Returning visit to Oxford, England/Carlos Pueblo
A little bit
more than 3 years since I had had a one day visit of Oxford,
England, I
decided to re-visit the city again. It’s about one hour train ride
with one
transfer from Bristol across the farmland of England. Now I know
that I can
reach Bath Spa, another Roman Ruin, by train instead of bus only.
At the transferring
station, I saw a huge power plant not far away, I thought
that was a
nuclear power due to the shape of cooling towers like the Three
Miles
Island. Actually, it is a plant powered by the natural gas and built by
the General
Electric. This time I got off from the rail station connected
immediately
to the City Center as well as the various Colleges of Oxford.
I mentioned
a girl from Hong Kong, Cookie whom I ran into at the hostel in
Bristol to
the manager. Before finding a job at Bristol, she worked at the
same hostel.
The manager remembered her and thought that she went to
Spain
instead. Cookie has a two years working visa after finish her degree
In Hong Kong
and comes to England to improve her English; however, she
complains
that she rarely speaks to regular British instead of foreigners and
she also
feels Oxford is too small.
I had run
into the internet connection issue immediately. I need the free WiFi
in order to
do my daily routine, checking e-mails , managing my payments,
listening to
YouTube, and checking my time, etc. The manager recommended
one of her
staff to help me. This young man, Louise, is a computer expert started
from playing
computer games and familiar with the software. I was watching him
checking
step by step with a help of his notebook. It took overnight to get it
connected
and failed again within 24 hours. I could feel the anxiety and suddenly
I made up my
mind to change my schedule and cut short my trip by two months.
I used a
desk top computer at the hostel to book a last budget flight back to Austin
on 09/25/2018
and two cities stay, York and Newcastle, for the rest of my itinerary.
I prepared
to face a life without internet connection from then on. Fortunately, the
lab top went
back on connected without his additional work when he checked on.
I showed my
appreciation of him to the manager and she said that they were fortunate
to have him
on the staff. He was from St. Vincent of the Caribbean.
Oxford is a
college town with unique combination of academic, commercial, and
residential combination.
Visitors all over the world are flooded in to visit. I have
circled the
city several times and also marched outside of the city limit several
times, twice
to a suburban parks and twice to a park of swan by a river.
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