probably funnier in Latin. You know how that is.” - Fred on Angel
Yes, the railcard is for anywhere in the UK - normally, the only times it doesn’t apply are on some special offers, and on some peak-time trains (generally morning commuter ones into London). It’s not valid for the Eurostar (you’ll embarass yourself if you call it Chunnel 
) - but they have their own tickets for under-26s.
The key-code thing has reminded me of something: you may find that switching between your US Mac and university computers with the UK keyboard gets confusing. I know of some people who’ve switched their US computers to the UK layout, finding it easier than jumping between the two.
crosses off “Chunnel” on vocabulary list
That’s something I hadn’t considered, about the keyboard. I imagine it’s not too difficult to do, I’ll look into it.
Depends on your college. Some colleges do Formal almost every evening; at these, it generally adds a soup to whatever meal is served at Informal, and maybe some extra vegetables. That’s worth doing if you’re going with a group of friends, but probably not if you’re going on your own. At other colleges, Formal happens only once a week or once a fortnight; at those colleges, it’s much more of a social event, with a better meal and sometimes before/after dinner drinks. Judging by this page this page Corpus is one of the latter colleges - so it’s fun to do if you’re going with a good group of people, provided the food’s good. That’ll depend entirely on your taste, so YMMV.
Formal Hall is certainly worth it if a food fight breaks out in the midst of it. A rare event, but it happened once while I was there. To be sure, one of the more surreal dinners I’ve ever attended.
You may also be interested in Boat Races: these are not The Boat Race, but a common drinking game at formal and informal events at college. A large group of students sit at a long, narrow dining table, each with a full glass of wine. At the starter’s signal, the first person on each side of the table chugs the wine. After drinking it, that student puts the empty glass upside-down on his or her head, which is the signal for the student sitting next to them to drink. Continue this all the way down the table.
There is no prize for the “winning” side, but several Boat Races run in succession can result in interesting dinners (see above).
sell or give away your 110V electrical appliances; it’s not worth the cost and inconvenience of buying step-down transformers to run them on 240V.
Leave behind your TV, as it will operate on the NTSC [National Television System Committee, or Never Twice Same Color] system which is not compatible with the PAL [Phase Alternation Line] system used in most of Western Europe. Likewise VHS tapes - while you can play NTSC tapes on the newer generation of PAL VCRs you can’t record on them.
See UK Yankee Forum at http://talk.uk-yankee.com/index.php for this sort of stuff and much more
Check before you do this! Some things - such as the adaptor for a laptop - can work on either voltage.
DaphneBlack writes:
> When I was in Oxford for two days last summer, I sadly recall a five pound plate
> of nachos that was just awful.
Oxford has a lot of good restaurants. Check out the Cowley Road especially. However, the one thing you will not find in the U.K. is decent Mexican food, nor any other Latin American sort of food.
One more warning: Oxford must be the most bus-choked city in the world. Having eliminated most parking in the center of the city, they have to rely on buses for transportation. There are several competing bus companies for all of the various routes. (Interestingly, all the city buses and long-distance coaches are privately owned.) At this point I don’t think they could fit any more buses into the crowded traffic.
There are also a lot of bicycles on the sidewalks.
Regarding the bus issue I am afraid you must blame this on Maggie Thatcher. This was yet another of her harebrained schemes called bus deregulation. Now you have the situation of too many buses chasing too few people.
Actually, Wendell, it’s not as bad as it used to be. Some time before I left in 2000, all traffic other than bus traffic was banned in the city centre, and even busses were banned from Cornmarket. That seemed to thin the traffic tie-ups in the city.
There didn’t seem to be as many busses when I left the city as when I first got there, either–I think the schedules have been cut down.
I don’t think you will need a TV licence. As seosamh said, you only need one if “you use television receiving equipment to receive or record television programme services”. Just watching DVDs or video tapes on a TV does not require a licence.
In the unlikely event that you get raided by the TV Licensing Gestapo, not having your TV tuned to any stations would be enough to demonstrate that you are not watching telly on the sly.
Completely untrue.
If you own a tv in Britain you must have a license.
Even if it has no aerial and you only use it for playing video games you need a license.
The license is for owning a tv, what you do with it after that is regardless.
The license inspectors also have a habit of swooping on student residences knowing that very few will have one.
We were lucky in that the guy that caught us said he’d be back in a week and we better have one by then.
Yes - my laptop (and I believe all Mac laptops) run on either voltage.