Life Update: Winter’s here

3 months in and I am still questioning myself as to why did I take electrical and electronic engineering.  I have 4 labs (at least 2) per week and lab reports to submit every other week and on top of that we were given problem sheets and homework NON-STOP. I probably should mention now that I really hate programming. I honestly didn’t know what I signed up for.

There’s one thing that made me happy for accepting my offer to study in Sheffield. About 1.5 months ago I was emailed by the university saying that I was awarded a few thousand pounds of scholarship  for obtaining 2A*1A for A’level but since I am funded by my government they decided to give the money to me in a form of payment! Alhamdulillah really. Back in Bru I only got trophies so that was something else. A few weeks after that I received another email saying that I am qualified for the “Anne Bainbridge” scholarship. It’s basically an award for doing well in A’level as well as for being a female and doing EEE. (Since there aren’t that many female students in EEE so I guess they’re trying to recruit more by giving $$$ and it’s actually working for me hahaha). Thank you Allah for this rezeki.

On to another topic, it started snowing few days ago and I felt super blessed to be here and able to witness it. The sight was so majestic , there were mixed of emotions when I first experienced it but now after seeing it more than once I get even more excited! On one side, I got sick. I have to walk to uni everyday & cold weather is destroying my nose, sometimes I forget how to breathe.

Despite the hills, Sheffield is a really nice place. I went to my first Christmas market and had some churros dipped in white Belgian chocolate. Yes, be jealous. It was so good but a bit pricey (GBP 3.50), unless you don’t mind NOT converting it to BND. Sometimes I just cant help. I do have so many pictures to show but I’m too lazy to transfer everything here, I post things on my instagram most of the time 😉

It’s December & I’ll admit that initially I had so many plans on travelling but it’s not happening so I’m probably just gonna stay here in Sheffield to catch up with my studies. I do have plans with my sister for next year’s easter break tho! We’re planning on travelling to… drum roll please….. Cappadocia! InsyaAllah.. I really want to tick this one off my bucket list.

I admit that I don’t and probably wont have much time to write here mostly because of my busy schedule but who am I writing to anyway? The point of this blog is so that I have something to look back to in the future and I hope I’ll end up smiling from one ear to another whilst reading this. Chao for now.

Start of something new

A week has passed and here I am writing in my house in Sheffield. A week since I said goodbye (and cried) to my family at the airport (3 days since I last said goodbye to my sister). 2 Days since I got my student university card. Milestones.

I enjoyed shopping for my room at Primark for the first few days with my sister. They have A LOT of Harry Potter related stuff hence why I got a Harry Potter bedsheet…and the mug..and the chalkboard…Thank God they don’t have the bathrobes and the shoes @ the Sheffield branch, my sister saw them at the London branch.. I probably would’ve gone crazy!

I haven’t started my course yet so it’s too early to say anything but I have attended a few welcome meetings and so on. So far, I love it here. The environment’s not as bad as London and almost everything is a walk away (literally). The only downside of it are the hills. Should’ve known that before I accepted their offer hahaha kidding. The only thing I regret is not bringing more Serundings…

As for my housemates, they’re nothing but a bunch of lovely girls. One of them cooks so well! I think I can just make Maggi when it’s my turn to cook for dinner….ok I’m joking…I have a few instant paste I brought from Brunei. I’m not sure if I have mentioned this before but I’m living with Malaysians because I couldn’t find Bruneians to share a house with. (Renting a house is cheaper than going for uni accommodation, just putting it out there). Last night the last girl/lady just came, she’s from Iraq and doing Postgraduate. She’s doing her Masters for the 2nd time now (Crazy smart right??) so she’s way older than us. When she found out that 2 of us are 1st years, she went “Ohhh you girls are still babies!!” A long way to go…

I’m trying to look for societies to join but none of them sparks my interest,unfortunately.. so for now I’ll just settle down and see how my study goes and THEN I’ll decide if I want to join a society or not.
I’ll post more if I have time and much better events to talk about in the future..Cheers.. hahahahaha

Time ticks

It has been 20 days since I was called to get the approval letter and here I am in the middle of packing because I am leaving in a week. I attended 2 pre-departure briefings so far, one from the British Council and the other from MoE. They were both similar and made me feel all sorts of feelings about leaving this country but mostly, I’m excited.

I met up with the Malaysian-Sheffield SW Officer (she came to visit since her dad works here) , I met her because of the whole accommodation process. I couldn’t find a single Bruneian to share a house with so I decided to look for Malaysians instead and she helped me sort out the whole thing with the landlord& so on (and a few other Malaysians too so, thank you!). I also had a meeting with the Bruneian ones, they were so warm and loud and super friendly, definitely my kind of people. They were telling us some of their plans for this year like going to Little Mix’s concert & Disney on Ice.. okay I’m kidding..(but am I?)…. Hahahaha we’ll see what happens & I’ll try to update more about the events I will (probably) attend when in Sheffield but for now, think positively!!

