I’ve lost all control and can’t stop going on trips. It was was meant to be to Devon, but ended up heading to Wales almost last minute. This worked out pretty well as we got lovely, all be it expensive, accommodation with a cute old couple that gave us food and actual real beds with actual real pillows! Bam.
A few experienced people went off to paddle some nice grade 4, called Nantygwyryd…or so we thought. They returned displeased and it turned out to be a lovely grade 4 scrape. Apparently they actually had to exit the boats and walk a few times. Once we reached put in, pretended to be a rollercoaster, pretended to be Gazolphins and generally had some great merry times, we met a lovely lady, who warned us about angry farmers and gave the whole group a rather unimpressed glare when we mentioned what the morning mission consisted of.
The river Seiont (usually a grade III with a pleasant grade IV rapid, but more a III-(III+)) was initially just pleasantly bouncy and contained a few nice drops, but ended up presenting us with a damn good view of Caernarfon Castle. Due to the flat water at the end and the fact that paddled 11km, we were rather ready for chili. Taking boats out by climbing out of them directly onto a ladder and then heaving them up with a throw line was also oddly fun. I think an important addition to the level of pure funbags was the fact that my typhoon drysuit was still functional and kept me pretty warm.
dang pretty
We were off the water with plenty of light left and popped for a quick shop, because apparently we didn’t have enough mushrooms. The evening was the usual blur of chili, card games and *hot chocolate*.
The next morning was slow for most of us, as the two experienced ones went off to lose their glenginity i.e. paddle the Fairy Glen (a grade V(V+)). A few exciting things did occur while packing up though, as the owners locked the drying room with a bunch of kit still contained within it and promptly left. There is absolutely no way that we had to open a window and gently climb into the drying room. We decided to meet the glenginity losers at the Betws y Coed train station, where we found them enjoying some proper breakfast. One of them managed to obtain a mildly impressive cut on his eyebrow, which had luckily stopped bleeding before they ate food and met us.
Eventually, we decided to paddle the Ceirw, which began with a death gorge i.e. a compulsory portage. We decided to get on the river after it, so we got a lovely look from a bridge and path alongside the river. It looked like pure, never ending, beautiful death. After finding the appropriate put in, we made the decision that 2 miles is a ridiculously short paddle, despite the fact that we were 2+ hours later than we really should have be. Hence, we decided to paddle past the confluence with the Alwen. This was also a short paddle, but contained a pretty fun weir adventure. We approached a rather smooth looking weir, though remembered the guide book mentioning one to portage. Luckily, we did get out and look at it, which allowed us to see the disgusting tow back on the second drop and the fact that getting out in between the two drops was not likely to be easy.
It was overall a really good trip, as it contained 5 rivers and the ones I got to paddle were just lovely. Unfortunately, the next trip was cancelled, but not only was it okay to leave paddling for the term on such a high, but it was also replaced by a half-trip to Lee Valley. This means that I will finally get a Legacy assessment in two days, making me less incompetent 🙂
Living in London is busy. Studying at Imperial is manic. Resting does not come easily.
This week I found myself challenged to rest. Everyone works better when they take breaks as well as study, but I have recently found that this is easier said than done! I find it takes a lot of confidence to be able to take a good break without worrying about work. This is particularly true in the run up to exams.
Everywhere I seem to look people are working. I try to be disciplined and take breaks, but find it hard to relax. I start thinking about work, worrying about things I need to do or I simply cannot sit still!
Alas, after six years of battling I have still not fully conquered the balance of rest and worry and work. If you feel similar there are many resources at Imperial that can offer a great help. I’m sure this won’t be the last week I am challenged by this, but with each that passes I improve!
Since my fellow blogger colleagues started to write about their average weeks, I thought I might try something similar… The only problem was that I always forgot to start it in the past couple of Mondays 😀 But this time I didn’t, so here is
my average week as a ChemEng student and Woodward resident.
Monday
05:45 Time to wake up! I like to wake up early because the tube is horrible after 8, so I try to avoid that period. Hence I get up when an average Computing student goes to bed…
07:00 The weather is cold but the sun is shining, the tube is half empty, the birds are chirping. Sounds like a good start!
07:30 Whenever the weather is nice (i.e. not raining) I choose walking through Kensington Park instead of the Circle line. It’s wonderful in the morning, the grass, the pond, the swans, everything. I love it!
08:00 Sitting in the lecture theatre alone, my favourite! 😀 I had to watch some video recordings before the lectures (because the Separation Processes lecturer sends us the theoretical part in pre-recorded videos and then on the lectures we solve problems).
