If You Thought That I Had Died...
...you're most probably right.Since my last communique to the world, my time has been spent wallowing in the endless quagmire of notes that characterizes the much-despised land of Revision. My progress? Glacial would not be too strong a word to describe the progression of my revision. Perhaps it is purely relative - after all, I am used to the Malaysian way of education, which consists of myself receiving notes, tossing them into some obscure corner in my room (if no suitably obscure corner exists then one can easily be manufactured with just a little bit of creativity and surreptious furniture-arranging) and devouring them just before examinations, when the motivation to study is driven 90% by Last Minute Panic and 10% Fear Of Being Garroted By Parents After Failing Exams. I am not used to making my own notes and charting out my revision "road-map" on my own seems as foreign to me as the dark side of the moon.
I really do not have any qualms about making my own notes - in fact, I find that I understand my own notes better than notes given out en masse by lecturers, assuming I bother to make any notes in the first place. However, it is the key question of how much do I really need to know? that makes me sometimes wish for Malaysian-style notes, where everything you need to know (not less, although maybe sometimes a little more) is on them. Read them, understand them and hopefully regurgitate everything that is written on them during the exams and you'll definitely pass. Of course, that automatically assumed that you managed to dig them out of Some Obscure Corner in time for revision, spade and whatnot and all. My current studying method involves reading the chapters that will be covered and hoping that some knowledge will be retained in my head - although absorption of knowledge via osmosis by resting my head on my books seems to be a rather appealing method at the moment...
I presume that by around this time, you will probably be bored listening to me rant about the endless revision that I will have to do in these remaining two weeks to my finals. Yeah, yeah. He thinks as though he's the only one having troubles. Etcetera etcetera etcetera. Therefore, it is with great pleasure that I will cease whining about my revision and move on to hopefully more appealing subjects to your literary palate. First off, I attended the MASSOC Dinner and Dance at the MacDonald's St Paul Hotel, the "swankiest" hotel in Sheffield. Retrospectively, it was rather a stupid thing to do - I had no suit with me over here so I bought one just for the dinner, therefore my dinner that night cost a staggering 152 pounds (32 pounds for the dinner, 120 pounds for the suit). However, the suit will probably be reused time and again over here as there are so many formal events in a year, so the money spent on it was not exactly wasted.
The dinner was not fantastic - perhaps it is the genetic vestiges of my Chinaman ancestry talking, but I would say that paying 32 pounds for the dinner that night was almost a ripoff. The only course worthy of a mention that was served that evening was the dessert - the starter and the main course were just average, I guess. Not exactly what you'd expect from the supposedly "best" hotel in Sheffield. It may be an unfair comparison, but if MASSOC had held the dinner in Wong Ting, a Cantonese restaurant over here, everyone would have gone home filled to the brim with excellent Chinese cuisine. However, as it were, MASSOC chose style over substance. That said, I cannot fault them for their choice despite my prior comments - I would have probably done the same thing if I were in the organizing committee. I mean, a formal dinner in a Chinese restaurant? Granted, Wong Ting has a pretty high-class interior and the food is great, if not excellent, but it just doesn't sound right.
As for the performances, the sketches (I wonder if you could call it a sketch in the first place) sucked although the performances done by the bands were excellent. I think that this was the first time I had clapped in sincerity after listening to amateur bands play; they were that good. The Dance part of the MASSOC Dinner and Dance was non-existent. Perhaps my way of thinking is flawed and very likely outmoded, but when you hold a formal dinner, is it not the custom to have ballroom dancing? Or at the very least, slow-dancing to love songs? Somehow the organizing committee decided that club music would be more appropriate and blasted club music over the speakers until the speakers were mercifully fried. As a result of the speakers going on the fritz, everyone did what Malaysians do best - we stood in groups on the dance floor and talked and took pictures and talked a little more until it was time to leave.
Here are some pictures!
Hiromi and me just before leaving Halifax Hall.
From left - Wei Jin, Hiromi, myself and Ah Wong. The four of us shared a cab to go to the hotel.
They f***ing misspelt my name. What the hell... Somehow one would expect his or her friends to know one's name after eight months, but it is evident that such expectations are unrealistic. My name is still misspelt by quite a number of my friends as everyone prefers to just call me by my nickname, "Medic"! Hahaha!
Ladies in black! Clockwise, from bottom left - Noemi, Hiromi, Rex, Jessica and Lisa. Black seemed to be the dominant colour at the dinner, so much so that I overheard someone commenting how it seemed so much like a funeral...
Group photo of our table! Ladies, from left - Anna, Hiromi, Lisa, Rex and Noemi. Guys, from left - Suresh, myself and Wei Jin.
Max actually wore a tuxedo to the dinner - now that's what I call uber-formal! It was really funny to see him doing the boogie with Jessica and Lisa in the tux, but it was even funnier to capture a video of it without him noticing until it was too late!
From left - Jian, myself and Wei Jin.
Me and Wei Jin doing a budget-cool pose. Needless to say, it did not turn out perfectly well. Hahaha!
I guess this will be the extent of my entry this time. My raison d'etre for the next two weeks will be to revise and study, so no entries will likely to be forthcoming in the next couple of weeks as I erase myself off Life's metaphorical radar screens and consign myself to the dark and bitter depths of anatomy, physiology, pathology, histology and clinical medicine.
I'll see you around in about three weeks' time then. Hopefully.
posted by yong chen @ 5:29 PM
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