Hey all! This entry comes from the other half of the globe (Berkeley CA to be precise)! I’ve settled in quite snugly thanks to parents and sisters. Classes have also begun; in fact, I had a test the other day. And as a welcome present I had been handed some homework too.

But in all seriousness, this place is beautiful. You can see the bay and the Golden Gate bridge from campus. Huge, coloured flowers grow in the wild everywhere. You can even find the famous redwood trees! I wanted to take some photos and post them for your viewing benefit, but the camera is dead (took too many shots I suppose) and I lack a UK-US converter. All the photos are in my memory, but unfortunately that is of the nervous type rather than the binary type. Well anyway.

I’m probably a little late in saying this, but CONGRATS to all our incoming freshers! You all well and truly deserve a place at a world-class institute. And if you’ve been admitted to Mech Eng – special congrats. And if you were at the interview when I was a tour guide – even more special congrats!!!!

Hahaha. I remember being soooo nervous before the results were announced. And then I was apprehensive afterwards too. Once I realised I was in, I was nervous about coming to Imperial and starting life anew. And  then I started fretting about making friends, progress tests, and then exams etc etc.

But then I realised if you are scared the whole time, you won’t be able to savour your position! You are at the best university in the world, located in London, which is the centre of that world. I mean, think back to when you were ten. Did you ever imagine you would come this far? And this is only the beginning, god knows where life will take us once we have our degree…!

When I came, I was most scared about living in halls. Weird eh, normally that’s the part of student life freshers most look forward to. But hall life turned out to be extremely fun and comfortable, especially at Weeks. They had new events to look forward to everyday and the hall seniors were very kind, thoughtful, crazy and patient people. But still, I did feel a little homesick during the first few weeks, especially while I was still solidifying my daily routine. It was the smallest and silliest things that made me yearn for home – things like:

1. The shower being occupied when I needed to use it. And when it was free, it was dirty.

2. Not knowing where to put my gazillion pots and pans – and when I did find a place it felt awkward. I ended up keeping some of mine in my room, took me a while to realise that was allowed :S

3. Using someone else’s dishwashing soap. (I wasn’t used to using stuff belonging to others)

4. And last of all…not being able to connect to the internet on my first day!!!

As you can tell, these are all petty problems. Luckily they were easy to fix/live with (kinda like hall mates lol). I promise you, you will adore the hall experience : )

Anyway, I should get going now. I think this might be my last blog post ever – a saddening thought. I really enjoyed posting about the random stuff I did, and hopefully it was of some interest to you all. I would love to continue on next year, we’ll see. Maybe we gotta let some fresh blood in!

Also, as usual, if you have any questions post a comment or email me and I will get back to you. It was great to hear from so many of you over the holidays. Keep it up!!!!

It has been a few years since I last blogged. Even the spammers have been ignoring me . It is completely my fault though. If only I could do exams without studying…

Well, exams are finally over. However we still have to write up a mega-huge report about the Design Make and Test project we have been working on all year. I am feeling quite nervous about this as this is worth as much as four exams. That’s the equivalent of some studying, lots of hair loss and too much chocolate.

In an attempt to enjoy the sun and enjoy the report I headed off to Hyde Park with my laptop, USB key and a textbook. There’s this one tree that I always sit under; it just doesn’t feel the same anywhere else for some silly reason. It was the first time I had been to Hyde Park this term so I was hoping it was free. And of course, it welcomed me with open arms…branches…whatever…

That's my tree. No stealing!

Pretending to work

Maybe you remember that I’m working on the Drivetrain of the Racing Green car. The project itself has gone well – it definitely could have gone better though. But I think that if you don’t feel that way after a year-long project you have probably done something wrong (or you are a genius). Still, I feel very excited (and nervous) to think that we will be participating in the Design competition at Silverstone in about seven weeks time. And everything seems even more exciting as all Racing Green team members are obliged to keep our entire car design a secret. Especially since the drivetrain design is quite innovative, and it would be disastrous if other teams found out about it and copied us. I kind of feel like a secret agent! Except all the super-secret-crucial-documents are engineering drawings. And my weapon is a driveshaft. And I don’t have a code name.

In a previous blog post I mentioned that I had got tickets to see a new BBC Three show, ‘The King is Dead’. Three of my friends and I went to see it last Thursday.

It was a novel and great experience to enter the BBC studios and actually watch a real live proper recording! It takes about 3 hours to record a 30 minute show, and we get to see all the stuff that happens off-air which is quite exciting. I’m glad glad I got those tickets. I had in fact asked for 1 ticket as that normally improves your chances of getting a place, but they gave me four instead which was much cooler.

So anyway, we got to the BBC studios where we first had to undergo some airport-like security checks (Clement had a little trouble with his pen-knife…what did they think he could do with it anyway? Kill a camera man? Kill himself from laughing too much at really bad jokes?). Then they led us to a restaurant/bar like thing where we bought snacks. Joe asked for a panini that seemed to take ages to make, when in actual fact they had forgotten about his order. Epic sandwich fail.

