Dan and Keiths Visit to Cambridge

I had the pleasure of entertaining my good friends Dan and Keith on 2009-04-04.

Well, they arrived the night before and left the next morning, but truth be told, on those days they didn't see much that hasn't been written about before in this blog.  Saturday was the main attraction. We are very grateful to our heavenly Father for the superb day He gave us. This is what we did on that day.

We started off by climbing the Chapel tower at about 11am.  The small entrance, narrow staircase and spectacular view can all be seen in the photos.  Then we got brunch (all day greasy breakfast) and the buttery which fortified us for the rest of the day.  

We then tried our hands at punting. This was great fun and I feel that I am starting to get the hang of it.  Dan and Keith tried their hand at it too and quickly found some decent form for a first go. I must say, punting is really great and I should do it more often.

After punting we decided to make the best of the great weather and walk to Granchester.  This is a small town about 2 miles South of Cambridge.  The walk is mostly along the river and the scenery along the way is particularly splendid.  Our goal was to have afternoon tea at the Orchards. This is a bit of a tradition when visiting Granchester from Cambridge.  The website will explain why, but suffice to say, who were we to stand in the way of tradition? It was great. All of the confectionery was very tempting but I settled on the traditional scone with strawberry jam and clotted cream, washed down with some hand pressed lemonade.   You eat and drink your purchases on deck chairs in an orchard which is quite beautiful and very relaxing.  The walk back was quite picturesque with the sun casting long shadows over the meadows.

After a short rest and a change of clothes we attended a performance of Handel's Messiah in King's Chapel:

Performers:

Choir of King's College, Cambridge Academy of Ancient Music Ailish Tynan, soprano Alice Coote, mezzo soprano Allan Clayton, tenor Matthew Rose, bass baritone Stephen Cleobury, conductor

Although we were too late and too poor to get sighted seats we still got £5 unsighted seats for the 3 and a bit hour long performance.  An interesting point is that after the intermission we got promoted to sit in the Kings' members only section of the chapel which, while still unsighted, was far more grandiose and comfortable.   The music was sublime and it is essentially sung scripture, it was quite a blessing.

We were quite exhausted after all these activities and crashed pretty soon after that.

That's all folks...

Here is a selection of Keith's photos.

Here are mine.

Wolfson Formal and Cycling in Black Tie

Some friends and I went along to a Wolfson formal which was a great time.

It was a drawn out affair with
1: a white wine reception
2: starters: soup
3: main meal: roast lamb (great) with some not-so-good red wine
4: some mead (it was St. David's day and he was Welsh...)
5: pudding: sponge cake with custard
6: coffee in some other room
7: back into the hall for fruit, port and muscadel

We rounded it off with a tie breaking game of pool in Wolfson's bar/pub/dance room/(well you get the idea). Felix and I won, hurrah! :) It was a great game.

Anyway the real reason for this post is not the formal it is the mode of transport to and from the formal. In true Cambridge style, black tie, with academic gown on a bike! Well, the pictures describe it best. They can be found here.

Ttfn

Mike's Choral Concert

On 2009-03-07 I attended a Choral Concert at Trinity College.

It was held in Trinity's Chapel which is beautiful with two features which were highlights for me. The first was the painting in the sanctuary depicting the Archangel Michael kicking Satan out of Heaven (I think).  The second feature is the engraved names of all the people from Trinity who died in the two World Wars.

Although the evening's focus was the brilliant Choral performance, the Brass accompaniment was really cool. My friend and house mate Michael Luke Jones was singing and it was great to be there and support him.

Here are the pics and a small video.

John's Maths Dinner

This is just a quick post to link my John's Math dinner photos on Picasa.  

It was an evening organised by the Adam's society as the Maths society's formal dinner for its constituents.  The evening started with drinks with our director of studies and then we moved on the to Senior Combination Room, which is the Fellow's private room in which part of D-Day was planned and it is usually only lit by candle light, for dinner.