Since I have a week left, I am quite busy “shopping” for certain things like Serunding, Hati Buyah, Daging Lalap & so on for me to bring there. At the same time, I’m also trying to spend my time here wisely especially with my family and friends because I know I’ll miss them a lot once I go. Thank God my sister will be coming to the UK with me to help me settle in (she’s graduating tomorrow and will be leaving in 4 days, 2 days earlier than me). But once she leaves, it’ll all be just me… learning how to be independent…*SIGH* I’m getting old…. I’ll miss my maid the most….

My main plan at the moment is to study hard to get first class ( student loan priority)… oh and also to travel around Europe because isn’t it the best time to do so??? I’ll try my best to keep writing here for the sake of memories. In 2 weeks time, I will officially become a Uni student!! Omg!!! Time flies!!!

Plans change, accept it.

This time, last year, I had a whole different plan for myself. I wanted to do either Astrophysics or Aeronautical engineering at Imperial College London.

But none of that is happening.

Back then I wasn’t aware of the scholarship or the student loan course lists, so I just.. planned! I did my research on the courses stated and fell in love with them but due to a few lot changes on the course list I had to do research on other courses ( they used to have aeronautical engineering on the course list yearS ago, just like what I said, I wasn’t aware of it last year). Then there was the ‘new’ course list meant for last year’s batch, I thought it was meant for this year too and the only course that sparked my interest was Avionics. I was SO close to applying for it through UCAS BUT they changed the list again.. *SIGH*

On the NEW course list, the only thing that caught me was Automotive engineering. I did my research on it and a few other engineering courses including Electrical & Electronic engineering (EEE). I decided to apply for those courses since one is available in the scholarship list and the other is available in the student loan list. I wanted to be safe. Originally, I wanted to get into Imperial College London (so much) to do EEE (I couldn’t apply for Automotive Engineering there because they don’t have that course) but I was too late, application for the top universities closes on the 15th of January every year and that time it was already the 11th. I ended up finishing the whole UCAS process on the 23rd.

*Side note: I mentioned that I applied for two courses at the same time, right? To do so, I had to make my Personal Statement to be very general (but it was more towards electrical) still, they accepted me for Automotive Eng.*

Okay and then the waiting game began. While doing so, I had a hard time practising for the upcoming interviewing because well, I don’t know a single thing about Automotive Engineering. I applied for it just because it was listed. By this time I was offered by Leeds(for Automotive), Sheffield, Nottingham & Southampton (for EEE). After doing more research on both of the courses, I realized that I was more interested in EEE than Automotive (I don’t even like mechanical). At this stage, I decided to just do EEE and it was pretty hard for me to tell my dad that I was going to give up on Automotive because he really wanted me to get the scholarship instead of the student loan. In the end, he had to give in too because it was my choice and I’m the one who’s gonna sit for the exams.

Then, I withdrew my application for Warwick (for Automotive) because well, there was no point of me waiting to be accepted (I thought) but my dad said I could’ve just changed my course to EEE. *facepalm* TOO LATE!

In all the 4 universities that offered me, I was more interested to go to Sheffield and so I accepted their offer.

then the interview process went on (I wrote about this).

Last Thursday (17/8) I got called to get my letter of approval. (AAAAHHHHHHHHHH)

Alhamdulillah.

IM GOING TO SHEFFIELD!!!!!

Sadly, I have to go there alone (which makes my dad super worried) but I am actually excited and I’m sure I’ll manage (as long as I have the money too bring myself from one place to the other). So right now I’m in the middle of VISA application (which is very last minute) and filling up a few more forms.

From, Astrophysics/Aeronautical Engineering @ ICL to doing EEE @ Sheffield.. who knew? God did… There’s good a reason why He put me in this path so I’ll just trust Him..

