Two and a Half Minute Self Introductory

One beautiful morning in July, a baby girl was born. Her parents gave her the name Sui Min and took her back home, where she would live for the next 20 years and more. That baby was me. I was born and raised in Penang, and that is where many of my hopes and dreams revolve around. And it is because of Penang that I am here today.

Having Georgetown named one of UNESCO's World Heritage sites, further strengthened my choice in pursuing my ambition. Despite many relatives, teachers and peers telling me that the path I chose is a difficult one, I did not once waver from it and every time someone told me I should reconsider my choice, the stronger my feeling of wanting to prove myself became.

Therefore, after graduating from the most prestigious girls' school in Penang, St. Georges' Girls School, I entered USM as the first step to my ultimate goal. It was then that I realised these 3 years are not going to be easy. The beginning of my trials began as early as the orientation week for first years. As if having no friends entering the same university as myself was not bad enough, I was horrified to discover that the two most widely spoken languages on campus are Bahasa Malaysia and Mandarin. Being able to speak fluently in neither language, there were many times where I almost broke into tears, facing a huge language barrier alone. Thankfully, after starting classes, I found a great group of friends who had been my antidote in the worst of situations. Together, we completed ridiculous assignments, fought adversity and managed to survive our first year in university. Besides the hardships, we also shared many happy times joking, teasing each other and exchanging gossips.

After spending a year experiencing a taste of this course, I have to admit that what I chose to do is not easy. Assignments are always loaded with ideas, sketches, plans, crit sessions, models, all done in a limited amount of time. Do you know how many kinds of paper and board there are? Anyway, going back to my ambition, isn't preserving our heritage and culture a noble thing to do? In line with USM's mission to be sustainable, don't old buildings deserve a chance to contribute to this mission? And by this I don't mean knocking them over and constructing green skyscrapers in their place. What I want to do is to conserve and restore all run down heritage buildings to their former glory, and making them sustainable for the future.

I aspire to be an Architect who look to the future by utilising the past. That is why I am here in USM, taking a course in Architecture, and hoping to graduate in two year's time. Thank you.


P.S. This was supposed to be for my English course but I did not use it... so that is how it ended up on my blog... the shortest essay I've ever written in two hours... who knew self introductions are so difficult to write...

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