Mansfield is filled by portraits of English dissenters, the Puritans who were ejected from the Church of England in 1662. I had always wondered the relevance of those 60+ portraits to the college’s history, and the link between Mansfield and puritanism (and, to a certain extent, Oliver Cromwell) had eluded me for the longest time. …
Category Archives: Oxford
Truth
I remembered our RF engineering lecturer Dr Steve Collins lamented at us, “You lot are going to be bankers, aren’t you?” And yes, many of my peers did end up working for Goldman Sachs or J.P. Morgan. Thankfully I didn’t become a banker, and yet I didn’t practice as an engineer also, a decision I …
Punting on Cherwell
Suyash and I enjoying Pimms with Izrin on the punt along Cherwell. Circa 1997.
The Oxford Angst
Colin Wood had said to me more than two decades ago – You won’t learn much about engineering here, Khai. Not as much as you would if you had gone to, say, Imperial College. But you will know that you don’t know. And you can (then) find out (about what you don’t know). Or, more …
Five Mathematicians
Because as Tim was wont to say to me, “What’s an engineer but a failed mathematician?”
Gentle Regrets
Like Scruton at Cambridge, at Oxford, I was socially estranged, but spiritually at home.
Mechanicks at the Universitie
By the late Alastair Howatson. Shipped from a used bookstore in England, now in our family library for posterity.
Suyash
On my deathbed, I’d regret letting true friendships to atrophy over time. I’d only known Suyash for one year (he came to Oxford from Bucknell as a visiting student), but we were close as any brothers you ever knew.
VIII
One day I shall scull the choppy waters of Cherwell again. One day.
History
I’m now a proud custodian of these three important records of Mansfield College history–Mansfield College, Its Origin and Opening by Robert William Dale et al. (1889), The Life of Andrew Martin Fairbairn by William Boothby Selbie (1914) and Mansfield College, Oxford: Its Origin, History and Significance by Dr Elaine Kaye (1996). There’s something reassuringly immutable …