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Sunday, May 10, 2026 - 22:36 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Anglo-Dutch Tour

The Europe trip as informed in the latest post had been to England (specifically, London and its environs) and the Netherlands (Amsterdam - for just a couple of days), the duo of whom have played such a large part in the development of Singapore and its surroundings, as briefly discussed in February. My last trip to England may have been in 2009, but not too much had changed from memory, with the seagulls still patronizing the statues in Trafalgar Square (with a new one freshly installed at Waterloo Place, it seems), as is their custom. After making the rounds of the West End (The Mousetrap, Witness for the Prosecution, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), it would be a short hop to Avebury to take in the second most impressive collection of large stones in the vicinity, and then the dreaming spires of Oxford.

Oxford, or Muggle Hogwarts, has been really leaning into the Harry Potter connection from the merchandise on offer, but it has inspired numerous other literary universes, including Pullman's His Dark Materials, arguably some of Pratchett's Discworld, C.S. Lewis' Narnia, and bits of Tolkien's Middle-Earth*, where he once trod the Merton College Library - famed for its chained books (but really, what did they do?)

Seeing as Oxford has been around for a long time - longer than the Aztec Empire, anyhow - they have accumulated a wealth of eccentricities (i.e. traditions); 800 year-old Latin ceremonies (only recently gender-neutral**) aside, there's the oath taken by undergraduates against one Henry Symeonis up until very recently (A.D. 1827) alongside reciprocal confiscation of spurs, and also the most-anticipated races in the region. Not the rowing against the other place, mind, but the Annual Corpus Christi Tortoise Fair races (human substitutions allowed, and not without scandal - such is the prestige of the event)

The comfiest lodgings for the trip would be at the Raffles London, which is indeed under the same management as the local flagship - if possibly being even more steeped in history, given that it was previously the British War Office building from which Churchill would give his daily morning briefings to his staff during the First World War. Ian Fleming would later dream up James Bond (and locate his MI6 HQ) here, but alas their Spy Bar was closed, so no "shaken not stirred"; we had to settle for dinner in their Drawing Room instead, to the strains of Cohen's Hallelujah - fourths, fifths, minor falls, major lifts.

Oh, and it wasn't Putin that struck London, after all - it was the RMT Union for their Underground train network, on demands over working conditions...

[To be continued...]


[*As a follow-up on Iran's Argonath-inspired poster from mid-April, it had been observed that the statues actually face northward to mark the northern boundary of Gondor, which would make the application to Hormuz (southward) less appropriate. However, since maps from the Middle East originally had south as upwards before the north-up convention became standard during the Renaissance, these Iranian scholars and/or propagandists may well know their stuff.]

[**Which brings us to All Souls College, very likely one of the most-exclusive academic institutions in the world, given that its membership consists of some 89 fellows, and "less than six" postgraduates. It had been male-only until 1981, with an eminent geneticist reportedly protesting the change with his umbrella. As might be implied, their entrance examination is also one of the most challenging anywhere; the two "specialist papers" on a candidate's field(s) aside, there are two general papers (e.g. "write the history of a colour"***), and an very-Zen essay on a single word (sadly discontinued in 2010, but possibly to be reinstated, given the rise of LLMs)]

[***Interestingly, the Chinese gaokao has its fair share of such odd-duck questions too, with an example prompt being "A father is cutting articles out of a newspaper while his child embraces him and says, 'I'm willing to accompany you just like this.'" (yes, that's it). From how every single point on the examination can decide the rest of a student's life - no, not an exaggeration - this feels almost cruel.]



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