Welcome the year of the tiger! A whole new year on the lunar calendar. There had been much talk among the Chinese group here in Cambridge with regards to the new year, particularly how it is celebrated in various countries, with experiences of their own, let be in China or Malaysia.

Things here in the UK are very different from what it will be at home- No fancy Chinese new year lighting, blaring music from homeland shops, the endless looping of Chinese new year songs in most public areas, let be departmental stores. Things here are just as it is of a normal work day, not a single piece of decoration on the streets and bummer it’s not a holiday too. Angbaos were literally non-existent.

Though most Chinese new year festive and event lineups can be found in most Chinese cultural clubs in the university, there was an obvious lacking of the fun and joy of Chinese new year we all grew up with anticipating every year back home. The main sizable celebrations closest to us will be the Chinese new year celebrations in London itself- to our dismay an event held smacked right in the middle of our school term, so we can’t do anything much about it. There are of course some exceptional few I was told about from China who literally flew back home just for 3 days so they can have reunion dinner, that’s crazy but I dwell more about that.

Personally I did not have any festive plans lined up over the Chinese new year weekend, with only plans to attend a Chinese new year formal (dinner) in college on the Friday (12th) before Chinese new year. Planned for the actual day with be only a video conference (virtual pai-nian) with my family, wishing them a happy new year and calling it done by rewarding myself with a good home cooked meal in the evening. Little do I know things won’t go quite as intended.

College CNY formal (Fri)
The formal hall I planned on going was quite a bunch. And I am glad my college did have Chinese new year specific plans and a Chinese menu for that day as well and man was the turnout exceptional as well- full house! We had a 6 course meal with appetizers, Peking duck, chow mien (fried noodles) and bean sprout vegetable mix. Though much attempt had been tried to make the dishes as authentic as possible, it still does not taste as good as the ones prepared by Chinese chefs back home. Desserts, coffee and fruits followed after. Free flow of Wine, Champagne and port (dessert wine) was served as well.

Queen’s reunion dinner (Sat)
Just few days before the weekend. I received an invite to an engineer’s reunion dinner on that following Saturday from a fellow 1st year course mate in Queen’s college. Apparently we will be having a steamboat style dinner with all the year one Engineers as well as some 2nd year Singaporean lawyers. The setup was simple: 4 rice cookers (which doubled up as boilers for the steamboat), a spread of food for about 10 persons and lots of Chinese new year songs from a laptop courtesy of Youtube. It was a rather fun informal steamboat dinner all huddled and eating from our temporary “floor table” in the host’s dorm room, which was remarkably large and able to hold over 10 guests with ease. The dinner was simple, but served it’s purpose well as a reunion dinner and I say, a rather proper one.

Steamboat at Queens

Malaysia Steamboat Dinner

Drunk on CNY!

CUMAS Steamboat Dinner (Sun)
Just when I thought 2 events were enough. This 3rd event was held on the actual day (14th) of Chinese new year itself at Pembroke college. I got to attend the event courtesy of my roommate who unexpectedly offered me an invite to the event just few days beforehand. He is a committee member of the Cambridge Uni Malaysian society (CUMAS). There was another small Singaporean cookout which I could not attend as I’ve already RSVP to the latter. I was not disappointed as well- this event was much bigger than the one I went the day before, not to mention with a larger variety of foods and larger turn up as well (about 30 odd people). The food spread was commendably good and comparable to that of commercial steamboat joints. Did we had such a good time, a Chinese new year’s day dinner (aka V day as well) worthy for the occasion itself.

There were yum-sengs and lots of chatter with new friends. With the exception of the absence of yu-sheng not only in this event, but in the other 2 events too, apparently this is something only unique to Singapore and Malaysia. Oh yes then there was the feat of sobering up a few after the event as well.

Seems that my Chinese new year weekend turned out rather more eventful than I initially expected! And I have largely my fellow course and room mates to thank for a fantastic Chinese new year lineup to user in the year of the tigger!

Cambridge University Malaysia Singapore Association organized this event last Saturday, the 30th of January which is essential and asian food festival where the society gets to prepare unique Singaporean dishes for everyone to come and enjoy.

