Leeds City Stories

It's almost coming to a week since my arrival of Leeds and I'm glad and relieved to have settled most of the administration procedures such as registering, making a bank account and going through induction week. These few days were filled with lots of walking and finding out the whereabouts of every area and shops that are vital for survival. So, on Monday was the start where we need to report to Law School to get some headstart information and to meet with the director of students. There were a few other students from HELP who were also at the meeting. Halfway through the briefing, the director kinda asked whether there were any football fans in the group and my classmates all pointed at me. He asked me which team I support and in my mind I was going like,"Oh, this is not a good idea at all especially when I'm in Leeds" and I'm duly reminded with my brush-ins with the Uni. of Liverpool lecturers who asked me the same thing when United was thrashed 1-4 at OT. So I answered hesitantly,"Manchester..." and before I could finish, he was jumping in glee and shaking my hand in return, to my big surprise. Apparently, he ain't from Leeds and he's a Man Utd fan - 27 years and a season ticket holder too. Whew! And I discovered later in the other intro lectures that he loves taking shots at Leeds and Liverpool fans..lol. Not to mention, he's an ELS lecturer too, which reminds me of my previous ELS lecturer who was a Liverpool fan instead..haha.

I had to quickly rush off from the uni after Monday's session to get back to my accomodation area for a welcoming reception and briefing at 5pm. I managed to make new friends over there, a Malaysian PhD student from PJ, a Pakistani undergraduate and an Indian from Tamil Nadu doing Masters. We had to walk back to the university campus for the briefing (when I had just came back from it! grrr) . On the way walking there, there was this drunken Brit at the park who was screaming at our group as we walked by. He started to approach nearer and continued on screaming but he was blocked off by the fence. My Pakistani friend responded to him by telling him "Good day sir, good day sir"..lol. We quicken our steps to walk away from the area, just in case he decides to jump over the fence..haha. After the briefing by the warden at the lecture theatre, we proceeded on to the Senior's common room and wow, they have a bar right inside the Uni itself serving alcohol. As residents, we were all entitled to 2 free drinks using the coupons and we were allowed to pick any drink including beer. I picked juices for my first two drinks but later as we were chatting away, the warden came over to distribute more spare coupons and I'm fortunate to get two more drinks! Spent it on another juice and a free bottle of beer. Ahhh, with so much of free drinks, my dehydrated lips were finally restored to it's original moisturised condition. There was also a free dinner catered for us to my delight and it's an interesting range of pastries and bread. Haha..any sort of free food is welcomed, no matter how foreign they taste!

On the next day, we were supposed to meet up with our personal tutors, something like lecturers assigned for the pastoral care of the students. The thing about British timing is that it must not be too early or too late. It's always on the dot. So, we happen to be too early and we asked the lecturer in a room whether we can meet Mr Brian Hogan, as it was stated in the sheet of note written for us. The lecturer then told us that Mr Brian Hogan had died many years ago and that sparked a small moment of confusion. And then only I realised that the seminar room is named after him and there's only one tutor assign for the group of us instead of 2. Whoops, didn't know we were looking for a dead person xD

There was a fresher's fair on all the clubs and societies and as expected, the student union building is huge. It even has its own supermarket and pub and the eating cafeteria called the Refectory can actually be transformed into a 2000 seater concert hall. It seems that joining academic societies in the Uni is quite expensive, and Law Society is going on for a whopping 55 pounds lifetime membership. It's worth it if I'm a first year student, but there's little that I can do when I'm transferring in from the 3rd year. Arggghh..would really love to join it but cost-benefit considerations gotta come first. I managed to find the Christian Union though and made some contact with a few of the members there. They had organised a picnic for international students at Hyde Park and yea, had an interesting time interacting with the few of them. I've also joined the Malaysian & Singaporean Society and there's gonna be a city tour with them this Saturday.

After exploring and discovering things at Leeds for quite some time now, these are the few observations and first impressions that I have:

1. The British are a very polite bunch of people but they are not easy to warm up to. This means that unlike their American counterparts who are much more eager to make acquaintances, the British are more cautious in their approach. Often, it requires some initiative on the international student's part to break the ice. Somehow, international students interacting with other international students constitute little problems, be it whether they are Arabs, Pakistanis, China or African students.

2. British customer service is top quality. Be it whether they are doing taxi business, cashiers, salespersons or bankers, you'll feel top class as a customer anywhere and anyplace and they'll go all out to serve.

3. Shops here open as early by 8pm and close early, latest by 8pm. You will rarely see any shops open beyond that unless it's McDonalds or Kebab takeaway. That's because 8pm onwards is pub and clubbing time.

4. The British like to drink. And drinking is a big part of the culture. You see people drinking in the morning, afternoon, evening - all the time, everywhere. Everynight outside my room, I'll hear drunk Brits shouting and screaming. With that being said, beer is also relatively cheap here. And I like one of the more exotic English Apple beer which my English housemate treated me yesterday.

5. Fresher's week is not the mild orientation camps or sequences that you see in South East Asia. It's notorious enough with all the booze and partying for the 1st year students and it happens not once or twice..but everynight! In the day time, all the clubs will be distributing flyers to students at the uni, providing free drinks etc. and yea, basically the students turned the city center into a party city. At almost every night, you'll see lots of young Brits who are dressed up and ready for clubbing. Not sure whether they'll continue doing this once term starts

6. The streets at foreign land are not that clean actually. They are comparable to the streets of Kuala Lumpur. You get lalang growing in patches, styrofoam boxes and papers strewn all over the place. The inner premises are kept clean by those responsible of the land but not the public spaces.

7. Certain type of foods over in the UK are too cheap to be true. These things are like chocolates, bacon, carbonara sauce, bread (jumbo loaf for 50 pence!), salmon and pasta. Cooking at home with such ingredients would mean that my lunch and dinner would cost a measly 2-3 pounds at most per meal and it wud even be much more less if I have a meatless diet.

Ahhh, those are some of the small portions of Leeds City stories that I've experienced. I'm sure there are more to come in the future.