Manchester: A Trip of Discovering and Self-discovery Part I

Some of my friends used to call me a badly oriented person, usually fail to find my way around. Well it's time to clear my name and wipe the slate clean. Over the past few weekends, I've made several self-guided tours to the city centre of Manchester, and discovered the different facets of Manchester City. 

Manchester is famous for its sport; Manchester City and Manchester United, ones of the most successful clubs in professional football, could be the most popular examples. But that's not all of Manchester. The city is at the same time one of the best, if not the best, music venues in the UK; it also come through from the Georgian and Victorian era, leaving impressive architectural marks all over, and it's rise from a heavily industrialised city, being the pioneer city of British industrialistion, to a now culturally enriched and musically vibrant city is also a massive transformation. Below, I'll showcase the beautiful, beautiful city of Manchester.

Manchester, from my university to the city centre, is so walk-able, although there's free "metrobus" for the walko-phobic. From Whitworth Park (where I live) to the farthest point I went, which is around the Cathedral Garden, takes just under 50 minutes, and there're lovely architectures on the way to keep filling you with stimulation. 

The first remarkable building you can see walking along Oxford Road to the city centre should be the Palace Theatre, which is still operating. 

This theatre showcases most of the major plays coming to Manchester. "The Wicked" is the up and coming famous play it is going to host the following weeks.

For some reason, it feels like the mark of the start of city centre to me.

Keep walking along the Oxford Road, then you'll find this Midland Hotel at the end of Oxford Road and the start of Peter Street.

This is apparently a hotel with long history, the inside of it is quite grand too, I know it because I work part time here from time to time.

On the Deansgate, this is the John Rylands Library, neo-gothic style, built in 1900.

It's now operated by the university of Manchester, so it's kind of part of the university.

You'll be amazed how even the window is delicately constructed.

At the end of the Deansgate, it's Cathedral garden. Before seeing the Manchester Cathedral and Cathedral Garden, this little pretty cottage will give you some taste of classical stuff.

This is the Manchester Cathedral. It looks really cool. Gothic style, undergone two major restoration during Victorian era and after the IRA bombing. According to history, part of this building can be traced back to Saxon age. Apparently it carries very important symbolic meaning to the city of Manchester.

More of the Cathedral.

 Still the Manchester Cathedral.

Makes you feel small huh.

 This is the Cathedral Garden, nothing special about it. Just like the rest of garden in England. It's called the Cathedral Garden just because it is a garden located just next to the Manchester Cathedral.

Near the Cathedral Garden, there lies the National Football Museum

The football David Beckham used to win the World Cup for England. Does amount to something huh.

 Trophies

 More Trophies

 Some more

 ...

Matt Busby is there, Alex Ferguson is there, all right all right.
Arsene Wengar?! 

 The Hall of Fame Board.

Explore around, there's Royal Exchange Theatre, a very Georgian styled piece of architecture, although upgraded during the Victorian era. Neo-classic is the word for it.

Royal Exchange Theatre from another perspective.

OK. The white bit in the middle, it's the Barton Arcade, quite delicate decoration for a shopping arcade, a beautiful building. Thought not very impressive on the inside, the shops, if any, are few and not lively.

The Barclays Bank! This beautiful Victorian styled building houses a bank, kind of make you want to work in there huh.

There's more of my exploration in Manchester, The part II of it is coming soon... 

Stay tuned.

Exchange is not just about travel/ play, there's work to be done...

Sometimes we can be getting a wrong picture about student exchange that it's all about using exchange as an excuse to travel, relax, lay back, and not to do anything, which some of us may be doing just that, most of us need to really time manage and balance between academic life, social life and entertainment, just like a regular student.

Like I've mentioned in earlier articles that I intend to try something new, academically, over the exchange programme, I did not pick any course that has direct relation to the major I'm reading in HK. The exchange programme hosted by the University of Manchester does give exchange students the advantage to study across discipline, where we are not bounded by any particular school, as we are technically in the international programme (previously called Study Abroad Unit), which is a school in itself. That means I can pick almost any course offered by any school as long as timetable doesn't clash and the course is not too advanced for me. I then enrolled myself into courses of History, Classic Studies, Archaeology, and Language programme, from which I chose to learn Italian. These are subjects that I'm always interested in but never tried at CUHK fearing that it might ruin my cumulative GPA. So I guess it's a good time to try them all during exchange.

