Formal Hall at New Hall

Yo ho, me hearties, you ho!

It's Saturday evening. Sameer is off to the big TV room/combination room thingy (I must take pics) and I am here in W105 updating my blog after having a 47 minute video chat with my parents over Skype. I think it totally blew their cap but maybe, just maybe it was worth it. Kudos to Razia for letting me have that light bulb moment, and to the Magic Peeps for giving me incentive to get it sooner rather than later. Not that we ended up using the webcam to chat to them, since we unexpectedly ended up going to formal hall with Janine at her college. Also, I hear there was that pesky blackout in Cape Town as well.

Oh, so about my parents and the Skype video call. I smsed them and told them to log on to Skype but I didn't tell them that I had a webcam, then they called and I started the video stream and they were SO shocked! It took about five minutes to calm my dad down. You should have heard them. They were going "I can see you! I can see you jaan! I can see Sameer too! What's this? What's going on? I can see you!!!" :D It was so great. They were SO happy. They couldn't get over it. My dad kept saying that it was such a miraculous thing and he couldn't believe it, it was as if I was there with them. So yes. I like technology. :)

Anyway, formal hall. Right, it's a tradition here at Cambridge and at Oxford and some other older universities in the UK as well. Wolfson has it twice a week - on Tuesdays and Thursdays - but we haven't gone yet, although Dianne Quarrie (Sameer's liaison person) has really encouraged us to go. They say its formal so I was always worried about what to wear. And at Wolfson, they are quite traditional and wear robes to formal hall, so it's been quite daunting. We've just opted for the usual dinner in the clubroom on those nights.

So Janine asked us to go to her college's formal dinner last week already and we said yes but then she got ill and we forgot. Well, she forgot too but anyway, she remembered on Friday afternoon and called us up. We did a hurried dress up - Sameer in his suit and me in my black pants and top - and got a taxi for New Hall. (Ferzana, you'll be happy to know, I wore both the taupe pumps and the foetsek earings as well.)

When we got there, we were sort of milling around the New Hall entrance hall, near the porters' desk, and saw lots of young people who looked like they were going out to party. The girls were wearing short, shiny dresses and high heals, and the boys were all in dark suits. Janine and Mervin arrived and she whisked us off to one of the rooms. I think it's the grad room or something. Think of a parlor, with carpets and chairs upholstered in floral prints, dark, heavy furniture and low lighting. There was a waiter looking guy offering people juice, wine, port, and sherry. People were standing around and chatting for a long time. Janine introduced us to more of her MBA friends. Then the waiter guy knocked on the door to get everyone's attention and made an announcement. "Ladies and Gentlemen, dinner is served".

We were lead to the dining hall, a large round room with artwork hung at intervals, a brightly lit dome of enormous proportions, six long tables laid with silverware. Someone rang a gong and everyone stood, then they said a short prayer in Latin, and we sat down. People started pouring wine from special bottles labeled New Hall and chatting. After a while, the waiters came out to serve us.

Like wow! Okay. It was totally different from anything I've been to before. I so wish I had taken a camera with but I'd read that it's not allowed at formal hall so I didn't take it with. I was so upset afterwards because there were loads of people taking pictures there. Of course, nobody was wearing robes and there was no "high table" (reserved for senior academics) either so I guess New Hall has a very informal formal hall and that's why they let you take pictures. *sigh* Oh the regret.

Oh, and the food - fantastic. Well, I'm sure my mum, Nadia or any one of my aunts and cousins could have cooked the same but it was such a sight better than the Wolfson food!

The more mature tables - like ours with all it's MBA people - were fairly subdued in our conversation. We talked and laughed quietly. But there were tables with younger students, and lets just say, they were smashed. I think the 30 people at our table drank about six bottles of wine between them. At the next table over, a group of ten girls polished off the same amount. Towards the end, the lights dimmed, and people started catcalling. Then the waiters came out with a birthday cake that had a huge sparkler burning in the middle. Everyone cheered, and then a slightly drunk woman got up on her chair, tapped a knife against her wineglass and gave an incoherent speech. People laughed and clapped. It was funny but it also gave you this feeling that everyone there knew each other and that there was a sense of community among the students.

When dinner was over, we retired to the Middle Common Room, that being the common room reserved for post grad students. (It's all about the hierarchy here.) We had to walk through the building to get there and again, there was just more and more art everywhere. Janine said yes, New Hall has a really impressive art collection and they're really proud of it.

The Middle Common Room is like the big TV room here at Wolfson, just a lot more modern. Leather couches everywhere, wooden coffee tables, a TV, and a kitchenette with posh, silver appliances. Everyone mingled and chatted. Sameer and I felt a bit odd because we didn't know the people that well but they were all really nice and good spirited. Though maybe that had to do with all the port they were drinking.

Apparently what usually happens after formal hall at New Hall, is that everyone drinks copious amounts of port and then they play Sing Star. (Yes, there's a PlayStation attached to that TV and all - I mean all - of the Sing Star editions.) Well, Sameer and I had coffee and for some reason Sing Star didn't happen (awwww) and then they ran out of port and decided to go to the New Hall bar to find more alcohol. So, facing the prospect of standing around and watching people get more drunk, we said our goodbyes early and called a cab for home.

Well, I must say all the traditions surrounding formal hall are very impressive. It's almost like being in a movie or a fantasy novel, I tell you. What was also nice about it was that we got to see more of another college other than Wolfson and got to see what the traditions at New Hall were like. But I also think we got kind of a one-sided view of it. There really were very many young people there and most of them were there to party. From what I've seen of people coming out of Wolfson's formal halls, there's less drink and more talk.

Mpumi, one of Sameer's classmates who did his Masters at Cambridge, says that formal hall isn't actually about the food (or drink) but about the company - you get to meet the fellows of the college and all the serious academics. I'm told that if you sit next to people you don't know, you'll get to meet and engage with some very interesting people that you wouldn't normally talk to. I guess like most things here at Cambridge, it's all about networking with the right people. So, in light of that, we're quite excited about going to formal hall at Wolfson.