Food Trip

Recently we had a not-so-short family vacation (more like food trip) to KL and well, just like what the title says, all we did was eat and eat and eat and tour around around the batik house, the leather place, the chocolate kingdom (again, eat) and shop! Speaking of touring around, we had a talkative and comical tour guide who knows majority of Bruneians and Bruneian places. He wouldn’t let us sleep while he was driving so he’d mention each and every one of our names and said like ” Oh *inserts names* look at that building, you know who’s the owner?” and we’d go “no..hahaha” and he’d tell us the history of it. This went on until the end of the trip. He drove us around for two days…

We stayed at Fahrenheit suite so it has an underpass to Pavillion’s Food Republic (similar to  food court) which was probably the best thing that ever existed. Whenever we got lazy to go out of KL for dinner, we’d just go down there. The place was basically a food heaven. They have Subway, Llao Llao, Pepperlunch, Sticky, Softsrve, KFC, Nando’s , Auntie Anne’s, Hokkaido cheese tart and lots of other normal food stores of different types of cuisines. We even saw a Malaysian celebrity that I barely know but it was a nice feeling to actually know you were just a few feet away from a celebrity.

Speaking of celebrities, on the second last day of the trip, Ansel Elgort and Lily James were at Pavillion to promote their new movie, Baby Driver. The entrance was so full and we were so eager to stay and look but we had to have dinner

For the sake of education.

Alright so, four days ago I (finally) received a call from the MoE for an interview for the student loan. I was sooo happy that they’d finally made some progress! But that didn’t make me any less nervous. My brother went through the same interview a few years back and said that it was easy compared to the normal Mini-Multiple-Interviews they use for the student scholarship. (I went through this MMI a few months ago, and it wasn’t so bad just… nerve wrecking!). So at this point, I expected the student loan interview to be easy, piece of cake, kacang. 

But I thought wrong.

The next day, I had my interview in the morning, and I was the third person to be called in. So by this time, I was sooo nervous! More nervous than I was when I sat for the MMI (probably because I never expected to get through that one so I was a bit chill about that).

The first girl came out sobbing & whispered “It was so hard” to her mom.

CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW I FELT???

The Second person came out with a terrified facial expression.

I swear I almost peed because it was MY TURN next.

So I entered and greeted them and I stuttered A LOT. But they were extremely nice and funny. So the room was warm & friendly to me, nothing to be terrified about because the questions were EXACTLY like the MMI I did (The 2 people before probably never did MMI so I was a bit lucky…Alhamdulillah). Just that particular question (critical thinking) that kinda upset me. Overall it was a good one, I got too comfortable around them that my question to them was “What are the chances of me getting this? *SMILES WIDELY*”. They laughed and asked me back “What do you think?” and then my so-over-confident-self said “70%”. I kinda regret saying that because now I am embarrassed and I have never been that confident towards anyone I know before and what more strangers?? After that they smiled and said “We’ll see”. Oh man.. what have I done..

Then I was in the car feeling super happy to be done with interviews. I was driving with my sister next to me and then I received another call and my sister put it on loud speaker while I was trying to move to the next lane (It was so difficult to multitask in the car hence why you shouldn’t be on your phone while driving). It was from another scholarship section telling me to attend a Psychometric test in 2 days. *SIGH*

This scholarship is a prestigious one and again, I never expected to get through the MMI. I already gave up this one after realizing that the university I applied to isn’t even in the top 10 and after realizing that the people who are with me on this have the same mentality level as I am or better. I think they all are way smarter than me. They probably got A*s during their O’level whilst it was my first time getting A*s for A’level pssshhh..

So I don’t want to put so much hope into this scholarship but my dad is the opposite. He wanted me to do every stage wholeheartedly. As a result, I went for the Psychometric test and it was ridiculous. There were 4 tests and I couldn’t finish two of them, Numerical reasoning and Diagrammatic reasoning. The Numerical reasoning was basically Mathematics and I have to say the questions were easy BUT there were 20 QUESTIONS TO BE DONE IN 20 MINS. I need more than 5 mins to solve one! Which is why I said it was ridiculous. As for the Diagrammatic reasoning, it was easy as well BUT I had to do 40 QUESTIONS IN 20 MINS. Crazy right? No wonder they call it Psycho-metric.

Then at this point, I realize that I probably won’t get called for the 3rd stage, I’m not hoping to get called for the 3rd stage. I can’t imagine how hard it would be. I had to tell my dad that the test was horrible so that he won’t put so much hope into it too. Like I said I’m surrounded by intelligent people and they probably got accepted into one of those high ranked universities in London while mine is 2 hours away from London by train..

But whatever happens, I promise to be happy. Just getting the student loan approval would make me super excited and gratified. I probably won’t hear from either of them anytime soon because Raya is coming up! See you on the next post!

Quick Update

Another year, another Ramadhan.

Nothing much has happened since I last posted ( I warned you about how boring my blog will be, didn’t I?) except that I learned a few songs (such as Beauty&the Beast, My Heart Will Go on, Yesterday & Can you feel the love tonight) on the piano, went to another award ceremony held by the MoE and y’know, I passed my driving test (wooohoooo but still scared to drive around the kampong, how ah?). And then my maid went back to her country (coming back in a month) and I don’t really like doing all the chores (especially when it’s puasa), I get tired so easily and yes, I am so spoiled. Whatchu’ gonna do about that? tell me because I don’t know what to do about it too.