This semester I'm doing three courses, carrying 50 UK credits. They are 

The Making of Europe 400-1500, which takes us through from the fall of the great Roman Empire, to the rise of barbarian, successor states, revival of holy empire by Charlemage... up to the end of the middle ages. It's quite a stimulating course, basically taking care of most major European events during the medieval period, or the "dark" ages if you like. 

History is pretty much self-learning based, which means you have to do much reading yourself in order to really get something out of the course. We do have lectures, and curriculum, but these are only laying out a structure, in a sense, to give you direction of where to look and what to look, not to spoon-feed you information the course director wants you to know.   

Lecturers just raise questions worth asking and give the general views of historians, sometimes views of themselves. 

I do like the weekly seminar, which is really quite different from the tutorial thingy in HK. It allows students to speak their own views and, guided by the well presenting tutor, dig deeper into the topics which might not have covered enough during the lectures. It gives us a better picture of the historiography of the historical periods we're studying.

Italian is big fun too, although I am being seriously puzzled by all the complicated grammar it's throwing on me. What's more difficult than study a second language? Study a third language.

Archaeology lecture. This lecturer is very energetic, and try to present archaeology, which some might deem as a dull subject, as vivid and lively as she could. She even introduces some sort of electronic immediate response device to class, though not working as well as she might have imagine. ha

At last, it's BRIAN COX! I didn't enroll physics class,
but a star lecturer, who doesn't want to see him in person.
Sorry to all those physics student, whom we have intruded your lecture. LOL

While we still need to study for the subjects and the Tier 4 student visa requests us of 100% attendance, there's still a silver lining. At least we don't need to pay much attention to the grades/ marks. For those who want to transfer credits, you just need a pass, and for me who doesn't even bother to transfer the credits, I might even fail the course, which is of course not something I am aspiring to. But what I am saying is that it does take the exam pressure off you, and you can focus on really learning the stuffs you feel important/ interested, instead of the what will be tested in the exam. Surely if the course is designed properly, your focusing on the stuffs interested you should, by default, guarantee you good grades/ marks. 

That's about it. And next semester I will be learning about history of Roman Republic and British in the age industrialisation. Can't wait.

And next up will be me exploring the city of Manchester. Stay tuned.

Welcome Week/ Fresher Week?

Unlike Hong Kong, British uni doesn't have an orientation camp, rather a welcome week. they won't "force" you to take part in any programme/ plan your schedule for you. Students just walk in the million activities, and there are so many things going on, especially in a big uni like UoM. 

Welcome week, traditionally called fresher week, is a week of orientation, and mingling, and drinking, and crazy partying if you like, in all the universities in the UK. The new name, welcome week, is to dilute the obvious focus of the week on freshers, drinking, and partying. It's seemingly more about welcoming everyone else, international student, postgraduate and the like, but the tradition of freshers drinking and partying never actually stops. 

I arrived on 11th Sept, which is a day earlier than the official date when room licence starts, so I had the whole flat to myself. That's when I cooked my first dinner my time in Manchester. 

Not the most impressive spaghetti you can have, but that's not bad from a tired, and hungry man who just wanted to come up with something to avoid starvation. LOL

And by the way, that's the view from my room, and that's also how the outside of all the ''houses'' at Whitworth Park would look like.

Flat mates started to move in the following days, and there were already some mingling nights at the Grove house, our hall bar. We didn't go the first night, just mingled among ourselves. We went the second night and sort of checked the bar out.

A small and cozy bar. Grove House at the Whitworth Park Student Residence.

Before all the fun stuffs, there're some rather serious stuffs one must first address. The core presentation, the study abroad welcome talk, the Tier-4 visa obligation talk (for those who are staying for one academic year). These are compulsory. And of course, there're also fire security talk, money and banking and such.

This is the Core presentation session, which took place at the University Place. University Place has some of the biggest lecture theatres in the uni.

About the tier-4 visa, here's a spoiler for you. It turns out the visa doesn't only limit the working hours you can do per week, visa holders are also obliged to make sure 100% attendance to class. There'll also be census checking, so you might not be able to skip all the lessons to travel around Europe as you might have planned. That could be one down-side if you plan to travel a lot during exchange; but then, to be fair, attending class isn't actually a harsh requirement.

Here comes the fun part. The fresher parties! 

