Return to Cambridge

After graduating last June, I vowed that I wouldn't be one of those grads who sneak back on a regular basis and basically never leave. And although homesickness - uni-sickness? - did set in around October as idyllic punting and college snaps returned in force to my various social media feeds, I somehow managed to put off my own triumphant return until this month. (We're not going to mention that afternoon back in February when I caved and went back to see my friends for tea and cake in between various freak-outs in the Careers Service Library. Shh.)

One of my very first ventures on this blog was a post about my college's annual formal to mark International Women's Day - a particularly special event as we're a women's college. When the invite for this year's formal landed in my inbox, I didn't need much persuading. And neither did my best friends.

Roxy and I arrived back in the 'Bridge just as the sun was beginning to set, casting a golden glow over King's Parade and Market Square. This is the thing about Cambridge. Even on a rainy day it's stunningly pretty, and an unsuspecting visitor would never associate it with the agonies its students go through (I'll just put it out there: two essays a week and at least five or six 3-hour exams in one week at the end of each year.) I actually felt my chest start to hurt as we arrived in town, which I'm going to chalk down to residual stress palpitations (!)

I'll probably never get over how gorgeous King's College is. I mean, look at it. Ridiculous.

On your left, ladies and gentlemen: Senate House, the scene of my graduation last June. Time and its tendency to fly really does scare me sometimes!

Although when we gathered for formal in the Dome, it felt as if no time had passed at all.

Murray Edwards has stepped up its formal game. And I'm not complaining. (Free alumnae dining rights, y'all.)

Photo courtesy of Clare Cotterill

To start...a salad of purple potatoes, sprouting broccoli and polenta with an avocado dressing.

And for our main, sweet grilled red mullet with chakalaka. I personally thought chakalaka was the part of the egg Norman from the Great British Bake Off advocated removing, but apparently it's an African spiced bean and pepper compote. Yum.

The day before International Women's Day also happened to be Japan Day. Our college is partnered with Tokyo's Kaetsu University and has a Japanese cultural centre attached to it, so we were treated to a brief interlude of Japanese hip-hop dance while we waited for dessert. The dancing definitely brought out my inner East Asian fangirl, nurtured during my Oriental Society days at school and something of a secret since then...

And finally, dessert! Continuing the Land of the Rising Sun theme, we were served honey Castella Cake, a type of Japanese sponge, with mango and passion fruit sorbet, coconut cream and grilled mango slices. This one knocked it out of the park. Easily one of the best desserts I've had at Murray Edwards formal (or any other college formal), the flavour combinations were right up my street. It reminded me a little of a refined version of Thai khao niao mamuang, minus the glutinous rice.

No trip to Murray Edwards is complete without a visit to see the resident college beetles.

In first year Imarin and I got in a tiny bit of trouble for running down here after dinner and taking selfies astride the beetles (endless hijinks with the college art were had through our years at college, I tell you) - totally unaware that there was a CCTV camera fixed on us.

Photo courtesy of Clare Cotterill

We're obviously waaaaay more mature five years down the line...

Photo courtesy of Ran Huo

Cambridge, it's been fun. Let's do it again soon? 

Thank you to Murray Edwards College for providing a delicious New Hall Society formal! It was so lovely to have an excuse to see some of the ladies from my matriculation year group and run around college like an undergrad again. I'm already looking forward to next year! 

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Graduation

So...that's it. I'm officially a university graduate! 

(I guess that also officially makes me unemployed, but we shall not speak of that. For now.)

Over the course of my graduation, my family, being the good Asians they are, took hundreds of photos. Definitely about 600 upwards. So I've whittled the photos down for the sake of this post, but there's still loads, so hold on tight. I'm about to take you through the process of graduating at Cambridge!

At my college, Murray Edwards, graduation is spread over two days - one day for rehearsing the ceremony and taking photos, and one day for the real thing! So I'll take you through Friday first. In the early afternoon, we made our way to college to pick up our hired hoods from the porters' lodge, and then went into the gardens to take pictures.

