The big thing that I was trying to focus on this weekend was the Four’s Head of the River Race, on the River Thames in London.
Last year I rowed for Thames Rowing Club; this year I rowed for my Cambridge college crew (Jesus College Boat Club). The race went okay, but wasn’t spectacular. Our crew had little time to practice together, so the actual race was about our third outing as a boat. A couple of the guys had never experienced the “Tideway” conditions on the Thames, and they were fairly brutal yesterday. (Pouring rain in the last five minutes or so of a 20+ minute race doesn’t make for happy rowers.) But at least we finished without any disasters. It’s a good step toward the real goal of college crews: Lent and May bumps races on the River Cam.
In other rowing news, Cambridge did quite well against Oxford in the Fours Head, winning pennants in both the Elite 4+ and the Senior2 4+ categories. And I’m happy to say that the Thames women won the Women’s Senior2 4+ pennant!
There’s something else I’ve been meaning to mention for a while… it’s a bit of an oddity of our MBA class. In a class of 150 people, there are four couples! (Where both partners are enrolled in the MBA.) The Times did a bit of an article on them titled “Lessons in love for high-flyers.” Note that the Kate and Peter they discuss are not the same as this Katie and Peter.
I forgot to mention that about a week and a half ago Jesus College had a Matriculation Dinner for all of the new graduate students this year. It was quite an affair; black tie with gowns was the dress code. I grabbed a quick picture of the table and table settings. When I saw that each of us had five knives, four forks and a spoon and was a candlelight dinner, it was obvious this was certainly a special Cambridge type of event.
Jed Christiansen 