I am free most of the time but I don’t like going out. I love having sungkai at home with my family and eat homemade food it’s…homey. Plus, it’s hot out there & I ain’t willing to bring the air-cond along with me wherever I go, I already have dishes to wash and clothes to fold, I don’t think I have enough energy to carry around my own air-cond. Well actually I did go out to buy Kaftans for my pyjamas and guess what? the ones I want have only 2 colours available and they’re my most hated colours, orange and green.. blegh.. I had no choice but to get the orange with black stripes one.. One thing I like about it is that it made me feel like a tiger. Speaking of being free, I still don’t have the mood (is that it?) to watch all the new TV series that my friends or family suggested. For now, I’m just waiting for a new Buzzfeed Unsolved video, a new Hiho kids video and a new Running Man episode every week. Hmmm I know, boring..

And then on the other hand, there’s this whole University registration process ( Visa, Medical check-up and so on). I was warned that the process would be tedious (and it sure is). What’s annoying is that I still haven’t received a single phone call for my student loan approval. They promised to call us by May and oh look, it’s already June. I know it’s Ramadhan and I should be more patient but at the same time, I think they should keep their promise too! Okay sorry for the short rant, I just had to let it out somewhere. But alright, I’ll wait more.. it’s not like I have a choice..

That’s all for now I guess.. until I have something interesting to talk about, I won’t be posting. (Hopefully, something interesting will happen soon *pleasepleasepleaseplease*)

Surviving A’level with amazing teachers.

I promised to write something about surviving A’level..right? Here it goes!
Bear in mind, I think this post is gonna be so boring but thanks for stopping by anyway bye! *waves*

But for those of you who decided to stay…

I’m not gonna write about surviving O’level because well, the process wasn’t as challenging as doing A’level (Even though I did 9 subjects for O’level & only 3 subjects for A’level, most people in this country experience the same thing). For O’level I only managed to get 6A’s and 3B’s, I was a bit sad that I couldn’t get a single A* but it didn’t stop there, I knew I had one more chance & it was to do A’level. Doing A’level was my only plan after doing O’s, I mean, I never really planned to do foundation or something else after that. It was kinda already planned for me since I was a fetus.

For O’level I did 2 Maths, 3 Sciences, Languages, Islamic Religious Knowledge & Principles of Account. That time I’d already decided the 2 subjects I wanted to do for A’level, they were Maths&Physics, because I hated the rest of them. A month before registration for A’level, I was told to decide for my 3rd subject. Initially I wanted Further Maths because, again, I hated the other subjects but no one was allowed to take F.Maths as the 3rd subject, it had to be the 4th. So in the end I had to pick my least hated subject and it was Chemistry. I didn’t get to do F.Maths btw because, one thing, I only wanted to do 3 subjects.

Out of all 3 subjects, Maths was the easiest and Chem was the hardest (duh) but I worked hard equally for all 3 of them.

Maths was easy for me probably because I did Additional Mathematics for O’level and also, I had an awesome teacher. He was so hilarious, he made me excited to go to Maths class everyday. He shared a lot of his amazing stories. He loved to annoy us but probably because we annoyed him first.  Whenever a question couldn’t be solved, he’d go,

“Students, if your working is too long, it’s clearly screaming TO-LONG! TO-LONG!”
(HELP! HELP!, get it? so lame I know but that didn’t stop me from laughing)

and whenever he saw someone being lazy or tired, he’d go,

” Tired? Okay, take off your tudong, wave the white flag & say ‘I surrender’“

He was quite savage at times too like this one time there was this stubborn guy in our class who stapled his test papers on the right side and my teacher kept on telling him to staple them together on the left side, this went on for a while and it stopped when the guy received his test paper one day and he found out that my teacher had stapled all four sides of his paper (He couldn’t even see his marks hahahaha).
He was undoubtedly a really fun teacher, there was always something to laugh about every day but sadly, he had to leave 3 months before my exams because well, he’s already 60+ years old. He could’ve stopped earlier but he really enjoyed teaching & that’s why he didn’t. I gave him a mug that has “Laugh” written all over it as a farewell gift. Before he left we asked him what was he gonna do now that he’s free from teaching and his response was,
” Oh no, I am not gonna stop teaching, I’m gonna teach wherever&whenever I can” (something along the line)
His passion for teaching is clearly an inspiration to us all.
He never really stopped keeping in contact, every once in while he’d send us his greetings from Darjeeling,India. He wished me happy new year while I was in South Korea & reminded me to keep myself warm because the temperature was too low that time & was similar to his country and he also sent his greetings for Chinese New Year for the ones celebrating. I really hope to see him one day to thank him for being my teacher and for making my A’level experience not as dull as I thought it would be.

