Last week, I got the chance to attend a friend Jon's PhD graduation, which was quite an event. Otago makes a big effort for graduations and this particular one had 600 graduands processing down the street led bagpipers and senior University staff finishing with a ceremony in the town hall.
Jon and his family also very kindly invited me to the graduation dinner later and we ended up going to a lovely listed Gothic-style townhouse, converted for use as a small restaurant and B&B. Quite amazingly, it turned out to be called Lisburn House and run by a family from back home! Very impressed and the lady who ran front-of-house was great fun, so if you're looking for a special meal out, I'd highly recommend it.
In fact, "Capping" (that is, graduation) is a big thing here and there are lots of associated events and activities around it, not least the Capping Show, a run of skits, parodies and songs organised by students. It has plenty of offensive bits but also a lot of very funny parts and some remarkably talented performances. Quite a unique experience and amazing that it is largely student organised. In fact, it's been going for 115 years (or something like that) and the Selwyn Ballet has been part of it for 81 of them, so it's got a lot of precedent to live up to each time round!
[Front of the Capping procession. The pipers are clearly visible at the front, with the dignitaries directly following (including the Mayor in the middle) and the PhD candidates coming around the corner in maroon robes. There were about 500 graduands on this particular day, with more students being capped the two Saturdays afterwards) Normally there are a number of motorized floats produced by the different halls but, as a result of the fuss with the Toga Parade, that didn't happen this year]
[Inside Dunedin Town Hall with the graduands filing in. The seats on the stage were used by the academic staff and the Chancellor's chair is in the centre. The term 'Capping' arises as the Chancellor confers the degree by 'capping' each person in turn with a mortar board. (To clarify for Cambridge people, in Otago you shouldn't wear a mortar board until you've graduated, as far as I understand. I'm not sure what the rules are at QUB & UU)]I should probably mention a bit about the maths - it's progressing, hard work but rewarding when it works out! At present I'm coding up a Navier-Stokes solver; for those of you who this means something to, you'll probably realise this could take me a little while, but it's largely an educational process.
In other news, Tutorials are getting very busy - this particular week the College has scheduled in or around 15 hours worth across all the courses we provide extra tuition for, as mid-year exams are beginning next week. All the best to those involved! Keeping me on my toes with markers, room allocation, student coordination and so on. Organisation isn't exactly something I'm naturally talented at (laugh away), so I'm still climbing the learning curve; we're getting there, just rather slowly.
On the next episode: Christchurch marathon (I finally leave Dunedin after 3 months) and some pretty pictures of the first view of the Southern Alps, once I actually get round to tagging the photos.
A final thank you to those who have been in touch and particularly to Mike (very belatedly) & Helen for their postcards!
PS This post has been written over the course of about a fortnight, in which context it may make a little more sense... maybe...
PPS A random picture of scenery, an autumnal day at Uni:
2 comments:
Of course, last week at the top ACTUALLY means several weeks ago. You get the gist.
the pix are great as usual Phil and I am looking forward to the ones of your trip to Christchurch.
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