That’s all I can really say – that’s all, folks.

Herby I announce that this blog will no longer exist very soon. It might had something to do with the fact that my posts were boring, geeky or too infrequent (I’m not as crazy as Chris and Corrie), but the outcome is the same – I have not been selected to be a member of the college blog team this year.

It is very sad. I had plenty of ideas for this year, and considering I’m the only undergrad-turned-postgrad among all the bloggers, the blog had a potential of being very interesting. I was considering to continue blogging, but is there a point if nobody reads it?

This blog has been a wonderful thing to do in my free time, and I often say that it’s one of the most exciting things I’ve done at Imperial. Virtually every new person I met this year said that they recognize me from the blog, some even said they remember me from the College’s homepage. I don’t have any statistics available for my blog, but this proves it was high enough (or maybe my “Proud of myself” tshirt was just very memorable ).

Lastly, thanks to other bloggers and the people from the Communications Division at Imperial who created the blog project. And of course, big thanks to all of you, the anonymous readers of this blog.

Goodbye.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been based in Northwick Park campus. It’s a medical campus in Northwick Park (duh) in North London, near Wembley. The important bit, however, is the fact that I have now visited every single one of Imperial campuses – and there are 8 of them. I’m quite sure many people have achieved this, so here’s my ranking of the campuses.

1. South Kensington

Of course it’s SK. Beautiful location, next to Hyde Park, plenty of places to eat, Union Bar, FiveSixEight, Eastside, Ethos – no introduction needed. This is the place to be. Even though I have no lectures or practicals in South Kensington, I’m here every day – this shows how much I like this place.

2. Silwood Park
This might come as a surprise, but Silwood Park is a truly beautiul place to be. True, it is in the middle of nowhere, and getting there is a pain – but once you get there, and you see thousands of bunny rabbits hopping around you – you’ll immediately fall in love with this place. In many ways, it is like a posh boarding school – far away from any civilisation, with pretty sights, wild animals etc. The only difference is that the stuff normally banned in a secondary school are all legal here!

I truly recommend going for a sunrise walk around the campus grounds – a breathtaking experience. Sightings of deer and other wild fauna very likely. You just have to forget that there’s a nuclear reactor there…

3. St. Mary’s

In many ways, just an average medical campus. Think again – it’s located in Paddington. Within 2 minutes, you can be in KFC, Subway, McDonald’s and Burger King (what I call “the triangle of death”). Lecture rooms are very nice and comfy, and it’s a pleasant walk through Hyde Park to South Kensington. There’s also a swimming pool there, free of course, and the library gallery is an interesting place to revise. Info for geeks – that’s where Fleming discovered penicillin (and there’s a museum for that!).

4 & 5. Chelsea & Westminster / Royal Brompton To be honest, I never really spent much time there. I’ve only been to  C&W to get a paper from the library, and in Royal Brompton for one day of lectures. Generally very nice and modern hospitals, located withing a walking distance from South Kensington. Both have access to lots of shops, bars and restaurants (on King’s Road and Fulham Road, respectively). They have a potential of being a good place to revise if SouthKensington gets full during exam time.

6. Charing Cross

Confusingly located in Hammersmith, far away from the real Charing Cross (and yes, I know of people who went to Trafalgar Square for their first day of lectures), this hospital seems to be the social centre of the medics with their bar – Reynold’s. If there’s any event hosted by ICSMSU – bets are it’s gonna be rightthere. The bar itself isn’t too bad, the size might surprise some of you (it’s bigger than FiveSixEight and the soon-to-be-opened Metric). Otherwise, the campus is a bit depressing. Combined with the fact that you have to walk through a cemetery to get there (which is a memorable experience, especially when foggy), visiting CX will be definitely an interesting experience.

7. Hammersmith

Continuing with the confusion, Hammersmith Hospital isn’t located where the common sense tells you, but instead between White City and East Acton. This “between” is one of the problems – from the station, you need to walk an extra 10 minutes to get there. The place is really big, and very densely packed – a word ‘maze’ comes to mind. Although many building are very modern (the newly refurbished Wolfson Building) and nice looking, and there’s a number of places to eat on campus, the biggest downside of HH is it’s location. Not only it’s not close to the station, but also travel from South Kensington might be problematic (it’s on the Central Line) and there is nothing around the campus. Okay, nothing except the Wormwood Scrubs prison.