I’ve signed up as a helper for the food festival since early last term. So that very much grants me “free” entry to the event, which by itself costs £7 for members and £11 for non-members, not that actually was part of the agenda! I was rather clueless when I placed my name down to help. The day started out with some supervisions in the afternoon (yes I know it’s a bummer to have supervisions over the weekend). Little do I find myself prepared for the daunting task ahead to prepare dinner for well over a 100 guests.

Cumsa Asian Food Festival 2010

Food’s out

More cooking to do!

Nonetheless, that Saturday afternoon was spent preparing Chicken rice, as well as cooking all the chicken. Chicken rice is one of the main courses to be served for the event, which goes hand in hand with Pak choy (vegetables) with other local dishes such as Bak ku teh (pork rib spices soup), Loh bak (black sauce meat and eggs), as well as Laska. There were also appetizers, servings of the famous rose syrup bandung as well as bobochaha for desserts. I opened the place up in the late afternoon so that phase 2 of cooking can be done at the hall venue, where they have a kitchen which we can use too.

Besides cooking the rice and chicken, the hard part was myself doing most of the cooking for the vegetable dish, which easily saw me through over 25-30 packets of Pak choy and having to separate, wash and cook over 100 stalks of the vegetable. I guess that will keep me away from it for sometime. We did encounter quite problems ourselves too, such as being unable to reheat the rice, so it was quite a pain to serve all the guest cold food, particularly the rice. But I think everyone received that as OK, with no complains as I know of.

Chicken Rice!

Laska

Bobochaha!

The event was a success, and the guests were all generally happy with the food from the feedback we get as servers. The same can’t be said for all of us though. Sadly, we ourselves as organizers literally have nothing to eat from mid afternoon onwards to late. It’s not until about 10pm where the guests start leaving where everyone started to have dinner.

Well not that we actually prepared dinner for ourselves, but rather savaging-ly dined with whatever food is left in the kitchen as well as those collected/cleared from the guest tables. Not that was bad, but hey at least we get to try what we cooked! We had enough food leftover for everyone (with excess to spare) mainly from the bulk of the leftovers from the last few dishes where many guests could not finish, coining out the term “serve the dishes you want to eat, last”. Much of the the leftovers were all meats and rice, not to mention some half eaten bobochaha, which wasn’t too much of my liking contrary to some who just slurpped them all. There were no left overs of the vegetables I’ve prepared too- they were all wiped clean!

Looking back at what we had prepared, that was really quite some feat we had pulled out, not to mention the number of bowls of food we all went into making for the all the guest. We have pretty much have each other to thank: the committee and the helpers for a job well done.

What other cooler way to mark the end of the university’s 800th anniversary celebration with a cool and ambient lightshow held at night with fire art performances? Apparently, the whole stretch along Cambridge King’s parade street was closed for much of the night’s last week for the event, consisting mostly of laser and light shows. The crowds are evident as well- with the roads packed and queues to the event snaking out onto the streets.

People passing by during the evening will be delighted with much of a treat- Lasers and life performances by the Fire Troupe, consisting of fire breathers and eaters. There was much to see. You will be greeted at entrance to the event with a splash of animation projected onto the senate house. The white walls of the house made an ideal projection surface for the myriad of lively and brightly animated features seemingly “painted” onto it’s walls.

It’s no other painting either, each animation segment is uniquely different and animated to tell a story about the university’s rich history, intentions and foundlings of the university as a global world leader in education with an alumni of 85 Nobel Laureates. Notable figures shown will also include Issac Newton & Charles Darwin.

Woot projection!

Transforming the senate house

Animated pictures & text

The event saw a tour around the King’s college grounds, demarcated by thin green electro-luminescent strips lining the path taking us towards the college chapel and along the river Cambridge. There, another set of animated projections were displayed on the chapel and adjacent building walls. Ambient sounds were played throughout the tour path, giving the area a rather upbeat feel despite the dark eerie setting required for the projections to be effective. The place was packed almost bumper to bumper, as remarked by some: “This is the amount of traffic King’s will get the whole year in one day!”. The tour ends with a globe laser display at the green towards the gate exits, painting the global outreach Cambridge have in education as well as constantly echoing the slogan “transforming tomorrow”.

