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.

Kitty missage

I miss this one a lot. Can picture her sitting on the window seat here, giving us that "Cuddle me" look. :(

Rainy Thursday

It rained today in Cambridge, and I had to cycle through it. That was an adventure. I think the wind was worse than the rain. You get all wobbly on your bike when a strong gust comes along. The rain just makes you soggy and you get this steady drip, drip off the tip of your nose. I was off to temporary employment agencies to see if I could get some on and off office type work to fill my time with 'til we go to Chicago. The proficiency tests took a while but by the time I got home they called to ask if I was interested in doing some office admin for the council in Bar Hill so it was worth it. We'll see how that turns out.

Anyway, I've been storing up some pics for the past few days and meaning to post them when I had some time at the computer, so here they are.

Okay, remember in one of the previous posts I mentioned the cornerstones at Wolfson? Well, here are some pictures. At Cambridge, they always make a big deal about not stepping on the lawn. People just don't walk across the grass, so it always grows thick and green. Now, according to one of the porters, who gave Mpumi a lecture when he set one foot on the lawn, the university has found that though they don't walk across the grass, people always cut corners. They don't like to walk in straight lines with 90 degree angles. If there's a corner, the will cut it and with repetition that usually kills the grass, like this. (See the corner of the lawn.)

So, anyway, their grand solution to this was the following - a triangular shaped paving stone, placed on the corners of each patch of lawn, or wherever there is a 90 degree turn in the path. With this in place, people can cut corners, and not affect the lawn. Maybe not such a great story but the way the porters tell it, it's a really big deal!


Anyway, more pictures. Here's one of a squirrel that lives in the grounds of Wolfson College. Well, I don't actually know if it's the same squirrel each time but I somehow think it is. This one is really brave and a bit nonchalant about people. I've seen him sit near the bike racks and watch as you struggle to unlock you bike, or sit in the path and watch as you go by. I got this picture only after following him up the path and towards the tree. He'd scamper forward a bit, stop to look at me, then scamper forward again. He eventually climbed about a meter or so up the tree, and then just stood there, vertical and Spiderman like, watching me until I walked away. I was only a few steps away from him at the time.

Oh, and then last night (or was it the night before?) we went to the clubroom and played Scrabble with the Sainsbury peeps. Except for Molebaleng, none of them had played Scrabble before so we had to explain the rules and so forth. Well, Sameer played and I just watched but it was fun except when we knocked a juice bottle over the board, that wasn't so good. Now it has a distinctly mangoey smell when you open the board. And then we played pool for a while.

Here's one of Kings Way in the late afternoon. I had to pull my bike over to the side of the road to take it and even then it didn't come out so good. It was all just so golden and glowy that I had to take a shot.



I also took some pictures of the market because, well I really like it there. The first is of a mum, with one kid in a baby seat on the back of her bike (don't know if you can see it so well) and another kid cycling alongside her on his little bike, with a big flag sticking up from the back of it so cars can see him. It's amazing how families get around on their bikes here. I've seen mum's cycling with a toddler in the kiddy seat at the back and the baby in a baby seat in the front. It's hectic! I'll try to get a picture of one of those bikes if I see one parked anywhere. They also have this other mechanism where the kids bike attaches to the back of the parent's bike so it looks like a tandem bicycle with a big and little part. And they also have this thing, it looks like a motorcycle sidecar except that it's attached to the front or back of a bicycle, and usually a parent rides the bike, and they put two kids in the sidecar, which has a plastic cover with little windows in it. That's also quite nifty. But, I keep thinking, that this only works safely in a place where people who drive cars respect and give way to cyclists and pedestrians.