8. Northwick Park

It’s in Zone 4 on Metropolitan Line. It doesn’t look very nice. It has no library, computer room, or Imperial-WPA wifi (or at least I couldn’t find it). There is also no signs indicating it’s even an Imperial Campus (I found one, inside a building). Quite boring really. On a plus note, it’s located right next to Northwick Park Golf Club. If you’re a golfer, you’ll definitely enjoy a session on a driving range during lunch break, especially since you can get £10 worth of ball-credit for free (you can find the offer easily). That’s what i’ve been doing for the past few days.

I’ve never been to Wye Campus, but it’s not an Imperial Campus anymore – good for me

(all photos except the Silwood Park one are taken from Imperial’s Image Library)

If you were in South Kensington campus on Wednesday, you might have noticed a lot of people dressed in gowns. No, it wasn’t the Harry Potter convention, nor the biggest fancy dress party ever hosted by the Union. It is the ultimate event in the college education, a.k.a. graduation.

Since the first year, I wondered how it’s gonna feel like to finally graduate. For those of you with similar thoughts, here’s my highly-realistic report.

Arriving at college around noon, I started looking for friends, walking back and forth between SAF and Beit. Eventually, an individual was found and we collected our gowns. I always liked dressing formally, and this was no exception. The only part I didn’t like was that I have to pay 30 quid for hiring a piece of fabric for 8 hours (really, someone has to start up another gown hire company to destroy the monopoly of E&D).

Next hours were spent by mingling, posing for photos and generally feeling like a celebrity or supermodel. I don’t think I’ve ever been on so many pictures on one single day, and I can still see flashes before my eyes. I am glad that my special student-blogger camera is reaching the end of its life and I didn’t have to think of using it creatively.

Royal Albert Hall itself is indeed a beautiful and monumental building. This is truly a perfect place for the graduation ceremony. My course was actually the first one to get on stage, which meant that for the remaining 90 minutes, I was staring at the people walking up and down and not shaking rectors hand (it seems a bow is good enough). That was a bit boring, but strangely enjoyable at the same time. After all, for most, this will be the only opportunity to ever step onto the stage of Royal Albert Hall. Then the speech by the rector, the Union President, some other people, some classical music, and that’s it.

Perhaps slightly more exciting was the reception afterwards, the exciting bit being of course the free champagne. Drinking 7 glasses maybe wasn’t the wisest move, but nothing bad happened, so no harm done Since I had no guests at the ceremony, I could mingle even more which I’ve done. After that, we all went for a huge afterparty, which was the best party ever… except nothing happened. My friends just disappeared with their families, while I was left alone. Oh well, that’s not my last graduation at Imperial, so I can still correct my mistakes

My course have been running for nearly 2 weeks now and things, at least in theory, start to get serious.

Entering (10 minutes late) the beautiful lecture room in Hammersmith Campus sub-basement, I met my fellow coursemates for the first time. I immediately felt something was very wrong. I couldn’t figure out what it is, so I continued to listen to the course organiser telling us that White City station is safer than East Acton station, and how to properly sit in front of a computer. If you have read any of my blog, you’d know that this kind of stuff makes me bored, so I decided to look at the course handbook. Again, it is full of non-interesting text.

One sentence caught my attention, however:

Yes, there exists a course at Imperial that is literally dominated by girls. Yes, it is my course. Yes, I could finally say that odds are good (but goods are indeed, slightly odd). I later learned that most of the master’s courses at Hammersith Campus have more girls than guys. In fact, I’m sitting in a lecture room with 130 people, of which most are female. Unbelievable, but true.

This begs the question: why is this not advertised? Surely, it would greatly increase the number of applicants from Imperial, and explains why there are so few of them on my course.

Anyway, being a fresher is not all course-related, and it shouldn’t be. There were a few events available for freshers during the Freshers’ Week Welcome Week, but the one relevant for me was the Postgrad Mingle which happened on Saturday at the Union.

