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by Sam Aaron.
Original Post: Cambridge
Feed Title: Communicatively Speaking
Feed URL: http://sam.aaron.name/feed/atom.xml
Feed Description: Sam Aaron's blog. Here you'll find interesting discussions on matters such as communicative programming, domain specific languages and music.
As some of you may know, Susanna, my wife, has recently started a Ph.D. in Bioethics at Cambridge in the Centre For Family Research. I’m so wonderfully proud of her and it’s fantastic to see her applying her mind to something that’s both interesting and challenging for her, yet ultimately valuable for us all as a society in times ravaged by technological progress. However, it was very difficult to deal with the fact that we would be reduced to fleeting weekend visits; islands of togetherness in a silent ocean of isolation.
So very luckily, Innovation Factory the company I work for, are fantastically understanding about this and have agreed to let me work remotely one week a month from Cambridge. I really feel proud to have such caring colleagues to support me with this arrangement.
All of this means I spent last week living and working back in England from the (then remarkably pleasant) climes of Cambridge.
I have only ever briefly visited Cambridge before this stay, so only managed to get a glimpse of the condensed beauty it offers. Even compared to Amsterdam it is a tiny city, and like Amsterdam it offers wonderful architecture, a rich cultural history and an affinity for cycling. Although don’t get your hopes up too much - this is still strictly an English city and its cycling offerings are only relatively better than those available elsewhere in England - all of which pale in comparison to the facilities here in the Netherlands.
However, what I hadn’t experienced until last week’s visit were the people Cambridge attracts. Having trained as an academic, I have certainly met my fair share of interesting people endeavouring in a wide range of exciting studies. Cambridge has a wealth of such endeavours. Yet, what sets those I met in Cambridge apart is that they’re not only interesting, they’re interested. I have some strange and obscure ideas about the communication of process especially when I apply them to the context of music, yet I found no shortage of people readily wanting to listen and discuss them with me. I found this overwhelmingly powerful. Here there were people not only capable of working in their own field but also free and willing to explore other areas and able to combine and contrast concepts from wildly different contexts.
I’m really looking forward to my next visit and if anyone reading this happens to also be in Cambridge, I’d love to meet you for a coffee one morning.
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