Ex Post Facto
Yesterday, it was a completely lecture-free day for me. So I sat a long time in the dining hall for breakfast and slacked around in my room until 12, when I had to meet the other Singaporean Law students to go into Beeston.
There in Beeston, we had lunch at Subway.
Then we did a little stationary-, grocery- and all-other-necessities-shopping. I left the group afterwards because I wanted to get back to my room to skype with my dad and mum.
Boy, it was tiring briskwalking back to FB carrying 2 thick pads of paper and a huge bottle of liquid washing detergent! When I reached FB and finally got into my room, I took off my jackets immediately because I was feeling SO hot! I think I'd done my exercise for the day:)
After dinner, I met up with the people in my ninetwenty group to attend Equip, the weekly Friday meeting Christian Union (CU) meeting. I found out from Hannah (one of the two CU reps. the other one's called Justin) on our walk to the building where the meeting was taking place, that our cell groups were called ninetwenty groups instead because they took it from a verse from a book of the bible (I'm afraid to say that I've forgotten what book of the bible this verse is from).
It was wonderful being able to pray with a whole group of people, to sing praise and worship songs and to listen to a message from a Pastor! I admit, the group of people were alien, with very few asians present; I did not know a single one of the songs sung at the meeting, somehow there wasn't any clapping during fast/upbeat songs, and there were so many pockets of awkward silence during the worship segments; and the Pastor gave quite a superficial interpretation or message on the passage we were "studying".
HOWEVER, my ninetwenty mates (Katy, Sarah, Justin and Hannah) were great people to go to the meeting with. The unfamiliar songs had catchy tunes so I could join in quite quickly and, despite the weird transitions, the individual musicians and singers in the band were actually rather good. The Pastor who taught us God's Word was a very interesting and engaging speaker too.
So I'm not going to focus too much on the obvious and strange absence of clapping during fast/upbeat songs and everything else I mentioned in the paragraph above. I'm just thankful I can attend a "mini service" like that.
Today, I did my handwashing of clothes! I looked at the amount of stuff I had to wash and realized that I wouldn't be able to fill half of the washing machines in FB. So I did handwashing. I am QUITE proud of myself, haha.
Again, i have no idea how to rotate this silly photo. So please tilt your head sideways to see the end product of my handwashing - CLEAN AND NICE-SMELLING CLOTHES (hung on an airer to dry)!
Yee Tzen, my hall mate from Brunei, and I wanted to "crash" a BBQ organised by the Korean Society, as our hall mates, Trang, Chris and Jae were members of the Society. But when we got there, we regretted going because they were talking in Korean, practising their language. The actual Koreans who hailed from Korea kept within themselves. In the end, Tzen and I decided to head back to the hall for lunch.
Then I accompanied Tzen to do her launday in the laudry room. Here in this next picture, you see our American-Kenyan friend, Bora, figuring out how to work the washing machine.
The rest of the afternoon was spent with an ultra thick book entitled, "Constitutional and Administrative Law: 8th edition". I borrowed it from the library to get some kind of idea on what Constitutional Law is all about after my first Consti Law lecture on Thursday. Look at the sad Po Yew with the thick book in his hands. Then take a look at the number of books in the shelves!
Now, you must be thinking what the words of my entry title mean and why I am using them in the first place. "Ex post facto" is defined as "retroactive effect or force", "retroactive" being "taking effect from a date in the past". This term came up twice in the first 8 pages of the silly thick book I'm trying to tackle now. Both times I came across this word, I had to check the dictionary for its meaning. Now, this word is just stuck in my mind. So I decided to put it as my entry title:)
For your information, I would just like to let all of you know that I will update every alternate day, as I seem to be doing this past week (I will try to keep this up for as long as possible). I can't possibly update every day because, my life in Nottingham is not that exciting to begin with. Yes, it's something new, refreshing and something oh-so-different. But it is not as if every day something blog-worthy (well, at least in my opinion) happens in my life.
To end off, before I return to my Law textbook, here are two shots of my hall of residence, Florence Boot (FB) hall:
*My post time and date has now been "tweeked" from Singapore to Nottingham time. If you ARE in Singapore, Nottingham is 7 hours behind Singapore.
