update from cambridge!

hello all! sorry for not updating so regularly, it's been busy as you might already know. so in chronological order for your sake and mine, here goes:

Friday 29th September
i arrived in cambridge! finally after 10 months of waiting and dallying... took the bus from heathrow station all by myself as there was some mix-up at the ticketing booth. yep quite weird how my family was sitting with all the other singaporeans and i was by myself on the next bus but no fear, jay chou kept me happy and occupied. :) it was a 2.5 hour bus ride from heathrow and i wish i could say the scenery was fantastic but really, it was just fields and red brick houses the whole time. nonetheless, i got to cambridge safely, got my room keys and heaved my 5 luggages up to the second floor (which the brits call first floor.. ) with the help of dad, pers and uncle george.
went the the bank and got my account settled, which has surprisingly encontered with NO problems whatsoever! all my other friends are complaining about hsbc, but i have none :) pay as you go phone line also settled today.
the singaporeans met up for dinner and we went on a room crawl to assess which end of the straw we got. i apparantly got the long end! yay.. my room has a wonderful view and it's nice and big, "straight out of the ikea catalogue" as christina puts it. I now have stuck loads of stuff on the wall and it actually looks lived-in already.

Saturday 30th September
day off with family. we walked around and I packed my room. Daddy and uncle george wanted to follow the river on foot, so pers helped my by sticking all my pictures together to put up on my wall.
Went for the international student’s gathering and dinner at the old library at night. Oh ok sidetrack a bit, pembroke’s campus is BEAUTIFUL! If you ever have the chance to visit, I’ll show you around. The lawns are manicured, the trees grow just nicely, it’s straight out of a fairytale!

Sunday 1st October
Sunday was the start of fresher’s week at Pembroke. It was also the day that daddy and pers left for London.
Tea in the old library was ok, I left like after awhile cos it was just tooo many people and it started getting stuffy. So we went to zoe’s room to sort out some of her stuff (zoe’s another medic from Cambridge itself)
Dinner in hall, our first dinner as a cohort! 3 course meal which was IDENTICAL to the meal I had the night before. Cheater bugs!
The senior tutor gave a talk after that which was so sleep-inducing I think quite a few pple succumbed to it. haha basically he told us to study hard (!) to maintain pembroke’s high academic standing.
I met my college family after that and went to Becky’s room for chocolate cake and wine. It was nice. I’m glad I didn’t get like drunks in my family or anyone tooooo wild. They were fantastic!

Monday 2nd October
Happy birthday Tee! Oh dear I didn’t wish you at all did I? I hope you read this cos I was planning on sending an email or something to you but I just kept thinking I’ve done it already. So sorry!
Well, there was a self-defense class which I didn’t go to cos…
I had to meet my Director of Studies (person in charge of my academic progress) and my Tutor (person in charge of my welfare). They were ok I guess. Can’t really say much about them since I wun get to see them often. It’s prob just going to be once at the start and once at the end of term just as a formality.
JP (Junior Parlour, the equivalent of student’s council for undergraduates) had a societies bonanza in the afternoon, and I signed up for wayyy too many societies. I have to sift through all the emails now.
The three-legged (literally) pub crawl which I missed cos I wanted to chill out on the night punting, was quite a disgusting affair. Thankfully I didn’t go. There were weird cream and cracker games with honey smeared on faces and stuff. But the people that went had fun, or so they say…
The night punting was the event that I had wanted to go on, however, because Nicole’s mum treated us to a nice Chinese dinner at JinLing, we ate so much and so slowly that we missed the punt entirely. We just saw it floating away into the darkness. L so in the end we had a nice chat in Liu Rui’s room at Newhnam.

