Steve Evergreen's Web Journal

Ceremony starting

A few weeks ago, my sister attended the graduation ceremony of the university of East London held at the Barbican Centre for her BSC (Honour) in IT. In fact , it was a sort of celebration of the achievement of university students after 3 years of extensive reading, doing research works in given time frame, writing academic essays with thousands of words and attending seminars. I was proud of her. But that school event was little or nothing exciting to me as she is the 4th person among our relatives who took the UK degree. Yes, of course, I brought my camera and took some random photos.


queueing for a hand shake with chancellor. The degree certificate had been sent off by post in advance.

The following is some information about attending the university I was told.

Enrolment:

For International student : To join the UEL, student must achieve IELTS score 6.0 for undergraduate degree and 6.5 for post graduate. In some cases, they may accept score 5.5 or 5.0 for some subjects, such as history or geography. The university gives more chance to international students than home students in entry as it can earn oversea fees, which is around £7500 to £10000 per annum for foreign students while home rate is about £2000-3000.

For Home student: Entering university as home student could be challenging. The students aged under 25 must follow their UCAS (University college administration service) system. They have to apply 4 to 5 universities after finishing A level. Some Uni reject and some give offer to them, depending on the situation.

Those aged over 25 do not need A level and do not need to apply in UCAS. They can apply directly to universities but they have to take aptitude test in English, mathematics and language interview.

Modules:

As a student, 6 modules have to be taken in every single year. BSc (honour) degree is a 3 years course. So it needs to clear 18 modules to achieve the degree, including the dissertation paper which must be done in the final year. The dissertation is essential to complete the degree, which includes research proposal for 3000 words and dissertation itself for 12000 words in the final year.

Semesters:

There are 2 semesters in a year. 3 modules have to be completed in one semester. Every module has at least 2 course works, some have 3, including exam. One semester lasts 4 months, during which the student has to submit 6 to 9 course works with or without exam. That means not much leisure time, contrary to uni life in Yangon.

Marking system:

First year’s marks doesn’t count for final grading while the scores of 12 modules of The 2nd year and final year are important.

• The average marks over 75 is first class honour,
• over 65 is upper second class honour,
• over 55 is lower second class honour,
• over 45 is third class honour grade and
• 40 is just pass mark with no honour but an ordinary degree.

Achieving the first class honour means that he or she can do the Ph.D. directly, without having MSC or MA and it is also easy to secure a job, but it is rare. The commonest one is second class honour among the UK students, according to the research.

Any question about study in the UK, welcome!

When I was in Burma, I overheard my mother advised a young woman, who was nurse, how to save money from food. I was only 12. But it was still a clear memory. My mother said "if you saved some money each time when you go shopping, you could have an emergency money when you need it for something in the future"

To be honest, I never appreciate that statement. But when I got to the UK, I a bit changed. Every time when I went to Tesco each week, I had to purchase at least £50 for my 7-10 days food quota. What I got back was a receipt and 5p off voucher (5P off for each litre of petrol).

Which came to my mind was that if I had to pay Tesco, I did need to pay myself something. That idea was a bit crazy and logically it was not right. In fact, foods I bought from Tesco was for myself. But anyway, whenever I went to Tesco, I put £10 or 20 notes beneath my mattress in last few years, trying to convince myself I earned from shopping.

The following pictures were the end result. I decided not to do like that any more in the future. It is not worth doing so. Mathematically, the figures of my money won't change. At the same time, we must not keep money at home for the security purpose. Banks are around.




Between mattress and base of the bed.


Interestingly, most were £20 notes


Counted before banking

I am not a GP, but yesterday someone from Singapore rang me, asking for an advice. It was about emergency contraception. Of course, it is well known as "morning after pill". In fact, this term is misleading. The pill works for up to 72 hours (three days) after unprotected sex. But it is advised that the earlier you take it, the better as it works best if taken within 12 hours of sex.

In Britain, it is the pill that people can buy from chemists without needing prescription. But the pharmacist will do a quick chat before issuing it, making sure everything is OK. According to the data, if the pill is taken within 24 hours after unprotected sex, about 95 in 100 pregnancies are prevented.

Of course, all drugs have side effects. Some people experience feeling sick after taking it. But the majority has no problem at all. At this point, I'd like to talk about something. Some people from far east thought that conventional western drugs have loads of side effects while herbal preparations have no or little side effects. That is absolutely wrong, I think . In fact, many of conventional drugs come from the purified extracts of herbal preparations. Lack of extensive scientific research dose not necessarily mean that herbal drug from some parts of world, such as Burma and Thailand, has no unwanted effect.

Obviously, morning after pill is not ideal for a long term plan and own doctor or GP is the best person to discuss about other options. At the same time, people should bear in mind that unprotected sex is one of the main mode of transmissions of viral illnesses, such as HIV, hepatitis B and C.

For the further information of emergency medication, please visit the following sites.

www.patient.co.uk

www.netdoctor.co.uk

Here is a related news you may be interested in

A pilot scheme allowing pharmacists to give women the contraceptive pill without a prescription has been given the go-ahead for next year.

