Uni-7-8-disaster all in one

This post may not be as long you may think it would be... I can summarise my final year in UK in 3 words.

FUN EXHILARATING STRESS

Celebrated my 21th birthday with a bunch of friends!

Semester 7 was the fun and exhilarating part. The timetable had only 2-3 columns filled, mostly Thursday and Friday mornings and sometimes Monday workshops. That's it! Some of my friends had to attend their lab practicals for their research project during the other days but for me, it was HOLIDAY!!!

I had my own research project which required me to collect data from NHS pharmacists who also act as assessors in our final year OSCE examination. This means that I had to travel to several different pharmacies around and outside of Glasgow, like a field trip. Sadly my only trip outside of Glasgow was Hartfield Clinic in Dumbarton, the others were within Glasgow like the Royal Infirmary and Western Infirmary.

Dumbarton Central train station at 9am in December.

Walked around University of Glasgow after my assignment in Western Infirmary.

Winter is quite a depressing season. The weather got really inconsistent, sometimes hailing, sometimes snowing and sometimes the sun appears when the day and night temperature difference can be up to 15C. Many people in my house went for holiday, leaving only 3-4 of us at home doing nothing.

One day we got bored and I decided we should visit Glasgow Necropolis near our hostel.

On New Year's Eve I went on a solo trip to Edinburgh to attend the Hogmanay street party and met up with a bunch of other friends there. Although the party was a total rip-off, the fireworks and atmosphere was fun, especially singing Auld Lang Syne with everyone where the song was actually made. My friends went back to Glasgow after the party while I stayed for another 2 days to explore Edinburgh. Fortunately I didn't get lost this time and didn't need to use a map anymore since I was familiar with the roads already.

Group photo shortly before the street party

Let me think, what else happened? Semester 8 was much tougher than any other semester since we already enjoyed ourselves too much during the previous semester *my bad*. Projects, presentations, tests and OSCE were coming at us endlessly. Somehow we still managed to plan a Malaysian Night and celebrate Chinese New Year before that nightmare started.

Muhibbah in Glasgow!

All you need during CNY, cookies by Chei Wan, Mandarin oranges, Bak kwa by me and

the awesome-st CNY reunion dinner away from home!!!

After that, life gets really crazy and stressful. That's the best description I can make, staying at home most of the time studying and working on projects, that's all for until study break. Ironically "study break" was the time we stopped studying for a short while to take a breath of fresh air although the final exam was just weeks away because we were so exhausted finishing and submitting our research project. Many of my friends went for trips during that time. I personally didn't go anywhere outside Glasgow.

We did visit Celtic Park

and St Andrews, home of Golf.

I think that's about all for semester 7 and 8. OH ya, before I forget, I went to another self planned solo budget trip to London. Being alone in trips like these were tough. I did all the bookings and itinery myself long before I knew what to expect in London. It was a true challenge and really made it a better experience than just following a tour group. Can anyone believe I only spent around 170pounds for the whole 4 days 3 night trip *150pounds if I didn't miss my bus back to Glasgow*. It was still a fantastic achievement to me.

This is just a summary of what I did in London. 

More posts to come very soon, so stay tuned!

lalanandaFRY
19/10/12

Uni-6-disaster Sum-UP

I don't think anyone in my course would disagree that this semester is one of most difficult semesters, comparable with the final semester.

While trying to settle in a whole new world, we were presented with 3 subjects:

1. PP3 - Gotta be very efficient in time management and familiar with UK pharmacy laws.
2. FMT1 - Probably the easiest of the three but can't be taken lightly.
3. FMT2 - Gotta think and solve issues instead of memorizing facts.

Fortunately, I managed to crawl through this semester and pass all the subjects. So it is time for a little intermission and travel around during the short break. So far I've only been around Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Scott Monument, our first stop.

Attended the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo

my first time planning an excursion

I wouldn't say Edinburgh is more beautiful than Glasgow, just more well spread.

I also visited Glasgow's Kelvingrove Park

haven't seen some of them for almost a year

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum

Museum side

Art Gallery side

Riverside Museum

I haven't seen such a large transportation museum

 Living in Glasgow is really delightful with so many friends getting so much closer then we were in Malaysia.

It is so nice to live with great cooks and best buddies!

Celebrate happy occasions together

Meet up with old friends and get to know new ones

study and live together.

I hope you enjoy these pictures. It is 3am in the morning now and my brain is kinda lazy to think of stuff to write. I'm going to Italy very soon, so I shall be writing about that trip in the next post. Till then... arriverderci!

lalanandaFRY
3/9/11

Uni-6-disaster week 4 & 5 report

Now is when the stressful time starts. After looking through my lecture and exam timetable, I realized 2 things:

1. Unlike IMU, there is NO STUDY BREAK for semester 6 here.
2. I'm in DEEP $H1+!

hardly any lectures left, only tests, tests, tests and exams!!!