King’s college chapel

The crowds

The lasers at the end

The show was great, but otherwise not really much an eye opener. However, it actually gave me a chance to tour and see King’s college in the night- something I’ve not had the opportunity to do so. “Apparently it’s the same as what they did for the opening ceremony last year as well” as exclaimed my seniors. Nonetheless, everything was rather new for me and I guess something worth-wide to mark the end of 800th years of achievement. I don’t think we may be seeing another celebration as big as this, well for a long time to come.

Today is the last day of term! Two months of back to back hectic lectures, supervisions and lab, all over! well for 6 weeks of term break at least. And whoa was it hectic. Quite notably, the pace of classes going on here in the department are so fast it can be compared to almost a half a semester of teaching (5-6 months) in the polytechnic all covered over a span less than 2 months!

It’s remarkable, yet something I am glad I survived even after spending sometime out from studying. In stark comparison, even friends I know in other universities are not that pressed, with still much bumming around even after the first week of term. Maybe it’s just something about the demands of Cambridge which is as synonymous with it’s name.

Christmas get-together
There are quite alot of end term events on these days. There was a Christmas pot luck organsied by the Cambridge CCCJ this evening at the halls, well it’s not really much of a pot luck anyway with home-cooked buffet style serving of dinner, dessert, followed by some acts, performances and lots of Christmas carols throughout the night. It’s the season to be jolly!

Christmas get-together dinner

Performance Skit

Singing christmas carols

With so much free time now comes great responsibility to use it. Man it’s almost like the weekends I look forward to at the end of every week, it that it’s happening everyday now, whee!

No it’s not an aftermath of a zombie vending machine raid, but it always seem to be the case here every weekend in school, particularly those staying within the college dorms. The college generally serves 3 meals a day- breakfast, lunch and supper (aka dinner) everyday, with the exception on Saturdays with only brunch served and lunch on Sundays. So this leaves our weekend dinners open which usually result in very interesting findings- It’s not uncommon to see 2 fully loaded adjacent vending machine selling drinks and sweets full and the one dispensing meals completely wiped out on weekends, so as I discover when passing by the college vending area on few occasions. It seems that this whole place runs off vending sandwiches on the weekends, otherwise it’s takeouts, microwaved meals or pizza.

Generally lets face it, not many people like to cook even if you do it will be most probably be worth while cooking for a group or so, which seem to be the case for myself. My group of about 5-6 Singaporeans friends will usually get together on weekends for a cookout where 7-9 pounds can easily feed 4-5 people for dinner.

In a typical bachelor pad setting, our cooking is not really what we call “restaurant standard”, but rather good enough for tasting eating. We tried cooking pasta with beef and meat sauce which turned out like a minced meat contraption with not much tomato. And there was one weekend where we had fried rice which was actually too wet, we ended up passing it off as claypot rice! and I don’t think I would want to talk about the chicken rice weekend!

Ingredients for dinner

Wet fried rice! (Nice try anyway)

Feeding time…

Cooking at home is not exactly that “cheap” either, though yes the material cost is low, but the time and effort going into actually preparing the food and actually cooking it muddles the justification of the cost (took about 1 hour for our first try). When you though that is it, then there’s the amount of grocery planning and shopping beforehand for the ingredients.

I kinda miss the ease of ready made-food anytime of the day back in Singapore. Not that I actually miss the food but rather the convenience of obtaining them, let be how ridiculously cheap our food is back home compared to here. Chinese food here is expensive, bout $12 SGD for a plate of Singapore fried rice, which is far more expensive than that you get in London as well (maybe due to fewer Chinese stores here).

In a typical English setting here, there are no hawker centers here, only restaurant and eateries which will set you back at least 7 pounds for any dinner. There are no diners here either. Nevertheless, with each passing week with new discoveries town, there are always few popular cheap spots to eat around town, such as pubfood (about 4 pounds for a burger, fries set with drink) or there’s always the sub of the day!

