Mysore and International Student Presentation

First of all, we’re sorry it’s been so long since our last post.  After our trip to Mysore, every spare moment seems to have been focused on the International Student presentation which took place on Tuesday this week, and then it was Ava’s birthday the day after – more of both later.

So there’s a lot to update you on since we last wrote.  First of all we had our first visitor when Louise’s sister, Jayne, came to visit at the beginning of July.  We packed in as much as we could during her 7 day stay with visits to Coonoor, the embroidering Nuns at Ketty, a meal with Neil’s Joint Syndicate, a US Independence Day party, a tour of Neil’s College and an evening stay in Le Meriden Hotel in Coimbatore.  It was lovely having her to visit, and both Daisy and Ava enjoyed spending time with their Auntie Jayne.  Unfortunately, her time with us was over far too quickly and she headed back to Dubai on 12^th July to go back to work.

The course has been slowly ramping up the pressure and workload for Neil, with various exams and submissions over the last few weeks.  At the end of each Tutorial, which last roughly 5-6 weeks the students have an exam on everything they’ve covered on the course so far.  After some late nights revising Neil was happy with the way the exam went, and whilst the results are not given back individually to the students, the Directing Staff were happy with the Course results.  Neil has also had a couple of short notice exams during class time.  Last week, he went to work to be told that he had 2 ½ hours to write a Service Paper on “Indian Defence Diplomacy in the Indian Ocean Region and how it can Counter the growing Chinese Influence.”  An interesting challenge considering it was a no notice exam with no reference material allowed and it had to be a hand written submission with all the intricacies and nuances of the Indian Military Staff Work, such as correct paper size, spacing, margins, page numbering, which headings to underline and which full stops not to underline.  Anyway, despite this Neil managed to scribble down over 2000 words, we all know he’s never short of an opinion; it’s amazing the knowledge of the subject he has picked up since he’s been on the course.

Neil hard at work, hand-writing a Service Paper

As soon as his exams were over, we packed our bags and went to Mysore for a long weekend.  We had 3 nights in a hotel there and visited the Maharaja’s Palace, the zoo, Chamundi Hill and temple, Devaraja Market, the golf course (for Neil), the shops (for Louise) and the Train Museum (for the girls).  It turned into a bit of an International Students Away Day as all the Brits went there, as well as the the Australians, Americans, Canadian, Maldivian, Singaporean and Seychellian (if that’s a word!) officers.  We stayed in the same hotel as the other Brits and the Australians so caught up with them over dinner most nights and had one night with all the internationals in Pizza Hut!  It was a great break, and now we’re planning the next long weekend at the end of Tutorial 2 in 6 weeks time.

The Maharaja's Palace

The event that has taken over the lives of all the British students and their families for the last month or so has been the UK International Student Presentation, or ISP.   Each nation on the course has to give a 40-minute formal presentation to the rest of the course and their wives, including all the Directing Staff and their wives, which totals about 1,000 people.  The presentation is all about the UK – it’s geography, history, culture, government, economy, sport and the armed forces.  It is highly choreographed as it has to start at exactly 12.50pm and finish at exactly 1.30pm, and runs with 2 simultaneous slide shows of about 260 slides on each, plus 50 minutes of video before the presentation and various short video pieces during the ISP itself.  The wives have the job of preparing a separate presentation in the foyer, of noticeboards, books, uniforms and various other British ‘stuff’.  It took them weeks to put together and a whole day to put up in the foyer, and Louise now has a very sore arm (from pushing in drawing pins, she thinks!) and can’t play tennis!  All in the name of Neil’s career – she hopes it’s worth it!!  The 3 wives also had red, white and blue saris made, which the Indians loved!



Just to add to the pressure, the British Defence Attaché and his wife and daughter, also came down from Delhi for 3 days to see the presentation, so we were all busy hosting them as well.  Fortunately, they were a lovely family; very easy-going and they loved the presentation and the Wellington area.  We had also found out the Brigadier used to play International Rugby for Ireland, so we put a picture of him on our Sports board for the ISP!  Anyway, the presentation was extremely successful, everyone was very pleased with it, and the other international students are all really worried now as ours was the first of the course and has apparently set a very high standard.  It’s the Australian’s turn tomorrow, and we’re sure there’s will be equally good, but at least, we can sit back and relax this time!




The UK ISP Team



Yesterday, of course, was a big day in our household too, as it was Ava’s first birthday.  We were both very pleased with ourselves for managing to keep her safe and sound for a whole year, so we celebrated with a little tea party yesterday.  Fathima and Precilla made pizza, samosas and a cake and we had about 30 people round to help us celebrate.  Fathima’s cake was amazing, as you can see in the pictures, so Louise is hoping that Ava’s going to lower her expectations for next year!



Ava's Birthday Cake

Apart from all that, we’ve been to various socials and had our first invite to an Indian student’s house for dinner – very different to the UK as in India they drink all night, eat at about 10.30pm and then all go home after dinner!  Neil’s golf is going really well and he shot a 12 over par last weekend during a Course golf competition.  And we have also had the whole of the outside of our flat painted – light blue for the RAF, of course.  It seemed like a good idea at the time, but we hadn’t really appreciated exactly how blue it would be, and all the other buildings on this Married Patch are painted in the same cream colour!  Hopefully, we won’t get asked to repaint it, and the Clulos will like it for next year.

Our Blue House

We’re off to Coimbatore this weekend and a night in Le Meridien for Louise’s birthday.  We won’t leave it so long before the next post – promise!