For Chemistry, it was my least favourite (it wasn’t even a favourite) subject so it was harder for me to do it compared to the other 2 subjects. Chem O’level was hard and omg I can’t even describe how hard Chem A’level was. It was horrible. Period.
But then again, I had an awesome teacher. Even though he was much much younger than my Maths teacher and had only a few years of experience, I can’t really compare their skills because both were good. The only difference is that my Chem teacher wasn’t as playful as my Maths teacher (or as savage). I would ask him A LOT of questions after class and he never showed any discouraging sign, he was so eager to explain every single thing. In class, he would explain in detail and with simple words. Whenever we gave him our puzzled faces he would re-explain everything without a slight frown.
There were ups and downs obviously because, again, Chemistry is not an easy subject, not everyone can easily grasp the concept and not everyone cares about achieving high grades and lastly, not everyone has the motivation to drive him/herself to do well. Remember, even the nicest person’s patience has a limit. A few weeks before AS Chemistry we did lots of past year papers and he spent his time explaining every single question in the MCQ section! His hard work made me realise how I shouldn’t give up and how I should give him the best grade I could.

 Physics, I loved this subject and I loved my teacher. She was the cutest and bubbliest teacher ever and she was never angry or displeased throughout the 2 years she was with us. As for the subject, it wasn’t extremely easy because I needed as much help as I did for Chemistry but it was definitely easier to understand. I enjoyed the class because of how lively my teacher and the classroom were. My teacher was so nice that she gave us angpao each during Chinese New Year hehehe, she even gave us chocolates (Toblerone heheh) for winning the small group ‘project’ and one time, she ordered lots of pizzas and pastas so I asked her what was the occasion and she said “nothing” with a huge smile plastered across her face. How amazing is she????
Okay for the subject, I did the same thing as the other two; ask questions. Again, this teacher was so patient with me, I would send her pictures of questions from the past year papers that I couldn’t do (through Whatsapp) and she would respond to every single question, sometimes with a super long paragraph. She made me appreciate her more for that. She inspired me when she told me that she went to Imperial College London to do her degree in Physics but when I told her I wanted to go there too she told me it’s best not to (but that’s not the main reason why I didn’t get to apply there).

Besides my teachers, I spent my time studying endlessly not just 3-5 times a week but every day (okay, maybe not everyday) mainly because I refused to go for tuition. I went to look at my old planner recently and I realized that I studied 10 months prior to my exam, mahn..I really wanted those grades huh. There was no shortcut to do this, I kept on telling myself repeatedly that “It’s just 19 months” “I only have to suffer now” “I’m not gonna regret it” and here I am sitting down, typing on my laptop seated next to my Outstanding Achievement Award trophy for obtaining 2A* 1A

(A for Chemistry psssssshhhhh a bit disappointed with this but overall I am so happy)

Alhamdulillah

I am not sure how long am I gonna keep this here but if you are a student, O’s or A’s or anything lah, good luck with everything and don’t give up!

(I should probably read this in the future when sitting for my Uni exams)

To start off..

Hello there, I don’t know why you are here but thank you for at least reading this first sentence! *claps for you*

So I’ve decided to start blogging, again, simply because I am bored out of my mind. I had another blog before this but I decided to remove it because I cringed every second of reading it. I am a 19-yr-old Bruneian lady who is currently waiting for a loan approval to go to a university somewhere in the United Kingdom. I sat for my A’level in October/November 2016 and left the sixth form centre soon after, so I am now NOT a student or a part-time worker or even an intern, I am just a girl who does nothing but eat, sleep, read, play the piano, watch tv and repeat.

No, don’t tell me to get a job. *waves index finger*

If I do get to go to the UK, then my life start sometime in September this year. Now it’s already May, so I have 4 months to write unremarkable posts about my current life (nope, I won’t say boring). I can’t promise you that your definition and my definition of ‘fun life’ are comparable because I’d say it’s fun as long as it’s more than just eating, sleeping, reading, playing the piano and watching the tv.

I will talk more about my personal life, such as what course I’ll be doing, how I survived through A’level, how unorganised my desk is even though it has been months since A’level ended, how many times do I usually chew my food before swallowing, what would I do if there’s fire in the house and more, on future blog posts.

For now, that is all you need to know about me.

Ok bye… Shooo

See you on my next post 😉