One Week in January

Posted by Shiny

It was the last week of the January exams.  We have experienced a lot this week.  And it was indeed a busy week.

On Monday, in the afternoon, we had an awards ceremony of the United Kingdom Senior Mathematical Challenge.  This year our college really had a fabulous harvest.  We’ve got hundreds of certificates to hand out this year many of which are Gold Prize.  At least 25 candidates have received a gold certificate.  My ex-high schoolfellow Chen Jun has got the best prize at our college.  Some students believe that in the recent years, the mathematical level of Bellerbys may have gone up gradually year by year.

On Tuesday, I had a C4 exam, which was almost a doom.  I found out that I have got many answers wrong.  I was horribly frustrated after the exam as I think that I should never have a bad grade for an straightforward module.  I don’t really want to retake any modules in June since there would be loads of work then.  Nonetheless, “There is a crook in the lot of every one.” 

I went out of the library, attempting to comfort myself, but I just couldn’t calm down until I saw the “Table Tennis Club” going on.  Oscar and I went to join them in the exam hall without any hesitation.  We played with some Russian students.  Haven’t played the table tennis for ages, I really missed it.  At first I couldn’t play properly, and it was partially because the Russian students were skillful.  There is no doubt that the balls were a bit small and not like those for formal competition and the bats are not ideal enough either.  However I definitely enjoyed the game since I lost myself and utterly forgot the sadness of my painful exam memory.  Finally, I got some practice and I was able to compete with the Russian athletes.  Since then, it was a bit hard to judge who was better at playing.  The Table Tennis Club has enabled me to tackle my bad mood in time by doing some sports I like.  Hopefully soon students will be able to play basketball and badminton in the college too.

On Wednesday, there was a lecture and an opening talk about “Immigration - why it is good for your country” in the hall given by a famous Anglo-French author and LSE economist and WTO adviser, Philippe Legrain.  Students from Bellerbys and Sussex University attended.

On Thursday, Brian invited me to the Music Club which was set up by him.  The college has bought the band some instruments for the students who are also musicians.  I have met many brilliant musicians here who can play the piano, violin, cello, drum and so on.  I felt as if I was having a bathe within the heaven of art accompanied by plenty of angels.  I believe that everyone likes music, so do I, but I still can’t play a music instrument.  Anyway, listening and watching people playing are amusing.  I am glad that the college offers me such an opportunity to get close to so many intelligent musicians.

On Friday night, we invited Dr. Butcher for a dinner with us after finishing loads of exams in January. We had the "Thanks giving dinner" with Dr. Butcher in a Chinese restaurant near the train station. Being Dr. Butcher's student is absolutely lucky. As I always mention to other students, Dr. Butcher is not only a responsible teacher, but also an intelligent and knowledgeable teacher. He is always patient to help us solve out the problems we come across, and what's more, he can understand and predict the questions of students and answer us as clearly as possible even if the student can't properly express the question to him due to some linguistic questions. He always tries his best to make things as nice as possible to us, so we students admire him and feel so grateful about him.

This Saturday afternoon, as usual, we went to the Chinese Cultural Centre near Brighton Station to practice lion dance.  This year’s party will be held in Brighton Dome and many artists will come to join us.  As the Chinese New Year is coming, we are busy coping with the rehearsal and practicing.  As the part time elites of Lion dancing, the centre still invites us to perform again.  We’ve got several new members joining us, and we are having more dancers these days.  We have got bored by repeating the same practice for several times and honestly speaking, we want to quit and let the new students do it.  Then we realized that Grain, a British man who is one of our lion dance members came to practice even after his feet operation, we were absolutely touched.  Since then, we became more responsible to our practice.

On Sunday, I had my hair cut by my housemate since the landlord has got the electric hair cutter and some other tools.  Why not try it by our own people instead of going to the barbershop?  If the barbershop can do it, we may be able to do it as well.  So I asked my housemate to give it a try.  He was not confident about his skills so he would rather not do it.  “I don’t mind and offer you a chance to learn something, why do you bother about it?” so finally I persuaded him to do it.  Things went pretty well at the beginning and he won his own confidence and suddenly became excited using the device when he accidentally cut too many hairs.  He screamed after which I screamed as well.  And eventually my head has completely become a masterpiece of art.  “Don’t regret and blame for me!” he said.  "You were willing and you dare to let me do it, so…” “Yes, trial and error is inevitable in our life.  I forgive you, mate.”

Wasn’t it a fantastic week that lots of fascinated events happened?  We should try our best to receive new feelings about life, not only about happiness.  The best way to have a nice day is to make it by yourself!