Fresher's week

Saturday all the new UK students started coming… there were large queues in front of the elevators with students and their parents with more stuff than you can ever imagine. Of course I didn’t wait in the queue every time I wanted to go to my room, but I just took the stairways. Saturday I didn’t do much special anymore, the afternoon I spent for a large part in one of my new friends’ (Vikesh) room, watching sports matches. For the evening we wanted to watch match of the day, the English premier league football show on BBC, but unfortunately the TV room downstairs in my dormitory already closes at 10 PM.

Saturday night there were a lot of parties going on and noisy , drunk students walking around campus keeping everybody awake who wanted to get some rest. But that’s part of the fresher’s week I guess. Sunday morning Koy waked me up with a phone call around 8 AM. She just received my message that I was trying to call her and called already 10 times but her phone wasn’t working… I sent this message 2 days before, hehe. But never mind, I’d rather be woken up by my girlfriend calling me than by the accommodation services knocking on my door and telling me I have to move out (like on Saturday).

On the campus there was some kind of small fair going on, including a barbeque. Me, Jaffer and Vikesh participated in some games and even won some prizes. I won a cute little lion teddy and I got a great balloon in the shape of a sausage dog. At the BBQ I bought myself a nice and fresh hamburger with onions and cheese. Don’t worry about my diet, I’m taking good care of myself eating a lot of fruits and vegetables and of course my fromage frais with muesli and fruit for breakfast.

Monday morning there were no activities scheduled by the university. Therefore I took this time to visit the English Language School where Koy wants to study English for 2 terms, The Brasshouse. The school is about 20-30 minutes walking from my university, just past the city centre. At the school I received some information about the courses which are provided and the visa, which should be no problem.

In the afternoon the University planned a welcome talk for the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, where I study. The talk was given by the CEO of the University and wasn’t all that special. After the welcome talk we went to the fire safety talk, which seemed to be endless. All the rules regarding fire safety in the University were explained to us thoroughly and often with examples. Listening to two long non interesting talks a day is quite exhausting…

As was the party the same night, to which I had me talked in to by Vikesh. The partyLoaded @ Gatecrasher, was held in Birmingham’s largest club/disco Gatecrasher. As you all know me, I danced the roof off the place the whole night (not ), but after all it wasn’t too bad. Around 2 Am we arrived home, because we had to wake up early the day after.

Tuesday morning the enrollment for the engineering students started at 9 AM. There was quite a queue of people for the enrollment and it took me about 30 minutes before it was my turn. After all the information I had given was checked I could continue to the next queue, to pick up my brand new Aston University Student ID. As from now I am officially an Aston University Post Graduate student!

After I was finished with my enrollment I went to the market to buy me some food and things. The market is about 10 minutes from the university, next to the large Bullring shopping centre. I bought tomatoes, peppers, bread, bananas, apples, eggs and a pot to boil my eggs.

Later on the day there was a information market in the Great Hall (the main hall of the university), with all sorts of promotions and stuff and a lot of freebies including a Philips energy saving lamp (unfortunately I don’t have a desk light to put it in), bags, pens, key chains and candy. After the information market I went with Vikesh to a food cookery demonstration for students, which was held on the campus in a party tent outside the main building. The lady doing the demonstration wasn’t that good of a cook; after tasting her smoothie, bean casserole and stir fried something… we figured we can do much better.

When I wanted to go back to my dormitory after the disappointing food, the fire alarm in my building had just gone off. This meant I couldn’t go in and had to wait for about 45 minutes. It was just a practice, and nothing was going on actually. At home I made myself a nice salad with tomatoes, a pepper, apple and egg, much better than what we had on the food cookery demonstration. At night we wanted to watch the Champions League football match downstairs in the TV lounge. Unfortunately it wasn’t broadcasted on the public channels, why we ended up watching the match on a laptop in Vikesh’ room. Wednesday’s match will be broadcasted on a public channel, so we’ll watch that one on a large screen in the TV lounge!
Wednesday morning the Engineering Postgraduate students had a workshop in BlackBoard, the University’s Virtual Learning Environment. It was all quite easy actually… Before the workshop we were all given our 2nd USB flash drive since we’re here, the first one we got during the library tour. Halfway the workshop I got a call from a truck driver he was parked in front of Aston Business School, with my suit case! It wasn’t hard to find the large truck in front of the Uni, as it wasn’t hard to find the fat tattooed truck driver without teeth either! I brought my suitcase to my room and then headed off for school again, since we had a welcome talk from our program director David Carpenter.

The welcome talk was mainly about the contents of the course and the planning of the course. I will be studying and doing normal coursework until the end of March, and then I’ll have to start my project and dissertation from April and finish it in September 2010. In March 2011 will be the official graduation of the M.Sc. in Engineering Management program. After the welcome talk we got (again) a free USB flash drive, which means we all have 3 Aston University USB flash drives!

After the welcome talk I went to the fair which is still going on on campus, because today they’ll be selling second hand bikes. The second hand bikes came from the police who got them from I don’t know where (probably found them, or they were stolen and not reclaimed or something). Anyways, I bought myself a very nice mountain bike in superb condition for only 40 pounds (45 euro)! The guy selling them could surprisingly speak a little Dutch, since he had been a semi-professional cyclist in Maastricht. The University was also selling by the police subsidized padlocks to secure the bike in the bicycle stalls, so of course I also bought one of these. In the afternoon I had to register with the National Health Service (NHS). Who gave me a vaccine against meningitis. At night we watched the Man Utd footbal match, downstairs in th TV room.

Thursday I went with Vikesh and his cousin, who also studied in Aston, for a lunch In the city centre. We went to a place called “Nando’s” where they sell all kinds of grilled chicken. I had an extra hot pita with chicken breast, which wasn’t really that hot, but tasted very good. That night I became really ill, my eyes were hurting, all my muscles were hurting, my throat and nose were hurting and I had headaches. Friday I have spent the whole day in my bed and luckily I’m feeling a little better now.