08:50 My classmates start to arrive…
09:00 Maths lecture! To be honest, that one coffee in the morning probably wasn’t enough, because I almost fall asleep… This is something which I didn’t believe before uni, but I totally understand now: from October till June you are constantly tired. Constantly. There is no such thing as enough sleep. And you are especially close to falling asleep when the lecturer talks about undamped driven oscillators as non-homogeneous second-order linear ordinary differential equations…
10:00 One of my favourites, Separation Processes 🙂 Today we talked about interfacial mass transfer in packed columns… Sounds fun, right? We discussed a couple of problems and calculated a couple of numbers. Easy 🙂
11:00 Thermodynamics, the “bugbear”. I don’t dislike Thermo, I am just not quite good at it… Today was about the connection and physical relevance of Gibbs energy and availability. Full of equations, full of new material, and I already see myself failing the June exam…
12:00 Finished for today! Before I came home, I visited the new Transport for London shop at the South Kensington tube station. Not to buy something, but just to look around, check the latest items… Have I mentioned that I am totally in love with the London Tube? I just love everything, the design, the map, the infinite amount of “stuff” related to the tube you can buy. My favourite of today was the moquette cushion with the classic Central line design. And I almost bought the colouring pencil set which features all the colours of the lines. Top item on my Christmas wish list!
12:30 I got home and ate some weekend leftover for lunch. The good thing about weekends is that I go home and my mum cooks amazing food. The good thing about Mondays is that I always have some leftover from Sunday and I can still eat my mum’s amazing food 😀
13:00 Time to do the lab report! We have to submit the conclusion and the evaluation for the latest experiments (Conduction&Diffusion and Flow lines). It sounds easy, but the data is quite confusing, the equations are strange, and I have absolutely no idea what the conclusion should include… But at least my desk looks cool 😀
Yes, I have a post-it obsession 😀
16:00 Well, I got stuck with the labbook, so I started to discuss a coding problem with my sister. Not so helpful for my lab report, but definitely more fun!
18:00 Dinner time 🙂 I accidentally ate a whole pack of oreo cookies…
19:00 It’s so easy to procrastinate when you are the editor of the Woodward newsletter, the admin of the Humans of Woodward Hall facebook page, and a student blogger. I feel like the universe doesn’t want me to finish my lab report…
20:00 University Challenge!!! When you are an Imperial student and the Imperial team is in the University Challenge, you just watch it. No matter how much coursework you have. You just watch it.
20:30 We lost it 🙁 But I unintentionally stayed in the kitchen, talking with my flatmates…
21:00 I should really go to my room and study…
21:30 Seriously, watching Big Bang Theory in the kitchen won’t give me a good lab grade…
22:00 Really… I should go to bed now…
22:30 I really shouldn’t start another movie…
23:00 I have 5 deadlines in the next 2 weeks, there is no time to sit in the kitchen…
23:30 So I went to bed at half past eleven. Again. Damn.
Tuesday
06:30 Good morning! To be honest, it took me 30 mins to get up. Maybe I shouldn’t have talked with my flatmates till almost midnight yesterday, I guess… But when you’re at uni, these things just sort of happen, and then you terribly regret it next morning. And you need an incredible amount of coffee even to be able to get dressed.
07:40 I was so tired that I didn’t realise my Travelcard has expired and I used my pay-as-you-go credit. I hate this day!
08:00 At least the Kensington Park is beautiful as always. Swans! 🙂
08:20 Time to do nothing for another half an hour… I usually read news and facebook, and stuff like that, but this morning I was just sitting there and listening to some music…
09:00 Maths lecture! We learnt about the general non-constant-coefficient linear second order ordinary differential equations this time, and let’s just say I kind of had a clue what was going on, but I’m not entirely sure about this…
10:00 Heat & Mass lecture, with heat exchangers, proving that it doesn’t matter if you have co-current or counter-current or any other type of heat exchanger, the governing equation is always the same. I.e. no need to memorise more than one, phew!
11:00 Properties of Matter!!! Yayy! Our PoM lecturer is such an amazing teacher, he talked about the conduction in crystals and he asked 5 people to come and “dance” the whole thing with him! 😀
12:00 Nothing better than 2 sandwiches as lunch… Just joking…
13:00 Chemistry tutorial 🙂 Our tutor is amazing, but kinetics is just… Kinetics. Rate law, reaction orders, differential method. Most of the time, I was just guessing the answers.
14:00 After a large latte and a well-deserved chocolate muffin, I sat down in the library cafe and started to work on the lab report. Choosing the best 24 pictures out of 200 is not so easy, and then writing footnote and everything, laborious. But after all, we have the chance to do this cool stuff, so I’m not really complaining 😀
16:00 My last Horizons session this year… We did an amazing summary of what we’d done in the past 8 weeks and we got little awards for our achievements (I got a joint “Most active member” award!!!! I am sooo happy 🙂 )
The final summary of our Horizons course. It was amazing!!!
18:00 I’m finally heading back to Woodward… The tube is full as usual, but that’s just how it is in London. You can get used to it after a while. I usually watch others and try to guess what they work and where they are from…
19:00 Have I mentioned that they started to sell Uncle Ben’s Sweet & Sour sauce in Tesco? I’d consider this as the greatest news of the month! I love sweet & sour. <3
I’m still better at taking food pictures than actually cooking…
20:00 I just started to work on the Woodward Newsletter, when I got a message from Andreea (the designer) to come over and interview some guys from her floor for the Humans of Woodward Hall project. One thing led to another and I ended up…
23:50 Going to bed at almost midnight. Again… 😀
Wednesday
07:00 We didn’t have a 9am today (rare exception), so I could sleep a healthy 7 hours. Makes such a difference!
