I was told before coming to Princeton that life wouldn't be easy for me. Apart from the work load, there would also be the psychological pressure from being in an elite institution, I was told. Even having this in mind, it was hard to go from being the cream of crop at UCL to being mediocre at best in Princeton.

It seemed as if everyone knew more about everything, and in greater depth than I could. It doesn't help when I sometimes realise that I should actually know what people are talking about because I've studied it before, but just can't remember for the life of me. I'm friendly with the physics grad students here, but I often feel reluctant to socialise too much with them, partly because they often 'shop talk' about things happening specifically within their department, and partly because they spend a lot of time talking about physics. The former would exclude anyone who's not within the physics department, and the latter makes me feel excluded because my knowledge of theoretical physics is very shallow compared to them. In particular, a couple of the physicists irritate me because of their self-assurance (and dare I say arrogance?) when casually talking about stuff I know nothing about. I'm OK when people talk about far-out stuff in a cautious and speculative tone, but when they talk about it as if it's the law and that they know everything, it's very off-putting.

In due course, I had learned to take the attitude that I'm privileged to be in the company of such brilliant people, and that I have much to learn from them. The likes of Richard Feynmann were once in their shoes, and it's likely that more geniuses would emerged from the ranks of the Princeton physics grad students. If I had gone to somewhere less demanding, I would have still been among the better students, but I wouldn't know how far I am from the very best. There's the saying the greatest fool is he who does not know he's a fool, so I guess I am less of a fool here in Princeton.

I seem to be losing hair more than usual. Oh joy.

Last week was probably the darkest time of my life. It was the fall break, which meant that most students had gone home. Although not that many of the grad students actually went home (mostly because 40% of the grad students are foreign), meals were not served in the week, so the focal point for social interaction was removed. So there weren't that many people visibly around the grad college.

I was already feeling extremely stressed due to the pressures at work, so I planned to commit myself to studying virtually full-time during the break, which wasn't something I felt like doing but I nevertheless felt I had to push myself to do. With the loneliness and my unhappiness thrown into the mix, something just snapped.

By Tuesday, I was feeling utterly weary of life, and would have welcomed eternal sleep. I just couldn't get up in the mornings, and when I did, I couldn't make myself leave me room, not even to buy food. I was spending hours upon hours sitting listlessly in front of my laptop, and now I can't even remember what I was doing in front of the computer. I was already undergoing counselling, but with my next session schedule for 2 weeks later, I felt there was nowhere to turn.

Eventually I did go to the health centre to request an urgent appointment, and spoke to a counselor. It felt much better to be able to let things out, and I immediately regretted some of the things I had done when I hit bottom. The next few days, I began to force myself to shut out my negative emotions and get something done, although it was still difficult to motivate myself to do anything.

Classes restarted today, and things felt so much better with everyone back. I wouldn't say that I'm happy at the moment, but I hope I never reach the depths of last week ever again.

I've realised that I have really bad long-term memory, even when dealing with physics concepts. If I'm not constantly working with a given field, e.g. electromagnetism, I'd rapidly lose my intuition for it. I'm struggling these days because my brain isn't in 'physics mode', and lately I've realised that even back in UCL my mind wasn't always working. In fact, it would only work after the month or two of solid cramming that precedes my finals, which is why I always do well in finals.

It looks like I'll need to carry the cramming ethic (i.e. about 8 hours of studying per day) over to my daily routine here....

In my general relativity class, there is this Russian girl, Tatianna, who is from the Anna Kournikova/Maria Sharapova mould of Russian chicks. Blondes aren't my type, but I hear that when the semester first started, the physics students (the GR class is in the physics department) were drooling over her, in part because she was one of only 4 girls out of the incoming class of 24 physics students.

Pretty soon, however, it turned out that this girl is married.

And has a baby boy.

It seems that her husband is also a Russian physics student in the 3rd or 4th year, and is working with Ed Witten, one of the top theoretical physicists in the world. I was in a conversation last week with a bunch of physics students, and one was saying to the other, 'We'd better make our mark and accomplish everything we want to do within 20 years, because once their kid grows up and gets his PhD, there's nothing left for us to do.'

