Whilst

I never knew that people younger than 110 used this word, but it seems that academics at Cambridge still do.
This place has a pace like no other place that I have ever seen. Yes i've been to the Caribbean, and saw the pace of sun and rum, and been to the Greek Isles and watched the pace of long lunches with Ouzo and grilled Swordfish. Yes i've been to the big apple, dodged crazy taxi drivers under Big Ben's watchful eye and jammed myself into a Greek train.
Cambridge time doesn't run with a watch, it runs with a crazy timepiece known as the Corpus Christi clock, with a huge bug clicking off the seconds, Dr. Seuss style.

First there are the long days of fresher week (really 2) where one party or punt outing leads into another.
Then there is the long day of watching 25 professors sell their wares while you decide which 4 of them deserve your continued attention, and hearing that the lawschool really has absolutely no idea who is enrolled in the LLM, as only each college has that information.
Then there is the realization that university fees for tuition and lodging will be paid in due course, when your college gets around to sending you a bill.
Next is the realization that other than the 8 hours of class, time is basically your own until exams in May next year, with an unbelievable number of distractions that have nothing to do with your course of study, such as incredible history, architecture, lectures, punt adventures, sailing the English channel coastal rivers, debates, readings, music (both classical and jazz/rock), societies from Tiddly winks to the Cambridge Union Debating (Paul Martin and John Howard to name a couple participants), and of course those wonderful pubs with that wonderful cask ale.
The library opens promptly at 9am, and a bell rings for "last call" at precisely half eight, with the lights flickered at 8:50, lights out at 9:00, which is the hour that the college pub opens for business, with its last call at 11:30 with the same bell, bar doors shut at Midnight, every day of the week.
Lunch at Hall is served at 12:45, with the same bell rung at 1:30 to rouse you for to bring your coffee into the parlour, until 2, when classes begin again. Dinner is at 6:45, with that crazy bell at 7:30 and coffee again in the parlour until 8:00. Formal hall which is the gowned and dressed version available Wednesday and Friday has the same starting dinner hours, but sherry is poured first in the parlour, and port and Madeira served after instead of coffee, and again the pub is open right after, with formal diners mingling with the jean cladded non-formalists.
To flourish in this strange laissey-faire world, these people must be and are incredibly bright. They only need to be shown where the books are, and what they need to know, and they get right at it, with plenty of time for socialibility and exchange of ideas. This place has been like this presumably for 800 years and they have it down. Speaking of time, one of my strolls at Gonville and Caius (pronounced "Keys") College lead me to observe the names of the resident "fellows", which included as one of many a "Steven Hawking". Just one of the "guys" around here.

Getting down to it

It's now 12:15 and I am sitting in the law library taking it all in. I have reviewed the reading list for my Family law course, looked at the questions on our first topic, Parentage and I realize that family law discussion topics have changed drastically since when I was last sitting in a Family law course. For example, one of the discussion questions is:







5. Is there an inherent difference between donation of an egg and donation of a sperm that justifies treating the right to know your parent (and indeed the allocation of parebthood) differently?



or

12. Should the parental status of a parent change when he/she changes his/her legal gender?


or

13. Under English Law (and the law of some US states) it is possible that a legal man (i.e. a man who changed his legal gender from female to male) gives birth to a child. Should he be the father or the mother of the child? What about his partner (male or female)?



The readings should be quite interesting.

Just to go backwards a few days, the weekend has been filled with new skills and opportunities.


There did not appear to be any sailboats readily available, only the punts previously descibed and some odd narrow things with paddles sticking out every which way. Having had previous success with the punts, I decided to try the narrow things. Apparantly, these narrow things require that someone actually push snd pull the sticks to make it go, rather than the far more relaxing wind power that I was used to. So with other like minded folk, I have begun to learn to push and pull the sticks in unison. These sticks have large spoons to make the boat go fast. I now know how those Vikings felt when the wind died and they had to resort to splashing sticks in unison. All kidding aside, I had a ball learning this new skill and intend to see if I can get good at it. It sure is good excercise!


Saturday night was the big fresher event, called a BOP. There was salsa lessons, and then a fabulous salsa band. We tried our best with these odd steps, and were about to head home, when Ole, the partying Swedish guy who really wants to be a Dane, invited us to the "after party". When we politely tried to say no, Ole told us the story of driving all over town in a taxi after store closing hours to find cups for his guests, and that we had to come and use them. Ole is a very persuasive guy (the life of the party), so off we trudged to his residence. There were about 60 people in his room, hallway and outside, drinking out of his cups. Strangely enough, the house next door to his residence in this lovely Cambridge residential neighbourhood was for sale! We were one of the first to leave - god knows how late the "after party" went on!

I have been saving the best news for last. We got a Darwin rock/blues band going. Ever since I met Jens, who showed me all his various guitars (including a vintage Fender stratocaster - eat your heart out Geoff!), we have both been trying to put something together, lacking only drums, another guitar and a singer. We finally found some drums in a cellar accesed with a trap door under the bar, Nikon found a great singer (Anja from Germany), Jens found another couple guitarists and had our first practice Sunday afternoon. What a thrill. Our first attempt sounded great, so we have our next practise on Sunday.

Susanne is off for a week, so I am going to try to get ahead on my reading. back to family law!

Here is the Fresher`s week schedule with the events attended by me highlighted.

Classes week 1

Okay - its not just all fun. Today I really missed people at home. Classes started yesterday, and I had to think very seriously about which courses I am going to take, and whether I want to write a thesis. Been to International Criminal law, Comparitive Family law and Jurisprudence, as well as meeting with the seminar leaders in Comparitive Law if I want to do a thesis. The courses have been really amazing so far, but it has been a bit hard to get my head back into listening to lectures and taking notes. My new tablet laptop has been a hit, letting me take notes using a neat program called windows journal.

If I do a thesis, it will be in Consumer law, specifically comparing UK and Canada (Ontario) law with respect to cooling off periods. The first professor that I spoke to wasn't too keen on my topic, but the next one was. I will have to decide this early next week.

On the social front, we had games night alast night at the college. Along with ping pong, we played this crazy drinking game with chugging beer and then flipping your cup over (I was really good at that game) and another one where you had to choose a sign, and then sign each other. Very goofy, but there ended up being about 20 of us playing. Great bonding with my college mates.

Maybe it is all fun. Even the courses. And missing people means that I will be that much more excited and apprecitive of them when I see them next, and that I will return to a rich and fulfilling life when I return. Everyone stay healthy.

Here is another picture for you all, taking a couple minutes walk from our flat. Note the beautiful weather. We`ve had very little rain, for jolly old England!

A great weekend

Last night we had our first "dinner" party. It started harmlessly enough. A pancake breakfast, a walk downtown, and a last look at the Darwin exhibit. Susanne went to a lecture entitled "Lunch with Mrs. Darwin" which was a look at Darwin's life and the personality of his spouse and her cookbook. She was given the last ticket, so I wandered around the museum once again and then headed over for punting at 2pm at the College. It was too crowded, so a bunch of us chose to watch at the Mill Pond Island whilst quafing an ale. Met a fellow student from Owen Sound, who smoked rollies with filters, and a couple of other interesting blokes. We wandered back to the college, and joined in the scavenger hunt. We were suppose to answer a bunch of questions about Darwin College, and it was amazing watching 100 people keenly running around trying to find the answers. We got stuck on: "What was watched on Darwin's birthday?" We thought that there might have been an eclipse or something on Feruary 12, 1809, but alas - nothing of note happened that day. While we groped for that answer, which turned out to be "Zoolander", which was the movie that the film club watched that day this year, other groups figured out the secret clue and won the hunt without even getting all the answers.! Oh well, we should have thought about a trick.

While standing around drinking Pims (a drink popular in England), a bunch of of us decided to go punting. We set off, and then doubled back to grab a bottle of wine from the party. It turned out that it was a privately owned bottle, and the owner chased after us in a kayak. He arrived on a collision course, and we calmly offerred him a glass, which he accepted with a good laugh. This was the first of two acts of piracy that we engaged in this day.

Apparantly, learning to punt has 4 stages:

1. Getting the punt moving, but not likely the direction that you want to go.
   
2. Learning to turn using the pole as a rudder.
   
3. Using the river bottom to turn the boat the way that you want to go.


4. Doing 3. with one hand.
   

I quickly got to 1., mastered 2.., and struggled through 3. Tried 4., quickly went back to 3.

After a beautiful trip past the colleges of Cambridge U., we all decided that we were all thirsty, my friends. We moored off King's College, and ran to King's "private pub" and bought 6 bottles, as we learned to do in the BVIs. Alas, according to our upper year skipper Nikon (a person not a camera!), each college's pubs are for their members and invited guests only, so we had to run and not get caught. A person appeared, who Nikon told us was a guard, and he suggested to Esther, an M. Eng. student that she had to tell the guard that she had to use the ladies to get past. Turns out he was just a bystander, and not a guard, and Nikon laughed at his good folly, and we all joined in. Arriving pirate style with our pirated beers in hand at the moored punt, we jumped in and completed our journey.

We arrived at the college, starved. We were directed by Nikon to the best pizza in town, where we ordered 3. When they were ready, we dashed to our flat with our hot pizzas in hand, and served dinner with limited plates, cutlery and my computer for music. We laughed, drank my last bottle of wine, and concluded the evening at the Darwin pub for a nightcap.

Oh, as you may have guessed, the pictures here are not pictures of our first dinner party. They are pictures of our first formal dinner at Darwin, and the scavenger hunt quiz. Enjoy.

Geting settled

Indian summer has followed us since we arrived. The weather has been amazing. Warm, sunny and perfect for getting to know our new surroundings and putting our flat together.

In the midst of a lot of this activity, there have been some great moments where I have had to pinch myself, as I didn't believe that I was doing those things.

Like punting down the Cam River. I actually got the hang of it pretty quickly.

Like putting on my new gown and walking down to the College for formal dinner with Susanne all dolled up as well. (pictures later).

Like sitting at a pub with my fellow students and being treated like one of them, despite my grey hair.

Like hearing people talk enthuisiastically about attending an amazing Darwin history and art exhibit at Fitzwilliam museum, and then having intelligent discussions about it after everyone had seen it.

Like sitting in the law school and taking in my first lectures, where things were actually pretty clear to me.

Like talking to a PHD biologist about his hypothesis for new DNA findings, or to a Chinese Archaeologist about his controversial findings about the origin of the Chinese people.

Like the thrill of seeing people's eyes light up when I tell them what the heck that I am doing studying law at Cambridge.

I am truly living my dream. Tonight we are off to the first pub night for my LLM class at the Eagle Pub.

Missing everyone.