08:15 Travelling in peak-time in the morning… Avoid it if you can, it’s terrible.
09:10 After a nice morning walk in Kensington Park, I tried to work on my lab report before our first tutorial. Why is it so difficult?
10:00 Maths tutorial. It might help to look at the problem sheet before the tutorial, but Maths is not too difficult, so at least I understood what was going on (as opposed to Chemistry…)
11:00 On our calendar it said: “Rig Building Briefing”. I had a vague idea that we’d need to build a rig as our last Lab project this year, but I had no idea about the when/where/what and how. (And I had to google what a “rig” is…) Well, we had a briefing, where they said:
“Construction of a closed system rig to independently control level and flow rate of water between two tanks. Water must be delivered from one tank to the other tank while maintaining levels. No by pass or recirculation in only one tank will be allowed.”
We have 8 days to come up with a complete design, and after that we’ll have 9 hours to build it. And it has to work. Properly, and without leaking. I had only one question: HOW ON EARTH WILL WE DO IT???
12:00 In the lunchtime I tried to look into the recommended textbook for the rig building, and I got more and more distressed. Like seriously, a rig?! HOW???!!!
13:00 My lab group agreed to meet and discuss the calculations, so we headed to the study rooms (challenge: find 3 empty seats in the study room in the Spring term). I don’t usually go to the study rooms because I prefer to study at Woodward at my desk where I have all my nice and colourful post-its but this time I spent a couple of hours there and realised a few things which I hadn’t seen before. Firstly, that the chairs are super-comfortable. And secondly, that it’s an amazing place. It’s designated to ChemEng students, so it’s very homely. And undergrad students from all years do their projects there, so for example there was a team on the opposite side of the table who did their third year Absorption column design, and it was just so… Cool! That’s why I love Imperial so much: I feel home here. And the ChemEng department is like a huge family. My huge family! <3
18:15 You know you have to stop when you close your eyes and the only thing you can see is Fick’s first law for diffusion… And when you open your eyes, there is this graph and you can’t decide any more if it’s generally this zigzag-shaped or just you are too tired to see straight…
Answer: generally zigzag-shaped…
19:00 I was waiting for this moment the whole day: eating the leftover sweet & sour chicken from yesterday!
20:00 I should really finish the Woodward Newsletter now. But just when I started, I got a message from Andreea to head down to the common room and interview some more people. Cool!
21:00 Have I mentioned that we have this new facebook page for our project? It’s getting extremely popular now! I love it! https://www.facebook.com/humansofwoodwardhall/
21:30 Time to finally finish up this Newsletter. Woodward needs some news!
00:30 DONE! I’m not as satisfied with this one as with the previous ones, but after all, I did it half-sleeping… 😀 My favourite part is the intro:
“Dear Woodward Citizens! In the midst of endless coursework and uncountable deadlines, the much awaited Woodward Newsletter is finally here! (No more pink in the lifts…) This week, it’s all about pictures: the Humans of Woodward Hall gets bigger and better, the Woodward Hoodie competition is coming to an end… And can you match the subwardens with their childhood photos? Read the newsletter and like, share, comment, vote, answer, but most importantly: enjoy!”
Thursday
06:20 It took me 20 minutes just to get to the out of my bed. Seems like another good day…
07:30 I love how there is always a “quote of the day” at the North Acton station. It’s usually about motivation and success, and it’s exactly what I need in the morning. JustLondonthings… <3
07:50 I just realised I haven’t yet mentioned the most important thing about Kensington park: the symmetric arrangement of the trees! I really like symmetry and perfect geometry, so looking around and seeing 10-15 trees perfectly aligned in a straight line is like getting a Christmas present… Infinite happiness!
08:15 Alone in ACEX250 lecture theatre, so usual, so good… That’s when I catch up with the news, write my blog, read my emails. People don’t understand how can I get up so early. And I don’t understand people who don’t understand it… 😀
09:00 We were supposed to have a Separation Mastery seminar, but the lecturer didn’t show up. Why I feel there is a problem with the mastery calendar again? It happened last week as well…
10:00 We were supposed to have a Mastery feedback session, but… Yeah, so we had 2 free hours. Perfect for finishing the conclusion of the conduction experiment…
11:00 Business Ethics. That is the strange subject which is taught by “outsiders”, lecturers from the Horizons program. We did case studies and talked about whether a business is a morally neutral activity (not really). Ohh, and by the way, the Separations lecturer came in at 11:00 to give the mastery seminar. We told him it was 2 hours ago… 😀
13:00 I’m getting better and better in eating my lunch and writing my lab report at the same time… Almost finished!
15:00 Separations tutorial. We discussed the liquid-liquid extraction, but everyone was terribly tired and disoriented so it was quite hopeless…
16:00 We came together with the rig building team to discuss the first steps in our rig building project. Well, first of all we tried to understand the handout and our tasks. Not so easy… But we have a clearer view now, and we’ve set up a vague idea about our rig. Hopefully it will work!
17:30 Ok, no more excuses. Let’s finish this conclusion thing!
18:15 Finished, printed, done! I could finally go home and eat something…
19:00 … Except that I didn’t have anything to eat… I made a quick cream of wheat, and regretted it immediately, because I realised today is our virtue area event…
20:00 … the Ice-cream party. So my calorie intake today was a smaller country’s yearly consumption, not so good. But the ice-cream was so good (and free!)
21:30 I was chatting with my flatmates because I was so tired (despite the two coffee I had) that I wasn’t able to start the next lab report.
23:30 After completing the risk assessment for the Friday’s lab session, I went to bed early. I mean earlier than in the previous days…
Friday
07:20 We didn’t have a 9am again (I don’t know what’s happened with the timetable, it’s quite unusual not to have a 9am), so I could sleep a bit longer.
08:30 There are these rare tubes which depart from the North Acton station therefore half empty even in peak-time. I managed to catch one of these, cool!
08:50 Kensington Park, classic foggy English weather, sunshine, chill temperature. The best way to start a Friday!
09:15 Let’s write my blog 🙂
10:00 Maths lecture, the usual first. It was about coupled linear systems and how to solve them using the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a matrix. I like matrices and for a change I wasn’t that tired, so it was quite a fun lecture.
11:00 Heat & Mass. Ohh god, these questions when there is a zero divided by zero in the log-mean temperature and the lecturer asks “who knows why is that and how to solve it?” and everyone starts to look at the previous notes and everyone wants to be the first to answer, and this excitement/nervousness/terrified feeling that you are sitting in the middle of the second row and the lecturer looks at you expectantly and you have absolutely no idea about the answer… Why am I sitting in the middle of the second row? I am so stupid 😀
12:00 Two hour lunchtime… There is definitely something wrong with our timetable 😀 Anyway, I worked on the lab report and started the PoM project (with the easiest bit: drawing the molecules).
14:00 The last lab session this year! I will miss it a bit, I got used to doing these experiments in my fancy Imperial lab coat 😀 This time we did the Bernoulli experiment, with a Venturi tube and 12 capillaries and hundreds of bubbles and fluctuating flow level and 120 different data points, and… Ahh, this picture says it all:
Venturi tube and rota meter. All about the flow…
17:00 Time to go home… There are these moments in life when you are too tired to think and you just do things by routine, well, this Friday was exactly like that. Getting up, going in, having lectures, eating sandwich, doing labs, coming home… If anything would have changed (like a delay on the tube or a forgotten lab book), I just couldn’t deal with it, because I was too tired… But fortunately, it was all good and usual 🙂
18:00 My new Friday obsession: Subway sandwich! A good honey oat bread with tuna and 4 different salads, nothing beats it!
19:00 Ohmm, I just watched the latest episode of The Big Bang Theory. I deserved it…
19:30 Another Friday thing: the point when you can no longer function. When you are just sitting at your desk, staring at your notes, but you can no longer see the words just black points vibrating, and you look at your lab report and it makes no sense at all, just random graphs and numbers… So at this point, you just have to stand up from your chair, turn around and collapse into your bed. Because your bed needs you. Period.
Saturday
07:30 I love waking up without an alarm. And then just lying on my bed and reading the news…
08:00 … and then getting up and getting ready for a productive day!
09:00 I have never been to the Woodward study rooms to actually study. I’ve been there for the Committee meetings a couple of times, but as my desk is full of distractions, I decided to go down and try this study room thing. I have to admit, they are amazing! Huge windows facing the cemetery and the barbecue garden, white desks/walls/chairs, zero distraction, quiet buzzing of the water pipes in the walls. The only disadvantage is the temperature: it is like ACEX250, terribly cold. I don’t know what’s this with Imperial and the temperature…
11:30 Wow, I’m done with the conclusion of the flow line experiment and it wasn’t even that bad! This study room definitely has a good impact on me… 🙂
12:00 My father took me home for lunch. Ohh I was sooo hungry! My mother made fruit soup and rice with two different steaks. Just because I was “visiting” and I am the “uni student who doesn’t eat anything all week”. Which is not true but who cares when you have proper food in front of you 😀
13:00 The good thing about going home is that you open the fridge and it’s full. Then you open the cupboard and it’s also full. And it looks like there is infinite amount of food there, so you just start eating… And eating… And eating… And then you start packing food to take with you… Last time I took an entire box of chocolate powder, a jar of Nutella and 4 cartons of orange juice, just because why not… My home is basically like a free Tesco 😀
14:00 Classic Saturday afternoon: I accidentally mentioned the rig building project to my father who immediately had a design idea in mind and we spend the next 1.5 hrs making it better and better…
16:00 My mother recently signed up for Netflix and since that we usually watch Once Upon a Time every time I go home. The problem is, we can’t stop. So we ended up watching one…
17:00 … two…
18:00 … three episodes straight. Here goes my productive day…
19:00 Well, as I was already there, I stayed home for dinner. You just cannot say no when your mother offers free food…
20:00 I guess I should go back to Woodward now… Well, after eating another 2 croissants. And a sandwich. 😀
21:00 After packing my bag full of food and taking another 4 cartons of orange juice (yes, I consume an extensive amount of orange juice…), my father took me back to Woodward.
21:30 There’s still time to save the day and be productive. I went down to the study rooms again to do some work…
23:30 … until two classmates from ChemEng came in to do some group work and the silence was gone. (Note that only ChemEng students are so crazy to be in the study rooms at 23:30 on a S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y.)
00:00 I guess I should go to bed now, right?
Sunday
07:30 I had an alarm for 09:00 to wake up in time for the Free Breakfast, but I just woke up at 07:30. Interesting…
09:00 The problem with the Free Breakfast is that it’s not enough. So even though it starts at 10:00 I usually go down 15 minutes earlier to be there when the pain au chocolates arrive. But today I took my laptop and did the lab report while waiting for the food, and I felt soooo productive 😀
10:00 Pain au chocolate! Yayyy! I lost count after 6, so I don’t know how much I ate…
10:15 And it’s gone. That was quick… I took a blanket from my room to balance out the temperature in the study rooms, and spent 2 hrs to finish the evaluation for my lab report.
12:00 Lunch: leftover from yesterday. Lovely!
13:00 After finishing the lab report, the next on my to-do-list is Mastery. It starts with this:
“Zerg is a planet with a gravitational acceleration of 1 m/s2…”
Ohh god, the terrible Mastery jokes…
15:00 This is worse than I thought. I need a break. Blogging time 🙂
16:00 I decided to go down to the study room and just finish this Mastery. It can’t be that difficult!!
18:30 After 2.5 hrs of pointless algebra and negative temperature values, I had to ask for some help. Fortunately, I live in Woodward, and the good thing about Woodward is that there is always at least one course mate around and available. Seriously, it is statistically provable…
21:00 Well, it makes a lot more sense now… One of my classmates explained the whole thing to me, and without laughing at me when I asked a couple of terribly stupid questions, and then a couple even more stupid ones… (Thanks again!!!) And I realised Thermo is really not my thing 😀
21:30 When you want to have a decent sandwich for dinner and you realise you ran out of bread. Arghhhh…
22:00 I set my alarm for 5:30 tomorrow, because I need to watch the Separations videos in the morning, so I should really go to sleep now, but I also want to finish and submit the Mastery sheet. I only need to type up the last 2 questions, can’t be that long, right?
23:30 … Submitted. Obviously, it IS long if you spend 30 minutes calculating a log-mean temperature again and again, because it becomes negative, and then you realise you were subtracting kelvin from celsius all along… I think it’s really time to sleep now.
That was a “short” summary of an average week as a ChemEng student. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did 🙂
I can’t cook to save my life. That was the greatest certainty I had, while stumbling confusedly from the stage in life called ‘moving out’. I’d never really needed to cook for myself (except on duke of ed over a dodgy portable oil stove) and whenever I tried, it either took FOREVER, or my mum would casually take over half way in an attempt to save the disaster. I mean I knew the general concept, its not rocket science, more chemistry 😛 … But, the fact remains that when I first arrived in halls I was completely clueless about food. What to buy from the supermarket? How long do things keep? What things go well together? Is bread thats slightly green on the sides still edible? In halls the rule is basically if its not rotting, give it a shot and if you’re not willing, ask around and someone else will be.
Nowadays, I avoid talking about what I eat to anyone remotely adult (usually other peoples parents and family friends) because it tends to raise eyebrows and prompt worried questions about my sanity. Mainly, its due to the completely utilitarian outlook on the idea of food. I’ve really come to enjoy cooking, but its really more of a necessity than a hobby. As a computing student i’ll present the logic thus.
I bought a blender in 3 weeks into Autumn term and its basically the best thing ever. The running joke in my hall is that I don’t eat anything that isn’t blended… not true, but I do blend stuff a lot. I have a constant supply of soy milk, bananas and frozen fruit for that purpose. Its a bit of downer at the moment, because I’ve got a cold so cold drinks all the time isn’t really that appealing, but most other times its delicious and healthy. Heres a montage of the smoothies I make.
those flavours … mmm
When I’m feeling particular disciplined I blend my breakfast smoothie the night before and shove it in the fridge, because I’ll never wake up in time to make anything in the morning. The smoothie with oats, is a personal breakfast fave because its kinda like cereal in a bottle 🙂 Smoothies for lunch, are quick and stress free, and then for dinner well I try not to smoothie again because … I require solids.
In terms of actual cooking, I quickly got over my initial phobia of raw meat, because well vegetables don’t keep as long, whereas meat you can freeze = less shopping. Most days I just chop up some meat stick it in a pan, salt and pepper and its ready to eat. I basically cut carbs from my diet week 5 of autumn term after the crash diet I did for a taekwondo competition and since then I’ve never really gotten my taste back for rice, pasta, bread etc. Plus most of my floor is still kinda on the ‘healthy eating vibe’ so it just seems normal. I probably have rice noodles maybe once a week, more often recently because hot soup noodle be good for the soul and hacking cough… I only recently got into cooking chicken, because it takes quite a bit longer than beef, and I need the beef for its iron content, but I guess I got bored of a diet of 4 days salmon 10 days beef. Its all pretty cheap if you look at it. I get 4 salmon fillets per shop for £6 and basically eat that 4 days in a row because it doesn’t keep. I freeze about 6 – 7 thin steaks which I get for £4.50 total and thats all the meat for the fortnight.
Then theres eggs, the saviour of all. Poached eggs, soft boiled eggs, hard boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, omelettes. I can do them all. Poached eggs are the easiest, and very tasty so I do them a lot. Scrambled eggs have the illusion of being more filling because it takes more than 2 bites to demolish (1 gulp per poached eggs :P) and it can be interesting to scramble in other things. So far i’ve tried beans, haloumi, salmon and quorn. When I was on a stricter diet, I just ate 3 eggs for dinner or 2 + meat. But nowadays my eggs usage has slowed to a pack of 12 per fortnight.
Here are some very un-instagram worthy food pics.
salmon w/ scrambled eggsPoached yolk goodness
I basically gave up on vegetables quite early on, apart from cucumbers I ended up throwing away more vegetables than I ate since it all went bad too fast. I either had to top up every 3 days or only ate vegetables 3 days a fortnight. Its not even like I don’t like vegetables, its just I don’t seem to have any good ways to manage it in my diet. I like to think I make up for it with my excessive fruit consumption. If theres anything my shopping partner has pointed out, its that every shop most of my basket is fruit, and my fridge is basically a fruit store. This week I bought, nectarines, grapes, peaches, a honeydew melon, watermelon 4 mangos and 10 bananas (would’ve been 15 if I was making more smoothies). If I didn’t get the watermelon as a treat, I’d have gotten apples as usual. And these are the fresh fruits, I also buy frozen mangoes, blueberries and strawberries for my smoothies. Its just so easy to pop into the fridge, grab a nectarine, apple, or peach to go. Need a refreshing post meal dessert? Grab a handful of grapes. I also have to have fruit after dinner – its a slight obsession since its basically a thing my family’s done since life on earth began.
Much has changed in my dietary habits since I first got here and had pasta for every meal. The remnants of that trend is festering in the 2 kgs of pasta I have on my untouched top shelf. In my halls, we tend to go through fads as well, everyone is suddenly into ice cream, or quorn, or cheese. And while i’m not immune to that, having so much control over what I eat, means I really should start paying a bit more attention. I’ve realised there are a lot of foods I ‘would rather not eat’ as opposed to dislike. Meaning, if you put it on a plate in front me, i’ll eat it, but if I saw it in a supermarket, I wouldn’t buy it. The only constant I have is the fruit obsession, otherwise 3 meals a day is a lost cause since I see every meal as either optional or conditional on environmental factors. I basically forget to eat a lot of the time, because cooking takes time.
However, the fun of cooking is not lost when time permits. I often cook with my hall mates and when i’m involved it usually involves sharing something culturally relevant. I got my hands on some prawn noodle paste and decided to put together my inner malaysian and make some with a friend.
this was one of the best meals everwe also made a lovely curry
All in all, for the most part, food as a student is a bit of chore, we accept its necessary in order to keep functioning, but would rather it not be. But from time to time, the cooking experience becomes more social, and its really quite fun to share a meal with people, cook together and discuss ‘the best way to cut up potatoes’. I was definitely overly concerned about the amount of working cooking for myself would be before coming to uni. And at first I seemed to spend all my time cooking. But once you get into a routine with it, (or lack thereof in my case) it just fades away into the background. I recommend following the logic I provided above 🙂 the gist if which is – if (hungry) {eat} 🙂
Before my interview, I called anyone I knew who had anything to do with Imperial and read every student blog that even mentioned the word. If that’s why you’re here, hey. Hopefully an extra insight will prove useful.
Outline of the day
This can obviously change between subjects and years, but the general outline is likely to stay the same.
The general idea is that you get a tour of the university from a student, along with a lunch, before meeting the human that decides your fate interviewer. This is the opportunity to ask questions about student life, stresses, work load and living in London, which may be more helpful answered by someone freshly going though it all. Also, I’ve done some of these tours since I came here and they are really fun, interesting and rewarding, but frankly awkward if no one asks anything.
After that you meet the interviewer and get a tour of the department, which is there to show you what the university can offer you. You get a brief look at the facilities and an idea of where and what you learn.
The actual interview is then there for you to show what you can offer the uni. Achtung: no, the interviewer does not directly decide anything! They make a comment/recommendation and it is one of the things considered when taking you into account. Basically, the interviewer could hate you, but you still get in, and vise versa.
How to prepare
– Bring the correct documents. You’ll be told what they are before the day. Don’t be the one that forgets them.
– Make sure that if anything in your personal statement isn’t true, it becomes true damn golly fast!
– Even if it is true, go over books you’ve read and projects you’ve participated in, to ensure you can talk about them comfortably.
– Be fairly up to date on what you’re learning, as problems to solve may involve such knowledge.
