UTAR - What i wish others would tell me before i start college.

CAUTION: THIS IS A POST FULL OF PHOTOS AND WORDS.

Hey guys, so this post i'm gonna type mostly about stuff i encounter in UTAR based on my almost-one-month experience and basically it's the stuff i wished others would tell me when starting college.

To me, starting college was all a BLUR. I didn't know what college is like, basically, and i just thought, yeah....i'm gonna further my studies that's all. To me, college is nothing other than: -

1. You don't have to tie hair to school anymore. *Most of the girls think they look weird in ponytails*
2. Now you can dye your hair. (Blue, purple, electric blue, green, yellow, gold, pink, red.) *YAY*
3. No more uniforms (I mean, who wants to wear knee length skirts, HAHAHA, just kidding, i'm sick of uniforms already after wearing it for 11 years.)
4. I'm going to a bigger study place (UTAR is REALLY BIG)
5. I'm gonna meet different people from different places

Of course all of the above is true, but there's more to that.
Like the post i posted previously, i spent one month before going to college getting really worried about how i'll be able to adapt. It's the fear of going to a new place makes me creep, the fear of knowing new friends and what i'm gonna do.

My best friend, May is also going to UTAR, when i first heard of it i was super happy. Until she told me that she wanted to go for NS first. So i was like..okay...  Then i got like really emo and sad and i thought she's really cruel to let me die alone at Perak. HAHA,

That period of time i really hated UTAR to the max. I was like, NOOOOO i don't want to leave home, i have no friends there. And then i started searching up blogs that blog about UTAR, their first time experience of going to UTAR. Most of it were some really weird comments and then my fear for UTAR just grew more and more deep. I keep telling myself "Why are you so worried? Once you go there, everything will go accordingly."

Later after that May sent me a message saying "You must be really happy because i'm not going to NS anymore, i'm going to January intake with you."

And so we decided to stay at a double room together because we wanted to cook, so by staying together we can cook together and makan together and also take care of each other. At first she wanted to stay at eastlake, so May's brother went to look for houses at eastlake with us. Then later after that, by driving to kampar and really see for ourselves east and westlake, only we realise the difference between the two.

At westlake, more university students are residing there. The good news is, majority of your friends will be there. And it's also closer to the foundation building. At eastlake, it's best if you have a car. And if you need to do assignment with your friends, it might be a little bit hard because majority of them will be at westlake.

At eastlake, you only have a little choices on the food. At westlake, there are hundreds of shops selling different type of stuff, there's bicycle shop, mostly restaurants, souvenir shop etc etc. I've known a friend from my foundation class who grew up at Kampar and according to her, 2-3 years ago it's like a deserted place there, and right now because of UTAR, all these shops are starting to grow more and more. Bagai cendawan selepas hujan. (I haven't forgot my bahasa :P)

Why UTAR?
-My ambition is to become an english lecturer. Previously i read it on Star Newspaper about TESL, it's a course where you learn to teach people the ENGLISH language. Then i seek answers from google and i found a few universities that provide the course and not much from private universities. Mostly is government university. And i saw HELP university offering the course, but you know what? the fees is SOOOO expensive. I mean who doesn't want to go to KL universities? Right, people? Right? Right? Yes.

So then i seek consultation from my secondary english teacher and she told me to take english language and the course is offered in UTAR. There's this difference between english language and english education.

English education emphasise more about HOW you teach people, while language cover a wide range of topics and you can study broader about the subject. Plus, the main idea about this whole thing is, UTAR IS WAYYYYY CHEAPER.

So, after arriving at UTAR, i chatted with a lot of my seniors, and they told me more about english language. The difference between english language and english education. And here, i would suggest those who wanted to go UTAR or even other universities to ASK YOUR SENIORS ABOUT YOUR COURSE AND RETHINK AGAIN, that can give you a better insight on what you're doing for in the future.

So all in all, UTAR is more affordable, and the environment is very relaxing and the campus is big and fully equipped.

So talking about the environment in UTAR. I'll give it a big thumbs up. Not just one, but all the thumbs on my body. This university is really just PURE IMPRESSIVE. The campus is very big and beautiful, very eco friendly (I mean why not? Everyone is cycling). The food in the cafeteria is affordable (At least i think so), and if u ever travel to block I, YOU WILL KNOW WHAT I MEAN PEOPLE!

It's like a mini forest or something over there and it's just BEAUTIFUL. (I have no idea is it because of my photography perspective of looking at things differently, but yeah).

AMAZING VIEW OF BLOCK I

If my camera wasn't so heavy, i WOULD bring my camera to campus every single day.

Which intake do you take?
-People would be like YOU MUST BE CRAZY, where got people straight away start studying once they finished their SPM? Of course i wanted to enjoy too. But my mom advised me a lot on this and it's worth considering. Because my brother used to go May intake, so my mom know a lot about May intake and so she advised me to go for January intake.

