VISITING NOTTINGHAM – THE UNIVERSITY OF TWO MALAYSIAN KINGS AND THE CURRENT PRIME MINISTER – IN JULY, 2009, PART I.
By Mansor Puteh
You don’t know you are on a university campus in England in the countryside because the whole place is covered with verdant trees and tall shrubs that cover most of the buildings much like the whole scenery you have seen throughout the trip there. And you want to ask if this is already summer?
I had not been too far inside of England to be able to see such a scenery and I liked what I was seeing. I wondered if I was able to return here in the near future to see it in a different climate so everything will look totally different like it is not the place I had been to but to a new one. In the middle of summer and Fall, the scenery will have a different tone, looking brown and gold everywhere; now it was green.
But anytime is a good time to be in England, especially for many Malaysians who have a strong fascination for this country despite it being one which had colonized Malaysia for many decades and somehow we have a way of being able to dance with in a tight embrace.
They are so few Malaysians who do not like England, as much as they do not have any hatred of Japan which had exhibited atrocities on the country in the Second World War and caused the death of many and hurting the many others.
So now many Malaysians will jump at the opportunity to visit England and Japan if they are given any opportunity to do so. Unfortunately, some go there to work illegally so no wonder the immigration authorities of the two countries are not reacting to this attitude which unfortunately, will affect all the bona fide travelers and visitors to the countries.
The scenery in Nottingham look well arranged or manicured and tidy, much like my long hair which seems to adapt well in the cool weather of summer than it could in the heat in Malaysia where I had just come from.
And the buildings on this campus are low. They do not scream out for attention and they blend well with the surroundings and with nature. So you tend to think you are still driving along trying to find the university you had flown from so far away – from Malaysia, to go to, until you see a signboard which says so.
So you have finally arrived at the university of two Malaysian kings – Sultan Azlan Shah of Perak and the late Almarhum Tuanku Jaafar, the Yang diPertuan Besar of Negeri Sembilan, and the current prime minister, Datuk Seri Najib Tun Abdul Razak.
I can see why the university is outstanding; it shows all over.
And one immediately gets to cool down once one gets here. So I suppose it is very congenial if one has come to study or to make a lighting visit. It is also near a city which does not scream for attention; it has a tempo of its own. It doesn’t seem to be interested to compete with the other larger cities in England, much less abroad. It is contented being itself.
Forget London and the other big cities. Also forget Kuala Lumpur. Try and enjoy the city and its sights. This is almost the whole of England. It is not so cosmopolitan but still a trendsetter. Its history goes back in time to affect the history of the whole country.
Last July, I visited Nottingham University in England for the first time. And I liked it a lot. I have been to many cities, big and small in the 33 countries I have been to so far, to know why there is a certain attraction that I can find in this city.
It is a big city but small enough to make you not lose yourself; and it is also a small city with features of a big city.
And after half a day of driving around it, I could get the sense of direction to know how to go places and ending up at more interesting and out-of-the way ones, which expose different facades of the whole city and its dwellers.
There’s only one building at the center of the campus called the Trent Building with a tall clock tower. It also looks like a not-so-quite old castle. It was imposing nevertheless, as it is difficult to escape one’s view of it, even from outside of the campus as it stands above the trees. It is best to look at it from a distance to see the whole of it instead of just parts of it.
And nearby it and beside a lake is a tower which looks like a giant pencil. It looks like a chimney or an incomplete minaret of an ancient civilization that had been left behind.
Or, if you want to allow your imagination to run wild, it could be like a structure from the sky or from an alien space station that had fallen and got stuck into the ground.
Other than that, it was fun and a relief to be able to arrive at this university for the first time after driving for more than two hours along roads which are equally quiet cutting through wide plains which are only broken by small villages and towns along the way.
It was quite an enjoyable ride. There were so few vehicles and people we had met or seen along the way.
The quiet was quite a relief actually, but I got over it by busying myself by taking video and still photos, and listening to the radio.
