Remember a while back I mentioned about the Trinity 3rd year tea towels? Well, they’ve arrived last weekend. And the towels look like this:
And so, let us scrutinize it in more detail and observe the artistic talents of Cambridge's Trinity students. This is me:
Anime influence:
A bit of an overkill for a tea towel:
The resident alien:
What the heck??!
Yaz.
So I was doing some internet research on the reactor operating procedures for the hydrotreating plant that we’re working on for our group design project (basically a plant to reduce the amount of sulphur in diesel). Then I came across this:
I was wondering, with a name like that, can the company ever be taken seriously?
Yaz.
I guess sometimes, people (UK students) forget that Cambridge or other universities for that matter is an international place. In my case, going to a school with people from 70 different countries tend to make you aware of what you’re saying and how it can be perceived by others. However, for a number of UK students, I suppose university is probably the first contact that they have with lots of international students in one place, and sometimes they forget that the people they’re talking to have different nationalities, cultures and views on things.
I usually have breakfast with a group of people, dubbed ‘The Breakfast Club’ by us. This morning, I saw a friend of mine, an exchange student from France in the hall so I beckoned him to sit next to me. We conversed with the people in my table when one of them stated, “I think Paris is an unattractive place.”
My eyes almost bulged out. Oops, the person who spoke didn’t realise my friend is French! I can’t say anything without being obvious, so I fervently hoped that the person would shut up or talk about something else.
“Yeah, I agree, it’s not that nice. But southern France is beautiful,” quipped my friend.
Phew! He didn’t take offence. That was fortunate. Bloodshed avoided. Though in the future, some people might want to screen what they’re saying to avoid potentially awkward moments.
Yaz.
So, the thing about Cambridge nowadays is that it gets extremely hot. The sun shines brightly and it hasn’t rained for a few days now. Furthermore, these days I also tend to be woken up by the warmth and brightness of day rather than my alarm clock.
Before the exams, I made plans to spend my post exam days with lots of punting practices, cooking and catching up with my readings. Unfortunately, with me being the project coordinator and all, it seems I only have enough time to do these things sporadically. Let’s hope things get less intense from now on since the weather is so nice and if there is a time when I should get a life, it’s now.
Talking about punts, as you may know, Trinity has its own set of punts for us the college members to use. Not for free, of course but it’s still cheap as hell. What you may not realise is that these punts’ names are all related to the number three. For example, ‘Ménage’ refers to ménage a trois and Wise Man is the three wise men in biblical stories. See if you can figure out all of them. Give the answers in the comments if you want to.
The punt names:
And so, what’s happening is that we are all being yanked out of our post exam stupor and idleness back into Chem Eng world. And this happens via the means of a design project, the first ever done in a group (if you don’t count the Weblab computer exercises) and it will last for a whole of a month until the 6th of June when we have to present to a panel of jury and answer questions from them. Hmmm, sounds familiar, when have I done this before?
Anyway, we’re all divided up into groups of six or five, supposedly at random but with staff moderation, which means that it’s not really. Our job is to design a hydrodesulphurisation plant, with each of us in charge of an area of the plant. We also each have one extra task to do. Mine is the project coordinator, which means I put everybody’s little mess together into one gigantic tangling mess. Sounds fun? A friend of mine in the year above specifically warned me about the project coordinator being the most stressful of all the tasks but I guess I’m just too stubborn to listen.
In any case, the first coordinator’s meeting was held today. I missed the first half of it. Not a good start, eh, for somebody who’s supposed to organise everybody else.
Yaz.
P.S. Not quite my fault. The schedule says 12:00 but they moved it to 11:40 and just told us orally. Oh well.
Yesterday was the start of the volleyball summer cuppers in Cambridge. As per usual, it’s held in a grassy area called Jesus Green. The weather was sunny, hot and perfect for volleyball. This year, because of the turnout, the Trinity captain decided to send two teams instead of one. This also means I have more playing time than usual, which is good.
Trinity 1 won both their matches in the first division. Kudos to them. Trinity 2 (my team) went up against the Cambridge Air Squadron and Girton 3 (honestly, how can a college smaller than us have so many players that they send in three teams?) and we also won both matches. Yay!
The next matches will be on the following three Saturdays. Looking forward to those.
Somebody stole the new shiny pot that I bought at TESCO from the Junior Parlour kitchen. Bastards!
While looking for it, I found my old one in the upstairs kitchen, the kitchen used by a few mathmos. Aha, I’m keeping an eye on you now, suspects!
Yaz
I am feeling quite sad. Some time ago a blog that I often read is deleted by its owner. Apparently it was mentioned by somebody in another much popular blog and within hours, lots of visitors from this popular blog visited his site. Unfortunately, despite several nice comments, he was bombarded with lots of other nasty anonymous comments and e-mails full of vitriol that he decided to shut it down. I won’t go into details about the blog. There’s not much point now anyway. It’s suffice to say that I’ve lost a valuable source of wisdom just because there are some nasty people out there who prefer to spew unfounded hatred behind the anonymity of the internet.
Yaz.
And so, this concludes my four-day exam period. A quick summary is given below.
Day 1: Hmmm, not my best attempt at an exam paper.
Day 2: That was horrible! Someone please kill me now...
Day 3: That was alright. Stats question was a bit harsh, though. If you don’t remember one definition then you’re screwed. Good thing I revised.
Day 4: It was okay. Not too bad.
So as you can see, day 2 was the worst for me and everybody else. I will probably not get more than 50% on that paper. But then again, exam’s over now and we don’t talk about exams when they’re over, do we?
We had a little post exam celebration where we went punting on the Cam. Went up to Magdalene Bridge and then down to Kings. For some reason, whenever I go punting I never got as far as Queens. Hmmm, I should remedy this in the future. Good thing I’m in a college that has its own punts.
In other news, last December/January I ordered some volleyball kits since I’m part of the Cambridge UCCMixed team and hence am eligible to wear a track top that has “Cambridge University Volleyball” gracing it. Of course, whether I deserve it or not is another matter. So anyway, after eons of waiting the stuff finally arrived last week. And thus, here are my two kits posing for the camera:
As some of you may know, I’m not really any good at volleyball, so I will feel very self conscious wearing these in Cambridge. Wearing them in Malaysia is of course, a different thing altogether.
Yaz.