So what I did was to open my books and study. That enthusiasm lasted only 5 minutes. FMT 1 and 2 are really boring. I tried studying everywhere, from my room to the living room, from the open garden to the laundry room *while waiting for my laundry*. I seriously need a system.

On a lighter note, my flatmates and I have been performing many experiments in the kitchen to cure the gastro-intestinal disease known as hunger... hahah! It was really fun preparing and cooking dishes here with friends. It is also nice that my housemates are really good cooks!!!

Meals from H4 kitchen

it is like having party everyday!

Recently I had FMT2 labs for sterile, tabletting and emulsions. Sterile lab is a whole new experience for me as I had to put on *space suits* when moving from different grades of clean environments.

I don't know these people, but I know how it feels to be in those suits

In tabletting labs, my partner and I made paracetamol tablets and tested them. Tests were interesting and some are actually "cute"!

this machine was used for disintegration testing

this machine was used for dissolution testing in gastric and intestinal fluids

There were two more machines to test friability and tablet hardness but I didn't take photos of that.

tablets by me and my partner

batchmates discussing the calculations

I guess that's all for the past two weeks. Now is time to get back to my books and notes.

lalanandaFRY

17/7/11

Uni-6-disaster week 3 report

So far, Glasgow has been treating me quite well with comfortable weather and convenience of shopping. However university work is building up, class test is approaching and I'm still trying to manage everything well.

Master chef Gary cooking carbonara

The nice part of being here is that I get to cook and eat anything I want. Call me stingy or boring, I made a rule for myself that my lunch must not exceed £1. To achieve this, I improvise a little with the limited lunch time I have, which is one hour for preparation, cooking, eating and washing. Despite setting this rule, I still get to make simple yet delicious meals.

my Pork Spaghetti in special tomato mix costs only 50p

Glasgow is a beautiful city with wonders everywhere, especially those nearby as the university is situated within the city centre. I made a point to explore a wee part of the city when I'm free. So far I've made several solo 'adventures' with my P&S camera, this includes Glasgow Necropolis, Glasgow Cathedral, George Square (evening walk), The Lighthouse and Glasgow Green (with a few friends).

Glasgow Necropolis

Glasgow Cathedral

George Square

The Lighthouse

Glasgow Green

After a month away from home, I'm in the midst of adjusting myself to the weather. With sunrise at 4.30am and sunset at 10pm, the average daily temperature is ~15°C now. Just last Sunday, I was actually drenched in my own sweat while walking along the street when the temperature at that time was 22°C!

this is the view of the sky from the room on Sunday 

Now is time to leap into the huge pile of overdue notes and try to understand those 3 tough subjects of Semester 6, probably the toughest semester of all.

lalanandaFRY
5/7/11

Uni-6-disaster week 1 & 2 report

It has been slightly more than two weeks since I took my first step on Glasgow soil. The journey from KL to Dubai to Glasgow was quite a torture. The flight from KL to Dubai gave me a claustrophobic feeling since it was a 2am flight and everything was dark in the cabin throughout the whole flight. I forced myself not to sleep by watching movies, TV shows and listening to music.

The transit in Dubai was another weird experience. Dubai is a very very hot and dry country that values water more than oil. That latter statement means that I was dehydrated for the 3 hours transit time, but fortunately or unfortunately due to the @#$%^ delay, we were given a bottle of water and some snacks.

After another 7 hours and 45 minutes of non-stop food from Emirates, we finally reached the destination.

Glasgow Airport

Then we were brought to our halls (that's what they call hostels here) to settle down and the university also prepared a light refreshment for us *which I didn't eat bcos too full from airplane food*. My first impression of my room was *why is it a triangle?*.

The shape of the room was not the worst part, the living room which is shared with our neighbor smelled like a rubbish dump. Just when I was about to vacuum my rooms dirty carpet flooring, the vacuum cleaner gave out the same rubbish dump stench too!!! What else can go wrong in this tenement? Somehow I managed to settle and survived till today.

Glasgow is very different from KL... duh! The currency difference released the "x5 multiplication calculator" every time I see a price tag. Despite the *£1 is RM4.97*, lots of stuff are actually cheaper here than they are in KL. Nevertheless, I still feel a little guilty for being slightly more extravagant than I was in KL.

I'm starting to love Scottish food

Scottish Summer daylight *even at 9.25pm*

Glasgow architechture

the cooking?

but starting to worry about my hair... hahaha!

and also worry about Sem6

It was a nice experience anyway. I just hope I can survive this short and unpleasant semester so that I can enjoy my holidays in Autumn.

lalanandaFRY

23/6/11