Taylor’s invited me over for their open day last Sunday to do a sponsored post. I was to be there at 10AM on a Sunday. I dragged Kitteh along… a risk because Kitteh is never happy to be up before 12PM on a Sunday. We spent almost 5 hours there on the campus and by the end of it, we learned so much and had a lot of fun.
Let me tell you about our day there. The first thing we saw when we got there was this big hot air balloon. Kitteh was dying to sit on one ever since she saw the movie “Up” so she was really excited when Wai Quan who was showing us around took us there.
We queued up for a while and watched as it went up and down taking different people. It finally came to our turn. We hopped on and took a picture.
When the balloon began to rise though my paranoia kicked in. I started worrying about what happened if I fell off or the balloon “popped” or something ridiculous like that. Then I don’t know what happened but before we gained much altitude, we landed again. The operators told us that the winds have become really strong and they decided that they need to let it rest for a while.
Kitteh was disappointed but I was… secretly relieved.
So after pulling Kitteh away from the hot air balloon, Wai Quan gave us a tour of the campus. The first thing we saw was this showcase of what looked like a race car right at the front. We had no idea what it was so we went to check it out.
There were a few students from their School of Engineering there at the showcase and they explained it all to me. Here’s something that I NEVER knew existed.
Apparently in recent years, engineering students from universities all around Malaysia take part in this tournament called the Formula Varsity Race. They are all tasked to design AND build their own cars. They have to do everything of having a race car team. Everything from the engineering part of it, to finding a driver to even finding sponsors to help them fund their project.
This car that students of Taylor’s University made cost RM50,000 to build and can go as fast as 100km/h. It also happened to be the varsity champion in the race against other universities by a big lead.
How cool is that! While I was at university, all I spent my time doing was coursework or studying theories. These students here were building actual cars and racing them!
I asked them what they wanted to do once they graduated and they all talked about a career engineering and designing cars. They even mooted the possibility of working in a race team like the Tony Fernandes’s Lotus F1 Team.
After we were done checking out the race car we went on to tour the rest of the Lakeside Campus. The whole campus cost some RM450 million to build.
We checked out their Student Life Centre that was normally packed during weekdays we’re told. It’s a place for the students to organize non-academic activities. They have ping pong tables, foosball table, a keyboard, and a corner to watch tv!
Kitteh noticed the foosball table, grabbed a feel of one of the bars and then said “Woo this is a good table”. I wondered how she could tell and she told me a bit about how she used to play foosball too.
We then moved on to check out the other facilities. Apart from the class rooms and lecture theaters we checked out their computer labs. Like this one here that was filled with Macs to teach students how to edit videos.
Then we came across something that got the playful side of us out. Under the Taylor’s Law School, they had this thing called the Moot Court. Sort of a mock courtroom where law students can go there for a real life courtroom experience and practise debating at hearings.
Kitteh decided to do something acting on her own. This is Lawyer Kitteh presenting her case and defending her client.
And this is Judge Kitteh and Judge Tim listening to an argument by the prosecution but being skeptical about it.
My favourite though was this picture of Kitteh. We were supposed to pose pretending to be in a discussion but she put on her exaggerated argument face.
Seeing that we were getting too carried away with the moot court act, Wai Quan pulled us away. Only to bring us here…
Taylor’s University Lakeside Campus has its very own studio where people could record and edit audio and music.
Kitteh jumped in and pretended to be a recording artist… like in 200 Pound Beauty.
Again before we got too carried away, Wai Quan pulled us away. We were brought to this Gallery where art and design students could display their work.
And this automation and robotics lab where we saw this robotic T-Rex being made.
I insisted though that we checked out their library.
The library has always been my favourite place at university. It’s where I spend a lot of time studying near exams. It’s just fun studying together with friends because that way you feel pressured to study rather than be distracted by your computer or by your bed when you do it at home. This library was pretty neat. It had all sorts of seating arrangements. Some for quiet study, some for heated discussions and some just for lounging around. It even had a mini theatre to view videos, a computer lab with PCs and MACs and a 24/7 study room in case any students were inspired to cram at 4am!
