Saturday 16 August 2014

First Day in London & RICS UK

15th August 2014

It was our first time going to London and all of us are excited to be there. Our trip starts at 6.00 am and we arrived in London at 11.30 am. Three awesome LJMU lecturers were with us on that day. They were Mr. Nazali Noor, Mal Ashall, and Mike Farragher. Once we arrived in London, the first thing we do were taking a group picture in front of The Big Ben. Then, Mal Ashall leads us around London City and he tried to find the best halal restaurant for our lunch. The best halal restaurant we found were NEDS NOODLE BOX. The food there was okay but it doesn't really suit me. 


Our group photo in front of The Big Ben.

When we'd done eating, Mal then brings us to our main mission on that day which was going to RICS London that is located at the Parliament Square. RICS which is the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors had gave us a great treatment. Three of their directors gave their talk well and we were able to grab many new knowledge from them. The first speaker was Alan Muse, and he talked about the Building Information Modelling (BIM). He gave us a complete introduction about BIM and if I am not mistaken was already mentioned by Mr. Naz during our class. Then, Matthew McDermott took his chance to briefly explained to us on what is the challenges in practicing BIM. Some of the challenges are:
  • it was incomplete
  • BIM needs software and IT skills but not every computers have enough memory to do it
  • people wondering what is the real benefits of BIM
Its a bit different when it comes to James Fiske because he talked about the costing in BIM. He mentioned about Building Cost Information Services (BCIS). BCIS was somehow related to BIM where it provides the benchmark for the cost of building. It was more or less the same with our SMM (Standard Method of Measurement). Right after that, we were lead by the beautiful lady Laura Chadderton for a tour around the RICS building. We left RICS London exactly at 4.00 pm.





 From left : Mal, Mike, James Fiske, Matthew McDermott, me, Alan Muse and Mr. Naz when I was giving RICS some souvenirs from University of Malaya.

From RICS, we went to our hotel, Royal National Hotel London. The hotel was good and after we checked-in, all of us went to Kerisik Restaurant, a malay restaurant somewhere near Paddington. The food was really nice. We had mee kari, asam pedas ikan merah, pengat pisang, teh tarik and other good Malaysian food. We had so much fun when we sang together about 3-4 songs and were interspersed by Mal when he danced a cute dance for us. 

 Kerisik Restaurant here we go!

When we're done eating, then it was a free time for all of us. We split into two groups where Lily Jamal, Thahirah, and I were with Mal, Mr. Naz, and Mike. The rest were the second group and I heard that they were going to Piccadilly Circus. We were actually not split-up into two groups but it was because they were left behind while we were walking together at the Hyde Park that we decided to split into two groups. Anyway all of us were very ecstatic or you can call it jakun in malay, when it was so cold that we can see our breath coming out of our mouth when we were talking. Bhahahaha.

We, the first group was lead by the very fit man, Mal. He leads us to walk for about 8 to 10 kilometres and our first destination was Harrods. Harrods was really cool but we did not even enter the building. Mal then again leads us to walk and walk and walk and he said that we are going to get back to the hotel just by walking. Alhamdulillah for finally he knows that we were very tired of walking so we took the Underground Tube to Russel Square station near to our hotel. And for about 11.30 pm , I can have my rest after getting tired of walking and chasing Mal's walking pace.

It's Harrods!
Photo by Mr Naz, when we were walking around London City.

That's all for 15th August 2014.

Written by: Nurul Azeantiey Suhaimi


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