Dear Friends:
With my family safely headed back to the U.S., I made my way back to Cambridge. I will spend the rest of the week here, as my company is hosting a huge event. We call it the ARM Partner Meeting (APM), where we bring over 500 of our business partners to Cambridge for a series of presentations, talks and demonstrations. It's a big event, and over 500 ARM employees attend from around the world. I am lucky enough to be one of the ARM representatives this year.
I took the train up to Cambridge and spent the late afternoon walking around town. I found several interesting things during my stroll. First, there is a tiny, fledgling food trailer business emerging here. This is about all I could find of it:
I'm still holding out hope for these little guys. I have no idea when they're open. Near the center of town, I ran into an outdoor market. Such an amazing display of produce, bread, clothing and trinkets:
I could go on and on about the bread, here in Europe. Anyone will tell you that even the most ordinary bread is quite a bit better than in the U.S. It's delicious, and I'm glad I don't live here, or I would eat it all day:
Nearby, I ran past this statue, dedicated to the Cambridge lives lost in WWI. Recently, I have studied a bit about the first World War, and I'm just now understanding the size of the impact that it had on the UK, as well as the rest of Europe. I'm sad that it's taken me this long to really study what happened 100 years ago:
After a good night's sleep, I proceeded to a special series of meetings with Google, the day before APM really kicked-off. These meetings - as well as much of APM - takes place in one of the fanciest colleges at Cambridge University. I can't tell you how cool this setting is, especially when my days will be filled with endless business meetings. Let me show you what I mean...
The Google meetings took place at Claire College - one of the oldest colleges at Cambridge. It was founded in 1326! It's simply gorgeous. Here's a picture of one of the inner courtyards at the meeting location:
As for fancy - after lunch, they served everyone these little gems:
Here, they're called profiteroles - basically cream puffs drizzled in 72% Belgium dark chocolate sauce. I'm really roughing it....
This building was located on the other side of the River Cam, from all of the buildings that I showed you in a previous post. Walking from this location, back across the river, is such a glorious experience. Along the garden path, you can see the beautiful King's College Chapel rising in the distance. In front of you is the river, with punting boats lazily drifting by:
Continuing to move forward, I entered the Great Courtyard. A little older, but classically beautiful:
Since Claire College is located adjacent to King's College, you can see the spires of King's College Chapel poking out over the top of the courtyard:
But wait...it gets even better.....
The town of Cambridge isn't that big. There just aren't that many hotels inside the city limits. When you invite over 500 partners, combined with a busy tourist season, there just isn't any place to put all the visiting ARM employees. The solution? House them in the empty dorms inside one of these colleges. Usually, that wouldn't be that great. However, we're talking about some of the most prestigious institutions in the UK. They managed to put me in the King's College living quarters. To give you an idea, here's the entrance to my little dorm:
And here, folks, is the dining room where I'll be staying for the week...
It's a rough life, but I'll take it ; ) The regular dorm rooms aren't anything special - what you would find at many older universities. Because I'm a more senior person at the company, they put me on the top floor of the living quarters. My dorm has two levels - including a loft. It's pretty amazing for just one person:
While impressive, there are some drawbacks. That bed is TINY...I don't even think it would quality as a "single". There's no TV, which is also fine. I guess I'll have to actually read a book ; ) Also, there's no air conditioning - which is definitely a first-world problem here in the summer. Being on the top floor, things are already a little warm. I can handle it ; )
The inner courtyard, outside my room, looks like this:
I'm surrounded by gorgeous Gothic architecture...and I love it. The detail on some of these buildings is incredible:
As you can probably tell, I'm just a little excited about what's around me. Hopefully, all of the meetings and presentations will keep me from wanting to sneak out and explore more of the area ; ) On the next post, I'll probably wrap up the trip to the UK and include some pictures of the APM demo area. That's it for now.
Thanks for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment