A Letter Proper

Hello everyone, it's Thursday night, well it really is in the wee hours of Friday morning. I was about to write a letter to you guys and post it tomorrow since I need to post my first British Telecoms phone bill tomorrow (oh yes I've just gotten a landline it's +44(0115)9704190 and my handphone number remains if ever you guys need to call. if not it is still pretty much affordably cheaper for me to.). That means I need to get a Second Class stamp from the Post Office. But ah well, I decided to blog it so that you can read it when I publish the post.

So how's everyone? :) Life here is...good...? It's not that I have nothing much to say about my life in Nottingham, it's just I don't know where to start. Amidst the rigours of really trying to keep up with my work, I do have my moments of the pensive thoughts while walking home, and my rolling-over-with-hysteria moments with my flatmates and all. The physical details are basically as such, that I still live somewhere further away from the Main Campus of University Park where I have all my lessons, like the last academic year. I was at the Jubilee Campus, Newark Hall if you remember. This time around, I'm living with 5 other girls, in a flat at Raleigh Park, which is about a 10-minute walk from the Hopper Bus Stop at Jubilee Campus. Run a search on GoogleEarth and where you see Faraday Road and Triumph Road in Nottingham, those are some of the streets I have come to be familiar with.

And out of the 5 girls, 3 of them used to be at the Jubilee Campus, and 1 more I got to know through them as well, and so we knew one another before deciding to bunk in for Year 2. That's Ling, Jen and Prav who're from KL and Aggie who was born here. We get along mighty fine and it's cool having people I like living with.

We all have our own rooms but share the 2 toilets among us and a kitchen which is really enlarged to fit the dining table and coffee table. I have had my stint at whipping up dishes which accompanies my magazine-reading, and leaving for class with a banana in the bag while briskly walking so as to make it on time for the lectures alike. My mama had me pack in some chinese herbs and I've had chicken herbal soup just a few weeks ago. I have also, very importantly, taken along some of the chilli she made. I'm not terribly strung up about having rice everyday. In fact, I'm fine with pasta most of the time. The Singaporean in me comes through when I do have my fusilli in broth sometimes, like macaroni in soup at the school canteen.

I have classes everyday and my timetable is really quite terrific, with a hectic Thursday however. But this leaves my Fridays free, even as tutorials kick in from next week. There's plenty and plenty to read and understand, remember and apply, as you guys would know anyway. I get a kick out of speed-reading, well, not in terms of absolute speed perhaps, but in terms of how much it is accelerating, as I plough through the textbooks, lecture notes, etc. I do know the importance of reading productively though. I've also decided to lug my dear laptop to lectures for typing in notes, as well as getting the lectures down on audio recordings. And I'm also doing Spanish instead of the initial English optional modules which I wanted to do really badly. Between what my head and heart were saying, I went with my head, for a change perhaps. In any case, Spanish is great too. I crash the English lectures when I can. Does this mark some kind of a shift? I don't know, probably not. I do know that my attitude towards my Law degree has taken a turning. What turning, it's hard to say. In any case, the way I learn will all be part of the many memories I shall be taking with me from Nottingham.

My life wraps around the places I go to, the sights I see, the sounds, smells, and perhaps in my imagination even. Apart from getting down to the grind for what my academic life has in store for me, there's something special about my physical presence in Nottingham, against the greater background of England and Europe, but also against the little things like the idle chatter in the laundry room, the music I listen to (oh I am also going for a Franz Ferdinand gig on 28 November), the frosty wind skipping across the hills. Looking out of the window and into the distance sometimes, other times alerted by what sounds like gunshots in the middle of the night, and looking down to the ground 3 floors below and wondering who's come to visit when the doorphone rings, all these. I have probably, in the course of studying in Nottingham, taken more from her than I would have imagined. Of course I still am the girl you guys bade goodbye at the airport last year, at the very core. It's just that I have had the opportunity, for which I am infinitely grateful to my parents, to lead a life here, albeit being a mere few years. I miss home but I know it isn't going to be easy to leave Nottingham eventually.

The overseas experience isn't always as glamorous as they have on the glossy posters, nor is it as hedonistic as eagerly awaited by some of us who feel stifled at home. It really depends on how one has decided to lead her life, just as she would at any other time. Having chose to come, what I pack along from home is nothing short of the maximum I can replicate and recall, and that can be minimised to be put aside, giving way to what I have and build in front of me here. What this means for me, I guess we shall see in many more years to come.

I shall still try to do a better job of catching up and updating everyone at home and abroad. What might seem a retreat, or an MIA act, is really a busy, possibly fruitful and personal life in its course.

All right then, till my next letter, keep happy and safe. Will take photos and post them in time to come.