There are actually benefits for the 2 intakes. January intake would be less pack with students and whatever you do, you won't get worried that people will take it earlier than you do. While May would always be long queue and packed with students.

While for January intake, i have lots of friends older than me and some of it are the same age as me. But the bad news for January intake is that the replacement class wouldn't be as nice as compared to May intake. Because if there's more student, there will be more classes available and more classes will be open (instead of squeezing into one classroom), but January student only have so little, and so there won't be much replacement class available, but if you're the type of student who are always late and love to sit in front, i would recommend you not to take May intake, because for January intake itself already got a lot of people fighting for places, i wouldn't dare to imagine for May intake.

New friends
-The thing that i most feared about going to a new place is to meet new friends and new people. It got so serious to the extend that i even googled "how to prepare yourself to meet new people." In my mind, i can see me alone walking while others have their friends beside them talking and laughing. But since May will be going with me, i'm not as scare anymore compared to being alone. The know-new-friends started on the second day of college.

All in all, i met a lot of amazing people
Church friends, coursemates, etc etc

Second day of college was campus tour. During that period of time, according to the time you arrive, you'd be arranged to your respective groups with seniors leading you all to tour the campus. Before touring, they would play some ice breaking games with you to loosen the tension. By touring the campus, it depends on what type of person you are. Some just walk behind and be really quiet while some already taken their move to know new people around.There's also some (which is me) who just stay with your own group and talk among yourselves.

After the tour, there's these seniors who would approach you, or maybe if they don't, you approach them. They're the PMPs mentor . They would ask you to fill in the form to enter their PMP group. This PMP is called Peer Mentoring Programme, where if you're accepted, you will be in one of the groups, there are a lot of groups (I'm in group 14) and the main function is to get you to be familiar with the new surrounding as many here are from different places all over Malaysia including Sabah and Sarawak.

I entered and was filtered into group 14. And the first night we went out for dinner. And from there we had ice breaking (And they celebrated my bday that night too) and the next day when you know it, you guys are already planning for the next outing together. And then it became dinner every night together and doing activities together as a group. It depends. Some group are really active, which they would go out EVERY NIGHT, and some would be very DULL, where they only go out once or maybe only twice.

This PMP programme mostly stays active for a month, depending on the mentor who is leading, and by the time that one month ends, you are already quite familiar with Kampar's everything. They are here to help.

Coming to a place where to you is a total stranger, entering clubs and societies would just get you to know a lot of new friends with different personalities, different race, and different language. The thing that the seniors emphasise the most when coming to UTAR is to create your own NETWORK. This is the place where you start networking with each other and have a really colourful social life. That of course, don't affect your studies as well.

If you're a science student, make sure you manage your time well. Because i heard from most science students that it's very stressful. But since i'm taking foundation in Arts, i think i'm coping it really well. At least, for now. :)

Talking about new friends, i'm just really really glad i joined the catholic student society. From there, i have a deep insight into God and i've met a lot of friendly seniors. People here are REALLY KIND (And yes, i totally mean it). Whenever help is needed, and because everyone's staying so close together, they would HELP YOU whenever u ask. And it's like delivery service or something, a call, and there they are, in front of your house ready to help. 

New environment
-This place might look really dull and boring. But if you're really here with your friends, and with people you know to go with you, this place is like a really nice place because it helps you to forget about homesickness. Homesickness can get really serious to the extend where you would cry every night at your bed thinking about your parents, your siblings, your pet, EVERYTHING. That's what happened to me on my first night. Thinking about how i woke up to see my parents everyday to seeing only walls and friends and no home cook food prepared for me. May said her friend cry EVERY NIGHT after coming to Kampar with no friends. And that's how she go through everyday. It's really saddening. If i don't have May, if i didn't join PMP, i'd be crying every night as well.

Places i really like about Kampar is the never ending restaurant outside. I know i know, it's really NOT HEALTHY to keep eating out, but i can't help it, the food here is nice and weird at the same time. I taste food from EVERY PLACES IN MALAYSIA here. There's Penang food, Ipoh food, Selangor food, etc etc. They even have Pasar malam every Wednesday night and also Tesco and I LOVE THE SCHOOL LIBRARY because it's so big surrounding with books and there's aircond and it's very silent. To me, my second library would be a bookshop called Amazing R Station. It's a bookshop opened by Christian and it's open to public where you can read books off their shelf and borrow books, buy books, or just revise your homework there for free. But i heard you have to have membership to borrow their books. The place can be really quiet at times and they even have food and drinks for sale.

I went there today (When typing this post) and i stayed for a good 6 hours over there doing my revision and surfing the internet and looking for infos for my assignments.

There's also other study places like Wing Zone, G2, McDonalds, cafe, it's a town of university students. There's everything here, whatever u want, u can find.