Anyway, here are more pictures of the market. The first is of the little stalls in the square that constitutes the market. There are real shops, chain stores and such, on the streets that surround this, and even a little indoor mall. But the market stalls offer anything from fresh bread to flowers and plants, second hand books and clothes, spices, bags, and bicycle repairs. The second picture is of some bicycles (including mine) parked against and chained to the bars that surround St Mary's Church, which borders the market on one side. When I took this picture, I'd had my first experience of having to ride in circles looking for parking for my bicycle. That was novel. I couldn't help being amused by it. Also, another thing I find really interesting is the posters that people tie to the church gates with bits of string. They go all the way around the church, just like the bikes, and they mostly advertise plays, operas, or music recitals put on by the students at venues around town.



So anyway, here we are. I'm all out of pictures. The weather says it will be a minimum of -2 tomorrow and a maximum of 2 degrees. So Sameer's decided to stay in all day except to go to Jumuah. And I'll probably do the same, lie in bed with my book, a cup of coffee and copious amounts of biscuits.

Laa la laa

Couldn't come up with a better title. :P I don't have an awful lot to blog about. I was going to make an interesting note about the flagstones around the grassy patches in the college but I forgot to take some pictures so it probably wouldn't work out so good.

Meanwhile let me leave you with a few other updates.

Yesterday I took a walk along "The Backs". This is a part of Cambridge where a number of colleges, which are situated side by side, back up onto the River Cam. It's really a lovely area because there's the river, with a number of bridges crossing it, areas that look like pastures, and also the colleges' private gardens. Some of these are labeled "Fellows Gardens" and some are "Scholars Gardens". Neither kind is open to the public. I'm not entirely sure what the difference is but obviously, there is one. :P

You can get more information on the backs here.

Here's a picture that I took from a bridge behind King's College.



And here's another that I took, also from the bridge. It's of two guys punting down the river. They're going in the direction of Clare College, which is next to King's.



After I'd done strolling along the Backs, I considered making like a student and sitting down for lunch in one of these richer colleges. But I chickened out. (Sad...) I guess I'd rather wait until I had some accomplices. I know the students here all go around eating at different colleges, not only for a change in menu options but also just to see what the different colleges are like, but as I only have a lowly visitor's card, and am not even myself studying here, I don't feel that secure going alone. At least if I go with a bona fide student, it'd be more legit.

Anyways, when I got home, I did - what else - but read my book. The Subtle Knife was really good!

We saw on one of the noticeboards that there was going to be a quiz night in the club room and thought we'd go take a look. We asked the other Sainsbury peeps if they were interested but nobody much was. So we went alone and found a handful of people sitting around talking quietly while a lone guy up front spun some tunes. A few more people arrived but still, there was nothing discernible going on. Okay, we should have asked the DJ guy what was going on but we were a bit shy! So, under the pretense of buying Pepsi and making conversation, we ended up asking the guy who was manning the bar. Sneaky sneaky! Anyway, he said that basically it was a bunch of different categories that you answer on paper in groups of 2 to 10, and that the best team wins a prize. He recommended that we just join a group. So after listening for a bit and finding that we really could answer some of the questions, we did join a group. Two guys sitting on their lonesome. Turned out they were both medics - one was from Cyprus and the other from Bulgaria. I can't for the life of me remember their names. (I think one was "Yevoli" but I can't be sure. The other name was something very Greek sounding.) Anyway, another Medic, Chris joined after and it turned out that the DJ guy, Mark, was also a Medic.

So, we answered the questions, and then there was a swop of papers, and a marking thingy and guess what? We ended up placing second - only one point behind the group that came first! The third place group (of about 10 people) got a box of chocolates, second place got six ₤4 vouchers at the bar. (Yes, I know that was a Lira sign but Sameer did something to the keyboard and now I can't find the Pound.) First prize was a couple of bottles of wine, which wouldn't have been much use to us anyway, so I guess that one point was for the best.

Unfortunately, the vouchers were only valid for that night. Realizing that we probably wouldn't be able to use all of it in one sitting, we offered them to the other guys but they said no thanks, that we should go ahead and use it to stock up on munchies. So off we went to the bar and bought as many smoothies, J2O (juice), chips, and chocolates as ₤8 could buy us.

