Meeting the Local Member of Parliament

Today, at a buffet lunch in Somerville, I got a chance to talk to Nicola Blackwood, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Oxford West and Abingdon. (She was a doctoral student at Somerville in 2005 but suspended her studies and hasn't come back.) I had promised the day before that I would be civil, and I actually had no problems holding myself to that promise.

She is a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee in the House of Commons, which concerns itself with "the expenditure, administration and policy of the Home Office and its associated public bodies". This entails, among other things, discussion of things like visas and the census. The former is why it was important that I try to get a chance to talk to her, as one student who should have been a frosh at Somerville this year had his visa denied and thus couldn't come this year. (We're hoping he can start here in fall 2011.) Additionally, we have several other students from China who are worried about potential visa changes that might force them to go back to China immediately if they can't find a job here when they graduate.

And, admittedly, I dropped a small hint about what the methods I study could do with things like census data. (I focused on my international students, however, as I want to do my best to try to ensure that they're treated fairly and properly.) Of course, after Nicola deplored the poor quality of immigration data and the need to have accurate census data, my response was basically to promise to list my religion as "Jedi" on the census (which only yesterday had arrived on my proverbial doorstep). She reacted to that with amusement.

I think Nicola's main reaction to me was a combination of amusement and bemusement, though I think I got my point across. And I plan to take advantage of the direct line if there are any future issues with my students' visas. She seems like a very nice person, but I figure that most politicians are charismatic (it's pretty much necessary to have a political career) and it's hard to tell what they actually think, so I'm going to reserve my judgement.

Nicola also gave a talk, after which (unsurprisingly) there were lots of questions from the audience. One of the questions came from one of my international students (because of the whole visa business), and I am very proud of her for speaking her mind.

Unbelievable

About an hour ago, I actually found myself writing an urgent letter of introduction to show the Thames Valley Police so that someone who recently renewed a UK VISA can stay in Oxford. That's quite an indignity to require of that person!

"I detest American television!"

As Lemming alluded in his review, the title of this entry is the best line of the film The Namesake. (Technically, he only alluded to the fact that I think the line is awesome, but the stronger statement holds in spades. This is the second time in a row that Lemming and I have agreed on the best line of a film and also the second time in a row that that line was the best by a large margin.) It was awesome the first time it was used and it became progressively more awesome in subsequent uses/references.

Lemming's review pretty much echoes my opinion of the film, though let me state explicitly that I too was expecting a good film but found a great one. I did find the beginning to be a bit slow (which I think differs a bit from Lemming's view) and while I would recommend the film to all adults, I'm not sure if most children would enjoy the film. I don't think I would have appreciated this film when I was a child and I expect that would be true of many children.

As Lemming points out, there are both very funny and very sad moments in the film. It's listen on IMDB as a comedy first but it's really a "dramedy." I was tearing a little bit at a couple of points in the film, and that's not too common to me. I also laughed out out on several occasions.

A very important component of the film are the experiences of first-generation and second-generation immigrants. I am a second-generation immigrant (is that the right term?), and while I doubt my father's experiences were much like the ones from the film (his brothers and parents immigrated with him, which is very different from the film), it is true that in his heart the US is a distant third to two other countries and that that perspective was made obvious to my siblings and me when we were growing up. Also, as an academic, I've had the chance to meet a lot of people who just moved to this country (and I'll be making a move of my own like that, though mine will be a far easier one) and also know a bunch of people from who moved here at various nontrivial, and I can definitely sympathize with these sorts of issues and trying to preserve some of the old amidst the new.

The film also explores a couple of significant relationships -- between parent and child (especially via first- versus second-generation immigrants) and (in one main case and, to a lesser extent, in a couple of others) between lovers.

It was a very deep, moving, and often-funny film. Go see it!