There's also this Thailand-based restaurant, whether the waiter uncle that served us is TOTALLY A SWEETHEART. He's sooo polite to the extent that i was so impressed with the service i just want to give this restaurant a BIG SHOUT-OUT. He's always smiling to us, and talk in a low soft voice, he address us, always lowering his body posture and it's just TOTALLY POLITE. The food is GOOD. And i think the price is just directly proportioned with the quantity of the food. Especially the tom yam soup, it's just BEST. But one thing i don't understand is, why aren't there people visiting the restaurant? It's sad. But i can say it's a place worth going :) Try it, people of UTAR :)

SYA WAH TI KAP RESTAURANT

NEAR KTAR

PASAR MALAM

Tesco near UTAR
-There's a tesco where it's like the ONLY shopping mall near to me here at Kampar. It's really a place where you can buy ingredients if you cook. But going there is really far so you'd need to take a taxi. Best if you know the taxi driver's number. To me, the place is more or less the same to the Tesco at my hometown. It's not lacking in anything and all in all, you can buy your stuff there.

Is the neighbourhood safe?
- Let's see. Talking about safety. The most unsafe place would be eastlake since it's quite ULU over there. And the second place i guess would be Harvard Cambridge area if not mistaken, and lastly would be the Oxford, Beijing, Tsing Hua all those part. At night, there would always be students wandering around the streets and the street seller don't stop selling food until 12am or later than that. Every night i can still hear students walking around the empty streets at my place, which is Oxford and most of them cycle alone at night here. But still, it doesn't mean it's 100% safe. Who knows when is your unlucky day. Just remember your belongings always and just don't leave your stuff unattended. You don't know what type of people you're dealing with if you're not close to them. Just be extra careful around strangers.

My lecturer
- Well, i can only say there's this one lecturer that i particular like listening to his lectures. He teaches us sociology, and why do i like his lectures? There's of course a solid reason to it. First of all, he's NEVER late, and he prepare really good materials for his lecture classes, sociology is more like learning about society, human behavior and how things happen why does it happen. It gets really confusing sometimes, but he gave A LOT, and i mean DOZENS LOTS of real-life example, helpful examples and amazing elaborations. I always write a lot on my notes and it's always full of notes. And of course, by doing this, he really helped me a lot on this subject :)

A lot of lecturer in this university is ready to help you as long as you ask them during class breaks or after each class. Don't be shy, it helps.


My roommate

- My roomate? She's my best friend, my sister, my childhood friend, and more. There are mood swings from time to time, but i think she's the one that make my UTAR life not boring. it's always good to have a companion with you when you're out here studying.

And now, there's an addition to our duo, which makes our relationship a TRAID, and she is Marion. I guess she's just lonely and need someone with her :3 HAHAHAHAHAHAH Just kidding. She's a funny friend, and we started hanging out more.

There's also another amazing friend, and her name is very special which is Christovery. Four of us are really great friends in UTAR. We share laughter, and sadness, and also when there are mood swings. We balance out each other's stress and do things together. We take photos everyday, i think and mostly are crazy looking shots. So yeah, all in all, my friends are amahzing. I'm glad i know them. <3

Food
- DON'T WORRY. COMING UTAR MAKES YOU FAT, THERE'S A LOT OF FOOD HERE YOU'LL NEVER STARVE TO DEATH. And there's one problem here: Everyone doesn't know where to eat everyday. There's just too many food and restaurant.

Transport
- There's a bus that provides you transport to school, it gets so pack sometimes u had to stand up in front of the bus, i can't imagine how crowded it is inside. And about travelling to old town, tesco or train station or even other places (not necessarily the ones i mentioned), u can call a cab, just ask any utarian or your seniors, they will give u at least ONE taxi number. There's just never ending drivers here for you to call.

LASTLY
I just wanted to say that not many people think that UTAR is good, they might think that it's a desert and it's boring and dull. Plus you'll miss home. Well, in my "perspective", i think it's a great place for you to interact with more people and just 4 years in your whole LIFE of getaway-from-home experience. It's a school full of knowledgeable adults and friendly people. Especially UTAR PR groups, which are ALWAYS and EVERYTIME having events in the university.

Recently, there's a few really big events going on in my university that entered the news and also the televisions.

Color Run and PR volunteerism Paw2014

And those in-school activities like Photography exhibition, musical concert, and more! There are tens and hundreds of clubs and society in this university, whatever u want, name it. Pet lover society, photography society, dance club, music club, recreational activities and more. And when all of them are organising activities, especially the big ones, the uni gets really high and it's very very crowded and the situation is just awesome. I love seeing people at this big university, LOL.

Just imagine, a university of 15,000 students.
15,000 students, 15,000 ideas. It's a colourful and full-of-idea university.
According to my lecturer, there are more and more students coming in each year that the classrooms are not even enough. I guess, that's a good thing, no?

COLOR RUN 2014

PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION

PAW2014