What you’ll be asked
WHO KNOWS? It’s just a massive mystery. Some people on my course only got asked about their personal statement and what they’d done before. I was only asked to integrate for 25 minutes and explain some assumptions I had made.
– Be prepared to answer questions like “Why physics?”, “Why Imperial?” and any about your personal statement in case it goes like not mine.
– Be prepared to use your prior knowledge in case it goes like mine.
What to wear
This is pretty much the least important aspect that has the least effect on anything, but people seem to care. Feeling comfortable on the day is naturally important and feeling like you’re dressed out of place may of course ruin that entirely.
Something comfortable, professional and simple is the best. I wore a black and white skirt with a navy blouse. Partially because it’s the only smart-ish clothing I own, but also because it sort of fulfills the criteria.
After the interview
Just don’t stress. Whether Imperial is your first choice or not, just concentrate on the other bits of life. Good grades always come in handy, so working on those may be best anyway.
I was stupid enough to stress out about the interview for ages, so when I got the offer, I had to suddenly start preparing for exams again.
General tips
– Sometimes the correct answer is “I don’t know”. I was asked for examples of an event that doesn’t exist.
– Don’t panic and make sure you know where your towel is. (If you don’t get the reference, then you’re silly, but please don’t actually bring a towel to your interview.)
– Try to talk any thoughts out loud, as it shows that you can think through a problem, which is important.
– You’ll be fine.
I love food (in case you hadn’t guessed) so I thought I would share my favourite places to eat in London. If you’re up in London for interviews or just getting fed up of the Gloucester Road Nandos and East Side Bar, check out some these fantastic eating establishments!
1. Ottoman. Ottoman is on Fulham Palace Road, so maybe slightly out of the way for anyone in halls, but if you end up living out West at some point, make sure to go to here. Any evening out that begins or ends with someone suggesting ‘Ottoman’s?’ is bound to be a good one and my friend group in particular love it. It’s a Turkish kebab restaurant (and take away!) and they basically serve giant plates of meat, rice and salad. I would recommend the mixed grill and the hummus and pitta (but take a friend unless you have a giant appetite, I definitely couldn’t eat it on my own).
Rasa Sayang noodles in front of my lovely flatmate for perspective on how giant the bowl is
2. Rasa Sayang
I am no China Town aficionado and I am a creature of habit , so this is one of only a few restaurants in China Town that I keep going back to. It’s a Singaporean/Malaysian place and I love it mostly because noodle soup is my everything, it’s cheap and the portions are bigger than your head. It’s delicious, definitely go. Also my flatmate ordered a drink called Milo Dinosaur which is like a chocolate milkshake kind of thing, it was really nice, and the name just makes me so happy.
3. Bone Daddies
Bone Daddies is located above Whole Foods on High Street Kensington and it’s a ramen restaurant (which is another kind of noodle soup. Naturally). The soup is made of bone broth and there are different flavours are toppings. I like the one with fried chicken on top and also any of the ones that come with boiled eggs, they’re sooo good. It’s also set up well for people who aren’t used to using chopsticks, so they give you hair ties and these plastic bib things to avoid inevitable splatter when you drop your noodles in the soup.
4. Bill’s
Bill’s is a chain that can be found all over London, but there’s one on High Street Kensington. They do amazing breakfast/brunch and it’s a really cute restaurant with like, wood and candles and rustic stuff everywhere. I like the vegetarian breakfast and they also do really good pancakes.
5. Tombo
Tombo is a Japanese tea shop round the corner from South Kensington station and they do my FAVE green tea ever. Plus you get free refills on hot water for the tea so it’s basically my dream place. I’ve never eaten a meal there but it’s usually busy with a lunchtime crowd and from what I’ve witnessed from snooping on other people’s food, the food they do is really nice. I also had this white chocolate and azuki cake there one time (azuki is a kind of bean which sounds wrong but it’s really good) and I would recommend it!
Each year at Imperial students organise events around college for ‘RAG’. It took me many years to work out what this was, but it is ‘Raising and Giving’- events organised to raise money for a local charity, picked each year.
Events this year in South Kensington ranged massively again, including bungee jumping from Queens Tower and many cake sales. This year also saw many new, fantastic events from the medical school. As news often takes a while to drift from zone 2 to zone 1, I thought I would bring you all up to speed on some of the best events!
The Auction:
Thursday night of RAG week saw students from all years joining together in the Reynolds Bar for the RAG auction. Local businesses, students and faculty members had all contributed items to be auctioned, and members of the college were invited to bid for these items, all the money raised going to charity.
Donated auction items were fantastic, ranging from high-end items from local businesses to social arrangements with faculty members. For example, some lucky bidders from the night walked away with:
Lunch at Nandos with the head of the medical school
A baking session and coffee with a faculty member known for her baking skills!
Attendance at pre-drinks from well-known faculty members/lecturers
A sport prowess from the faculty to join their team
Tours of famous Imperial sites, including Fleming’s museum and the Royal Brompton Hospital, by experts from within the faculty
Staggering work experience placements with members of faculty who are top in their field
Personal tutorials from some of the biggest names in the medical school
Circle Line Day:
Friday of RAG week is traditionally an un-timetabled day for non-clinical years, to allow the medical school to fully embrace the spirit of RAG. This year saw this expand to include a huge range of local volunteering sessions for students.
