In less srs news
May. 4th, 2011 11:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livIn spite of getting home and ranting a lot, I actually had a really great weekend!
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mathcathy kindly gave me a lift to Cambridge on Friday. We had an amazingly clear run and it meant I got nearly three extra hours in Cambridge compared to doing the journey by train. I saw enough of the royal wedding to be able to join in conversations about it, but mainly spent the day walking along the river in the sunshine, stopping at the Green Dragon for lunch, and gossiping with lavendersparkle and her husband. Then I returned to the parents' for a Friday night meal; I felt very honoured to find that Mum had baked bread for the first time since she was ill last year.
Saturday was the excuse for the trip:jack's retroactive MMath graduation. So there was lots of Cambridge peoplewatching, with overdressed folk (many in academic robes) swanning about between implausibly beautiful buildings. The graduation itself was exactly as an academic ceremony should be, plenty of photogenic traditions but reasonably brisk at processing the dozens of graduands. A fair few of them were people I know, including fluffymark Then there was lunch in Trinity, which is a great treat both for the food (and especially the wine) and for the conversation. It's weird to think that was my life for four years, being served restaurant-quality food in glorious old buildings, wearing robes, attending black tie events several times a week, having abstract and erudite conversations with anyone who happened to end up sitting near me. That wasn't the whole story of my student experience, of course, but it was definitely part of it.
We wandered through some astonishingly beautiful gardens to the maths department for the public lectures they were putting on in celebration of the creation of the new MMath degree. It's a real challenge to give 40 minute talks on maths to an audience which is about half serious or even professional mathematicians and about half complete lay people, but the two speakers we caught did a very good job of this. One talk from Carola Schönlieb on using partial differential equations to model interpolating information to restore damaged artworks, and one from Ben Green on prime numbers, always a perennial favourite for presenting maths to lay audiences, but I learned something even though I've heard variants of that talk many times by now.
We waved toatreic and emperor briefly, and agreed to meet up later on for the ceilidh. Twitter informed me that doseybat was in town (yay technology!) so we went to hang out with her and pplfichi in Kings. Really great to catch up with them! The ceilidh was delightful, just slightly less crowded than it sometimes is so there was room to dance. And my virtue in regular gym attendance paid off, I was in much better shape to join in several consecutive dances than I have been in the past. Indeed I was able to keep bouncing until my muscles were tired, instead of having to give up to save my lungs. Two strangers did the "haven't I seen you somewhere before?" thing; the first of them I think was possibly chatting me up but he was friendly anyway.
Sundayjack and I went to my parents' for Sunday lunch. For once we didn't have to rush away straight afterwards so we sat in the garden all afternoon chatting and attempting the Times weekend jumbo crossword. And then I caught a train home, partly because of the annoying edict that says we are supposed to work from home through May bank holidays, and partly because I wanted to avoid travelling on the Monday after the double bank holiday season.
mathcathy kindly gave me a lift to Cambridge on Friday. We had an amazingly clear run and it meant I got nearly three extra hours in Cambridge compared to doing the journey by train. I saw enough of the royal wedding to be able to join in conversations about it, but mainly spent the day walking along the river in the sunshine, stopping at the Green Dragon for lunch, and gossiping with lavendersparkle and her husband. Then I returned to the parents' for a Friday night meal; I felt very honoured to find that Mum had baked bread for the first time since she was ill last year.Saturday was the excuse for the trip:
jack's retroactive MMath graduation. So there was lots of Cambridge peoplewatching, with overdressed folk (many in academic robes) swanning about between implausibly beautiful buildings. The graduation itself was exactly as an academic ceremony should be, plenty of photogenic traditions but reasonably brisk at processing the dozens of graduands. A fair few of them were people I know, including fluffymark Then there was lunch in Trinity, which is a great treat both for the food (and especially the wine) and for the conversation. It's weird to think that was my life for four years, being served restaurant-quality food in glorious old buildings, wearing robes, attending black tie events several times a week, having abstract and erudite conversations with anyone who happened to end up sitting near me. That wasn't the whole story of my student experience, of course, but it was definitely part of it. We wandered through some astonishingly beautiful gardens to the maths department for the public lectures they were putting on in celebration of the creation of the new MMath degree. It's a real challenge to give 40 minute talks on maths to an audience which is about half serious or even professional mathematicians and about half complete lay people, but the two speakers we caught did a very good job of this. One talk from Carola Schönlieb on using partial differential equations to model interpolating information to restore damaged artworks, and one from Ben Green on prime numbers, always a perennial favourite for presenting maths to lay audiences, but I learned something even though I've heard variants of that talk many times by now.
We waved to
atreic and emperor briefly, and agreed to meet up later on for the ceilidh. Twitter informed me that doseybat was in town (yay technology!) so we went to hang out with her and pplfichi in Kings. Really great to catch up with them! The ceilidh was delightful, just slightly less crowded than it sometimes is so there was room to dance. And my virtue in regular gym attendance paid off, I was in much better shape to join in several consecutive dances than I have been in the past. Indeed I was able to keep bouncing until my muscles were tired, instead of having to give up to save my lungs. Two strangers did the "haven't I seen you somewhere before?" thing; the first of them I think was possibly chatting me up but he was friendly anyway. Sunday
jack and I went to my parents' for Sunday lunch. For once we didn't have to rush away straight afterwards so we sat in the garden all afternoon chatting and attempting the Times weekend jumbo crossword. And then I caught a train home, partly because of the annoying edict that says we are supposed to work from home through May bank holidays, and partly because I wanted to avoid travelling on the Monday after the double bank holiday season.