GARGANTUAN steps

Monday, December 11, 2006

the graduate

Spending my Saturday in Cambridge proved to be an enriching and relaxing day spent with old friends and new company! I had an extremely enjoyable time with the excellent weather (means that there wasn't any rain) perfect for touring Cambridgeshire. For those of you who don't know, Cambridge is a university city, and is currently third in the entire world's university ranking according to Times, behind Harvard and Oxford. Imperial College is at a healthy ninth in comparison!

 
Cambridge

Meanwhile, my friends, consisting of Gabriel Cher (yes, there's another Gabriel actually studying Medicine in Imperial College), Zheng Yuan, Kenneth and Yun Qin and I left from Victoria Coach Station at 830am for Cambridge and we reached our destination in about two hours. My camera's screen was too cold at first to show anything on display when we first reached Cambridge and I was freaking out, because this was happening so early in the trip, before it actually had begun in proper, but thank goodness it came back fine.There's a long story about how my friend Zheng Yuan couldn't take this bus because his friend (whom I don't know) came late and they arrived 2 hours after us. However, we hadn't travelled far in Cambridge when he arrived because we spent a good hour trying to find the best photo to take of King's College Chapel, which was pretty ridiculous.

 
King's College Chapel
the architecture reminds me of Gondor in the Lord of the Rings

By the way, Kenneth is extremely trigger happy, and he took nearly 50 over photographs just of King's College Chapel alone, and a lot of other photos that just interested him and he was forever lagging behind, but just like me, we like to get the most beautiful view. 


King's College

King's College is suppose to be the most magnificent of all the colleges. To give a better insight on colleges, it's where students reside in, not where they study at. This is where their life revolves around. Behind the colleges is the River Cam which is where people go punting (basically, using a stick to propel the boat by applying a force to the river bed)


Me and the River Cam


Clare's College

We then went to meet my friend, Trysha, who was going to graduate with a Masters from Cambridge! That's the main reason why we were there, though we only saw her for a while. She's a graduate student in Imperial College now doing Medicine.


Me and Trysha with the market as the backdrop

Anyway, we met up with Zheng Yuan finally and his friend became our tour-guide, thankfully, or else we wouldn't know how to manouvre our way around. The maps were quite expensive, and we weren't really sure what the tourist attractions were. Here are a few, with interesting stories behind them too!


The Bridge of Sighs

Two myths were told to me with regards to this bridge and its name. One was that this was the bridge students crossed to receive their results, thus its name. Another is that it was the only way for the female and male students to meet and it was shut at a certain period of time, and that there were sighs heard once the bridge was closed at a certain period of time because they couldn't get to meet each other.


Cavendish Laboratory
where Watson and Crick built the DNA double-helix model


The Eagle
where Watson and Crick fretted upon the structure of DNA


The Mathematical Bridge

Legend has it that Newton built this bridge without any nails, and that a student with itchy fingers dismantled it and couldn't fix it back, so they had to reconstruct it again with nails this time.

The Roman Mound in Cambridge was where the Romans built a castle in Cambridge. However, after they left (speculated by my friend and I that the standard of education was too high for them), the Queen allowed the stones from the castle to be use to build the various colleges, leaving the mound behind.


Me atop the Roman Mound in Cambridge

It was an enjoyable Saturday spent away from work! Would have love to have gone punting, but I suppose it'll happen sometime in the near future. It's only one week left till the end of school, and the start of Christmas holidays! And I am just aching to go to Rome! Hope you guys back home are having a great time as I am too!

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posted by Gabriel Yan at 6:40 AM

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