First Cycle Trip

Well, after class, I should have gone to the library to grapple with string theory but instead the beautiful day beckoned me outside and I decided to embark on my first country cycle trip.

The whole album of photos including a little satellite map of my route can be found here.

I left at about 3pm and got back at about 4:15pm and had a thoroughly good and relaxing time. I obviously took it very slowly and stopped often to take photos and experience the sights. The most remarkable thing was the experience of getting away from Cambridge and getting some good fresh country air. It is worth pointing out that Cambridge is a small town with about as good country air as you can get but psychologically the trip made the excursion seem more adventurous than that. I suppose this is because everything I do on a day to day basis happens within a two square kilometre block. Getting out of that block was great!

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the photos.

Master's Concerts

Another interesting part of my life here at Cambridge are the music concerts at the Master's lodge. They occur 2 to 3 times per term and are held in the Master's lodge which is a large house on St John's College grounds.

The lodge is quite a fancy affair which is an interesting blend of very old and not so old. The rooms can't help but looking very upper crust but the many excellent portraits (mostly of very famous people, including royalty) give the rooms quite a stately/regal feel. The concerts are held in a largish room which seats about 100 or so people. Of course, besides the Master and his guests the audience can be a mixed bag of fellows, graduates and under graduates.

The quality of the music is very high with the resume's of the musicians being quite impressive. Once, musicians were especially flown in for our little concert. Most performances include the piano. Opera singers and violin players have been added into the mix as well.

They generally get it right to organise the evening to coincide with other great entertainment such as dining with fellows and such like (see other posts). This lends quite an extravagant atmosphere to the whole event as everyone is in formal gowns and has already been wined and dined for a while.

After the music there is a wine reception in the entrance hall to the lodge where the guests get to chat and soak up the plush atmosphere. Twice during this reception time, interesting, out of the ordinary events, have transpired. Firstly, I heard that in the cloak room, one could find Paul Dirac's old university gown. Dirac was a great physicist whose theories I am busy studying and underpin much of the great advances of today's high energy physics. And he was a fellow at St John's. Besides looking a tad worn the gown was the genuine article replete with a note from him regarding the storage of the gown while he was out of town. Secondly, the Master decided to take a small group of us on a tour through the rest of the lodge. It was quite and amazing tour with room after room having such a rich history surrounding it. The only detail I can now recall is that on a desk in the Master's study lie William Wilberforce's silver candlesticks, with inscriptions. he too, was at St John's.

I hope these few words record something of the fun and class of the Master's Concerts.

Freshers Fortnight

Freshers fortnight is a week of fun organised by the SBR (the graduate student council at St John's) to welcome freshers (first time graduate students at St John's).

The agenda for this arranged fun was:

Considering classes started on the 8th you can see that no one expects much work to actually happen in the first few weeks. While this might be the case for PhD students (they seem to have more time on their hands than the rest of us), it certainly isn't for me. Hence, my involvement was rather scant after from the 8th.

Well, I will talk you through some of the highlights:

• The reception was in this ancient building called the School of Pythagoras which is supposed to be the oldest building in Cambridge, which is saying a lot.
• The wine reception was amusing for a few reasons:
  1> Everyone's conversations is oiled by wine - sometimes good other times quite funny.  Very few got out of hand though.
  2> Every conversation had the same questions: Name? Where you from? What you studying? What do you think of Cambridge? .... It became quite a cliche by the end of the evening.
  3> I was wearing my half life 2 shirt (well done to those who know what I am talking about) and it was cool because there were quite a few people who recognised it and thus it was a good ice breaker. I am still friends with them. Computer games bring people together I don't care what anybody says! mwhaHAHAHA!
• The tour of the St John's was cool.  We have our own (free) facilities for tennis, table tennis, badmington, squach, billards and a gym.  The SBR also has a TV, Hi Fi , a Wii and a snooker table.  The cinema outing was cool because the people were cool but the movie wasn't to my taste.  Way too liberal and nothing blew up!

This post isn't finished. Yet!  I hope you have enjoyed it so far!