With some time to spare, let me talk about the engineering department along Trumpington street where all freshers will have to go through as a rite of passage here in the university of Cambridge before specializing in their various fields of chosen expertise here or out of the department at West Cambridge.

Built around 1875, this department is about 130 years old, but it still retains much of the old red bricked structure which is typical of the architecture of that time. Even walking through it, particularly some corridors does make you feel that you’ve gone back in time. Much of the old the layout of the building still largely intact, not to mention the old weather wooden doors and oak lecture room seats which are literally give you the sore bums ar some time of sitting. They even kept the building “trademark” smoke furnace smoke stack which can be seen sticking out of the engineering buildings despite it not being used for decades.

The interesting fact is that all these old parts goes hand-in-hand with the various improvements and modern additions seen all around- There are also many various enhancements made to the existing structure, such as modern ceilings, lighting and toilets. It’s quite unreal walking down an ancient corridor only to enter a bright tiled room with lots of modern facilities, typical a Frankenstein contraption of old and new. Moreover, the

The department from the library

Common lectures

The societies fair!

Being an old building, there are many instances of the old building which I always attend lectures in. Almost all lectures and talks are all conducted here for undergraduates- First year lectures are usually common and held in the larger lecture theaters where you will spend more of your senior years in small lecture rooms when you choose to specialize in the third year. The department is also a place for post grad research as well, with 5/5 start ratings for research and laboratories.

I am really liking the myriad of societies and groups available at university level, far more than what I thought SP had oftered was “large”, but it’s still a far cry from the type of CCAs offered in JCs. Signing up for track and field was a no-brainer for me, but sign-ups are usually in for competitive level, let be representing the college at university level. Since I am recovering from a leg injury, I guess I have to put that on hold until maybe next term where I get my fitness backup with training schedules of my own.

The engineering prep course was held over the course of last week, it was organised by the university department as an introductory course for all fresher engineers starting their first year in Cambridge university. There were talks on various engineering topics such as reducing airplane noise and introductory electronics by various speakers and industry partners, such as ARM, BP, etc. The highlight of the course for most students, would be having to get onto building and programming a robot to play soccer autonomously after an hour lecture on robotics. The robot was to be built using parts from the Lego Mindstorms set, something I was familiar with having owned a set myself back at home, only that the one used by the university is a new version (1.5) with the USB infrared tower (mines the version 1.0 serial tower) and they have quite an array of third party sensors to use, such as Infra-red sensors!

Robot soccer matches!

Let the match begin!

Slug fest!

I guess to anybody, to build a robot from virtually zero knowledge in 2 days was quite a bit of a feat. We were split into 12 teams which were formed during the ice-breaker dinner sessions on the first day of the prep course. I was rather niffy with building robots out of Lego, so I offered to design and build the robot based on the team’s requirements. In the end we settled for a single IR sensor with 2 pairs of touch and light sensors, all that’s left was programming which were delegated to the rest of the team of 6 to plan and code. Programming turned out to be rather more of a feat than we thought, but we did turn out with a working robot which actually looked rather cool.

The matches are hilarious, some team’s robots were just moving around blindly bumping into walls while some are just sitting stoned while the teams cheered on the “tortoises” to play soccer. We didn’t win in the end through the process of elimination where one team gets some small prizes, but I guess the new friendships made and the experience gained was more invaluable than anything.

Term will actually start next week, there are much to get around and registering with the engineering department next week. It will be busy!

School starts in a few weeks time and it’s time for my flight to Cambridge before term starts. My flight was seduled on the late night of the 27th, a Sunday at the Changi Terminal 3. After dinner within the airport with my family and a long farewell to friends, relatives and loved ones, I slowly made myself through the departure, which for Singaporeans, is rather fast and brisky, particular for the Passport scanning part- no need to wait in long queues for stamps and such, just scan, thumbprint and go.