This is England as much as London is also. Both strike different responses to the first-time visitors. Whereas one has ‘seen’ London many times in films, on television and the media, one cannot say the same with rural England, and especially of the areas that we had to pass through to get to Nottingham.
But one needs to get a least a cursory knowledge of Nottingham and especially of its famous Nottingham Forest to realize how at an earlier century there lived an Englishman who has since become a legend in the person of Robin Hood whose presence is still felt here and especially in the city where his personage is being kept alive for visitors.
Maybe it’s not too late for me to mention how many locals and Amrul, the Malaysian doctoral candidate at the university, had also called this city by its nickname of Notts.
I was surely lucky to be in constant communication with Professor Christine Ennew who was responsible for making our three-days stay on campus a memorable and interesting one. And through her, too, I managed to get in touch with Amrul, whom she is supervising.
But first on Christine: I have been told by some students how Christine or Chris does not like it when someone calls her Professor Ennew. The word somehow does not sound too good for her ears.
This is totally unlike in Malaysia where the university lecturers want everybody to call them by their job descriptions even if they are mere associate professors or even emeritus professors, which they take with them even if they leave the world of academia. But not many know what they are professors of and what researches they had conducted and are respected for, other than knowing them for their lofty titles.
To me, Chris is a very fast worker who had helped to arrange our stay at one of their boarding schools or halls to allow us to be close to the campus and be familiar with the environs so that we could return to the campus later to shoot a feature film there.
This would be the first Malaysian feature film to be shot mostly on the campus and in the city as well as in England, so Nottingham can be the university of two Malaysian kings and one prime minister and the location for the first Malaysian feature film to be shot in England, too.
Amrul took us to the supermarket to buy provision and cooked Malaysian food in his two-storey rented house where he was sharing with another Malaysian and a Siamese student.
Another Malaysian doctoral candidate at the same university called Rudy later came to join us for dinner of Malaysian food. So we have a mini-Malaysian restaurant here that serves the best Melayu food there is in the whole of Nottingham.
(NOTE: Chances are I might be returning to Nottingham in early March to attend the film event called ‘Four Films From Malaysia and The Residency Years’ held at Nottingham University, in conjunction with the Malaysian Night organized by the Malaysian Students Association of the university.)
You don’t know you are on a university campus in England in the countryside because the whole place is covered with verdant trees and tall shrubs that cover most of the buildings much like the whole scenery you have seen throughout the trip there. And you want to ask if this is already summer?
I had not been too far inside of England to be able to see such a scenery and I liked what I was seeing. I wondered if I was able to return here in the near future to see it in a different climate so everything will look totally different like it is not the place I had been to but to a new one. In the middle of summer and Fall, the scenery will have a different tone, looking brown and gold everywhere; now it was green.
But anytime is a good time to be in England, especially for many Malaysians who have a strong fascination for this country despite it being one which had colonized Malaysia for many decades and somehow we have a way of being able to dance with in a tight embrace.
They are so few Malaysians who do not like England, as much as they do not have any hatred of Japan which had exhibited atrocities on the country in the Second World War and caused the death of many and hurting the many others.
So now many Malaysians will jump at the opportunity to visit England and Japan if they are given any opportunity to do so. Unfortunately, some go there to work illegally so no wonder the immigration authorities of the two countries are not reacting to this attitude which unfortunately, will affect all the bona fide travelers and visitors to the countries.
The scenery in Nottingham look well arranged or manicured and tidy, much like my long hair which seems to adapt well in the cool weather of summer than it could in the heat in Malaysia where I had just come from.
And the buildings on this campus are low. They do not scream out for attention and they blend well with the surroundings and with nature. So you tend to think you are still driving along trying to find the university you had flown from so far away – from Malaysia, to go to, until you see a signboard which says so.
So you have finally arrived at the university of two Malaysian kings – Sultan Azlan Shah of Perak and the late Almarhum Tuanku Jaafar, the Yang diPertuan Besar of Negeri Sembilan, and the current prime minister, Datuk Seri Najib Tun Abdul Razak.
I can see why the university is outstanding; it shows all over.
