I was surprised then when the Tall South African called at 8 AM, and I probably did chat to him for a bit too long, hence missing my intended departure time by about 15 minutes. Which would turn out to be crucial when I arrived at the bus stop just as the bus was pulling away. Nooooooo!!
Okay, but the next one was due to arrive in 15 minutes, so not too bad... Except it never did, and I ended up standing out in the pouring rain for over 40 minutes waiting for the next bus. I seriously felt like crying. At least once I finally got on the bus and texted the Tall South African about my predicament, he called and chatted to me for nearly the entire journey to cheer me up. So that made me feel better.
When I arrived in Oxford, I quickly signed the card that I had forgotten to give to the Young Dutchman yesterday, and met him at the Oxford Playhouse for the TEDx conference were going to. I love TED conferences, and so had been very excited when back in March of last year, the Young Dutchman had announced he had gotten tickets for the two of us. Finally, the day was here, and I was so excited to go!
Each talk was limited to 18 minutes, and each of the speakers were truly brilliant. I sat furthest in the row, with the Young Dutchman to my right, Kellogg Boy to his right, and Canadian Balliol Guy at the end, given that he'd arrived late (despite having been in Oxford, and I was coming all of the way from London!) Kind of amused me, as back to my point yesterday about the two of us having the weakest friendship link, it was like we were perfectly ordered in our friendship strength.
The first speaker spoke about "The Rise of the Different", noting how similar the original G7 countries were to each other, but how different the BRIC countries were from each other in all matters except economic size. After all, Russia, India and China deal with unstable political situations from their neighbours, whereas Brazil does not. Or how Brazil and Russia are net energy exporters, while India and China are net energy importers. And overall, while their GDP is high, their GDP per capita remains low. Apparently India, with a population of 1.1 billion, has the same number of diplomats as New Zealand, which has only 4 million people! Definitely an interesting talk that gave me quite a few things to think about...
The next speaker was an absolutely crazy lady who wore some truly nutty outfit, and I didn't really pay attention to what she said because I was so focused on her insane outfit. Really it looked like a clown's costume.
After that was a woman who I think was speaking about power and different generations, but in truth it just seemed like a bunch of random topics strung together. It reminded me of this XKCD comic about giving a talk with a bunch of random slides that didn't actually relate to each other at all.
The best though, was this guy who described himself as a "Mathemagician", doing "Mathemagics". He'd actually already done this as a recorded TED talk, but we got to see him live! I was so impressed, it was hilarious, astounding, and just totally magical. I was laughing and having my mind-blown, all at the same time.
We then had a lunch break, so we went to the Covered Market to the Pieminster, where the Young Dutchman spent most of his time talking to some random girl that was tagging along with us (how did that happen?) and so it really was just me talking to Kellogg Boy and Canadian Balliol Guy. Canadian Balliol Guy wasn't too perky, but I noticed at one point that he adjusted what looked like a small pager at his waist. It looked to me like a diabetic insulin pump, which made me wonder if he was perhaps diabetic? Which would explain his ups and downs at times...
We then returned to the conference after lunch, where we listened to a guy talk about the prospect of human extinction, which was kind of random, and I have to admit my attention was wandering. We'd rearranged ourselves, so now this time I was at the end of the aisle, next to Kellogg Boy. Again, with Canadian Balliol Guy furthest away from me. Interesting.
Next up was a guy who was CEO of his own tech company who talked about the weird team bonding events he'd taken his team on. Like one was going diving with sharks without cages, to teach them about how scary overwhelming problems were, but how good you felt about taking them on when you came out the other side. Or, when some people on his team weren't getting along, he took them to the Ice Hotel, where people had to sleep in pairs for body warmth, and accompany each other to the bathroom. Well now, that's one way to force people to get along! Or when trying to convince his team of the importance of early sales to drive the rest of the year, he took them all bobsledding in Lillehammer, to show how a big push at the start made such a big difference throughout the rest of the race.
Then some lady came on and talked about having different identities on Facebook to preserve your privacy, and they showed a TED video of a talk by Malcolm Gladwell on basically how cluster analysis was invented, to realise that people liked different kinds of spaghetti sauce, rather than one universal type of sauce that everybody loved.
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| The Young Dutchman checking his phone in the audience |
Finally, we finished out with a guy who played some pieces of classical music and talked a bit about classical music, and his attempts to undo the image of it as being "serious". To make his point, at the end he sat down and played a classical piece that actually had us laughing, which I think shows the ability of a good musician to really relate emotionally to his audience. It was truly remarkable.
We then went and had a coffee break, where once again we were joined by some random girl that the Young Dutchman knew, while Kellogg Boy and I talked about the virtues of orange creme soda. We were a bit late returning to the talk, and then had to sneak in right at the start of a talk by some guy who had started his own farm run by students in high school. Kind of random and interesting.
Next up was a woman who had founded MakeLoveNotPorn.com, and was talking to us about all of the differences between porn sex and real sex, and the entire business model of the venture. Of course, for this one I was sitting next to Canadian Balliol Guy, the one of all of them I am least comfortable with, and the one who probably still somewhat regards me as female and attractive. We normally often meet eyes and share inside jokes, and had been doing this throughout the day, but for this talk he didn't meet my eyes once!
