As everybody know, we, the 10 students has back from London, and Wales in UK on the 15th December'09. It is a wonderful trip and we have gained ton of knowledge.
A presentation of few students, (not sure if all) will held probably in this month, as long as we done the report and we might produce a magazine if possible. I hope you are still catching up with us and read this blog from time to time.
My first impression for London is...wow, the structure!beautiful building and I love the cold weather, very much. You definitely do not need to worry for not having a vehicle cause the transportations there are awesome! The trains, named Tube *cause it was built and shaped like a tube* are so convenient, you needa just have a Oyster Card. Oyster is an electronic smartcard ticket. Simply touch your card on the yellow reader to get through the Tube gates or board other London public transport services. It doesn't even need to be removed from your purse or wallet to work. You can go wherever places you wish to, of course you must have enough credits in it. One smart rules they implement is, you must make sure you enter the correct station, else if you touch the card already, and found out it is not the right station you want, then you touch it to come out again, you are going to charge 4 pounds! *I did it twice!and it deducted me 8 pounds which is equivalent to approximately RM48!* -Always be alert-
Well, seriously I considered my walking speed is fast already, *walking slow is sort of wasting time for me tho* but guess what? they are even faster and wayyy faster than mine! impressed..Urm, where did you stand when you step on the stair of escalator? -Keep Right- They are very particular about this tho', please stand on the right side, else you will get "scolded" cause the left one is for those who is rushing, running up or down the stair. They are pretty fast!
I remembered the first day when Professor DC drove me and Zu to our accommodation, on our way, he asked me "what are the different you can see in London and Malaysia?" I paused and think for a second while looking out from the window... I answered "the buidling all built using brick with no finishing..." well, it is the drain, you will never see a drain, only river.
Throughout the entire programme, the most things I learnt and knowledge gained is while I was in Machynlleth, Wales experience the sustainable living over there. We Stayed in an Eco-Cabin at the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT). It is established in 1975, is a 40 acre site that has working displays of environmentally sound practices, with low energy ecological buildings, the use of wind, water and solar power, organic gardening and alternative sewage systems. I will write about this in details in my report, and once I done i might probably post it in the net, asap and then you can check it out later. Meals are provided to all of us in the impressive `Taste of Wales’ accredited and licensed wholefood restaurant . Some of the produce used is from CAT’s own organic gardens or sourced locally. The food is vegetarian and of course very delicious!A part from all this, the lectured in UEL amazed me alot, professors and lecturers presents to us alot of civil engineering topic, for example: "Managing Health & Safety in Construction", "Sustainability Research", "G.I.S", "Surverying History in UEL", as well as an English Class for the fourth year, master and phd students (students in UEL joined us in the lectured). Dr. Zawawi has also given a presentation about our university, which it impressed alot of UEL students as well as the lecturers. Besides, Professor DC has been a really kind and helpful person to all of us. He guided us, show us every part in UEL and London, shared with us the knowledge and the most wonderful moment is DC and his wife prepared us a very GRAND dinner! *Salmon is cool!" Dato' Ismail too sent us emails and texts to catch up with us and make sure we do the best and behave the best. Do not need to mention about the students, us...we were all very cooperative and gave our best in this programme.
Thank you very much to all of you!
P.s.: Well if I were to continue writing here then this will be a very long post, so I would like to stop now and hope you guys can managed to grab a magazine of IAI London - UTHM once it is ''in the market already'' ;)
UTHM rocks!
Regards,
Sin Mei
