21 May, 2017, a lovely Saturday with the sun shining brightly early in the morning. We headed to the London King's Cross train station, made world famous in the boy witch fiction Harry Potter.
As you would expect, the real King's Cross station doesn't look like the one in the movie at all. It is modern with a futuristic design.
However, to satisfy all the Harry Potter fans, they designated a small area as Platform 9 3/4, it is really nothing but a sign. Potter fans queue up just to take photos for memory sake, to let their imagination fly wild.
The return ticket to Cambridge cost £16.90 for super off-peak, as today was a Sunday. It seems like the cost for the return ticket and a one-way ticket is the same, so it is better to get the return ticket, instead of just a one-way ticket. You can take any train for your category and class for the day (only once of course), seating is free. The journey is ~1 hour, you can enjoy the famous English rural scenery along the way. It was quite a joy ride.
Cambridge's train station looked pretty new, at least renovated with modern facilities. There are some cafes around too. Good to have sip and recharge while waiting for your train. The town center is about 15-20 minutes walk from the train station. You can take a bus, but most tourists seem to choose to walk.
The day before the trip, we found a free Cambridge Walking Tour at this site. We wanted to go for the 11am tour, so we headed to the Fudge Kitchen right away. It was quite easy to find, just opposite the famous King's College chapel.
Our guide for the day was Joe, an English language student at Cambridge University. Naturally our tour started from King's college, admiring the architecture spectaculars and the long history, with the defining touches by King Henry VIII. To enter the college, you have to pay a fee, ₤9.00 for King's college, cheaper for others. As the guided tour was free, admission was not included obviously. You could visit the college after the tour though.
Just adjacent to King's college, there was this giant Corpus clock. This is a new addition to Cambridge, said to be designed to run for at least 100 years, counting started from 2008 when it was first unveiled. You can find more details about the clock here.
Our next stop was a church-like building. I thought it was just another chapel from another college, then Joe explained that it was the old Cavendish Laboratory, where DNA was first identified.
Cavendish Lab was not even a biology lab in the first place, it was a physics lab. Somehow, the research expanded and somehow, work was done on identifying the mystery of life, and then DNA was successfully identified. Lots of hard work, lots of luck, and the world is just this strange.
Since there is a King's college, a Queens' college became necessary. Our guide particularly brought our attention to the placement of the ' in the two colleges. It is a King's college, the ' is before the 's', signifying one king, maybe King Henry VIII? Although King's college was constructed over the reigns of a number of kings. For Queens' college, the ' is after the 's', signifying this college was constructed upon the efforts of many queens. This is one tiny detail the most people won't notice, or even bothered, while our English language student picked up for our entertainment :-)
There was a wooden bridge across the river in front of Queens' college. Legend had it that it was built by the famous physicist Isaac Newton as a gift to the college. It was built without the use of a single nail. His students wanted to challenge their teacher, dismantled the bridge, but unable to put it back. Newton was furious when he heard of this, refused to help his students to put the bridge back. At the end, the students could only re-construct the bridge using nails, which is what you see today.
Does the story sound good? It was just a myth.
Besides King's and Queens' colleges, we also visited many other colleges in Cambridge whose names I could hardly remember. What impressed me most is their education system, especially their 'supervision' system.
To put it simply, supervision is basically a tutorial session, nothing especial, we have tutorial classes in NUS and NTU too. However, the staff to student ratio at NTU was like 1:20 for tutorial, in comparison, it is 1:2 in Cambridge! You can see a supervision session in Cambridge, Queens' college of a computer science student here. I wish I could get that kind of attention and dedication from my tutor at NTU.
At the end of the day, good education is not defined by how grand the school buildings are, how much money has been spent, it is all about what kind of graduates a university produces. Would your graduates have independent thinking? Integrity? Social skills? Courage?
These are points for you to ponder. Until my next post, bye...
London King's Cross Train Station
As you would expect, the real King's Cross station doesn't look like the one in the movie at all. It is modern with a futuristic design.
Platform 9 3/4
However, to satisfy all the Harry Potter fans, they designated a small area as Platform 9 3/4, it is really nothing but a sign. Potter fans queue up just to take photos for memory sake, to let their imagination fly wild.
The return ticket to Cambridge cost £16.90 for super off-peak, as today was a Sunday. It seems like the cost for the return ticket and a one-way ticket is the same, so it is better to get the return ticket, instead of just a one-way ticket. You can take any train for your category and class for the day (only once of course), seating is free. The journey is ~1 hour, you can enjoy the famous English rural scenery along the way. It was quite a joy ride.
Cambridge Train Station
Cambridge's train station looked pretty new, at least renovated with modern facilities. There are some cafes around too. Good to have sip and recharge while waiting for your train. The town center is about 15-20 minutes walk from the train station. You can take a bus, but most tourists seem to choose to walk.
The day before the trip, we found a free Cambridge Walking Tour at this site. We wanted to go for the 11am tour, so we headed to the Fudge Kitchen right away. It was quite easy to find, just opposite the famous King's College chapel.
Free Cambridge Walking Tour Meeting Point
King's College Chapel
Our guide for the day was Joe, an English language student at Cambridge University. Naturally our tour started from King's college, admiring the architecture spectaculars and the long history, with the defining touches by King Henry VIII. To enter the college, you have to pay a fee, ₤9.00 for King's college, cheaper for others. As the guided tour was free, admission was not included obviously. You could visit the college after the tour though.
Just adjacent to King's college, there was this giant Corpus clock. This is a new addition to Cambridge, said to be designed to run for at least 100 years, counting started from 2008 when it was first unveiled. You can find more details about the clock here.
Our next stop was a church-like building. I thought it was just another chapel from another college, then Joe explained that it was the old Cavendish Laboratory, where DNA was first identified.
Joe, our guide, in front of old Cavendish Lab
Cavendish Lab was not even a biology lab in the first place, it was a physics lab. Somehow, the research expanded and somehow, work was done on identifying the mystery of life, and then DNA was successfully identified. Lots of hard work, lots of luck, and the world is just this strange.
Since there is a King's college, a Queens' college became necessary. Our guide particularly brought our attention to the placement of the ' in the two colleges. It is a King's college, the ' is before the 's', signifying one king, maybe King Henry VIII? Although King's college was constructed over the reigns of a number of kings. For Queens' college, the ' is after the 's', signifying this college was constructed upon the efforts of many queens. This is one tiny detail the most people won't notice, or even bothered, while our English language student picked up for our entertainment :-)
Queens' College
There was a wooden bridge across the river in front of Queens' college. Legend had it that it was built by the famous physicist Isaac Newton as a gift to the college. It was built without the use of a single nail. His students wanted to challenge their teacher, dismantled the bridge, but unable to put it back. Newton was furious when he heard of this, refused to help his students to put the bridge back. At the end, the students could only re-construct the bridge using nails, which is what you see today.
Does the story sound good? It was just a myth.
Besides King's and Queens' colleges, we also visited many other colleges in Cambridge whose names I could hardly remember. What impressed me most is their education system, especially their 'supervision' system.
To put it simply, supervision is basically a tutorial session, nothing especial, we have tutorial classes in NUS and NTU too. However, the staff to student ratio at NTU was like 1:20 for tutorial, in comparison, it is 1:2 in Cambridge! You can see a supervision session in Cambridge, Queens' college of a computer science student here. I wish I could get that kind of attention and dedication from my tutor at NTU.
At the end of the day, good education is not defined by how grand the school buildings are, how much money has been spent, it is all about what kind of graduates a university produces. Would your graduates have independent thinking? Integrity? Social skills? Courage?
These are points for you to ponder. Until my next post, bye...
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