Students visited places all around the circle line to raise money and support, and give their time to local charities and RAG. This included students helping at charity collections, serving up breakfasts and volunteering at community projects to help the elderly or vulnerable, sorting out donations at charity shops, helping out at homeless shelters, using computer skills to help map some of the poorest areas around the world and many more…
As well as having a great time and making new friends, this year’s med school RAG events have helped locals in our community and raised a huge amount of money for charity! Plus, it’s not over yet… look out for more RAG bake sales, collects and events over the next few months…
People say ChemEng is a tough course. Let’s see why they might have this impression: here is my calendar for the next 13 days… [And – as everyone always talks about these anyway – I put how much each thing contributes to my grade this year in brackets] May the coffee be with me!
We had our first driving test in week 6 of our first term… it was really quite daunting, but we got a practice test a week before to get us used to the process and the test environment. Since then we’ve had another one for Java and recently we had our final Haskell driving test. The whole process has become rather routine, but driving tests as a concept are a difficult thing to get your head around as an examination method when you’re used to the pen and paper exams that access content retention we take in high school.
A driving test basically tests your practical programming skills, challenging you to solve a problem in a time pressured environment and without access to aids like Google. If you’ve done any programming at all, you’ll understand that its just not the same as a normal exam. Like a physics practical, if the experiment just isn’t giving you the results you expected that one time you do it in an exam… too bad, write the report on how much it sucks. In a practical, a lot more things can go wrong and you can never really fully ‘prepare’ for them. A lot more rides on the conditions on the day, how well you understand the problem and whether the approach you choose to take is valid or not. Thats not to say you can’t prepare for them, its more that you can’t cram for them.
The first computing course I ever did was in Sydney and the practical exams were pass or fail. Either you completed the problem and your solution passed auto-testing, or it didn’t. However, you did get several attempts with more and more time provided. Time is precious in coding, sometimes you can hack away at a problem for hours to no avail, but ultimately the more time you spend on it the closer you’re getting to the right answer. The times I’ve walked out of driving tests wishing I had more time to work on that last question or that I’d been quicker in getting out the easier functions at the beginning… ugh. At Imperial, you only get one shot, but your code is marked by a person who uses the auto testing results as an aid. There are marks given for each correct function you write, and getting a pass mark really isn’t that hard.
The general format for Haskell driving tests are that they are built up in sections. The spec sets out this elaborate structure that you’re going to build and at first you’re just overwhelmed, but the instructions are quite detailed and really guide you through what you have to do. In Part I you might write some simple functions that you can’t really see the use for, but then in Part II you start writing more complex functions that use those earlier functions, and need a better understanding of the concept we’re exploring in the test. in Part III things really start to get tricky and often theres a super hard question right at the end for the geniuses out there who want to get the last few marks. I never really make it to the last question in time, and even if I did I rarely understood the concept well enough to make a decent attempt.
What I most enjoy about the driving tests is that its not just about testing us, they are also really interesting and a good challenge. They introduce us to new concepts and what is possible with the language we’re learning. Even though I know we’ve been excessively handheld through the process, it’s still cool when the code does what its supposed to, and the cool concept we’ve been reading about actually comes to life. All the information you need to know is provided in the spec, and seriously these things can be like 15 pages long, so its a lot of reading. I did every past paper I could find and each one taught me something new and was an interesting read. It sounds geeky, but I did enjoy doing them.
All of this applies to driving tests in general, but on a personal note, Haskell is my favourite programming language out of the ones I have come across and while we didn’t really get into the more powerful things it can be used for, I’d be keen to look into any other opportunities to play around with a functional programming language, rather than the imperative ones that are more well known (i.e. Java, C etc). I think that while the initial thought process involved with the recursive aspect to Haskell is hard to understand, its worth giving it a go, and I definitely found it very rewarding.
For now, with my final Haskell driving test over and done with, I’ll miss it, but its time to get into Java again. (and this term we’re getting into the serious stuff… apparently)
One of the Many virtues of Woodward – the games room!
Hi!
Not too much has been happening in the past few weeks. As the Easter holiday slowly approaches, my course-mates and I have begun to realise that a) we don’t have long until our end of year exams and b) we have a lot to do before we get to that point. So I shall be treating myself to an over-the-top Easter revision timetable made on excel! The argument with Mechanical Engineering is that the first year does not count towards the final grade. This is totally true, but I will still do as best as I can, because that’s really the only way I know how to, and it sets a good precedent for the next three years anyway.
In other news, I am going to be hall senior next year at Woodward Hall! I felt like a little more responsibility is never a bad thing, and I really like Woodward (awesome facilities, friendly people – what’s not to like?!), so it seemed like the best option. My main concern was never having time to see my flatmates and friends, but regardless of where they live, they will only be a tube journey away from me sitting on their sofa and eating all their food (sorry, guys).
