Hedingham Castle, Essex

This year's Chevening Scholars welcome reception was held at the Hedingham Castle, Essex. The castle is known to be the finest in the East of England. There were 95 students from Cambridge, represented for the event. The 95 students came from all over the world and it was a good opportunity to mingle and network around. Scholars from University of Essex, Norwich and East Anglia also attended the event. So, it was a big crowd that night.

We had a short tour of the castle and were briefed of the history about the who's who in the castle previously. I could hardly remember all their names and their roles because we were suddenly bombarded with so many names. But I did remember names like William the Conqueror, Princess Matilda, King Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth I and etc.

These are the Japanese scholars whom I "bumped" into during the reception. They are here on a short-course study under the scholarship and would be leaving in December. Had a wonderful time chatting with them. Felt pretty guilty because I spent half of the night pow-wowing with them (in Japanese) when I should have spoken more to the other nationalities. Oh my, but it was good because when you are in a different country, chatting with a Japanese (who is also out of the country) is really a different experience. When they feel unrestricted by their countries strict customs, you get to hear all the suppressed stories from these people; about what they really feel about the country, the culture and their way of thinking. I ended up taking the centrestage in the conversation after that because they were more interested in knowing what I did in Japan and the places I went to. Apparently, they came from places like Aomori, Shizuoka, Osaka and Fukushima, all of the places that I have stepped foot on before. So, they were really interested when I told them what I did there and they recipocrated with tips on what "I should also have" done there by extending the "secrets" of these places. Aha...now I know. Could this be a precursor to Japan again??? The haunting...