Women and girls aged over 16 will be able to get the pill at two London primary care trusts, Southwark and Lewisham, Pulse magazine says.

If the pilots are successful, the pill could become available over the counter like the morning after pill. Full article on BBC

Update (22/11/2009)

This article is what I came across on The times weekend.

A The morning-after pill is effective only up to 72 hours after intercourse but the level of protection declines dramatically during that time. In the first 24 hours it prevents 95 per cent of pregnancies, but that figure drops to 85 per cent within the next 24 hours and only 58 per cent if taken after that......

Ann Furedi, of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), says that “for women who are not in a relationship, the morning-after pill is even safer than the contraceptive pill because it is only an occasional dose of hormones, although obviously it doesn’t protect against STIs”. The BPAS states that “there is no limit” to how many times you can use it.....

More....at The times Online

More than half of office workers use sites like Twitter and Facebook for personal use during the working day, and admit wasting an average of 40 minutes a week each.

One in three of the 1,460 office workers surveyed also said they had seen sensitive company information posted on social networking sites, leading to fears about how workers use the internet.

Philip Wicks, consultant at Morse, the IT services and technology company who commissioned the survey, said the true cost to the economy could be substantially higher than the £1.38bn estimate.(Telegraph)

Above news article made me to think about my internet usage.

Discussion about advantages and disadvantages of the use of Internet is a sort of boring topic, commonly found in the study of foreign language schools. But I have to say that the emergence of social networks enables people to extend their contact list, discussing an issue in a wider scale and conducting a campaign for and against something up to a global level, at the expense of their private time, which can be used more effectively in other ways, in order to upgrade the working position and family welfare.

Probably, most individuals have their intended life time achievement. Obviously, I never think about myself to become a famous blogger or a great twitter user with a thousand of followers. If not, why have I been spending a colossal amount of time in front of computer, by clicking facebook and twitter links? At this point, my reflective practice came into an action to judge my next step. The verdict is that I need to change sooner rather than later.

Reflective practice is a continuous process and involves the learner considering critical incidents in his or her life's experiences. It is also associated with learning from experience(Wiki)

A few months ago, I had to struggle tremendously to complete my tasks at work. It happened after wasting my time on-line uselessly. Learning from experience means less time on-line, planning to do mandatory jobs in a fixed time frame.

I like this quotation.

“Change will never happen when people lack the ability and courage to see themselves for who they are.” (Bryant H. McGill )

My opinion is that people should need to upgrade their social environment and working situation from time to time whenever possible as part of the quality of life improvement process. It is not the right way to stay in one community life long. I came across some people from far east who were confined in the group of same people, even after residing in Britain for years or decades. I am wondering what would be their point of living in Britain. It is very reasonable that the government introduced the Knowledge of life in the UK exam for settlement status applicants, encouraging them to learn briefly what the Britishness is.

We are social-beings. There are some people who enormously enjoy the virtual world for many reasons, one of which it would be a result of withdrawal from the community after not achieving any positive communication. That model is common among immigrants. For a temporary basis, involving with on-line community seems an effective for a loneliness. But what would be the long term effect? How much have I lost because of Facebook, Twitter and cbox?

The whole yesterday morning, I did on-line research on current digital SLRs, thinking to buy one. I also bought a couple of photo magazines to get some idea. I know many amateur photographers are crazy to buy Nikon D90 for some reason, even though it is one of the entry level cameras. It would be a copycat phenomenon among a group of people. To be honest, I am not the one who is keen to try a relatively expensive development, at the expense of my monthly investment.

I found out that Nikon D-3000 has acceptable specifications with a reasonable price to me. So I decided to get that one, which was introduced in July 2009 in Britain. I drove to the town centre. When I got to Jessops, I changed my mind to take Sony alfa 230 instead. Sony is rather new in digital camera world, I think. My friends normally prefer Nikon and Cannon. But I think Sony is attractive, extremely compact with a light weight. Moreover, the quality of image of Sony camera is excellent, according to several independent reviews. Next thing is that it is cheap. So I took it. I did also purchase 70-300mm zoom lens. It was nice to take test photos instantly at beach once I came out of the shop.

But I found out that there was no "live view" mode. The LCD screen was only for setting and viewing the photos taken. I must admit that I have a poor knowledge in Digital SLR camera although I used Nikon and Cannon SLRs since I was 18. I wrongly assumed that all dSLR had got a live view as its compact counterparts. In fact, my friend Vista mentioned about "live view" yesterday morning that Nikon 3000 had no such mode, but in Nikon 5000. I neglected her statement which was my mistake. The whole evening, I tried to take photos using view finder, leaving me with some eye ache.

This morning, I went back to Jessops and I did exchange with Sony A330. Now I am happy with new camera. It has got quick AF live view. That means that A330 can provide rapid camera performance without any delay for capture. Hopefully, photos will be available on my picasa web album shortly.



Updated 26.10.09

Please click : Some sample photos I took today

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