This House Believes

I kept pretty busy last week. On Tuesday I wrote a manifesto. Wednesday I was elected to the Cambridge Union Society’s House Committee. Thursday I attended a debate at the Union Society titled, “This House Believes Religion is the Opiate of the Masses.” Friday I tasted chocolate until my stomach hurt and then bar-tended at the Union. Over the weekend, I hosted a visit from a friend, and on Sunday I went apple tasting at the Cambridge Botanical Gardens.

To clarify, the ‘manifesto’ was a one-page flyer (that was restricted to being black and white, devoid of curved lines – straight lines were okay, and to having a single black and white mug shot), which I was aloud to create for my campaign to get elected to the House Committee. I did get ‘elected’ to the House Committee, but it was a lot easier than it should have been since the election was canceled when someone resigned from the committee.

The debate on religion was pretty cool. A member of parliament debated for the opposition, and Prof. Simon Blackburn debated for the proposition. The debate got ugly, but it was nice that my friend PJ, who was in town, got to see the debate from the floor of the chamber.

The chocolate tasting was really cool. I got to taste cacao beans just after they were harvested, after they had been roasted, and in all kinds of chocolate bar concoctions. All of the chocolate was organic and mighty tasty.

The apple tasting was pretty cool on Sunday – people were waiting hours in line to do it. Fortunately, I ran into some friends toward the front of the line and was able to taste the apples without the long wait. The gardens themselves were probably even more amazing than the 50 or so apples that we tasted. Mom and Aunt Alison/Jan will certainly enjoy them when they visit in the spring…

This week I’ve been sick with a very soar/swollen throat.
Tonight, Achmed Chalabi (former President of Iraq) will be at the Union, and on Friday I am meeting with a Fellow (who happens to be a woman) who might serve as my thesis supervisor.

Lots of reading for today…

Hope all is well!

Cambridge Union Society Election

Monday was a pretty exciting day. I spent most of Sunday reading and doing homework and Monday I found out the details on my election at the Cambridge Union Society. I threw my name in the ring last week when the President and Vice President suggested I do so.

On Monday I found out that as a candidate I would not be able to contact anybody electronically to let them know I would be a candidate for election. I also learned that I was barred from posting fliers anywhere that non-Union Society members might see them. In a sense, the campaigning was relegated to calling friends on the telephone. The Union Society had each candidate make a manifesto (a flier), and then printed 100 copies for each candidate -- with each copy having a unique barcode on it so that no duplications could be made. If any candidate were to use any other form of campaign literature, he or she would be disqualified. Needless to say, the restrictions were strict, but not with the aims to be exclusive (as I saw it), rather the society just wanted the campaign to be personal in nature – the rules were designed to force human to human contact.

In the end three people from the House Committee resigned, so I was elected by default (as Homer Simpson would say, “the two greatest words in the English Language. De-fault, De-fault”).

So tonight, I will be on duty at the Union during its busiest night – the all you can eat Ben and Jerry’s night of the year. Tomorrow at the Union, debaters will argue, is religion the “opiate of the masses?”

Meanwhile I will be hosting a friend who will be in town for a few days…

Some pictures

The article, "Troops battle 10-foot marijuana plants," about soldiers in Afghanistan was amusing, but I thought it might be better to actually post some pictures instead. So I replaced that article with some pictures of me in Cambridge.

Some are taken during the annual race around Trinity College's great court -- where Chariots of Fire was filmed.

I had some friends running in the race and it was a good chance for me to stand on the lawn (normally only fellows of the college are allowed to do so).

This picture has King's Chapel in the background. The Chapel is really something from the inside (and as you can see from the outside as well!).

London

London is quite a big city.

After arriving on Friday, I walked from Westminster to the British Museum (stopping in Chinatown for a $10 ramen noodle lunch!). From there, I headed on to the museum to see the Rosetta Stone and other ancient artifacts. For dinner I headed to the University College London to meet an old friend (who's studying the History of the Book at UCL). After a delicious Indian meal we headed to the Tower of London. Since it was Friday the 13th we joined the Jack the Ripper walking tour – a vivid story and tour full of graphic recounts of the first serial murderer in the western world.

