We're full!

The New College Village is now full. While we are still finalising our last few rooms with latecomers waiting on visas etc, we have been turning people away this week. Last night we had our welcome 'Meet & Greet' for all residents in the Main Common Room and over 200 attended. It was a wonderful opportunity for people to meet others in similar courses or fields of study, people from their home countries, others on the same floor and so on. It was also a good chance to introduce residents to the Senior Residents on each floor who will assume responsibility for their care and support. People were exchanging phone numbers until midnight when I went to bed leaving about a dozen still talking.

The mix of residents is quire remarkable, with over 50 nationalities represented from every continent - our own little United Nations! As you'd expect we have large groups from Singapore (31), Hong Kong (20), Malaysia (20), India (9), New Zealand (9), Thailand (8) and smaller numbers (1-5) residents from countries like Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Mauritius, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, USA, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Chile, Uruguay, Pakistan and many more.

The balance between postgraduate and undergraduate approximately is 65% PG and 35% UG. Most of the undergraduates are upper year students.

As we come close to seeing every resident in the building (people will be arriving up till the 7th March) we are beginning to enjoy each other's company at planned events and informally within the building.

Our next event will be our first NCV Barbecue that will take place on Friday 27th February. All residents are invited. The food will be provided and residents are being asked to bring their own drinks.

We're full!

Getting used to living in the new building

There have been some amusing moments in our first few weeks living in the NCV. I was at reception yesterday and one of our residents raced up to me with the words: "I've just done something VERY silly, I've dropped my wallet down the garbage chute when getting rid of my rubbish" To which I replied, "let's go and see if we can find it".

Down to the garbage compactor room we went to work out how you find and extract a wallet from the garbage. "Let's try rotating the garbage compactor and we'll see what we find." I pressed the appropriate button tentatively (never having operated it before) and waited. It whirred into action and there it was on top of a bin filled with well wrapped garbage.

Fanny was one very pleased resident who will probably not make the same mistake again. Fanny decided that she wanted a record of this event (as you can see below).

Getting used to living in the new building