Oxbridge

Yesterday was the annual Oxbridge athletic competition between Judge Business School (of Cambridge) and Said. It was much less intense than MBATs, which was nice, and the weather was perfect. There were 15 athletic events that took place, of which Oxford won 8. The day started with an upset (for Oxford) in football and concluded with Oxford taking the punting competition, which included "participants" who sat in the boats and were required to finish a bottle of wine during the race. Somewhat similarly, we won the petanque competition at MBATs, during which time the regulators of the competition informed our petanque teams that they would be disadvantaging the other teams by refusing to drink pimms. Of course they promptly agreed to drink. I suppose these wins indicate that we do well in competitions that combine social drinking with sustained coordination.

After the competitions concluded we wandered around Cambridge a bit, which is less of a town than Oxford but very beautiful. There is much more open, green space, particularly around the colleges. As we were walking along the river path that led from the sports fields to town we passed the rear entrances of several colleges, including Trinity and King's, both of which were enormous and had huge lawns. We even ran into a family of ducks and stopped to feed the ducklings.

We then went to Judge for drinks and to St. John's College for dinner. It was nice to have some time to meet our colleagues at Cambridge and share stories. Near the end of the night two MBAs, one from each university, jumped off a bridge into the river. They survived and we promptly returned them to Judge to get cleaned up. Overall it was a great day. Many of us were saying that the schools should organize an Oxbridge event per term.