Unlike other universities, Cambridge has a strict dress code for graduation. Both sexes wear white shirts with the boys wearing special white bow ties, then girls must wear plain black skirts or trousers and black shoes. Students receiving bachelor of arts degrees don a white furry hood (faux fur of course, but in the past it was real fur), masters of natural science wear light purple, and masters of engineering a saffron hood.

Next we practised having our hoods pinned to our gowns to avoid the 'off the shoulder' look, as demonstrated by me in the top picture.

Once pinned, we headed to the entrance of the building to show a little college pride.

Next was more picture-taking, to no one's surprise! Excitingly, I was allowed into the Fellows' Garden for the first time in my four years at the college.

Next we had the year photograph, and then lined up to rehearse the ceremony process. While being briefed by the praelectors, the masters of ceremony, it transpired that they could speak Latin. Fluently. Because the entire ceremony is conducted in Latin...Of course. (Oh Cambridge).

During the rehearsal there was a sudden sharp bout of very heavy rain, but then the sun came out again - typical British summertime weather, right? So we started taking photos again. I think I intruded on a special moment between Gwen and Sana...

And as the only art historian in the year, I felt that I had special rights over the Barbara Hepworth sculpture in Orchard Court. Probably because very few other students actually know it's a Hepworth...

In the evening we changed for dinner and were treated to a champagne reception in the Fellows' Garden again. I may or may not have gotten very slightly tipsy. It wasn't my fault, my glass kept getting topped up...! 

For the final event of the day we settled down in Dome for our last ever formal. We were served a prawn and crab cocktail starter, rack of lamb for main and a cream and summer berry pavlova for dessert which came out on a bar that rose up from the centre of the room - very exciting! There was also freely flowing wine...Guess who accepted the offer of free white wine with alacrity?

After dinner was tea and coffee in the bar and the chance for me to play with the college sculptures a bit more. In first year we got in trouble for sitting on these, but this time, as fully fledged finalists, we didn't get stopped when posing with them! Full of formal food and very happy, I walked home with my housemate to get some shut-eye before the big day.

Saturday came all too quickly, and my family arrived in town early. Cue a hurried cycle up to college, changing into my gown at superhuman speed, more photos and a pep talk before the procession.

In name order, we filed out of college to applause from our proud families and walked down the Backs for our last walk through Cambridge as undergraduates. I felt myself well up a little at the cheers and smiles from parents and passers-by but (somehow) managed to hold it together.

Finally we arrived at Senate House and waited anxiously to be allowed in. The wait was mercifully short, and next we were standing inside the building watching fellow students walk up to receive their degrees. Heart thumping,  I had to force myself to breathe when my name was called. A kneel and a bow later, I was officially Tamsin Lim, BA Hons. (Cantab.)! 

Upon receiving our certificates we leave Senate House through the Doctor's Door in Senate Passage. I couldn't stop smiling, and my heart was still beating as quickly as a rabbit's. Thanks very much to Clare Cotterill for taking this photo of me after shaking the Senior Tutor's hand!

Family have to stay inside Senate House until the end of the congregation, so in the meantime we took lots of joyous photos. Everyone was so happy - we couldn't stop hugging each other, and to add to the glee, my lovely housemate Arsha had bought us all chocolates and balloons. I couldn't help feeling that the idea that four years boiled down to one piece of paper was totally surreal.

I just need to learn how to spell 'blood' with my fingers and I'll be all set for the West Side. Or something. 

Ghetto girls of Murray Edwards. 

Finally the congregation was dissolved and my family came out to congratulate me. I felt quite emotional, especially when my parents admitted that they'd shed a tear or two when I went up to the President to kneel and receive her admission. 

We were lucky that the weather held right until the end of the ceremony. It began to rain a little as we were wrapping up, and then once back at college there was a thunderstorm, complete with torrential rain and lightning! Some might bemoan such frightening weather, but I felt that it was dramatic and passionate - the perfect way to end my time at Cambridge. Plus I love petrichor.

It feels strange and a tiny bit sad to think that now I'm a graduate, I won't ever go to lectures or supervisions again, or cycle around Cambridge as a student. But I'm immensely excited too. I've moved back to London for good now, and I just can't wait to see what the next chapter of my life will hold...