And here's a picture of the stash. We've been slowly working our way through them since. ;) I think we'll be back at quiz night next week again.

First weekend in Cambridge

Today was our first Saturday in Cambridge. We were originally supposed to go to London today but were invited to a soccer match by Janine so we went to London yesterday and opted to stay in Cambridge for the weekend.

We woke up late - 9am. I was slowly going about my dressing and brushing regime when I got Razia online and we started having a Google-chat. I ended up running late and we had to hightail it to the high street shortly after.

We popped into a few shops to try to find ski-gear. We eventually bought ski-pants from a place called Milletts. They were the cheapest we could find at about £25 each. To get a pair that fit right, Sameer ended up buying the same pair I did - a ladies size 14. Hopefully no-one will be able to tell the difference on the slopes! I freaked him out a bit when I said I saw a flower but it ended up being a fairly nondescript snowflake shape. :P

Then we went off to find the Tattie's that I'd eaten at the first day. We got a bit lost, and found another Tattie's that was on a much more boring street and that didn't have quite the same feeling of coziness. So we wandered around a bit more till we found the right one. But I bet the next time I try to find it, I'll get lost again.

Oh, and I also took the opportunity to take some pictures with our new camera. Here's one of the town, taken from just outside Tattie's. Note how there's loads of people walking along the cobbled street, no cars, a cyclist just past, a couple with their kid in a pram, some people with shopping bags, a tourist with his backpack, little shops on the sides, and the spires of a college in the background. Typical Cambridge! (I'm in love with it.)

Then we went back to Sainsbury's to get sugar and powdered milk since we forgot to get those when we got our coffee the other day. And we went to Marks & Spencers to buy some mugs (50pence each!) because the cups in our room are too small for us mug-people.

And then we cycled back home again. We took the opportunity to take a picture of me cycling. Note how I'm balancing three packets there between my basket and my little rear attachment thingy that I don't know what they call. :P Maybe I'm just not that experienced at it yet but I say carrying all that stuff makes you a lot more wobbly on the bike!

So we came back home and had coffee and biscuits (yay!) while I updated the blog and checked mail etc. Then we got a call from Mervin, Janine's husband, and heard some shocking news. Apparently Janine fell ill very suddenly last night and had to be taken to hospital. They took her to hospital and ran a battery of tests with no result. She was sent home with morphine! We felt awful but Mervin said they were optimistic as the tests at least ruled out anything obviously damaging. Perhaps it's an ulcer or something like that. We hope.

So Mervin said we should go off to the soccer match after all. Janine actually wanted him to go as well but he said he wasn't in a spectatorly mood. Mervin came to fetch us and dropped us at the football stadium which was on the other end of town. We were introduced to some of Janine's MBA peeps, barring another guy, Tim who had broken his arm this morning in another football game. But we didn't end up chatting to them much after.

We sat in the stadium and watched Cambridge United play Altrincham FC. Not the most exciting game in the world but still fun. We could totally understand how people become wrapped up in sports this way. There was cheering, jeering, and chanting. Altrincham played poorly and Cambridge were always in control of the game. The scored once in the first half, and then in the second half Altrincham pulled even after a shocking error on the part of the Cambridge goalie. There were some poor tackles, high boots, and outright fouls. Sameer almost got hit in the head with a football that got knocked into the stands but the guy standing next to him deflected it at the last moment. Our lives flashed before our eyes. Then one of the linesman got hit in the head with a ball. The crowd teased him relentlessly, as they did an Altrincham player who ran into one of the uprights. With moments to spare, Cambridge turned up the heat and scored the winning goal. The crowd went wild. The players piled into a heap on top of the goalscorer. My comment at the time - Whoopee-lê. By the time the match ended, the sun was setting and the sky was on fire. We took a bus back into town, and started the long walk back to Wolfson.