D’First Week at UCD

Time and tide wait for no man. It has been a week since I left Malaysia . Wow, so fast and scary’em! Some of the highlights for the week are:-

A long-distance flights: KLIA – Heathrow – Dublin

We flew to Dublin via Heathrow using MAS Airline on Thursday’s night (7/9/06) 11.40 p.m ( Malaysia time). It was a 13-hour flight from KLIA to London Heathrow. There were altogether 30 JPA UCD-bound scholars boarding the plane. We’re very thankful to have Encik Muhamad Feros, a JPA officer who accompanied us all the way to Dublin . We reached Heathrow at 5.40 a.m. 8/9/06 ( UK time). It was indeed a long tiring journey. Luckily, I managed to doss down on my seat to prepare for the 12-hour transit stint at Heathrow. My goodness! Nonetheless, we enjoyed the short trip around London with the compliments of JPA. From Heathrow, we took a local airline to Dublin . This time, the flight took only 1 ½ hours. Finally, we reached Dublin at 8.00 p.m. on 8th September ( Dublin time). It was rather cold here with a temperature of 15˚ C. We went through the immigration without any fuss. We’re greeted by our seniors upon arrival at Dublin . Then, we headed to our apartments, Merville Student Residences / Belgrove Student Residences with a bus. The kind-hearted seniors lent us a helping hand to bring our bulky luggages up to our rooms. Thanks as we’re feeling very drowsy at that time due to the so-called run and run 24-hour marathon journey!

Lectures commenced on Monday (11/9/06)
It was quite a hectic week searching high and low for lecture theatres.
Choosing elective was a problem. I couldn’t register for Calculus 1
because it was over-subscribed. Alternatively, I might have to take up
Computer Programming. My dissection class at Ealsfort Terrace
commenced on Thursday (14/9/06). It was quite intriguing to discover the
mystery of human body. But the smell of formalin and formaldehyde was
quite unbearable.

Miscellaneous
I have to go to Glomena about 3 minutes walk from my hostel to msn my parents and friends. At present, the Sun sets at 8.00 p.m here. For hand phone usage, I paid 20 Euro for 6 months. Bus fares to and fro from hostel to town is 3.10 Euro. The cheapest meal available is sandwich , around 4 Euro. Very expensive’em…