Email

It's only occasionally, when something goes wrong, that one realises how important email is here in Oxford. The college were carrying out scheduled maintenance work this afternoon, involving a power cut and hence loss of email (run through the central college server). It was scheduled for 2-4 hours from 2pm today. Well, five hours later, the internet's still working (because our off-site flats run through a separate hub), but the email's still down. I don't know if this means power is still off in college - in which case I pity the poor people in the cold and dark - or if they just buggered something up. Either way, the lack of access to my email is annoying. Of course, I have other accounts, but the college one is my primary one - and I don't know how to contact many other people than via their (also not working) accounts... I honestly have difficulty imagining university before the days of email, internet and mobile phones.