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
Monday, March 9, 2009
Saturday, March 7, 2009
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.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
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.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
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).
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 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!
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Arrival
I moved to Cambridge on Saturday the 27th of September 2008.
We hired a car and two kind friends helped me and my stuff get to Cambridge. We left at some hellish hour (before 6am). It was a gloomy affair because even when the sun did rise it was choked by thick mist for most of the day. Pictures of the trip can be found here (if you have access).
After navigating our way here (GPS rocks!), I got my keys from a kind porter and went to go and see my new abode. But the keys didn't work and I had to go back to the porter to get a new set. I was happy with my room but not at the prospect of unpacking everything.
After my friends helped my lug all my stuff into the room we went for breakfast at a little French place called Cafe Rouge which treated us to an awesome breakfast. My friends bade me farewell and I promptly fell asleep on my bed!
A awoke to unpack and fix my room. My friend who gave me the tour in August came around, we did some shopping, watched a movie on my PC and thereafter I retired to get a good night's sleep to face the new day and all its possibilities.
The next day I got to meet some of my house mates. Most of which are new graduates like myself (ie: freshers). Two of my house mates are long standing Johnians and one of them took us freshers on a bit of a tour around Cambridge and also to some shopping centres to get some supplies or overlooked necessities. During our tour we went to a church service at King's chapel (it was a Sunday after all). The choir was great the the chapel was quite pretty. After that we went punting and I can see how, in the summer months, this will be a great retreat from the pressures of academic life. I was fairly good at keeping the boat straight and eagerly await opportunities to get better.
The next few days were full of getting supplies, sorting out administration (of which there seemed to be a never ending deluge), socialising with my new house mates and just generally finding my feet. One really pleasant aspect of St John's is the buttery. It's our canteen and an example of the food they serve can be found here. The prices are low but the quality is high.
The real stuff started on the 1st of October with the official start of term and the freshers week of fun organised by the SBR (graduate society in St John's).
We hired a car and two kind friends helped me and my stuff get to Cambridge. We left at some hellish hour (before 6am). It was a gloomy affair because even when the sun did rise it was choked by thick mist for most of the day. Pictures of the trip can be found here (if you have access).
After navigating our way here (GPS rocks!), I got my keys from a kind porter and went to go and see my new abode. But the keys didn't work and I had to go back to the porter to get a new set. I was happy with my room but not at the prospect of unpacking everything.
After my friends helped my lug all my stuff into the room we went for breakfast at a little French place called Cafe Rouge which treated us to an awesome breakfast. My friends bade me farewell and I promptly fell asleep on my bed!
A awoke to unpack and fix my room. My friend who gave me the tour in August came around, we did some shopping, watched a movie on my PC and thereafter I retired to get a good night's sleep to face the new day and all its possibilities.
The next day I got to meet some of my house mates. Most of which are new graduates like myself (ie: freshers). Two of my house mates are long standing Johnians and one of them took us freshers on a bit of a tour around Cambridge and also to some shopping centres to get some supplies or overlooked necessities. During our tour we went to a church service at King's chapel (it was a Sunday after all). The choir was great the the chapel was quite pretty. After that we went punting and I can see how, in the summer months, this will be a great retreat from the pressures of academic life. I was fairly good at keeping the boat straight and eagerly await opportunities to get better.
The next few days were full of getting supplies, sorting out administration (of which there seemed to be a never ending deluge), socialising with my new house mates and just generally finding my feet. One really pleasant aspect of St John's is the buttery. It's our canteen and an example of the food they serve can be found here. The prices are low but the quality is high.
The real stuff started on the 1st of October with the official start of term and the freshers week of fun organised by the SBR (graduate society in St John's).
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