Then we were made to stand in a somewhat orderly queue that involved some slight shoving and shouting, and plenty of rain. We were made to stand outside for a good 250 seconds I would guess. But once we were seated in the studio everything was fine. We had a ‘warm-up-er’ to help us understand our role as audience and to ease away boredom before the show began. He was a welsh guy who was as funny as the show itself. It was mostly light-hearted insult-based comedy directed at various stage managers, but they didn’t seem to mind. I think he was on the path to becoming a real comedian – it would be great if in a few years time I could say, ‘Hey, yeah I saw him when he was a mere crowd-warm-uper!’.

The show was presented by Simon Bird, who, as Tanya put it: ‘looks so funny you would just laugh at him if you saw him walking on a street’. It’s true. With his suit and his overly posh accent and his over-sized glasses you can’t help giggle a little.

The idea behind the show is that each week a famous person is killed off, and three celebrities compete to take their place. It’s like a job interview. The recording that we went to was the last in the series, and the assistant regional head of sales had just died. So Eamonn Holmes, some chick from ‘The Saturdays’ and another chick from ‘The Apprentice’ came to take his place.

Of course, as the audience our role was to clap, laugh and jeer. For some reason I had in my head that they would hold up signs, but I needn’t have worried. Sometimes we had to laugh as the same joke five times because of scene retakes. Sometimes during the filming they would redo a scene from the previous hour which seemed to be perfectly fine. It was a very strange and interesting experience. I loved it.

And then, because this was the last show they wanted to have a fake fire alarm where members of the audience walk onto the stage and clap at the winner. I got singled out as the asian girl in maroon! Had to sign a ‘release form’ which basically ‘waived my moral rights’ as the terms and conditions worryingly put it. Basically it meant that if I tripped over the stairs the BBC wouldn’t pay. I decided to go for it as I have plenty of experience in fire alarms being a Mech Eng student and all.

It was the weirdest thing ever.

Walking on stage, making eye contact with the presenters was so funny! Now I have thirty seconds of ‘fame’ on BBC Three. Do watch the show when it airs. You can’t miss me; I’m wearing an Imperial hoodie lol. And besides, the show is actually quite hilarious.

See, loads of free things to do in London!

A few days ago 20 Mech Engers went karting in Streatham. I’m very much a newbie at karting, so this was an excellent way to learn something new. Besides I really needed a short break from the coursework, tutorial sheets, design projects etc.

If you haven’t been go-karting before, you really should. It was extremely fun! We had a sort of ‘Grand-Prix’ amongst us Mech Engers. Despite coming last (well, ok second last) it was really thrilling. I think I had a fastest lap time of around 30.2 seconds. The best lap time of the night was around 27.1 seconds, set by a little blonde girl called Katie in second year. Made me wonder what exactly powered her car, was she hiding a secret jet engine or something? Anyway, kudos to her!

The best part of the race was the final. Eight people raced against each other, and you can imagine what sort of chaos ensued. At the first hairpin I spun, and there was a massive pile-up. Everyone was making angry signals at me (aka Jenny) but I couldn’t do much in my position until the Karting supervisor came and sorted us out.

And just as I was about to escape the pile-up, someone (who shall remain unnamed, partly because I don’t know who it was) came from behind and viciously bumped into me. Well, he/she forgot to brake I guess. I’m glad I was able to act as a suitable buffer (that’s not sarcasm). I was thrown onto the steering column and received a massive bruise on my thigh. I mean, it was comparable to the size of China. I complained about to everyone who would listen in my ‘wounded soldier’ voice. And throughout the past few days it has been going through the various colours of the rainbow.

We're all winners! Or so we like to think...

Anyway, it was a great way to spend the evening away from the worries of the course.

Also, a few days ago, I received tickets to go to a BBC live recording show! Ever since I came to London, one of my wishes has been to be a part of a live audience to a BBC show like ‘Have I got news for you’ or ‘QI’ etc. The tickets are free but the waiting lists are humongous. Anyway I got four tickets to see a BBC Three comedy panel show, ‘The King is Dead’. Seems like it will be really really interesting. I’ll definitely tell you all about the experience in my next post (well, as much as I’m allowed to divulge). The shooting is on Thursday, can’t wait for it!

This has been an interesting week. I want it to end, and at the same time I want it to continue forever…(kinda like quantum mechanics).

Firstly, I was ecstatic to be selected at the university level for the exchange to California! So much is going to change next year, and I am really looking forward to it. Summer is going to be hectic in a good way. My summer holiday will also get ruthlessly cut as term begins end-August…

The euphoria died down when I realized that by the day after I had to prepare an inspirational speech for the Engineering Impact lecture.

This month’s EI lecture focused on student-led engineering projects. Imperial strongly encourages these projects through the EnVision department, who are really supportive and always keen to help. They asked if I wanted to talk to the first years on behalf on Women in SET, describing our activities and so on. I took the chance – when else can someone like me talk in front of hundreds of students? And besides, people like Jonathon Porrit and Lord Darzi have given these lectures in the past. This would also be the ideal way to find out how a lecturer feels! I had the task of making the presentation enthusiastic, inspirational and full of energy – the last thing I wanted was my audience to fall asleep, or even worse, whisper. I hope I managed that.