Now, I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining, but you probably know that I wasn’t really a fan of the parties hosted by the Union (Summer Ball excluded), and I’m not really good at mingling (I actually left the Fresher’s Mingle in my first year after just an hour)

Adding the fact that the bar and club are not open yet, and the whole party is gonna happen in a tent in Beit Quad, you can see why I didn’t expect much. How little did I know that this would be one of the best parties at Imperial. Apparently 1,100 postgrads were there, and they did know how to party (you could argue that it’s because many of them were from other universities, but let’s ignore it for now ). I honestly did not expect that, and I’d love the Union to continue working above my expectations.

Hello, hello.

Yes, I am alive. I have not died in mysterious circumstances, nor I’ve been abducted by aliens. I know some fans called the CIA and MI6 to investigate my disappearance.

But here I am, alive, proud of myself, magic by nature and – most importantly – ready to blog!

Plenty of stuff happened in the past few months. A lot of this stuff should have went on my blog, but for various reasons (laziness being the most important one), they didn’t. A short summary:

• I had my final exams, which went surprisingly well considering me underestimating the difficulty level of revising learning everything in 4 weeks.
• My research project, which unless you’re a biomedical science geek, wouldn’t interest you anyway
• Summer ball, which is a unique experience, and highly recommended to anyone
• Waiting for results, and nearly dying when I saw two magical words: Upper Division on the Student e-service.

Most important for you, the readers, however, is the fact that I have been accepted to do a Master’s course in Human Molecular Genetics at Imperial. This means, that if the kind people that selected me to be a blogger allow me to continue doing it, then, well, I’ll be able to blog for another year

I’ll try to make the blog as interesting as possible. This year is going to be much different than the past 3 years for me for various reasons, so it should be a good read. I also hope that Chris and Corrie continue their crazy-blogging, motivating me to write more!

See you all around campus!

…and free of exams! I have a great idea for a couple of new posts, which, oddly enough, will be about exams.

Stay tuned.

As Imperial students, I am sure most of you are aware of the Science Challenge. Organized by RCSU, it’s objective is to write an 800-word essay for a given topic. For the rest of background info, google it

I actually took part in the competition – and I did it in style. As you probably know, I like to leave things to last minute. The deadline for the essay was 23:59 on 7th of March. I decided to write an essay at 21:00 of that day, chose the topic at 22:00, developed an idea at 23:00, and “finished” writing at 23:50. My idea was great, but I didn’t have enough time and only wrote 600 words. I really had a feeling that was the worst essay of my life.

You must imagine how surprised I was when I received an email saying my entry was shortlisted. Apparently, only 10% of essays got to that stage. Pretty amazing, huh? Unfortunately, I did not get to the grand final, but I’m still pretty satisfied.

So, encouraged by my minor success I decided to attend the Grand Final. It was held in the Institute of Directors in Pall Mall, a pretty awesome venue. I generally love any black-tie event, and this one was no different.

Another surprise of the night was that I managed to get a seat at a table with 6 rather pretty girls, and 2 guys. Anyone here would know that, given the male:female ratio at Imperial,  that’s nearly impossible. But it happened. Soon I realised that girls have strong preference to white wine, and they like it a lot. I can’t complain, it was fun to watch, and that meant I can have more red wine

In the meantime, speeches were given. First one was by Simon Singh, an Imperial alumnus, and a popular scientist, talked about his fight with UK libel laws. Then, I had an opportunity to see the new acting rector for the first time, but at that time the red wine seemed to have entered my bloodstream already, and can’t really say much about it.

What I remember, though, is the winners. I remember that, mainly because it turned out that Kieron, one of the guys at my table, was a finalist. Unfortunately, he did not win – this prize went to Matt Silver, who also won last year. Getting nearly 10k for 2 essays – that’s impressive.

After the dinner finished, I decided to go to no other place than Imperial Union. Apparently, it is the last event at dB’s before it’s refurbished and named Metric. It was also my first night out in the Union (okay, other than the Mingle during my fresher’s week). I’d really like to say some good things about the quality of it, but I’m afraid I can’t. I hope that Metric will be better and will be able to compete with King’s and LSE’s unions.

