Fitzwilliam Museum

Backtracking a bit, I visited the Fitzwilliam museum for the first time on Saturday. It's incredible, for sure the best university museum I've ever visited, and probably the best art museum I've visited (so far) as well, although Philadelphia's is pretty good too. The renaissance art collection was impressive, as were the antiquities, but finding myself in a single room with four Monets and a Van Gogh was incredible. There was one Dutch painting in particular that I couldn't take my eyes off, it was so intricate and beautifully executed.

The tour of the Fitz was organized by the "Fellow Borderer" at Johns, a retired professor of Italian and Classics who has created this position for himself, supposedly to serve as a bridge between the fellows and the graduate students, but considering how gregarious the man is, I think it's more likely the main purpose was just to give himself a continuous stream of social events to organize and attend.

Wound up at a fun post-Halloween party afterwards, where among other costumes were "Hawaiian Punch" (a married couple, one dressed as a Hawaiian tourist and the other as a boxer) and "The Van of Life" (a three man costume built around a gigantic cardboard box, representing a food van that sells greasy late night sustenance on market square.

Guy

I spent most of Guy Fawkes day in London for an interview, didn't get back to Cambridge until just as the fireworks were finishing: I saw the last burst of the display, I think, over the train station roof as I was walking down the platform, but that was it. Might have been my only Guy Fawkes day in the UK, too... but mulled wine at the SBR and a late night trip to Gardenia's for a pitta burger solved that problem. Unfortunately, I'm feeling pretty ghastly ill at the moment, but hopefully that will get better over the next day or two...

Corpus Formal Hall

On Friday night, I attended formal hall at Corpus Christi. I was actually a little late, because I was coming straight from the All Souls service at St John's Chapel, which had run over by about 15 minutes. I figured that if any excuse for missing the opening grace at Corpus hall would be acceptable, "I was at church" would work. Corpus has a beautiful hall: traditional, good balance, with lots of pelicans piercing their breasts scattered about. One little alcove has the walls painted blue, with silver stars. The food was good, and a couple of undergrad freshers down the table had their dessert pennied: usually, pennying involves dropping a penny into someone's wine, which they then must down immediately in order to "save the Queen from drowning;" in this case, it means they must eat their dessert without their hands. After Corpus hall, retired to Clare's MCR bar for Scotch, a bit of amateur matchmaking, and an absurd game of stairwell twister in suits and gowns.

Queen's Formal Hall

I attended Formal Hall at Queen's College last night and had a nice time. Free sherry before dinner in the "Q-bar" and a surprising number of other guests: simultaneously, Queen's was playing host to an exchange with Magdalene College in addition to St Johns. There are apparently two halls at Queen's: an old one and a new one, which is much larger. Because of the growth of the college, formals are now held in the new hall, which is huge but very modern and somewhat institutional in its architecture and design. Service was a mixture of "help yourself" (like Christ's) and direct service (John's). The food itself was fairly good, but I had heard that Queen's has a Michelin-star chef so I came in with high expectations. Apparently it's hit or miss, depending which chef has set the menu for each hall. Dessert was tasty, though: white chocolate fudge cake with raspberry sauce, and it was followed by a free glass of port in hall, something John's could learn from! No corkage fee for wine brought in, but there is a limit of one bottle per member of the college. Company was excellent, Queensmen (that's what they're called, apparently) sitting on one side of the table (a married couple, in my case) and guests on the other. Retired afterwards to the Q-bar for some refreshments - at which point I got a phone call from my advisor at 10pm. His first words? "Hello! Are... you at the pub?" Luckily, he was calling to let me know he has approved my thesis proposal - and conveniently enough, I didn't have far to go to celebrate.