There'd be so many fresher parties open to you. And your student hall would be selling fresher pack, which included all the parties your hall has planned for you and sold at a lower price than all the tickets combined. So if you are a party animal, that's an option for you. For me, I just got three tickets (not a pack, and paid the individual prices); needed a break every other party. And you also want to make sure your friends, or in my case my flat mates, are going with you too, you don't want to go to the party alone and be a sad loner wandering around. So don't pre-book all the tickets you are told about. 

Every time before we head off to the venue, we'd do something called "pre-drink". The name is pretty much self-explanatory, we drink and perhaps play some drinking game before the party starts. It's cheaper to get alcohol from store and drink at home than buy all the drinks from bars where the parties are held. 

Because every one has "pre-drunken", so even on the way to the party venue, you could be seeing pretty drunk people doing crazy/ alcohol-motivated things. People kissing in the middle of the dance floor ignoring all other people could be a common place in these fresher parties.

英國人由於習俗驅使, 平日的行為都比較保守,有禮, 大庭廣眾自然有一套潛規則約束; 但是兩杯酒精落肚, 就會開始攬攬錫錫。不過他們大多縱使是醉酒, 都未至於在電影<<宿醉>>系列那般瘋狂的。

This is the deaf Institute, one of the venues.
It's a pretty nice bar.

Apart from all the crazy nights out, I did have some fun, but less party-ish, nights with my flat mates. We would play board games, and have nice chats among us.

Scrabble is one of the more intellectual games we play, and I don't necessarily lose every time we play. LOL

There are other games we play too, and all of them are good fun.

Thankfully, I have some really good flat mates, who has given me an unforgettable and enjoyable fresher week. Though I get some terrible neighbours, some inconsiderate guys living just below my flat; they smoke just below my room and filled it with second hand smoke; play loud music, sometimes even with heavy bass, at mid-night; they talk so loudly, which is unnecessary at mid-night; and joke about stupid things. But when you don't get to choose both your flat mates and neighbours, at least I get one of the two things right, that's half full. I'm sure I'll be having a good year here.

Oh! By the way, if you want to see more of my photo updates, you may also follow my instagram, by searching "Kifungkung", where I update more frequently, and less wordily LOL.

Next up, academic stuffs, and next exploring Manchester City Centre... Stay tuned!

Settling in... surprisingly fast and well

Exchange students always expect many obstacles settling in a foreign place such as jet-lag, disorientation, culture-shocks, feeling incapable of dealing with a huge influx of independence etc. I must say I have experienced very little of these. I have settled in almost the first day in this city. For one, Manchester is a metropolitan city much like Hong Kong; besides English is not exactly a foreign language to me, or all of Hongkongers. So that's probably the best thing about choosing an English speaking country to go on exchange; while you can blend in more easily, (should there be any thing you find puzzling, you can ask away  your flat mates/ neighbours), you can also actually learn things, other than the local language, academically or non-academically. 

I thought I had packed a lot of stuffs in my suitcases, it was not until I unpacked them in my room that I realised I haven't brought all I need. 

Luckily living in a city means you can get things relatively easily, and living in Manchester, which boasted itself as the biggest student cluster in the whole of UK, means you can get things at a relatively cheap price. I have also been so lucky to have received the hospitality of my flat mate's parents', who drove me to IKEA to furnish my room and kitchen area. Really grateful of that.

That's so much of settling in, last piece of advice/recommendation/information would be to those who are coming to Manchester/ the UK to do your exchange, I'd advise you to bring more long sleeves clothes (though short could do too), because Britain is not as cold as you might imagine, you can normally put on just a shirt whilst in your room, or even outside sometimes; and when it gets colder, you just put on more layers, thick jackets will take up too much of your space in your suitcase and you don't always find them useful. Some medication for cold/ flu might prove useful, because during the fresher/welcome week, students normally catch the so-called fresher flu, medication could be cheaper at home and more convenient if you bring it than purchase it here, where although you can have free service from the lovely NHS, certain drugs will require a prescription. And for boys who apply chemical/gel to our hair, DO bring more gel/hair product, you'll soon find it's not really easy to find the gel you're used to, or even substitute, around all the local stores. So unless you want to drop the habit of being fussy about your hair, bring more of the hair product you use here!

Next up, I will be talking about the fresher/welcome week, all the drinking and mingling... Stay tuned.