Visiting the Taylor’s Sri Hartamas Campus
“I made 120 decisions today… all of them are wrong”
I was sitting in a talk last Sunday and looking at that line and I couldn’t help wonder where my life had taken me since I left high school.
Let me refresh my memory.
The first thing I was thinking about right after I walked out of my last SPM paper was how I was going to spend my next few months dating my girlfriend at the time.
I was thinking of all the movies we would watch, all the walks on the beaches we would take and all the other… uhmm.. innocent fun we were going to have. Those few months flew by so quickly and by the time I realized it, it was time for me to think of where to go after school, what I was going to study and where I was going to end up.
I had no clue what to do to be honest. I didn’t…
It’s true… when I was young I wanted to be all sorts of things. I wanted to be a soldier once… then a pilot another time… and at one point I even wanted to be a postman.
I told my mum that I thought it was so much fun riding around everywhere in a motorbike. My mum panicked a little bit.. you know typical traditional Chinese family. If your child doesn’t grow up wanting to be a doctor/accountant/lawyer then your son needs help.
So there I was back in present time sitting at this lecture hall listening to this talk about careers.
I was at Taylor’s Sri Hartamas Campus.
that just newly opened and I decided to spend my Sunday afternoon there since they were all so nice to invite me to go pay a visit.
In the audience were starry-eyed students fresh out of SPM and concerned parents trying to figure out what future would be best for their children.
I sat there alone unaccompanied by anyone with jeans and sports shoes so much that I looked like I had just finished my SPM myself… though I actually wish I had really sat through one of these talks right after I left school.
At least I might have known what I should do with my life.
After the talk ended, the nice people that man the new campus decided to take me a tour of the campus. It was quite an environment.
Allow me to illustrate.
They had nice hangout places for students to just sit and chill.
Can you believe that? They actually had special spots just for you to CHILL!!!
That’s it!!!
During my days as a student (which wasn’t too long ago), we all sat on the staircases to chill which was fun for a while until your butt becomes so flat you could place a cup of coffee on it.
Not to mention, occassionally a passing lecturer would say
“OI!… So free can just lepak here ah?”
At this college now at least the students could say
“No Sir… I am just making use of college facilities Sir.”
Then there was the library.
I’m used to seeing library with old wooden chairs and wooden tables. Heck memories from my old university days but this library actually had something more than just the really cute “Alphabet” stools on the tables there.
Seriously, just a private thought to myself right… it’s not going to take long before the students start arranging the chairs to spell
“F…U….”
“N”….. AH HAH !!!
I was going to say “FUN”.. what were you all thinking! Notty notty!
Now apart from the cute alphabet chairs, what really grinded my gears was… that they had their own “Nuffie Corner” there.
And one that was SOOO MUCH bigger than the one we have at the Nuffnang office in KL.
And check out these really really cute ‘chair’ like bean bags they had.
Dammit if I were a student there.. that’s where I would be all my student life. Sitting on that chair.
I’ll be there so often they’ll call that place “TIMMY CORNER”.
See? Don’t I just fit in there?
That’s the thing I love about bean bags. They don’t judge you if you’re fat like me. No… not like other chairs where you might be too big to sit on. Bean bags, they fit around your butt no matter how you sit on them.
Ahhh…
Anyway, seeing how nice the library was I insisted they showed me how the classrooms looked like. And this is how they looked like (without the hot chicks sitting on them chairs).
The classrooms were pretty Hi-Tech and it wasn’t only because of how each classroom had a fixed projector of its own …
But they had these things called “Dynamic Notes” where at the end of each class, you could Bluetooth to your mobile phone a recording of the entire session and take it home with you.
How stressful is that? I mean imagine if you were passing notes in class and your teacher catches you and gives you a public caning in front of everyone in the class.
Before, your shame would only be limited to the few people in the class who were there to witness it but now anyone there could take the recording to any of the computer labs they have there
and upload it on to the internet with titles like
“Timmy Tiah Gets Spanked During Biology”
After the classroom tour I had a “BEHIND THE SCENES TOUR” of the teachers’ lounge.
CHECK THIS OUT
Heck … I can see why more and more people are becoming lecturers these days. I can even imagine myself there… you know… “Mr. Tiah”.
Sitting down sipping my morning coffee and reading a newspaper.
I would be one of those ‘cool’ lecturers that jokes and dances in class.
Okay soon my tour of the campus came to an end and I’m going to show you my favourite part of the campus.
While we were walking around I spotted this glass room with chairs and table in it and I asked “What is this?”
The room was apparently called… the “BRAINSTORM” room.
How cool is that!?
You actually have a glass room for you to do nothing but brainstorm in it.
Now I’ve seen this in a few corporations… really really hip ones but this is the first time I’ve seen it in a college!!!
I love these rooms.
And not too far away from these rooms.. A VENDING MACHINE!!!
For us to binge!!!
The total sum of money it took to put together a college like that with all the glass rooms, projectors, classrooms, chairs, tables and BEAN BAGS… came up to… RM6,000,000.
Ah how Taylor’s has come so far from its early days at Pantai Bahru (Yes… believe it or not Taylor’s College started there in 1969… not at Subang).
The Taylor’s new Hartamas Campus is still pretty new so go check it out if you guys have the time but if you’re going to go into college soon… my advice… figure out what you wanna do first… you know go for a talk or talk to some people.
I ended up doing Economics at university because I didn’t know what else to do and ended up not liking the very very mathematical subject but I had to force myself to finish the course I started. Don’t make the same mistake I did.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space