Looking back (2) .... bits and pieces...

..the front entrance to the university

the Stdents' Union House--

..from another front..

…Life in UK

My first night.

After 12 years of working - I am a student again. And if you are expecting me to tell you how difficult it had been to switch role to being a student. YOU ARE WRONG ! To me that was the easiest.

So here I am in Hull , a small city in the north-east of England – a university student. I registered myself in a private hostel organization called International House run by the Methodists.

When I first arrived in Heathrow , I had nobody and knew nobody. I had a cousin sister who had been a nurse in London for quite a while, but I didn’t bother to contact her. My plan was to find my way up to Hull (250 km. north-east of London) on my own.

However I got to know a Malaysian student who offered to take me to Malaysia Hall to stay the night. So I did.

We arrived at Malaysia Hall in the late afternoon, and checked in the room. I remembered going to the ‘Surau’ for my first Asar prayer in UK. After the entire journey, then only I started missing the family. I still could not believed that I was in England, 12800 km away from home!

Anyway the next day, I got up early in the morning. It was Sunday morning. The air was crisp and fresh. Walking out of the Hall, I took several deep breaths and stretched myself. It was the best feeling. On my own, I ventured out in the streets of London – and strangely the song, “Streets of London” kept playing in my mind.

In the afternoon,, my new-found friend took me to my cousin’s flat. .I can’t remember the name of the place but I know I had to walk round the football stadium of the Arsenal Football Club. How much more fantastic can it get.

A bubbly night.

It was a strange kind of reunion with my cousin and I got to know her English husband. We had never been close before. Anyway she invited me to stay the night. It was a small flat and the couch was my bed.

However, I could not sleep at all. I kept getting this sound of a bursting bubble popping in a liquid. Believe me, it may be nothing but in the night, it sounded like a thunder clap. And it burst every 30 seconds or so.

The next morning, I asked my cousin and she laughed. Apparently her husband ‘brewed’ his own wine, and the fermentation process creates the bubbles which floated up to the surface and popped ( more like exploded to me at least) itself. Hmmmm… glass of wine ? Anyone ?

The first ugly side of London.

The following morning, my bubble burst when I had the first bad experience in London. I was leaving for Victoria Station to get the train to Hull. From my cousin’s, I took the tube (underground train). It was the morning crowd.

The thing about London and its stations were that there always seemed to be tourists about.
After finding my way to get to the platform of the underground, I rested and sat on my upright luggage and put down my back pack. On checking the inside pocket of my coat, to my horror, I found the envelope containing about 500 pounds missing.

I became a victim of the London’s famed pick-pocket. That was supposed to be the deposit for my hostel. It’s a good thing that I had a few hundred pounds in my wallet - enough to pay for my train fare and food until I sorted things out.

On the train, - I told myself, what a way to start my stay.

The Hostel

The International House, 96-98, Westbourne Avenue. This is located in an avenue in a residential area. Trees lined the road. When I arrived, it was autumn. Golden leaves were falling and covered the ground.

The hostel was a big old building. On entering the building, the smell of wax hit me. I loved the smell. It gives the sense of cleanliness and freshness, especially when in an enclosed area as all houses are in Britain.
After registration, I get to meet the residents. They indeed come from all over the world. Other than the locals, there were Africans, Asians, Spanish, French, Italians and Arabs. Throughout my short stay I many met interesting people and experienced interesting events. Perhaps it’s best to list them.

1. The kitchen.

The hostel is a self catering type where residents are allocated kitchen equipment for their own use in a big kitchen. These included stove , shared refrigerators, pantry and some basic cooking utensils. Unavoidably, there were always complaints on missing eggs, cheese, bread and other food items..

One day, two students from Sabah found their refrigerators ransacked. There were substantial food and bottles of milk missing. They did not make any noise or complaints.

However on the evening when everyone was in the kitchen cooking dinner, we started frying salted fish and ‘ikan bilis’. Believe you me, you get Arabs, Europeans and even Africans scrambling for safety covering their nose, cursing and swearing at the smell from the frying of the salted fish. The few of us Asians had a good laugh then – and had the whole kitchen to ourselves.

2. “Happy New Year”

On one of the new year’s eve, I had a small celebration in a friend’s room (in an attic with cheaper rates) . There was a Kenyan, a Malaysian Chinese, Spanish and a Malaysian Indian who was also stunted in growth. He was only about one and a half meters tall. By the time it was midnight most of us were quite plastered .

Now the little Indian guy obviously could not hold his drink. He was jumping about shouting ‘happy new year’ non-stop. We could not hold him down and he was trying to open the skylight to wish the world a ‘Happy New Year”.

I finally told him he should greet everyone in the hostel instead and led him out of the room. He started knocking on everyone’s door shouting his greetings. There were answers but there were also curses and swearings !

Then I told him to greet the Warden as well. We led him to the warden’s door. I knocked on the door loudly and we all scrambled away leaving the Little Indian Guy at the door to meet the warden.

We were all rolling away in my friend’s room laughing ourselves sick. However, there was a knock on the door. It was the warden holding the Little Indian’s shoulders, telling us to not feed him with liqueur as he was jumping all over the place in the Warden’s room. What a New Year eve that was!

3. “Pantat saya Hitam”

There were people from all continents in this International House. A particular man from Nigeria was getting on the nerves of many girls in the hostel. He was trying too hard to be a pain in the neck.

One day he asked me the Malay words for “good evening” as he was trying to chat up a girl from Sabah. So I told him that the best Malaysian way of greeting is in the evening (actually that is when the kitchen is busiest with residents cooking up their dinner)

Well, I thought here is a lamb that is ready to be slaughtered. I told him the Malay translation is “Pantat saya hitam’

He was beaming and could not wait to show off. I spent some time correcting his pronunciation and stressed that he MUST give the widest smile when shouting the greeting.
Anyway, just imagine you were busy cooking and having a friendly chat when this tall Nigerian bloke came in the kitchen and shouted the girl’s name and smilingly shouted “ Pantat saya Hitam !”

I can’t describe the situation in the kitchen. He was actually happy until a Malaysian told him the meaning of the words.

I had to avoid him for the whole week!

4. The Iraqi and The Iranian

There was an Iraqi and Iranian who were the best of pals. They did not talk to anyone else as understandably so, they were very well off with the kind of scholarship they were getting from their Government. Anyway they did not cook as dinner would always be in the restaurant. They would come back in the early morning after boozing away at the clubs. Yes indeed, these two were the talk of the hostel, and the envy as well.

One evening we were watching the TV news when it was announced that Iran and Iraq had just declared war at each other.

We all stopped and looked at each other , shook our head and said that this hostel is the best place to show international peace — seeing how the Iraqi and Iranian were so close to each other.
Well…. The next morning, a Panda (Police car) stopped outside the hostel and the two gentlemen were led in by the Police.

Apparently they had been fighting in the club, trying to kill each other with bottles and spoons and what-have-you ! They injured each other so badly that they had to be sent to the hospital - not before they were arrested by the Police.

Even then, they were at each other’s throat at the stairs leading to their room.

Sigh… so much for international peace in neutral ground….

Anyway I will continue in my next postings. To those reading this, I hope you enjoyed my ‘memoirs’ – if you can call it that. And comments are certainly welcomed.