On Saturday, my friend Andrea and I walked back to the Westminster area to check out the Churchill museum including the old underground cabinet war rooms. It was an impressive museum -- an astonishing look at the tiny mole hole in which Churchill and his top advisors lived and worked during the Second World War.

Following the museum visit, Andrea and I decided to walk all the way across the city to get to the pier where the Gates Scholars were meeting for an evening boat cruise on Thames. The long walk took us through markets, passed Shakespeare’s famous Globe Theatre, the London Eye (which should be called the London Bicycle Wheel), and across the London Bridge.

As for today, I’m reading, writing, and getting ready for the second full week of lectures.

first entry

This post was written Friday, October 13:


I just got on a bus that’s going from Cambridge to Central London. It’s the first bus that I’ve been on that’s had free wireless internet -- a sign of the times I suppose. It’s my first trip into London and it so happens a friend of mine from elementary school is going to be there as well as a friend of mine from WMU, and a friend that I met while working in Washington, DC a few summers ago.

Tomorrow the Gates Scholars are meeting for our first semi formal event – a boat cruise down the Thames river. The Gates Trust is bringing the Scholars to and from London on a bus, so I decided to go a day or so early to see some of the sites and visit with friends in London and then hitch a ride back on the Gates bus after the dinner tomorrow.

This week has been busy. In fact the entire time I’ve been here (in England) I have been rather busy, but it has been a good mix of socializing, studying, and getting settled in my new home.

My new home is Wolfson Court, which offers predominantly graduate housing for members of Girton College. It is known for having some of the best food on campus and is not too far from most everything in Cambridge.

My department (Land Economy) is mostly housed in buildings that line the Cambridge River – a 5-10 minute ride from home. So far, the classes have been interesting – mostly focused on economics and law. One of my classes is in the impressive new Squires Law Building – a huge architectural marvel on the Sidgwick part of campus.

My classmates are a diverse, and friendly bunch. There is an even mix of male and female students, young and not so young, and there is a good representation from five continents (absent are representatives from Oceana and Antarctica). We have representatives from Nigeria, Brazil, Russia, Japan (2), China (4), Taiwan, the Netherlands, Italy, two other students from the United States (northeasterners), and a couple of students from the UK. I haven’t taken the opportunity to get to know all of my classmates yet, but my friend who completed the program last year said that she suspects we’ll become a close bunch (she’s doing a PhD at MIT now and says that although her new classmates are great, she can’t imagine having a better class than her Environmental Policy class at Cambridge).

My first week in Cambridge I became a lifetime member of the Cambridge Union Society – which claims to be the oldest and most prestigious debate society in the world. My membership provides me with free access to all of the events at the Union Society (including whiskey and wine tasting events, guest speakers, and of course the weekly Thursday night debates), as well as reciprocal rights to attend events at debate societies at Oxford, Harvard, Yale, and many others around the world. The Union is housed in an old building in the heart of town and runs one of the best bars in town, one of only a handful of full-size snooker tables in town (which members can use for free), and the Keynes Library which houses the largest private collection of fiction books in Cambridge.

This week at the Union I enjoyed a special guest lecture from Richard Dawkins (who discussed and read excerpts from his new book, “God Delusion”) and a delightful whiskey tasting event (hosted by a scotch whiskey expert from Glasgow who brought some of the Kingdom’s finest whiskies for a dozen or so Union members to enjoy). Last night, I attended my first debate. The proposition was, “The United Kingdom should scrap its trident missile program.” Six debaters including a British colonel and two members of parliament debated for an hour or so with intermingled comments and questions from audience members. Concluding the debate, the few hundred attendants (and the debaters) filed into the Union pub for a post debate drink and chat. There, a couple of other attendants and I debated the MPs (informally) and discussed the merits of the British nuclear weapons program.

Other highlights from the last few weeks include a pub visit to the Eagle (the oldest pub in Cambridge) where Watson and Crick chose to announce their discovery of the DNA double helix, a beer with another Gates Scholar and new friend who is one of only three PhD students working with Prof. Stephan Hawking, dining at my first ‘formal hall’ – a weekly [three to five course] formal meal open to all graduates, undergraduates, and fellows of each college and held at the college’s formal dining hall.

I still am not able to ride or walk through campus without being amazed by my surroundings – the architecture, landscape, and history that is omnipresent on Campus and around the city.

From the highways of England,

Tristan