My Snowy White Christmas

Weather: Chilly
Mood: Mild


Today's face:

I've become a bit of a camwhore. Rediscovering my Asian roots!! Oh dear! 

^_^

guys, I have some SERIOUS BUSINESS:

My White Christmas - My little fundraising effort.

It's officially decided, fellas! I have made the oh-so-important choice of dyeing my hair snowy white for charity! Having been unable to find Hope For Latvia's justgiving page, I opted for my former Mentoring Charity, ReachOUT!. I was planning to register first with Reachout as my charity and then ask the CEO whether I could fundraise for them, but apparently Justgiving email the charity if someone registers to fundraise for them. I received a very touching and relieving message from Xavier.

Hopefully I'll go from this:

to this:

I think I look slightly fatter in this photo. And also my hair would be whiter and slightly shorter than that!

Obviously I would like to keep my facial features (although turning into a Korean pop-star wouldn't be such a bad idea after all if only possible.

If you haven't already been linked to death on Facebook by yours truly, here's a link to the page: 

CLEMENT'S WHITE CHRISTMAS

I would greatly appreciate it if you could contribute. I'm setting a target of 100 pounds for Christmas. Even a small amount like 50p or a pound really makes a difference. Think about it: if 100 people donate 1 pound, we're able to sponsor a minibus for a month. If the same amount of people donate 2 pounds, we give a young person a friend for life! Hopefully with your help we'll be able to do all these things in the near future. Just think about what a pound means to you. A bottle of coke? A packet of crisps? It's not even enough to buy you a pint! But what it will do is fund a healthy relationship based on trust and lots of fun! 

Below is a list of costs that ReachOut has to pay every year, taken from here:

Mentoring relationship: one Mentor for one Mentee= £200 per year. We have 200!

The Minibus:  costs £1,000 per school year: £100 per month. We have 2!

Summer projects: £6,500 per project. We have 4 projects!

Materials per session: £5 x 25 sessions is £125 per year per project. We have 9 projects!

Training for Mentors: Accreditation fees £21 per participant. We have 200!

Study Aid: £10 to convert 10 hours studied by Manchester students into pounds, which will then help to realise aid projects in developing countries.

I am doing this to finance part of the charity's operating costs and also importantly to raise awareness of the importance of having a mentor/role model in a young person's life when their parents are either incapable of being exemplary people or if they are simply not around to do so. I am involved in mentoring in Norwich but I feel that many UEA students are missing out on the opportunity and satisfaction of mentoring because they are simply not aware of such a project existing. As of now, the number of mentors from UEA is below 20.

Friends, family and strangers, if you want to give me the perfect Christmas present, donating to my fund would be the best thing you could give me. 

P.S. If you live in London or Manchester and would like to get involved with mentoring, please register here and pop Dr. Xavier Bosch our CEO an email. His contact details can be found here.

P.P.S If you are in UEA and would like to get involved with mentoring but would like to find out more about mentoring in Norwich, please go here. Alternatively, drop me an email, so I can contact our supervisor (I don't really want to put her email down here for fear of spammers).

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The Rest of My Day

Now that the serious business of immense importance has been concluded, we can move on to duller things such as my day. We had a new guy this time in Development Perspectives instead of Ed Anderson; Dr Luciano Esposito from Italy! Absolutely smashing fellow of a lecturer, made me laugh many times when describing the the evils of the Washington Consensus with a reference to water bottles and perfect information of markets. He mentioned Malaysia, and that pleased me. Too often have we stood unnoticed by the wider world, while our economy flourishes and our wealth grows! But enough about that.

I finally managed to fall into slumber at about 0530 hours, and awoke (promptly it seems) at 0830 hours. Surprisingly enough, I actually got on with it and arose with little panda/zombie problems. Unfortunately, I only had 30 minutes to basically get dressed, brush teeth, pack bag, make coffee and cycle to UEA (not necessarily in that order). So of course I left the flat at 9am and arrived at 9.15 to a truly excitable lecture regarding the Post-Washington Consensus. 

The way to UEA.

After that, it was a trot to the library a failed attempt at printing out a p60 form to stop the damn government taxing me 23.5%; I got very frustrated by the PCs generally not working and got ticked off at people who need to go for lunch or somewhere for more than half an hour, blatantly leave their stuff on the computer, and then come back at that opportune moment when you try to sign into your account. I'll do my form digitally and send it off.


Went to a wellbeing fair with Harbi Jama and got my BMI taken. Apparently I am cutting it close at about 18.5; probably need to put some more weight on but eating my weight in food does NOT help. Scheduled a "Shamanic Massage" on Thursday before going to the GDD lecture; hopefully that will be some sort of destress for Natalia Alvarez's exhilarating lectures. Also, I bumped into the Human Library. Basically they are an organisation composed of volunteers with a unique characteristic (self-harmer, senior management, e.g.) who give people the opportunity to borrow them as Human Books for up to half an hour to find out more information about their uniqueness. 


I selected a rather dubious title: Senior Management of UEA.


It turned out to be the Academic Pro-Vice Chancellor of UEA, and we basically sat and chatted for 30 minutes non-stop about everything! UEA, Manchester, Malaysia, International Development and Volunteering were among the topics we covered. I enjoyed it a lot and I would hope the Pro-Vice Chancellor did as well because we talked up to 45 minutes! Sorry Harbi, I know you were waiting for me and I just ran off because I assumed you had abandoned me...

I think photos were promised yesterday night. As I have a free day tomorrow and will most probably spend it doing notes on my other modules, I will indulge you, my children!

Dinner with Thomas Maxwell and Christopher Portway

We duly met at Wagamama's outside Chapelfield at about 1800 hours and had a lovely dinner. I ordered pork dumplings in sauce and absolutely died and went to heaven in that dish. Kinda wish I'd taken a photo of it but I was too busy eating (and dying but coming back to eat some more because death will not take me from food).

After that, we went on quest to find a coffeehouse around the city centre, traversing the lean and mean streets of Norwich until we finally ended up at The Forum (the heart of Norwich if you must). There we finally obtained our much deserved coffee.

Excellent

Chris being half-emo after coffee.

Yes.

After which I spotted this absolute beauty of a Yamaha Grand and simply HAD to play it.

Waiting on Thomas for the remainder of the pics which actually show me on the piano.

After that, it was home for all of us (Thomas met up with his partner Amy and got a lift home in her car while Chris had to walk all the way back to Earlham road) and straight to the computer for me. Organised all I needed for my study tomorrow and started today's post. Man it's been an absolute MASSIVE post I've done today. I actually feel slightly proud of myself. Stay tuned for more treasures in Norwich!


Stay safe,
Clement.