Making Friends in Oxford

I've been going through another one of my thoughtful phases recently, and I've been pondering the fact that the places in which I have been able to most easily make close friends are first Caltech and now Oxford. I have made a few pretty good friends here, and there is one local with whom I'm especially close who I would put up there with just about anybody I've ever met and as far as I'm concerned is a friend for life. It's also particularly nice for my mental state when I am slaving at work and I get an unexpected knock on my door. The gentle nudging to try to convince me to eat and sleep a little more properly are also much appreciated, and I occasionally even follow that advice. (Our first interaction was kind of interesting, so I certainly wouldn't have predicted this at the time we first met in fall 07. In retrospect, I probably should have, but it's easy to say that.) I know I've been here for about a year and a half now, but Caltech is the only other place where I've met such people on this kind of time scale. (And it's not like I haven't made close friends in other places---my best friend is someone with whom I've been friends for 29 years, and I obviously met him in a different place.)

So then part of the question becomes 'why' have these two places been so good to me in this respect. Obviously, friendships are constrained by opportunity, and I think that's the main key. It probably is true that Caltech and Oxford have more (as a ratio of total people) of the types I like, but it's not like those people don't exist at other places (and I have clearly met several of them in the past). Most of my close friends from Caltech were in Lloyd House and similarly most of my better friends from Oxford are people I know via Somerville. I don't know anybody in the Mathematical Institute that well (it's more of a colleague thing there, though I certainly like my colleagues very much), and I only know one person from the complex systems group at any reasonable level.

The number of good friends I've made here is admittedly smaller than after the same amount of time at Caltech, but I believe that the difference is that back then we were basically all thrown into close living quarters and that is different from my living arrangements here. But here I have excellent opportunities to meet wonderful, interesting people with whom I enjoy spending time. At Cornell and Georgia Tech, I really struggled to do that, and I would literally sometimes go multiple months between going out with other people. (At Berkeley, I just hung out with people I knew from before.) Here I am hanging out with my friends all the time (though, of course, Upper and Lower Crotch haven't been duplicated), so life is good.

I still get moody and even depressed at times, but that's who I am. But a couple of the locals are really looking out for me, so this entry is for you.

(Well, I'm not sure if I phrased my feelings eloquently, but I hope I got the point across.)