Extravagance

While Bangkok is very cosmopolitan, there are still some luxuries less available than others, and I have indulged in a few of these luxuries since arriving in Oxford. The first extravagance was a bottle of whisky: I had never heard of BenRiach which, although a Speyside whisky, is heavily peated and happily lacks the sickly floral-scented sweetness of most Speyside whiskies. There is a whisky shop on Turl Street (bearing the rather cunning appellation of "The Whisky Shop") whose proprietor is a Scot named Nick. He is quite knowledgeable about whisky and rather crucially, he is enthusiastic. I think he is one of the few people in the world lucky enough to be employed full time in a job he enjoys, and it is a pleasure buying whisky from such a person if only to encourage him to continue.

My second indulgence is books. Call it a conceit, but I think there are probably only a very small number of places in the world where it might be possible to walk into a bookshop and purchase a Sanskrit Dictionary (Monier-Williams' 1899 edition). While it may be possible to order one in most bookshops from a catalogue, it is less often that one finds such a book sitting on a shelf expectantly awaiting a purchaser. Blackwell's on Broad Street in Oxford is one such place. In an era populated by Border's book shops (usually well-organised 5-storey affairs), the size of Blackwell's is less surprising than in former ages. What is still surprising is how the nondescript shop front hides a number of impressively large reading rooms, each accessed by means of equally nondescript staircases or doorways.

http://whiskyshop.com
http://blackwells.co.uk