And one immediately gets to cool down once one gets here. So I suppose it is very congenial if one has come to study or to make a lighting visit. It is also near a city which does not scream for attention; it has a tempo of its own. It doesn’t seem to be interested to compete with the other larger cities in England, much less abroad. It is contented being itself.
Forget London and the other big cities. Also forget Kuala Lumpur. Try and enjoy the city and its sights. This is almost the whole of England. It is not so cosmopolitan but still a trendsetter. Its history goes back in time to affect the history of the whole country.
Last July, I visited Nottingham University in England for the first time. And I liked it a lot. I have been to many cities, big and small in the 33 countries I have been to so far, to know why there is a certain attraction that I can find in this city.
It is a big city but small enough to make you not lose yourself; and it is also a small city with features of a big city.
And after half a day of driving around it, I could get the sense of direction to know how to go places and ending up at more interesting and out-of-the way ones, which expose different facades of the whole city and its dwellers.
There’s only one building at the center of the campus called the Trent Building with a tall clock tower. It also looks like a not-so-quite old castle. It was imposing nevertheless, as it is difficult to escape one’s view of it, even from outside of the campus as it stands above the trees. It is best to look at it from a distance to see the whole of it instead of just parts of it.
And nearby it and beside a lake is a tower which looks like a giant pencil. It looks like a chimney or an incomplete minaret of an ancient civilization that had been left behind.
Or, if you want to allow your imagination to run wild, it could be like a structure from the sky or from an alien space station that had fallen and got stuck into the ground.
Other than that, it was fun and a relief to be able to arrive at this university for the first time after driving for more than two hours along roads which are equally quiet cutting through wide plains which are only broken by small villages and towns along the way.
It was quite an enjoyable ride. There were so few vehicles and people we had met or seen along the way.
The quiet was quite a relief actually, but I got over it by busying myself by taking video and still photos, and listening to the radio.
This is England as much as London is also. Both strike different responses to the first-time visitors. Whereas one has ‘seen’ London many times in films, on television and the media, one cannot say the same with rural England, and especially of the areas that we had to pass through to get to Nottingham.
But one needs to get a least a cursory knowledge of Nottingham and especially of its famous Nottingham Forest to realize how at an earlier century there lived an Englishman who has since become a legend in the person of Robin Hood whose presence is still felt here and especially in the city where his personage is being kept alive for visitors.
Maybe it’s not too late for me to mention how many locals and Amrul, the Malaysian doctoral candidate at the university, had also called this city by its nickname of Notts.
I was surely lucky to be in constant communication with Professor Christine Ennew who was responsible for making our three-days stay on campus a memorable and interesting one. And through her, too, I managed to get in touch with Amrul, whom she is supervising.
But first on Christine: I have been told by some students how Christine or Chris does not like it when someone calls her Professor Ennew. The word somehow does not sound too good for her ears.
This is totally unlike in Malaysia where the university lecturers want everybody to call them by their job descriptions even if they are mere associate professors or even emeritus professors, which they take with them even if they leave the world of academia. But not many know what they are professors of and what researches they had conducted and are respected for, other than knowing them for their lofty titles.
To me, Chris is a very fast worker who had helped to arrange our stay at one of their boarding schools or halls to allow us to be close to the campus and be familiar with the environs so that we could return to the campus later to shoot a feature film there.
This would be the first Malaysian feature film to be shot mostly on the campus and in the city as well as in England, so Nottingham can be the university of two Malaysian kings and one prime minister and the location for the first Malaysian feature film to be shot in England, too.
Amrul took us to the supermarket to buy provision and cooked Malaysian food in his two-storey rented house where he was sharing with another Malaysian and a Siamese student.
Another Malaysian doctoral candidate at the same university called Rudy later came to join us for dinner of Malaysian food. So we have a mini-Malaysian restaurant here that serves the best Melayu food there is in the whole of Nottingham.
(NOTE: Chances are I might be returning to Nottingham in early March to attend the film event called ‘Four Films From Malaysia and The Residency Years’ held at Nottingham University, in conjunction with the Malaysian Night organized by the Malaysian Students Association of the university.)
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