Tuesday 3rd October
Matriculation day today! Took the picture with an ancient camera, the type that needs to pull a black cloth behind the camera. I also signed my name into this huge bound book in the old library with a fountain pen and with that I’m “now and forever a member of Cambridge and Pembroke”! haha that was amusing…
Fresher’s fair at Kelsey Kerridge (some sports hall) where I signed up for even more societies like rowing, CUMSA, softball (!), badminton with the Queens’ people. And then there was the matriculation dinner. The first time I had to wear the college gown for formal dinner! I HAD to buy it for 45 pounds! Bah. It’s nice and important-looking though. This was supposedly the nicest dinner during a student’s life in Cambridge… that must mean their standard is not very high. It was nice, but not fantastic.

Wednesday 4th October
My lessons started today. Was allocated a cadaver today during FAB (anatomy) lecture. Spent the day shopping mostly for groceries and pullovers. I didn’t bring enough warm clothing I think. I have clothes for winter and summer but not autumn. First supervision today, my anatomy supervisor’s v nice! We had a real vertebral column in front of us as she went through all them all.
In the evening, there was rock night held in the new cellars. This is basically just an excuse to come out and party. There was a live band which was not bad, although I thought they could use a better vocalist. But hey, it was nice and I actually know most of the songs they played so hooray! :) I had fun tonight.

Thursday 5th October
My first dissection room experience! We saw our cadaver today, and we almost fainted at the size of him! He was very plump and our demonstrator warned us how much work we will be doing in the future during dissections cos there will be layers and layers of fat to cut through to see anything.
It was family night and we trooped down to watch Twelfth Night at the ADC after a stir-fry dinner. There’s 4 of us children in my college family and they are all super nice. Yue, the HK guy kept laughing at my accent, and I kept laughing at his! Haha that’s mostly all I can remember during the dinner… just laughing.

Friday 6th October
Proper lectures started today. So nothing much happened in the day other than me trying to find my way around town to get to my lectures on time. I am so glad that my college is so centrally placed with respect to the lecture sites. I literally just have to walk out different gates of my college to get to the different lecture sites! No other college can beat that man!
It was Mid-Autumn Festival tonight and a few of us tried to go to this restaurant to have a nice Chinese dinner, but ended up getting Chinese takeaway instead cos it was wayyy over our budget. But the food was good! And we had a nice time after at Ceilidh in the hall, which is a kind of Scottish dance that nobody knows the steps to and just kinda learn on the spot. People kept banging into me and stepping on my toes but then again, I think I trod on so many other people as well.

Saturday 7th October
The sporty day today:
Pembroke’s big rowing day! I went down to try rowing out and it was great fun! It was so fun that I went for my second outing today and I think I shall try to continue with rowing for the first term and see how after. Apparently, it might require lots of commitment if you are on the first boat (ie, the pro people) but other than that, there are boats for recreational rowing as well. The Pembroke ladies are the head of the waters last year (which means they won the inter-college rowing competition) so we have a high reputation to keep. Hahha. I think I’m not bad at rowing! :)
Badminton in the morning as well. I now have a new racket thanks to Yao Yu. All I had to do was to re-grip it and it was mine!!! Haha.
CUMSA Fresher’s Squash next at Magdalene. it was nice seeing all the Singaporeans again and made friends with some other people.
Then the legendary Cambridge Bop, which loosely translates into a party. It’s funny how the brits dance to cheesy songs and not all the shitty R&B and hip-hop we have in Singapore. Hahha. Ancient songs were playing as remixes and so we had a good time dancing to the funny lyrics! It wasn’t as wild as I thought it would be.

Sunday 8th October
I had to take a rest day from all the activities of Fresher’s Week. Consolidated all the lectures I’ve had, bought files and more food. Organized my notes. Housekeeping day.
Went for the bar quiz at night, which was crap in my opinion. The geography questions were really hard, I couldn’t answer any :( the scientific ones though weren’t as bad.



And now that Fresher’s Week is over, I have more time to do stuff that I wanna do, although I dun think this week will be less tiring than the last. I foresee tons of work coming my way.