Then they showed a recorded TED talk by Dan Gilbert, speaking about happiness and choices. Which is basically that we're actually happier when we have fewer choices. Most interesting to me was when he talked about an experiment where they put people through a photography class, and at the end allowed them to make prints of their two favourite pictures, but then keep only one. Half of the condition was told that their choice was final, whereas the other half were told they could change their minds for the next week. Turns out that while most people thought they'd be happier in the condition where they could change their minds, most people were actually most happy in the condition where their choice was final. Less choice was good. Later on when we were talking about this at dinner, we hypothesized that this is why married people are actually happier than single people (choice has been eliminated), and why Kellogg Boy is probably the happiest of all of us, having been in a relationship for the past seven years.
We ended with a talk by a marketing guy, who gave the most random talk of all, moving among topics like how Methodists don't tend to become terrorists, and how religion serves as an important social organiser in our lives. Or why it makes a lot of sense for Dutch people to learn English, but not a lot of sense for English-speakers to learn Dutch. (This made us all laugh quite a bit looking at the Young Dutchman, our case in point). Because you will have few people to practice with (the Dutchman will have many, as all of his friends will also be learning English, while few of the English-speaker's friends will learn Dutch), and his Dutch will only become useful when it is better than the Dutch person's English. Hence, not usually really worth it.
Or he talked about how wine is one of those things that is of variable quality and price, yet we still accept it due to the social norms that dictate we should like it. Or how social norms can create behaviours, like the Minnesota zipper merge, or the designated driver. Simply by naming a behaviour, we can create a social norm for it, and therefore it becomes established without even any proscribed enforcement. Overall, really interesting talk which I truly enjoyed.
After the conference ended, we went outside, where we found the Young Dutchman had pigeon-holed the last speaker in a chat on the street. We joined in, listened to some of his pontificating, and I actually made a funny point about how research from OK Cupid shows that if you want to know if your date will have sex on the first date, you should ask them if they like the taste of beer. That got a good laugh from the crowds, and the guy really engaged me at that point, because I think that unlike many of the others I'd actually contributed something interesting rather than just talking for the sake of it. Yet soon after it was time for us all to go, and so we bid him farewell, and started to head off to dinner.
At this point we noticed that the Young Dutchman was talking to yet another girl (the third of the day, you will note). Kellogg Boy and Canadian Balliol Guy seemed perplexed as to where these girls were coming from, and yet she seemed to be coming to dinner with us, so we didn't protest and had her along. We decided to go to some Asian restaurant, and the Young Dutchman sat next to the girl and talked to her the entire time. It was really comical, as every time we tried to break into their conversation, we got nowhere, as the Young Dutchman so quickly closed the two of them off into their own conversation again. Yet later when we teased him about it, he insisted that he had not been hitting on her. Which made me wonder, "Does he not even realise when he's doing it?"
Regardless, it meant that the entire dinner was really just a conversation between myself, Kellogg Boy and Canadian Balliol Guy, which was good as we talked about some of the talks we'd seen that day, and I felt like Canadian Balliol Guy finally started to open up with me a bit. We talked about sex, and how Canadian Balliol Guy had recently slept with a friend of his, and what that meant, and how we all felt about the talk of the "MakeLoveNotPorn" woman.
Unfortunately, that interesting conversation got sidetracked by Kellogg Boy and Canadian Balliol Guy having the most boring discussion ever about the fundamental differences between Islam and the Judeo-Christian tradition, where Kellogg Boy mostly argued about semantics and definitions, just with a lot of bluster and being a very bad arguer. Bored the heck out of me, but I couldn't seem to drag them off of it to something more interesting, and learned that this is how they usually argue.
After dinner, we decided to go for tea at the Turl Street Cafe, which had been called "QI", in my day. It was really nice actually, with a roaring wood fire, people reading, and Phillip Glass music playing in the background. It was funny, as when the random girl (who was still with us), left to go to the bathroom, the three of us turned on the Young Dutchman wanting to know what his play for her was. At which point he became utterly outraged that he was not hitting on her. Again, is he totally delusional, or what?
Still, the three of us decided to sit on hard chairs (or at least Kellogg Boy and Canadian Balliol Guy did), so that we could put the Young Dutchman and this girl together on the couch, snuggled up with each other. Surprisingly, Canadian Balliol Guy absolutely insisted that I take the nice, big comfy chair, in quite a gentlemanly move. As I often point out, I think he is the only one of the three who still remembers that I am female!
Finally, everyone was heading out, with Kellogg Boy and Canadian Balliol Guy heading to some drinks reception, while the Young Dutchman was going to go for drinks with this random girl. (Not hitting on her, eh?) And I was going to go home, back to London. So I helped Kellogg Boy tie his bow-tie (it's one of my few skills in life, being able to tie bow-ties on boys, as I love real hand-tied bow-ties, and I often find the boys need help), and then said good-bye to Canadian Balliol Guy, who was leaving for Istanbul on Wednesday for a month.
In the end, the Young Dutchman and this girl walked me to my bus stop, with her holding his arm the entire way. When I later teased the Young Dutchman about it, he just smirked and assured me he hadn't slept with her in the end, but in the way that implied he hadn't kept it totally innocent. Really some days I wonder, am I the only girl he's never slept with? Seriously, I'm starting to think I am... But he seemed to be happy and having a good time, and so quite cheered after an excellent day, I gave him a hug good-bye, and went off home.
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