Hello, welcome back to the podcast. How is everyone doing? It's been two months since my last episode, which honestly is probably the longest gap I've had since I started this. A lot of things have happened, a lot has changed.

I'm actually recording this from Hong Kong right now, which already tells you something different about what my life looks like compared to two months ago. So today's episode is kind of like two things in one. The first half is about saying goodbye to Oxford and the end of my first year there.

And the second half is a little intern diary update from Hong Kong, because I've now been here for about three weeks and I feel like I finally have something to say. Let's start from the beginning. So I finished my exams at the end of April and after that I had what I called, I had what I can only describe as the most beautiful, bittersweet final stretch in my first year in Oxford.

Because I had to leave early, which is like two weeks before my term actually ended, to move to Hong Kong for my internship. So while everyone else was still finishing their exams and settling into the imposed exam Oxford summer vibes, I was already packing like my stuff and feeling like, oh this is this is the end of it. That meant I had this very strange, very compressed window where I was just trying to fit everything in.

I tried to engage in a lot of meetups, coffee, catch up, walk, dinner, you know, all these kind of things were crammed into very few weeks. One thing that really stood out to me from this period, I know that this is kind of random but yeah, I met my friend in a concert in one of my favourite artists, they're called Wasia Project. They never, like they're not very big and because I was in Oxford, you know, like literally no artist would come to Oxford to do a concert but they came.

Anyways, I went to this concert and there was this guy standing next to me playing sudoku and I was like, wow, what a guy. We just started chatting. Turns out that he was a visiting student from France, from Lyon.

He's just here for three months and somehow in that one month period time where we overlap, we became like each other's, one of the best friends in each other's life in Oxford. We went punting, we watched the Arsenal versus PSG Champions League final together, which if you know, you know, like that was such a vibe especially. Okay, I'm a city fan and I was watching the game with a bunch of French.

Anyways, it's just so fun. He took me to the Teddy Hall formal, which was genuinely the best formal I've had in Oxford. Their food is class, like you could actually have those food in the restaurant and obviously, likewise, I invited him to come to multiple cable formals and informal dinners as well, informal lunch.

Yeah, we drank together, we went clubbing together, he introduced me to all his other friends and I spent about like three solid weeks pretending that I could speak French whenever I'm with him and his friends, which obviously I cannot, but sometimes we communicate in really simple French. Yeah, and what I love about this is that he's someone that I probably would never have met under other circumstances, like obviously he joins the French society or like he likes rock climbing, things like that, which I have totally no idea about. A random person standing next to me at a concert and then we talked about everything, obviously had to introduce him to the city.

We went to get ice cream after the concert and, you know, we realised that we were neighbours and we just kind of walked back from Calais, which was a solid 40 minutes walk. We talked about a lot of things, we talked about family, relationships, how we grew up, climate change, philosophy, a lot of random chats, a lot of deep chats. Yeah, I'm actually planning to visit him in Lyon this October.

I think friendships like this, short and very intense and completely unexpected, are one of the best things that life can offer to you and I'm really glad that I made the move to say like hello. We also went to watch the Summer Eights together, which is the biggest intercollegiate rowing competition between all the colleges. It was a Saturday, it was good weather, kind of hot, really good atmosphere.

It's like a very Oxford thing to do in summer. One of those days that just feels like it belongs in a montage. And then later of the same day I went to meet one of my choir friends, Victor.

He's from Germany and he's leaving Oxford, he's graduating and he's going back to Berlin. We had a really good chat about life and philosophy because he actually quit. We got close in the America tour back in March, but obviously then that was Easter break and I was like preparing for exams and stuff.

But then he, yeah, he quit choir this time. I guess he's just too busy. He's also really into like filmmaking.

I guess like the pressure of doing a whole film project and writing the dissertation and being highly committed to choir for him, it was just not possible. So he quit and I was like, oh my god, am I cursed? Like all my friends from choir were leaving. Anyways, it was very good that we get to catch up.

I was, to be honest, like a lot of these catch ups were just me trying to push because it was quite difficult for both of us to find a time and we always say like, oh, maybe later, later. But then this later never came, would have never come if it wasn't for me to push it. Yeah, for him, one interesting is that he was doing this film project and he asked me whether I want to join to be one of the actors.

I didn't have to do anything. I just, it was a very short film. It was set in a funeral.

So yeah, I was dressed in black and like, you know, in this cemetery and just trying to look sad, throw a flower to. But yeah, it was a very cool experience because I've never been in a student film. I've been, I've tried like various like things like theatre, play, musical opera in my life, but never, never had I ever tried film.

So yeah, that was a very good opportunity and a thing to get ticked out in my bucket list. Yeah, so that kind of thing is what I mean when I say like farewell season. Every year now, like since I left undergrad, it's become more real, more people leave, more goodbyes that could genuinely be the last time.

Like I had this very strong feeling that people like Victor, yeah, I guess I could visit Germany, I could visit Berlin, but like he's a very offline person. It won't be the same. It won't be that we see each other three times a week, like things like that.