Also, a funny incident happened to me when I was leaving. I’m walking towards the exit, and then I hear some guy shouting my name, I turn around and realise I don’t know him. Then he says: “You’re Maciej, you write the blog, it’s great!”. That was surprising and strangely satisfying. Ah, the fame

Yesterday, I had to visit the IT Service Desk in Sherfield Building to sort out some IT related stuff for my society (did I ever mention I’m a committee member for BioMed Soc?). On my way back I wanted to grab some DVDs from the library, but I stumbled upon a rather large crowd of people queuing up to the Great Hall. After some research, I established that there is an Ig-Nobel Prize lecture in the next 5 minutes. Sadly, the admittance was for ticketholders only, but using my innate charm (or the fact that there were some empty seats), I managed to watch the whole event.

All I can say is WOW.

I am familiar with the Ig-Nobel prizes, and I examined many of the winners some time ago. I really love the concept, and recently I even presented a paper on mathematical modelling of zombie infection for my epidemiology module, and I’d be surprised if that doesn’t get a prize soon. However, reading things, and seeing them is a completely different thing. Mind you, if 3 years ago someone told me that I’d attend lectures on side effects of sword swallowing, influence of naming cows on milk production, scientific inaccuracies of Rudolph the reindeer’s red nose and using bras as protection from nuclear fallout, I’d just LOL or ROTFL or both at the same time. But it happened. I now know, that if I want milk, I should give my cow a name. I know that I should not try sword swallowing at home,  after seeing an amazing demonstration by one of the leading specialists in this field. If on the other hand I must use a face mask, I should use a special bra instead (kindly demonstrated on Professor Andrew George – provided that a female person next to me wears one (correctly pointed out by a member of the audience that this wouldn’t work at Imperial due to low women:men ratio…). I also witnessed that it’s possible to perform an aria on a love between a proton and an electron.

Sadly, I have no videos or photos of the event. I usually carry it with me all the time, but I never expected that a short trip to IT service desk will turn into one of the funniest events I ever attended at Imperial. The whole thing was apparently filmed and will be available somewhere on the Imperial website, but I couldn’t find it for now.

To all the geeks of Imperial and the world:
Happy Pi Day!

It’s also birthday of Einstein. I’m seriously surprised that nobody celebrated at a place like Imperial.

(and prepare yourself – Geek of the Week is back this week!)

For all those of you, who are under the impression that final year is the time you revise 24/7 and have no time for fun – you are very wrong. In fact, this year I had significantly more fun than in my 1^st and 2^nd years combined. Oddly enough, I now sleep 9 hours a day on average – and I am still bored.

One of the fun events I attended recently was a casting event for the leading tequila manufacturer (which I shall not name). What was so unique was that only about 30 people (mostly bloggers) were invited – so it was pretty exclusive thing. When I arrived at Cargo in Shoreditch (East London still scares me, even though I lived there for some time), I was welcomed with a free margarita. What I didn’t know at that point, was that drinks were free and unlimited for the rest of the evening, and the cocktails they prepared for us were absolutely amazing. Arguably, up to this point, I wasn’t a big tequila drinker, preferring certain Scottish or Polish spirits, but I have to say that this agava-based alcohol becomes one of my favourites now.

But as I mentioned, the whole objective of the event was to find a person to go on a free VIP trip to Mexico with his/hers 3 friends, to film a movie about tequila. Each of us was given a character to play, together with some props. I was supposed to be Senor Ramon Rudolfo, a badass Mexican businessman. I was given a slim tie and some nice aviator shades, and after a few more Margaritas, Cuervo Diablo Flowers and simple tequila shots I was ready to sit on a casting couch, where I (or to be correct, Ramon) was interviewed by the casting director. I somehow doubt my acting skills, but who knows?

I can honestly say that it was one of the most exciting events that I attended recently. It was also great that I could meet a lot of fellow bloggers from London, and finally talk to people who are not just students. I really hope anything like this happens again.

Here are some photos. You can even spot me on a few of them.