Chapter 11 : First Impression

It’s still 7 AM in the morning when the team from Brunel University picked me up at the Heathrow Airport. Morning breeze in London was very fresh and cool. It’s just like being in Batu or Tretes. At first, I thought it’s going to be cooler than those places, because the temperature was only at 8 degree Celsius when I arrived.

Along with me in the pick-up bus, there were also 3 students from Hongkong (and later I realized there are many Chinese students in Brunel). A trip from Heathrow to Brunel took only 10 minutes, and in just 2 hours after I arrived in England, finally I could take a rest in my room. My first impression about my room could be described in two words, simple yet tidy. Room size is about 10 square meters, equipped with a cupboard, a washbasin, a wall cabinet with mirror, a desk with one drawer, a chair, two bookshelves, a bed, a bedside table, a cabinet with three drawers, and a room heater. Unfortunately, the room heater will be activated by the accommodation office in October (and sometimes I felt quite cold while I was sleeping).

Brunel University campus area is very large (and up until today, I still haven’t look around all the environments and buildings on campus one-by-one, but I promise I will complete this task soon). On my first day at campus, I just went to the campus store and bought a mobile-phone number (it seems like Lebara, not “Lebaran”, is the most popular network here) for 5 pound and top it up for another 5 pound (it’s quite different with how it works in Indonesia, where we can buy a mobile number which already contained some amount of balance in it), and then I went to the Sports Center building to complete my registration (fortunately I just need to queue for a while, whereas the queue for the next 3 days was very long), and in the end of my first day, I also completed the medical registration.

The first week on campus was called Freshers Week. There were no lessons for this week, but there was induction sessions. This induction sessions was arranged to help students understand their study material and syllabus, and also help them to understand how to use the campus study facilities (such as the campus e-learning website, library, computers in the laboratory, etc). Beside that, the campus also held a Freshers Fayre, which is a fayre to introduce all the sports and societies club in the campus. Students could sign up and join any clubs, if they are interested. This fayre is a little bit unique, because we could find several rare sports and societies here, such as archery, fencing, even if you dare to join Shaolin Kungfu, it’s also available. Hahaha.

~ by xhino on 24/09/2010.