There were no gate numbers printed on the board pass, so that needed little hunting on the screens to find yours upon entering the departure walk and duty free areas. The gate check was a little messy, especially those who were carrying laptops with them, I have 2 of them with me and they have to be individually scanned through the x-ray, to my dismay with lots of re-packing to do. My flight is on a A380 and I always particularly hate long haul flights, this 12 and a half hour one is no exception either.

Departure at Singapore Terminal 3

On the A380 to London!

The bus terminal

The journey to Cambridge
On the contrary, the flight on board the plane was quite smooth and slightly quieter than most planes I’ve flown before, it’s so much better than being on a 747 as well. The A380 does not have the typical drowning “airplane smell” which I hate. The food is great, can tell it’s prepared largely by Singapore chefs, not sure what food I will get if I were to fly from London to Singapore tough. Despite sleeping like 5 hours on the plane, man, was I still very tried after that flight. Surprisingly, I still managed to get that much sleep despite tossing and turning round much- the seat is just too small to be comfortable for a sound sleep, managed to catch the movies fast and furious 4 after takeoff and transformers the fallen on the flight before landing.

Back at Singapore before my flight at the SIA check-in, my parents did indicate that I may need some assistance from the airport in Heathrow. Considering that I was still recovering from a stiff ankle following a minor surgery from an injury. The SIA staff were rather helpful, they saw me out of the plane upon arrival and there was an Airport representative staff from SIA which walked me through the whole arrival hall and helped me at the baggage carousel (which weighed over like a helfy 20kg and was too heavy for my injury) glad there was help! Immigration was a breeze as well, with just a need to show my university letter and I am off to the arrival area with 2 hours to spare before my coach arriving timing.

Sat round the airport for an hour or so reading a book and got about chatting with a Hongkong family there before starting on a 15 minute underground walk with all my baggage from Heathrow T3 to the Central bus station. The bus arrived on time as expected and did not wait long before setting off, so it pays to be early or you can easily miss your bus. I did not sleep much on the bus, but did doze off sometime in the journey, but the country side views throughout some parts of the journey were rather nice. Along the highways, you can see nice rolling hills and large open fields. There are always cows and horses on those fields.

Contrary to what my dad always warned about highway truckers and driving in the UK, from my observation, the trucks on the motorway all drive slowly here (no speeding), not like what dad said, maybe he’s just paranoid for my safety. In fact, the highway here is almost like that in Singapore with the trailers. Most with speed limiters as well.

The National Express coach trip (service 787) is about 2 and a half hours from Heathrow, going in and out many airports, rail stations and towns along the way. Despite the rather loopy journey (which effectively almost doubled the traveling time), got to catch many interesting new scenes around town as well. My coach journey terminates at the Parker’s piece in Cambridge where I managed to flag a cab almost instantly to the college which is about 2km away. The cab fare was a 10 minute ride, costing 5.80 pounds. The next and final moment of my journey I saw myself standing right in front of the college flagpole. The stone path in front of the college are not exactly roller luggage friendly, but I am there!

The front of the college

The main building (porter’s lodge)

My accommodation block

The porter there brought me on a short introductory tour and gave me the college welcome pack as well as ran through the administrations required for the wolfson card, which is essentially the college contactless smart card. Got to meet many new faces, particularly my engineering buddies who were already on college few days before me. There are many Singaporeans and Malaysians studying in this college as well. Had lunch and dinner within the college grounds for the day which is really a great life saver having not to cook or prepare my meals, anyway I will see myself eating often in the college dining hall. I am just too lazy to cook! Oh yes, there’s free pizza form dominos for freshers as well!

It’s official!

My room, well always in a mess

Time for an update!

There much to unpack and organize myself around. Will be up exploring much of the town in the days to come. It should not be too different from what I last recall of it. As you can see, my room is kind of quite a mess. Had not slept at all since lunch though I did had some coffee then and been up till like 10pm London time (which is about 5am Singapore time here) since yesterday. I should be hitting the bed soon and maybe prepare breakfast myself as I might be too lazy to rise early enough to catch breakfast in the dining hall tomorrow morning.

More to come!