Seals and Emblems: Don't Get Confused

There's only two days left till departure on the 27th of September, and there's so many mixed feelings - on one hand I'm really looking forward to my post-graduate studies with all the academic rigour, but I haven't quite crossed the Scharwzchild radius yet into the whole UK experience and all.

Which therefore gives me a lot of time on my hands to give you a brief introduction to the crests and mottos that you'll soon be hearing me chant my days away in Oxford:

Coat of Arms, City of Oxford
Fortis est Veritas - Truth is Strength

I guess Oxford-folk must really like elephants then! Haha! Actually, the black elephant on the left represents Sir Francis Knollys, High Steward of the City, Lord Lieutenant and MP for the County. By the way, the animal to the right is a green beaver - it's not a leopard. And the animal in the centre? Well, it's an ox fording the River Thames!

And John Goddard's the new Lord Mayor for this new year - what's a Lord Mayer you ask? Well, let's hear it from James Morris himself:

"Since 1963 [Oxford] has boasted a Lord Mayor, instead of a plain Mayor,

a distinction which it shares with 18 other English cities and which means,

pomp apart, nothing whatsoever." (James Morris, 1965)

I hope you get the dry humour. It's quite amusing to hear them speak.

But did you know that James Morris became a lady eventually? So I guess it's more appropriate to address him as "her" maiden name, Jan Morris. So Morris now lives with her "ex-wife" in a civil partnership - and no, the UK didn't allow her surgery, so she had to have her sex reassignment surgery in Morocco. I'm not too sure what I should make of this discovery though.

University Seal, University of Oxford
Dominus Illuminatio Mea - The Lord is My Light

So what you see above is the seal of the University of Oxford - did you know the University has a Latin name? It's Universitas Oxoniensis, which well, means University of Oxford! It's the oldest university in the entire English-speaking world!

And of course, Jesus College has its own emblem too, so let's take a look:

Coat of Arms, Jesus College

It's interesting to know that, like those of other Oxford colleges, the arms were not granted or authorised by the College of Arms, but the authority to use them has been gained by length of time. And of course, we have a sister college: Jesus College, Cambridge.

And lest we forget the best institution in the whole wide world, the Methodist institution known as Anglo-Chinese School:

School Crest, Anglo-Chinese School
The Best is Yet to Be and some say The Worst Has Yet to Come

And to educate all of you non-ACSians out there, our school motto's taken from a poem by Robert Frost:

Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be.

The last of life, for which the first was made.

- - - - Robert Browning "'Rabbi Ben Ezra"

So yeah, that about killed half an hour of my time. Toodles!