First Hi from Manchester!

Aloha!  It's blogging time again!  After the submission of portfolio, I'm finally free free freeeee!  So in this post, I will try my best to update my current status and share my life in Manchester with you all!

People always ask me about the life in Manchester.  And my answer will always be, oh, Manchester is such a boring place!  Actually, it is not that bad.  I'm just exaggerating the situation because to me, studying oversea is not an easy task.  You need to be physically and mentally strong to withstand the extreme weather  change(ok, lame) and to live without your family(which means you have to cook, wash, clean and buy everything yourself).  Therefore, you can hardly survive without friends.  Luckily, I'm not alone here.  I have two big brothers that always help me and guide me when everything gets mess up.    ^.^v  Manchester is treating me good, compared to the time I first entered INTEC.  That was really horrible.  I was so emotional and took so long to cope with the life in Shah Alam.  So glad that I don't have the problem here in Manchester.  Touch wood.

The two big brothers - Haseef and Raden!

And thanks to our senior, Hakym, and many other seniors as well (too many to be mentioned) who helped us a lot, really a lot, when we first reached here.  So glad to have you all in Manchester.  =)  We, the freshers, really appreciate it.

This is for you, Hakym.  Haha!

I'm now living in a private hall, named Manchester Student Village, which is located very very near to my studio.  =)  Sharing kitchen, bathroom and toilet with another Singaporean girl, I'm pretty happy with the accommodation!  It's a room with big space and a big double bed, and my own working table, like a boss!  I am not going to post the pictures of my flat, because I have to spend time tidying up everything before I can take a snapshot on them.  Hehe, further details, please google search. =P

You can find different kinds of people here.  Black, White, Asians.  It's really fun to spend some time walking on the street because you can see lots of things happening in the city.  Manchester is having its Autumn now, so it's really cold and windy out there.  A cup of hot tea inside the warm room can just make your day.  (Having self-made teh tarik right now, hehe).  Can't imagine how people survive during Winter.  One more thing, Manchester rains a lot.  More and more rain is falling on the city each year.  It rains almost everyday.  But, the rain here is totally different from what you can see in Malaysia.  In Malaysia, you can't walk under the rain without umbrella because the raindrops are so freaking big.  In Manchester, umbrella is not a useful stuff, because you will get yourself blown away by the strong wind because of your huge but useless umbrella.  People just walk under the rain in their jacket, and you don't get wet!  But the wind can kill you anytime if you are too skinny and light.  No joke.

This is The University of Manchester, and people call it tin can.

I'm under two universities, University of Manchester(UoM) and Manchester Metropoliton University(MMU).  Ask me why?  I don't know~  Because I'm an architecture student.  This school is weird.  This course is weird.  Everything is weird.

A day exploring the city centre.  I love this picture, because we look happy.  Credits to Raden!

Please take a look at my photo album in Facebook named "Go Go Manchester".  There are some nice buildings you can find in Manchester.  =)  If you want to know more about Manchester, you are welcomed to visit this place!  But I can't be your tour guide because I'm utterly poor in direction and may get lost anytime.  Ahaha

For our first year, we had a field trip to Berlin, Germany!  Woohoo, that's the fun part of being an architecture student!  =D  Berlin is bloody AWESOME!  It's my first time travelling without tour guide, exploring the whole city with just a piece of map.  It was an extremely good experience.  Most of the Germans in Berlin City can speak good English.  You don't need to worry about getting lost in the place because they are very happy to guide you.

Love the clouds.  Took this in front of Reichstag, one of the most historic landmarks in Berlin designed by Sir Norman Foster.

This is the glass dome.  We walked all the way to the top of the dome via the spiral walkway.  You can see the whole Berlin city from the dome.  =)

Lots of nice Berlin pictures can be found in my Facebook, the photo album named "Go Go Berlin".  Won't mention much about Berlin, it will take me days to do that.  In a nutshell, I strongly recommend you to take a visit to this place.  It is GREAT!  Mmm, I love Germany!

Apart from that, a site visit to St. Ambrose Barlow RC High School was organized by my school.  It was the first site visit we had for our course.  Our task is to design a tessellated installation to be installed at the entrance space of the new high school.  I had a bad day travelling to the site by train.  Manchester should have improved its public transports system.  Because of the poor system, I was late for my site visit, waiting for hours at the train station. T_T  Luckily, I got to joined other groups and managed to enter the building.

 Briefing from the tutor about the site.

The future architects.

The high school was still under construction.

The project took around one month and guess what?  My design was selected as the top 6 for the competition!  I'm really happy and proud of myself because a month of hard work finally paid off =) (even though the group work did give me a big headache).  Presenting in front of the school officers and architects was a precious experience to me.  This project gave me lots of confidence in my study.  Praying hard that  my next project won't give me sleepless nights again.  I need a normal life.  =S

I'm no longer a teenager!  I'm 20!  But I'm so childish!  -,-  Had my first birthday celebration in Manchester with the two buddies.  They baked me a cake!  How sweet they are!

A very cute birthday cake.  "HB BABY J"  Funny.

Thank you for the buffet!  And thank you Salamah for joining the dinner!  I love you all!  =)

Received a parcel from home yesterday.  A parcel full of love.  I miss home.  =(  When can I go back?  I miss your food, daddy!  Hope that everyone in Malaysia is doing good.  Addicted to eBay recently.  I need to control myself.  Learning how to cook good food too recently.  I'll try to make a post on that one day.  Stay tuned!  Okay, I guess I have to go now.  See you all next time! xx

p/s  My hair is long now.  Yeayyyy  But my severe hair fall is giving me headache.  Bought a new shampoo yesterday, hope it works.