What Am I Doing?

It seems like everyone is spending quite a lot of time online these days, especially my blogging friends. I just checked out some of the regular blogs that I visit and almost all of them are abuzz with activity: regular posts and a high number of comments associated with them. And what the hell am I doing? Oh, I’m busy trying to make a decision at 1 a.m. on a Tuesday night. I’m trying to figure out whether to implement a median filter or a digital biquad filter for my Digital Circuits coursework :S

Any immediate ideas?? Anyone? I am so clueless right now that I can just toss a coin and select the one which shows up. But ofcourse, I’d prefer to make a much more wise decision.

And these filters are not the only thing on my head right now. I have to design some sort of a basic graphic card too in another project. There will be one more project which I have to decide next week and all these need to be done by the second week of January. I have no idea how all this can be accomplished.

It seems like I’m totally out of the league these days. I’m hardly up-to-date with the happenings back home, not responding to e-mails and certainly not spending enough quality time online. Talking about time, I’m running short of it!

Gym Showers!

I may or may not have bragged about the wonderful fitness center (gym) at Imperial College known as Ethos. I, after some procrastination, decided to have a go at it. I had a 3-hour break between my classes on Tuesday so that was a nice time slot for me for a light workout. I was also told that the gym usage at morning and afternoon hours are light but tends to get crowded after 4 and may even require waiting periods. Anyway, it was almost 1200 when I went to the gym, passed the secure entrance, went up to the changing room and kept all my stuff in a locker. I slipped in my new adidas gym trainers and went down for some activity. I did a 3-km jogging session on treadmill followed by only 500m of rowing (first day after a break, couldn’t do more!). I also did some light crunches and decided to end the session. I went up to the changing room again and asked a guy where the showering facilities were. At this moment I did see some weird things, which I ignored (more later!). I walked in the pointed direction and found, to my utmost surprise, that there was a showering area was communal without any partitions or even curtains! It was a large area with wall-mounted showers and a little distance in between. barriers! Okay, in case farooqk reads this, the changing room for women are separate

Now things began to make sense. The weird stuff mentioned above was some guys walking back to their lockers completely naked. How on earth can people shower like that? It’s like the guys face the wall and turn their back as if saying “mate I’m not looking at you, so you shouldn’t either.” I asked a friend what the heck this was? He replied “dude! why are you shy? we all have the same things!” At this point I thought that not only toilets were a problem here but showers as well. Apparently, this is normal here and in most parts of the Western world.

I turned around [not in the shower, duhh!], and walked back to get some more information. I found there was only ONE shower which had curtains where you’ve to wait for your turn in case there are many shy guys at that time. I showered in that area and walked back with clothes to get my stuff. Then a guy in a short towel around his waist (hardly!) asked for a favour. Apparently his digital locker wasn’t opening, he was almost naked, and his clothes were locked in!!! So he asked me to go down and get some help, which I did.

These common showers also made me realize why bromance is so common in these places! Besharam Log!

The First Week

The first week at Imperial College has been largely festive. Various welcome sessions were arranged to acclimatise the students with the structure, functioning, services, facilities and administration of Imperial. Something amusingly strange about Imperial College is its name! In fact, it’s a university but they still call it college. The word ‘college’ is embedded in its name. However saying Imperial is more than enough for the purpose of recognition.

Coming back to the events in the first week, the first welcome session I attended was for the International students where the rector (SIR Roy Anderson) spoke to the students together with other representatives of different departments of Imperial including the International Office. The next welcome session was for all the postgraduate freshers in engineering and physical sciences courses, where more or less, same group of people spoke with special emphasis on the changes to expect as a postgraduate student and the expectations of Imperial from us. The Imperial College Union (ICU) President also spoke on both of these occasions and highlighted how the union (run by students for students) helps the students all along. Another welcome session that I attended was by the department for all the MSc students and the final event was speicifically for my course. So in a way they addressed the whole group first, then the department took over and then the specific course. Attendance of a mandatory safety induction programme (boring, to say the least) then allowed us to pick up our cards which is to be used at the ubiquitious card readers at the campus. The card is used in printers, scanners, copiers, library doors, gym doors, praryer room doors, department doors, and what not!

The limelight of the first week throughout Imperial was the events organized by the ICU. At this stage it is important to mention that ICU gets the largest funding in the UK for any student body. It has over 300 clubs and societies! You can find everything you can imagine (YES!) and even those that you can’t. The Union runs shops, cafes and pubs as well. The main event was the freshers’ fair. They also arranged various parties every night during the first week none of which did I attend.

Realizing that there was nothing much to do in the first week I took the opportunity to register myself with the local GP at the Imperial College Health Center. I also applied for the opening of a bank account which I heard is a pain in the ass in UK. Natwest Bank didn’t bother me much, but they did say it takes a week for the opening of account. I guess I’ll have to keep my fingers crossed.

I’ve been overwhelmed by the sort of facilities available at the campus. The central library which remains open 24 hours is awesome. It has multiple floors (levels), a big cafe, group study areas, silent study areas, etc etc. and its beautiful too. It houses books for the NHS and some museums too. Then there is a departmental library in our EEE department building which houses very specific titled. A special MSc room which is quite large is the place where most of the MSc students from all three MSc programmes meet up quite often. Its a study room as well as a leisure room. It has lockers for us and computers with ultra high speed internet. Wireless access is everywhere. The room has armchairs and tables as well and a microwave oven as well. One day it smelt badly of fish! (arghhh). This particular room is usually locked with a digital code.

Other facilities within the department building include a cafeteria below. Eating isn’t a problem. There is a main dining hall and other very large common rooms too. These places do serve Halal food as well.

I’ll be covering the stuff in greater detail as time permits, and try to add pictures as well. There’s a lot more I wish I could key in now but I’m just unable to formulate proper sentences these days out of sheer tiredness.

Note: Although I wrote this post a while ago, I wasn’t able to post it up due to some odd reason. I’m almost at the end of week two which has been very interesting, so I’ll write about it over the weekend, hopefully.

Masters @ Imperial College London

Admission at Imperial College London is a step forward towards pursuit of my dream in achieveing academic excellence, says Anas Imtiaz excitedly. [This would have been my reaction had someone asked me for a comment].

It’s official folks!! I’ve been accepted for a MSc course beginning next month. In fact, i was offered the admission some weeks ago, but a final confirmation and an ‘entry clearance‘ has sealed the deal.

I will be starting MSc in Analogue and Digital Integrated Circuit Design in October, and I can’t wait for it to begin. I just hope it turns out to be one of the most favorable phase and experience of my life.