Today, Malaysian society(Msoc) had auditions for its annual Malaysian night(MNight) event, Imperial Msoc's MNight is supposed to be the best in UK, or at least that's what the seniors told me. But as last year, the 700 tickets available were sold out in the first 3 hours, I have to believe them.
Mnight is basicly a play, with many songs, dances, performances(all the usual Malaysian staples, including a lion dance) woven into it.
The seniors who attended freshers camp had already gotten to know me, and so insisted I at least audition, as freshers have a few cast positions available.
I decided to at least make a stab at a main role, and found one I thought suited me.
JON
- Total joker with a loudmouth. Tends to speak rather quickly.
- Doesn’t think about what he’s saying.
- Exaggerates far too much.
Sound familiar, anyone?
I doubt I will get the role, as there is a friend of mine that is more Jon than me(unbelieveable, believe it),but I must say, it was fun to try the whole audition for a major screenplay, with the panel of judges, and rolling video camera and all.
Wednesday, 17 October 2007
Tuesday, 16 October 2007
Welcome Party and Malaysian food
I've just come upstairs from my hall's welcome party. It was held on a weekday which meant nobody would have gone down if not for the free beer.
Damm, the Europeans can drink. People were guzzling alcohol, getting drunk and showing off their stuff on the dance floor. I was smart enough to stick to one beer so I could stay sober, watch and laugh as my friends started pulling all sorts of crazy moves.
Last Saturday, one of my friends had her birthday, so we went out to dinner. The group wanted to eat Malaysian food (wasn't my idea,honest) and as the only Malaysian there(there were 2 Singaporeans there though) I was the only 1 not expecting anything much other than bad, expensive imitations.
When we got to the restraunt,and I saw the menu (6 pounds for fried rice,3 pounds for ice kacang and so on) I got scared out of my wits.The food was not special but it was okay.
Oh, and Royal Albert Hall,which is right next to Imperial campus, is where Imperial students graduate. How cool is that! More incentive to do well.
Damm, the Europeans can drink. People were guzzling alcohol, getting drunk and showing off their stuff on the dance floor. I was smart enough to stick to one beer so I could stay sober, watch and laugh as my friends started pulling all sorts of crazy moves.
Last Saturday, one of my friends had her birthday, so we went out to dinner. The group wanted to eat Malaysian food (wasn't my idea,honest) and as the only Malaysian there(there were 2 Singaporeans there though) I was the only 1 not expecting anything much other than bad, expensive imitations.
When we got to the restraunt,and I saw the menu (6 pounds for fried rice,3 pounds for ice kacang and so on) I got scared out of my wits.The food was not special but it was okay.
Oh, and Royal Albert Hall,which is right next to Imperial campus, is where Imperial students graduate. How cool is that! More incentive to do well.
Friday, 12 October 2007
Life at Imperial
My 2nd week at Imperial is now over. With the first week revolving around fresher activities, this week was really the first week. If I had the time to blog daily I could go on and on about life here, but details get forgotten easily, so for now I'll water things down heavily.
Lectures started on Monday with Mathemathics, and at the end of it, everyone who took Further Maths at A Level said they no longer understood complex numbers, which was our first and easiest topic. We also had lectures for various other electical and electronic subjects, but I won't bore you with details, except to say my classes are 9-6 with ocassional hour breaks. I also have 5 hours of electronic lab a week, and 2 hours of computing lab.Plus a group project that will take up our first two terms here.
Lectures basicly is 200 people listening to one person talking for an hour. Work will never be marked and is completely optional(execpt one bloody subject called technical communication where we have to do presentations and write essays), and I have to say the independence of uni life is amazing.You show up for what you want, do what you want and nobody cares about you. Sink and float on your own. But if you want to merely keep up with the pace, you need to put up an incredible amount of work. To chill out and begin studing just before exams, as we all did in Malaysia, is simply not an option. It cannot be done. But I am going to give it a shot anyway.
The Malaysian Society is one of the biggest national societies at Imperial. I made it a point to attend the General Meeting on Wednesday, and it was fun to socialise with Malaysians, and talk food. Especially since my course is heavily Singaporean and there are only so many times you can argue which country is better. Malaysians tend to be really friendly to other Malaysians when overseas, so there were some interesting conversations there.
Locals and Europeans here know how to have fun. And they are very open here, they make their thoughts very clear, unlike Malaysians who are generally a timid lot. However, one warning to any of you thinking of coming to London, Londeners drink like fish. And they fully expect you to keep up.
Lectures started on Monday with Mathemathics, and at the end of it, everyone who took Further Maths at A Level said they no longer understood complex numbers, which was our first and easiest topic. We also had lectures for various other electical and electronic subjects, but I won't bore you with details, except to say my classes are 9-6 with ocassional hour breaks. I also have 5 hours of electronic lab a week, and 2 hours of computing lab.Plus a group project that will take up our first two terms here.
Lectures basicly is 200 people listening to one person talking for an hour. Work will never be marked and is completely optional(execpt one bloody subject called technical communication where we have to do presentations and write essays), and I have to say the independence of uni life is amazing.You show up for what you want, do what you want and nobody cares about you. Sink and float on your own. But if you want to merely keep up with the pace, you need to put up an incredible amount of work. To chill out and begin studing just before exams, as we all did in Malaysia, is simply not an option. It cannot be done. But I am going to give it a shot anyway.