Ok till next time. This is too much to read. Thanks for reading all the way to the end, although I doubt anyone managed to sit through all that above!

packing packing crazily everyday. and in the middle of that i still can catch up with around 15 episodes of bleach, listen to still fantasy gazillions of times so that i can now officially catch some of his lyrics, go out for lunch with uncle 4 and family, skype with rahh and sang more jay songs :) , AND organise mummy's pictures... ... looks like packing wasn't thatttt crazy now. which just means that i have to realllly pack proper later tonight. and so, sorry caroline and yunqin i can't go to the airport tonight. but anyway we will catch one another at some point or another in london la so no biggie.

see la, my horrible will power. i was just supposed to charge my laptop battery and i end up going online for 2 almost 3 hours now. this is bad.

ahh yes, hady has won singapore idol :( enough said. poor bird she must be super depressed. actually can tell from the live atmosphere that hady had much more supporters. they were louder, more passionate and basically just MORE. welll now he and taufik can go slug it out for the super tiny market they both find themselves in while dear jon goes on and wins over taiwan and china. :)

i bought a nice pair of flats and i have just succeeded in smuggling them into the luggage! yay.

the story of me and the letter J...

here are some significant things recently that all begin with the letter J... such a lovely letter :)

• Jay's seventh cd is out! and i've got it! duh. even though everyone says it's not very good (take note bird) i think otherwise. it's wonderful as usual :) it runs so smoothly from start to finish and this time he actually made an effort to pronounce the words to ju hua tai properly! ahahha. and i just so happen to watch him on wan quan yu le... it's been a joyously-filled jay week.. wahaha.
• Jonathan leong is going to win singapore idol. especially after lilian and i personally went down to support him last night at the indoor stadium. heh mosh pit summore haha. sorry for the grainy picture we weren't allowed to bring our cameras in. my phone's resolution's actually quite not bad huh.
• Japanese anime! haha.. (well... i had to draw the link) bleach! ahhhh kuchiki byakuya is how cool. i love how no one can pronounce his name properly haha. senbunzakura kageiyoshi! oh and ichigo's not bad too... ok here's an example how watching too much anime can infiltrate your life:

Brother's friend R: "eh how to do this question?"
Brother looks at the question, "hmm, this is taicho level already, always skip this kind of questions!"

and another example:

R and his brother sits at the computer when R was supposed to teach his brother for the PSLE coming up in a weeks' time. They've been playing games for quite a while. R's mum suddenly bursts into the room, back from the market: "NI MEN WEI SHE ME ZAI NA LI?!". My brother then warns R: "you better get ready for her bankai!" and they both laugh.

i think i'm going nuts

5 more days...

and i've caught catching-up-fatigue

I have just received tons of post from Cambridge and from the JCP (Junior Committee Parlour, which is kinda like the student council of the college) of Pembroke. some exerpts from the booklet of house rules:

• Avoiding fire: "you must never leave any pans unattended while in use, and you must avoid in particular frying in oil, which can generate high temperatures and fumes, and thus considered to be dangerous, as well as anti-social." well then, if i can't fry in oil, what can i fry in? maybe i'll have special frying liquids when i wanna cook there. and anti-social? how is that anti-social?? oh then there's more: "the bursar may remove, without notice, any frying pan!" apparantly it's illegal to bring a frying pan to college. quite a tricky move to get us to all eat from the buttery eh!!
• Entertainment and parties: "permission must be obtained in advance for any party exceeding 15 persons and will require that stewards are named to assist in the smooth running of the party". sounds regally restrictive... like there's so much order to be followed in college.

the rest of the package was quite interesting. it sounds like a lot of fun in fresher's week! i'll have parties and pub-crawls almost every night. die la i'm going to be so tired after only the first week. oh and there's going to be staircase dinners, family outings, matriculation dinners where i'll have to wear an academic gown, whatever that is, and lots of other obligations to attend to. it's going to be packed.

on another note, i haven't started packing yet! and the worse thing is there aren't people around these days who are free enough to hang out with me anymore. so i'm left alone in the house most of the time. thank god for korean dramas! and the internet! my companion buddies, i foresee, through to the day i leave our sunny little island for the cold of the UK. it's only 2 and a half weeks more.