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Dissertation Binding and Dino Chocolate

I'm very happy today. Why? Well, because yesterday, I went to Tottenham Court Road to get a certain text printed and bound.

That's right! After weeks - months - of griping and grumping, my undergraduate dissertation is finally finished! I've sworn I won't look at it at all now - I like to think it's been bound and gagged. I actually had a nightmare last night where I agonised over writing 8,139 words instead of a nice round 8,140 (yup, my subconscious is that lame). Must remember that it's out of my hands now.

Sadly I'm not in much of a celebratory mood despite having finished, as I now have to throw everything I have into revising for my exams, which are a fingernail-biting mere six weeks away. While these will be the fourth set of examinations I've taken at Cambridge, they're the only ones that actually count towards my degree. Faaaantastic. So I've even asked A to change my Facebook password. Desperate times, desperate measures. With that in mind, I probably won't be able to devote the time to blogging more than once a week for now. I know it was very silly to start a blog in the middle of finals...But hopefully from June onwards I'll be back to my adventurous ways.

Here's a couple of lovely links that were thwarted from appearing in a Clickable Adventures post due to binding-related preoccupations.

• Recipes for bookworms who fancy themselves as foodies. 
• A collection of artworks curated specially for the characters of Moonrise Kingdom. 
• Incredible salted caramel cups. I'd like a little tub of these to keep on my desk.

I also wanted to wish everyone a happy Easter, Passover (or just a plain old happy weekend!) I was lucky enough to receive a Jurassic-themed Easter chocolate this year from best friend Jess (c/o Choccywoccydoodah). A and I have eaten his tail and many of his Smartie scales and think he's great. I was incrediblymildly obsessed with dinosaurs when I was little. My life ambition aged seven was to be a palaeontologist and my favourite thing in the world was the Diplodocus cast in the Natural History Museum foyer. I was so dino-crazy that I managed to ruin my parents' manicured little garden one soggy day by digging a load of mud up and crafting several piles of Jurassic Park-style, erm, excrement. Parents were not best pleased. Anyway. Fifteen years later, diplodocid-shaped chocolate still presses my buttons. Jess clearly knows me well! <3

Congratulations to everyone else who's finished dissertations this week, and lots of love to those still agonising over theirs. It's a long hard road, but you're so nearly there! If you're still working on yours, let me offer you a piece of advice that my mum came up with earlier this month. Think of your dissertation as a house. If you're still in note/research stage just start putting together the foundations - lay down the floorboards, construct the walls, get the windows put in. Once that's done you can start to prettify and worry about the details. You can plaster and paint those walls, put in some light fittings and carpeting, furnish the place, and clean up. It might seem unfathomable but my thousands of notes finally came together into a dissertation after months of stress, and so can yours! The moment you see the final product in front of you, printed and bound with a lovely shiny cover, is a very special one indeed.

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We're all mad here.

Let me introduce you to the bane of my life. It's nightmarish. A constant source of guilt. An insurmountable mountain of Himalayan proportions that I haven't even begun to chip away at. This monster is my dissertation - a 9000 word thesis worth 28% of my final grade, which I'm writing on  the paintings of Édouard Manet, widely credited as the father of modern art. 

Lent Term has just ended, so I'm spending the bulk of my time holed up in libraries, clutching books which may or may not help me in my quest for knowledge, generally looking desperate and ungroomed. Cutting to the chase, I haven't got a lot of time to embark on adventures at the moment (though when I get a moment I want to tell you all about my foodie weekend in London!) For now, though, I just wanted to share the best book title I found while digging through the stacks of the University Library for Manet-related texts yesterday.

Yep guys, you read that correctly. Rebel in a frock coat. 

REBEL. IN. A. FROCK. COAT. 

Nope, I can't take Manet seriously any more either.

Soooooooo. My sense of humour may have become a little skewed since I started spending all my time with books. Or perhaps mild insanity is symptomatic of Oxbridge/University life. Ah well... *Dives back into sea of books*