ESD Annual Dinner

Last Wednesday was the annual dinner for the MPhil students and alumni of the Engineering for Sustainable Development programme in Cambridge. It was held in Corpus Christ College - another highly noted networking event.

Professors from various departments

Eskandar catching up with Professor Guthrie

There are currently 29 students this year, a huge reduction from last year. 42 alumni returned for the annual dinner. It was really nice going back to Cambridge after one year. Six of us were from the same batch - Joan, Kyrea, Gareth, Gina, Eskandar and I.

Batch of 2006/07 with Professor Ainger

Cambridge still looked the same. It has to. It has been since 800 years ago. I would be gobsmacked if it turned into a modern city. The roads looked narrower. Cambridge looked so much tinier than I first saw it. The eyes must have been playing tricks trying to readjust to the London scale of things.

Current students adapted our previous performance to their rendition of the "8 months of the MPhil". 8 months? I don't remember it was that short. Still I think our performance was better. At least ours made sense even to other alumni.

Dinner at Corpus Christi Dining Hall

The centre still have very strong links with the alumni. One thing I learned about studying in Cambridge is that we learned a lot from our professors and lecturers but we learned much more from each other. This experience is priceless. Professor Guthrie's profound words so correctly put it that "[people who come to Cambridge] never really believed at first and expected that they'll be told, but later find out that they've learned so much more from each other than they'd ever learn from the staff."

An extract of Professor Guthrie's speech

Coming together and sharing each other's experience in the "working world" reminded us of what brought 198 graduates to do the course in the first place. It was one common objective that brought us together and the change that we want to make for a sustainable future.