There in Beeston, we had lunch at Subway.
Then we did a little stationary-, grocery- and all-other-necessities-shopping. I left the group afterwards because I wanted to get back to my room to skype with my dad and mum.
Boy, it was tiring briskwalking back to FB carrying 2 thick pads of paper and a huge bottle of liquid washing detergent! When I reached FB and finally got into my room, I took off my jackets immediately because I was feeling SO hot! I think I'd done my exercise for the day:)
After dinner, I met up with the people in my ninetwenty group to attend Equip, the weekly Friday meeting Christian Union (CU) meeting. I found out from Hannah (one of the two CU reps. the other one's called Justin) on our walk to the building where the meeting was taking place, that our cell groups were called ninetwenty groups instead because they took it from a verse from a book of the bible (I'm afraid to say that I've forgotten what book of the bible this verse is from).
It was wonderful being able to pray with a whole group of people, to sing praise and worship songs and to listen to a message from a Pastor! I admit, the group of people were alien, with very few asians present; I did not know a single one of the songs sung at the meeting, somehow there wasn't any clapping during fast/upbeat songs, and there were so many pockets of awkward silence during the worship segments; and the Pastor gave quite a superficial interpretation or message on the passage we were "studying".
HOWEVER, my ninetwenty mates (Katy, Sarah, Justin and Hannah) were great people to go to the meeting with. The unfamiliar songs had catchy tunes so I could join in quite quickly and, despite the weird transitions, the individual musicians and singers in the band were actually rather good. The Pastor who taught us God's Word was a very interesting and engaging speaker too.
So I'm not going to focus too much on the obvious and strange absence of clapping during fast/upbeat songs and everything else I mentioned in the paragraph above. I'm just thankful I can attend a "mini service" like that.
Today, I did my handwashing of clothes! I looked at the amount of stuff I had to wash and realized that I wouldn't be able to fill half of the washing machines in FB. So I did handwashing. I am QUITE proud of myself, haha.
Again, i have no idea how to rotate this silly photo. So please tilt your head sideways to see the end product of my handwashing - CLEAN AND NICE-SMELLING CLOTHES (hung on an airer to dry)!
Yee Tzen, my hall mate from Brunei, and I wanted to "crash" a BBQ organised by the Korean Society, as our hall mates, Trang, Chris and Jae were members of the Society. But when we got there, we regretted going because they were talking in Korean, practising their language. The actual Koreans who hailed from Korea kept within themselves. In the end, Tzen and I decided to head back to the hall for lunch.
Then I accompanied Tzen to do her launday in the laudry room. Here in this next picture, you see our American-Kenyan friend, Bora, figuring out how to work the washing machine.
The rest of the afternoon was spent with an ultra thick book entitled, "Constitutional and Administrative Law: 8th edition". I borrowed it from the library to get some kind of idea on what Constitutional Law is all about after my first Consti Law lecture on Thursday. Look at the sad Po Yew with the thick book in his hands. Then take a look at the number of books in the shelves!
Now, you must be thinking what the words of my entry title mean and why I am using them in the first place. "Ex post facto" is defined as "retroactive effect or force", "retroactive" being "taking effect from a date in the past". This term came up twice in the first 8 pages of the silly thick book I'm trying to tackle now. Both times I came across this word, I had to check the dictionary for its meaning. Now, this word is just stuck in my mind. So I decided to put it as my entry title:)
For your information, I would just like to let all of you know that I will update every alternate day, as I seem to be doing this past week (I will try to keep this up for as long as possible). I can't possibly update every day because, my life in Nottingham is not that exciting to begin with. Yes, it's something new, refreshing and something oh-so-different. But it is not as if every day something blog-worthy (well, at least in my opinion) happens in my life.
To end off, before I return to my Law textbook, here are two shots of my hall of residence, Florence Boot (FB) hall:
*My post time and date has now been "tweeked" from Singapore to Nottingham time. If you ARE in Singapore, Nottingham is 7 hours behind Singapore.
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