here's an interesting article I just read about a ~70 year longitudinal Harvard study about happiness:
Ive been living the good life. I have no more lectures, only a dissertation due in August. Hence, my daily life consists of trying motivating towards a distant goal (the dissertation), rowing in a casual and fun manner on the Cam with Caius, and living a more social life than ever before.
A couple of highlights:
Cambridge went to race the 8+ at BUCS, which is the British version of the IRA. Cambridge and Oxford usually dont attend, but for various reasons we decided to send a boat with 3 guys from the blue boat, and five guys from Goldie. I anticipated the race with anxiety, thinking that it was a "no-win" situation; we are supposed to be one of the two best University boat clubs in the world. Despite this apprehension, we did manage to win, by seven seconds over Oxford Brookes (not the same as Oxford University). Rather surprisingly (or maybe not) winning is really really fun. Even when you are supposed to win. Here is a photo, taken semi-legally from http://www.naturesimages.co.uk/bucs098desti/pages/_PLU3447.htm:
This past weekend we went on "the legends trip" to Croatia. Phew. Let me just say that it was legendary: Sailing, drinking, sun-bathing, 5 star hotel, poolside, dinner in Tito's old seaside villa, dancing.... on yeah, and some rowing too. The trip felt a little like this, only without T-Pain:
I think we rowed a grand total of 5 km the entire weekend.
A number of the Oxford guys from this year's blue boat were on the trip as well, and relations with them were surprisingly amiable. Probably not going to become buddies with any of them, but it was good to speak to them as guys who have a lot in common with myself.
I realised about half-way through writing this post that it is rather narcissistic and that the details of my life are probably not particularly interesting to anybody except my parents. I would attach some poignant commentary, but I have none. Only that I am very happy, very thankful for my fortunes in life, and feel very blessed. The weather is good, and expectations are high for a glorious spring of May balls, a social life, and all the joys of not training all the time.
nice! hardware ftw, and may balls sound pretty exciting...nothing of the sort down here. perhaps it's a lack of civilization. well, we have college football to look forward to anyway.
ReplyDeletep.s. we wouldn't be reading your blog if we weren't interested in the details of your life. post on!
On the contrary, talk more about the rowing! I'm sure lots of college rowers like myself are reading up after watching you and the others in the boat race. For those of us looking to improve it is great to learn about the stresses and training experienced by a blue.
ReplyDeletePS Watch out for Queens'!