Thank You 2012

Presenting to you, a couple of University of Glasgow's alumni:

Emeli Sandé

She’s probably the singer-songwriter of the year here in the UK. If you have not heard of her yet, she performed at both the Opening and Closing ceremonies of the London Olympics. She also performed at the recent BBC Sports Personality of the Year event. There’s something unique about her voice, that soulful one that could inspire people. I really like most of her songs; inspirational and calming. Just to mention a few: ‘Read All About It’, ‘My Kind of Love’, ‘River’, ‘Next to Me’. You are missing out if you have not heard about her yet; you can’t go wrong with this talented person.

 

Katherine Granger

This Olympic gold medallist in rowing is the University’s Young Alumnus of the Year 2012.
You can read more about it from the web link below.
http://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_252973_en.html

PS: Personally, 2012 has been a year of full of experiences that allowed considerable personal development and more self understanding. I am very grateful for it. My 2013 resolution will again be to have many 'been there, done that' moments. To a great 2013!
Happy New Year! J

White and Red

I went for ice-skating today because it was relatively cheap for students on Mondays (£ 4) and I thought I should learn it. I would say I was a good beginner; I didn’t fall and towards the end of the 45-minute session, I was skating like a boss. J

Had my first snow experience too about a fortnight ago. It was forecasted to snow at night, so I waited and waited and then I looked out of the window. I had to look really thoroughly at the light source from the street lamp to see if it’s raining or actually snowing. ( It’s always raining in Glasgow, I wouldn’t want to look like a fool posting on Facebook that it’s snowing if it actually wasn’t.)Then, my Facebook newsfeed was filled with posts of snowing in Glasgow. Many took the opportunity to had a little snowball fight, but I have yet to had one.

 

I thought I would blog a little on my living in one of the university halls: Cairncross House. It has four levels, including ground floor. Every floor is divided into rooms, communal kitchens and communal bathrooms. I am lucky to be sharing a big kitchen with 10 other people. I get to meet people from different countries and get to know them in person.

And so, we had a little Christmas dinner together the other day. There were macaroni and cheese, soy sauce cabbage, soup, Japanese rice cakes, ice cream, donuts and mulled wine. That was a pretty good student feast, I would say. We were also Secret Santas for each other. It was definitely an exciting thing to do. Randomly picking a person’s name from the draw, looking for a gift for the person, sneakily place the wrapped gift into the pile of Christmas gifts and wait… till gifts are presented to respective persons and that person would guess who their Secret Santa was. I got a kettle; very practical but useful. Good for me.

 



Stay tuned as I journalise my experiences in this beautiful land. Oh, Glasgow how I love you so. J

Christmas Break Begins

Sorry faithful readers (if any) for being MIA for more than 2 months. My aim when I revived my blog when I landed on Glasgow was to blog my Scottish adventure every week. Obviously, that didn’t happen. So now, too many things to catch up on.

First things first, I am so grateful that I have the opportunity to study medicine in University of Glasgow. Glasgow’s medical programme is quite heavily based on PBL; it suits those who enjoy managing their own study time. We don’t have routine 9-5 classes. I definitely recommend it to future medic applicants.

Celebrating Dad’s birthday through Skype was something new but not very fun at all. Singing Happy Birthday song to the laptop screen, that moment struck me that it’s amazing how people manage long-distance relationship. I mean, I know it’s difficult, but not till you experience it, you wouldn’t understand it.

It’s always nice to walk to city centre on a Saturday especially when you also have things in mind that you need to get. Christmas shopping must be fun for the people. Having a budget, looking around at all the varieties of things at various shops, then coming across the perfect gift or a very good bargain. That could light up your day like nothing else.  Also, the street performers are great; you get to see some good talents around or just people doing things to raise funds.  All walks of life walking on the streets, how not to be a little nostalgic? I miss shopping with my mum. Although, when one shops on their own, it helps managing-budget and decision-making skills.

Went to the Christmas Market at St Enoch Centre. Very much like 'pasar malam' but with stalls set up selling Christmas confectionery and food from different countries and Christmas crafts. One interesting stall was selling synthetic snow. Appearance and texture almost exactly match the real one. Here, I also tried ‘krakauer’- German spiced sausage.

 

 

Krakauer

 

Glasgow being such a nice city, very welcoming; Glaswegians friendly; I cannot imagine myself studying in another city even with the wet and cold weather. It’s like Ipoh in a way.

Fun fact: Lepak is now a word in the Oxford Dictionary.