The Malaysian Society is one of the biggest national societies at Imperial. I made it a point to attend the General Meeting on Wednesday, and it was fun to socialise with Malaysians, and talk food. Especially since my course is heavily Singaporean and there are only so many times you can argue which country is better. Malaysians tend to be really friendly to other Malaysians when overseas, so there were some interesting conversations there.
Locals and Europeans here know how to have fun. And they are very open here, they make their thoughts very clear, unlike Malaysians who are generally a timid lot. However, one warning to any of you thinking of coming to London, Londeners drink like fish. And they fully expect you to keep up.
Tuesday, 9 October 2007
Ping pong ball machine
I realise I have forgotten most of the details of what I did before college started so I will start with college. For fresher week, we had ice breaking activities.
So, what do Imperial electrical engineers do for icebreaking? Well they build strange looking contraptions out of everyday stuff, of course.
For our year, we had to build a machine to hold a ping pong ball 15 seconds then launch it 3 meters into a paper bin. Materials given were a small box, 2 polo mint tubes, 6 elastic bands,2 pencils,2 paper cups, wire, string, a ruler and a ballon. And divided into 28 groups of 7, we were given this assingment on Wed, to be done on Friday.
After considerable discussion, many failed designs and lots of fake formulae written on the blackboard to confuse other teams we adopted a simple design of 'deep breath'(if you don'tlike long descriptions skip to the next paragraph) using the pencils stabbed into the box, with rubber bands wound round them to support the ruler which had the ping pong ball placed in a paper cup. The polo mints were held of the ground by the ballon. After15s, the ballon deflates, dropping, and thus so did the polo mints, causing one end of the ruler to be pulled down, pushing the ping pong ball out of the cup.
Really sorry for that, simplified as much as possible. Anyway, our group did well, with me as cordinator(but doing very little work) but failed to make top three, which was sad coz prizes were CHAMPAGNE and really expensive bottles too. Ah well, life goes on.
If you haven't fallen asleep, my humblest thanks.
So, what do Imperial electrical engineers do for icebreaking? Well they build strange looking contraptions out of everyday stuff, of course.
For our year, we had to build a machine to hold a ping pong ball 15 seconds then launch it 3 meters into a paper bin. Materials given were a small box, 2 polo mint tubes, 6 elastic bands,2 pencils,2 paper cups, wire, string, a ruler and a ballon. And divided into 28 groups of 7, we were given this assingment on Wed, to be done on Friday.
After considerable discussion, many failed designs and lots of fake formulae written on the blackboard to confuse other teams we adopted a simple design of 'deep breath'(if you don'tlike long descriptions skip to the next paragraph) using the pencils stabbed into the box, with rubber bands wound round them to support the ruler which had the ping pong ball placed in a paper cup. The polo mints were held of the ground by the ballon. After15s, the ballon deflates, dropping, and thus so did the polo mints, causing one end of the ruler to be pulled down, pushing the ping pong ball out of the cup.
Really sorry for that, simplified as much as possible. Anyway, our group did well, with me as cordinator(but doing very little work) but failed to make top three, which was sad coz prizes were CHAMPAGNE and really expensive bottles too. Ah well, life goes on.
If you haven't fallen asleep, my humblest thanks.
Monday, 8 October 2007
Opening day
So I now have a blog. Thanks largely to incessant prodding by one I shall not name.
Anyone reading this blog almost certainly knows who I am and how insane I can be, but just for fun; my name is Arun, I am a Malaysian, studing Electrical and Electronic Engineering in Imperial College London.
So far, life in London has been fun. Well, apart from the fact that my luggage got delayed in Heathrow when I landed, and the fact that I life 40 min from Imperial, and my course happens tobe the hardest of all engineerings(trust me,it's hard), and several other iritating issues. Mostly though, the food and the weather is what gets me down, with the insesssant rain and howling winds and bad food(to my expert Malaysian tastebuds)
Still, I have some great friends here and that does help mantain the balance, though surely they can't enjoy going to dinner with me, where I always seem to frown at what I'm eating. Thankfully these British are to nice to ever complain.
And I've done lots of cool stuff here. I shall go into more detail in my next post.
So for now, this is me signing off.
Anyone reading this blog almost certainly knows who I am and how insane I can be, but just for fun; my name is Arun, I am a Malaysian, studing Electrical and Electronic Engineering in Imperial College London.
So far, life in London has been fun. Well, apart from the fact that my luggage got delayed in Heathrow when I landed, and the fact that I life 40 min from Imperial, and my course happens tobe the hardest of all engineerings(trust me,it's hard), and several other iritating issues. Mostly though, the food and the weather is what gets me down, with the insesssant rain and howling winds and bad food(to my expert Malaysian tastebuds)
Still, I have some great friends here and that does help mantain the balance, though surely they can't enjoy going to dinner with me, where I always seem to frown at what I'm eating. Thankfully these British are to nice to ever complain.
And I've done lots of cool stuff here. I shall go into more detail in my next post.
So for now, this is me signing off.
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