The coolest part of the whole visit though was learning about their Hospitality, Tourism and Culinary Art Courses. Before visiting the campus that day, I didn’t think much about Hospitality Courses. I thought that you would just learn how to manage a hotel and that’s about it… but I used to wonder why you needed to do a course for it when you could just …. Learn on the job.
Then I sat through a talk by the Deputy Dean – Yeoh Tay Boon who was also in charge of the School of Hospitality, Tourism and Culinary Arts.
He talked about how yes in the past, there weren’t any courses specific to hospitality or hotels. But today there are… and they teach you not just the very basics of running a hotel or customer service but things like accounting or yield management. Yield management is pretty interesting. It’s like where the hotel decides out of its 100 rooms, they can afford to sell 20 rooms at a discount but the 21st room then goes up at its usual race.
The yield manager’s job is to manage this. At Taylor’s though they took it to a whole new level. Throughout the campus there are restaurants and bars that are run by students from their School of Hospitality, Tourism and Culinary Arts.
Tangerine Deck – overlooking the campus’ lake
Some facts: Taylor’s School of Hospitality, Tourism & Culinary Arts is Southeast Asia’s largest and most established hospitality and tourism school. They have been around for 25 years now, and last semester alone, they had 3,200 students! To fit all these students the school built a range of specialized facilities to better equip them to what goes on in the working world. In fact, we were told that even in terms of area, the school is probably the largest hospitality school in South East Asia, beating schools in Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand! These facilities include:
• 14 culinary suites including a Chocolate Room, Garde Manger, Pastry Kitchens, Artist Kitchen and a Culinary Bar & Theatre;
• 6 full-service restaurants (ranging from fine dining serving, Asian, lifestyle and multiservice);
• 3 training restaurants;
• 3 hotel suites;
• 3 front office receptions of varied concepts;
• 2 tourism practical rooms;
• Travel agency
• Wine laboratory
Bet you’re thinking then what the heck it a “Wine laboratory” right? Well a wine laboratory is a special lab for wine demonstration and tasting. It’s equipped with artificial sunlight and lighting panels so that it’s easy to pay attention to the colour of the wine.
There’a also this theater that really looks like the set of Chef Wan’s cooking show. It’s called the “Manifestation Theatre”. That’s where they do their beverage and culinary demonstrations for students to see.
If you’re wondering how students are going to be able to see anything that goes on in a frying pan if they’re sitting at the back of the theatre. It literally has one of those cameras in cooking shows where it zooms in on what you’re preparing or cooking and projects it on a big screen.
Then of course just like in any cooking world, there are the “kitchens”.
Taylor’s has five hot culinary suites for preparation of appetizers and main course meals and three pastry culinary suites for preparation of desserts. There are also Artist Kitchen and Cocoa Room for food, chocolate, sugar and ice carving. Now out of the “Culinary Arts” side and into the “Tourism” side. I thought this was something interesting.
In the school they have two rooms equipped with Internet and Customer Relations Service System (Galileo), fax and phones. Students can plan, design, create packages, do airline bookings and negotiate with industry suppliers here. All of these contribute to learning how to design different inbound and outbound packages. Then on to the “hospitality” side of the school is where I think they took it the furthest. Taylor’s University has a real hotel open to public that will be run only by students of Taylor’s! It’s called Ruemz,. It‘s catered to business travelers to Subang who want to stay at this hotel laboratory which is Malaysia’s first. It’s located on campus in the building here on the right, and is scheduled to open early this year.
We went to check out the hotel. This is how the lobby is like.
And these are how their rooms are like.
Ruemz also has their own blog where they will conduct product reviews to the industry. Find out more at http://www.ruemz.com/blog
I thought that was really so interesting…. How Taylor’s University has really taken education to a whole new level. From the Racecar project by the School of Engineering to the hotels and restaurants by the Hospitality students… students there don’t just learn theories but they actually get hands-on experience. I kinda wish my student days had more hands on experience but I guess it’s great that we have it now in places like Taylor’s.
There was so much more that I had learned from my visit to Taylor’s Lakeside Campus Open Day even though I’m passed being a student. If you’d like to visit their campus too, they’re having their Campus Day on the 8th and 9th January 2011. You’ll get to see the campus then and even see what kind of courses you want to pursue from the huge Open Day Booths at their Multi Purpose Hall.
Or you can just check out their website www.taylors.edu.my
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space