Hi! I am Ling from Malaysia and I will be sharing with you my journey at the University of Southampton as I pursue my MSc in Risk Management
I started my first full day in Soton on 17th September by heading to the University in the morning to join the Postgraduate Meet & Greet event at The Bridge in the SUSU Building. Yes, I hit the ground running by starting to make friends and network. I had some help from the reception with regards to directions on how to walk to the University as I did not memorise the map of the area. Luckily it was very straightforward. I just needed to walk up Burgess Road and eventually the University will be on my left. Easy peasy 🙂
Thanks to the wonders of internet, I had managed to get to know 3 of my classmates a few months ago. As such, Claudia, Inge and myself agreed to meet up at the event to meet in person for the first time. We also met up with Andre and Anna-Lena from Germany who are in Soton on exchange under the Erasmus program. Good way to start the morning by having free coffee/tea and donut/cakes 🙂
- L to R: Claudia, Andre, Anna-Lena, Angelia and myself
My second day was quite eventful as I attend an English Ceilidh hosted by Friends International. The people at the Ceilidh were quite friendly and I quickly mingled around and made many new friends from various countries. I had a lot of fun dancing according to the instructions given that I did not even take my camera out to take photos. I only had photos before the dancing started.
- Burgess Road Church decorated with flags to welcome international student to the English Ceilidh
Third day in Soton was made more interesting by joining a Titanic Walk guided by Richard Blake, a local historian. The group assembled at the Cenotaph at 2.15pm for the guided walk. Luckily mother nature decided to be kind to us and we had a nice sunny walk that day.
I had a good time chatting with Andrea from Norway who I met at the ceilidh the day before. We drifted from the front of the group to the back of the group and back to the front. The walk ended with afternoon tea in the city centre where we were treated with scones, cakes and tea while Richard showed parts of the movie Titanic and pointed out the parts that were accurate and inaccurate. All in all, a very informative and fun walk. Total distanced walked – about 4km at a nice leisurely pace.
- Memorial for engineers
- Hotel where the rich stayed the night before boarding the Titanic
- Buildings where the White Star offices used to be located
- Memorial for sailors – this used to be at the Southampton Commons
I look forward to more adventures during my time in the UK and I will share some of them with you.