Although I did do something pretty embarrassing.

I was describing the disparity in numbers between girls and boys doing engineering. I then went on to say “This difference is a huge problem, one that concerns everyone, the guys as well”.

For some reason everyone starts laughing at this – you know the annoying way that guys giggle at the stupidest things? I was a little unnerved by this, still I persevered, proclaiming, “But it’s true!”

Only after it was over Alison (tutor for student-led projects) told me what had happened. Apparently the whole room had twisted my noble words, thinking I had meant that there weren’t enough girls for the guys… That made me giggle afterwards too, especially considering how serious my tone had been while saying that!

Then I went home and had ready-made microwavable pasta

The next day I went into uni and checked my outlook as usual. A strange e-mail entitled ‘A Winrar is You’ was lurking in my inbox. Initially I thought it was spam, but it turned out I had won a copy of Dragon Age: Origins! Yeah, that does sound like junk mail right? But I actually did remember entering that cometition – it was run by Felix. Even funnier was that the answer to the MCQ was written in the same paragraph (i.e. “The answer is B”). I have read some rave reviews about the game, so I’m looking forward to it. But first I will have to procure an Xbox 360…

On the weekend a good friend of mine came over from Warwick. We have known each other since the days I used to snatch building blocks from her chubby little fingers, so I was really happy to see her again. I showed her around London – where else to go than Trocadero? – and we met an interesting person.

He's a big soft toy

He snuck up from behind us quite slowly, but that was probably because of his/her huge head. Still, it shocked me and I let out a half-scream-half-’eee’. Nupura called it a ‘squeem’. The mascot then stopped slowly and lowered his hands – I could tell that inside the person had a dejected, sad face. I couldn’t see the person’s expression and yet I had felt really really bad about hurting his/her feelings. That’s why I asked the mascot to take a picture with us.

After that it was straight back to Racing Green and the Literature Research Project. LRP is basically a 30 paged essay we have to write in Mech Eng. More about all that later, but basically I just wish the holidays were here…

A lot has happened since term began, but I feel it is appropriate to start my posts from the beginning – when I moved back into my flat (nicknamed ‘B8′) in October.

As I am in 3rd year now, this is my second year living away from the comfort and homliness of halls. Before my 2nd year began I still hadn’t found a place to stay – the height of student procrastination. Fortunately my parents are very tolerant, kind-hearted people so we drove to London a week before term started and found a nice studio flat in the proximity of Imperial.

For about nine months I had a relatively nice time there; many Imperial students live in the same area, and Earl’s court with all its restaurants is just behind. I had no problem staying there for another year, but my mother was quite contrary to the idea. I suppose she had reason to be.

It all started on Hallowe’en 2008…

I remember it like it was yesterday…

I had just returned from a friend’s hallowe’en gathering. It was dark and chilly outside – typical October 31st. I was getting ready to sleep, thinking to myself that it would be a nice change if I actually got spooked on Hallowe’en night. My morbid wish came true a few minutes later.

Through my heavy blankets I saw something black move very quickly in my bathroom. It was too small to be a cat but to big to be a cockroach. I thought this was part of a strange dream, so I left it until the next morning.

As I was performing my morning ablutions I saw it again – darting across the bathroom. It was a disgusting little mouse. I had never been that terrified before. Mice in my house in India are alright, because you expect it. But in London? I was angry, scared and clueless – and I couldn’t concentrate on producing those engineering drawings that were due the next week.

In a small London flat there is no point in doing the ‘humane’ thing by capturing the little critters and releasing them into the wild (aka the London sewers). They dash about like Flash so you end up looking like an idiot trying to chase them. The landlord sent one of his cronies to set up traps in all the dark little corners. These traps consist of a tiny cardboard box with some poison. If you’re lucky the mouse will die in it.

After a week of chasing a mouse that could seemingly teleport, it was replaced by a pungent smell. The battle was finally over.

My father slowly removed the bodies (my parents had come that weekend to help out). There had been two mice. They were so small…and I felt ashamed at my fear of them (until another pair returned in March). I learnt that mice were an integral part of old London buildings. London is a big, crowded city, so things like this are inevitable.

Then there was the time it rained in my studio.

You know the nice, calm feeling you get when it’s raining lightly outside at dawn and you are snuggled in bed? And then the sound gets louder and louder. And then you open your eyes… and it’s sunny outside but there’s a rainstorm indoors.

It wasn’t that the roof was leaking with a few drips in a couple of places; it was dripping everywhere with a pretty big force. It was the first time I went to the toilet with an umbrella. Good times. Apparently a crucial pipe had burst, but everything was fixed by the evening. The smell and dampness was a little hard to get rid of, but time solves all.

You can see why my mother was not so keen on me moving back to the ‘mouldy old’ place. I took her advice and visited more flats, but I couldn’t help comparing them with my B8. B8 had slowly transformed into a home, and despite the difficulties of adjusting I have grown to love it. I feel very lucky that this very flat was free in October, almost as if it knew I was returning…

(Wow. It took me 668 words to get to my point. I promise the word count will be less next time!)