I actually got to meet little Sergei last week when his mum came over to the grad college for Friday night drinks. He tried to eat my hand.

I've been playing volleyball for UCL in my years there, except in the final year. I've had a lot of fun in volleyball, however it is sometimes frustrating because I didn't seem to be able to play to the best of my ability during games, and going to practices didn't seem to be improving my playing. In the final year, I was playing so badly that I felt I was being more of a liability than a help to my team, and in addition I just didn't have much time to play anymore, so I stopped playing.

I've also considered volleyball to be the most 'disposable' part of my life, i.e. it was the hobby which I was the least passionate about, even though being the perfectionist I still did my best to be good at it. I had assumed that after starting my PhD, volleyball would go on the chopping block as my time became more and more limited.

So I am surprised that nowadays I am playing volleyball more than anything else outside of my studies. After the torrid form I had experienece last year, it was a pleasant surprise to find that my passing is back to my old level (which is still not good enough), and I have rediscovered the joy s of throwing myself around the court to retrieve lose balls no one else can reach.

Volleyball probably isn't as good exercise as simply going to the gym, and I'm not as good at it as I am to playing guitar, but at this point in my life I feel the need to interact with people to avoid being drowned by unhappiness and self-pity.

I am not adverse to hard work. I'm not quite a workaholic since I'm inherently lazy, but I can put in the hours to get things done if that's what I have do. But there's something very wrong if I'm sitting in front of a homework for 5 hours and still have no clue how to do it.

This has been the case for ALL my homework in the past week, and I just don't know what to do. I can ask my classmates for help, but it doesn't change the fact that I can't actually do the work on my own.

I've never felt so stupid in my life.

Astronomy is such a small world that it can be a little unsettling at times. In Princeton's astro department, there is a tradition where the grad students invite a professor or notable person to come for lunch on Thursdays, imaginatively known as 'thunch'. This stemmed from the Tuesday faculty lunch at the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) in Princeton, where following morning seminars the grad students are barred from joining the faculty members for lunch. In the 70s, some grad students here decided to introduce thunch, whereby only people without PhDs are allowed in apart from the guest.

Generally, the guests are distinguished visiting professors either at Princeton University or the IAS, but occasionally we get some famous names, like John Nash and Freeman Dyson.

In the past couple of weeks however, we have had the interesting experience of hosting thunch for guests who were ex-grad students here. Both of them, David Weinberg of Ohio State and Nick Gnedin of Fermilab, were students in the 80s and 90s, so they've had the same experience of attending thunch. I spoke to David Weinberg and told him briefly about my project on measuring the topology of cosmological reionisation. As I started to explain the method I'm using to measure the topology, he (politely) interrupted me and said, 'Yes, I know about that. I worked on that when I was a grad student'. I then realised that the main paper which described the methodology I'm using is Gott, Weinberg and Melott 1987. Rich Gott is still on the faculty here and I guessed prior to this that Weinberg must have been a grad student at the time, but I didn't really make the conscious connection between the student who had worked on the paper and the middle-aged professor at thunch until he told me.

Even more surreally, that paper which I'm using now was based on David Weinberg's very first semester in his first year as a grad student. It's funny how his first year project has spanned a couple of decades to become an integral part of MY first year project. I can only hope that my own semester projects will eventually have some longevity.

Life has been really difficult this past week. I'm taking two courses this term, 'Structure of Stars' and 'Introduction to Relativity', and there's a homework for each course every week. I seem to have to spend a day or two just reading through the material from the previous weeks' lectures before even starting on the homework, and then a few more days doing the homework. The problem with this is that I'm supposed to be doing research as well...it's Thursday evening and so far this week I've been doing nothing but homework, and THAT hasn't finished yet. I might be able to finish it if I work full-time this weekend.

I seem to be the slowest person in the department. A couple of my classmates are really smart and clever compared with me, which is fine with me apart from the fact that they don't seem to be as stuck with work as I am.

They have a phrase in Princeton, 'impostor syndrome', which is very apt to what I'm feeling right now. It's the feeling that somehow Princeton made a mistake in selecting me to come here, and that I've somehow managed to bluff my way to high grades in undergrad.

A warning from the manual of my new MacBook laptop:

"This computer is not intended for use in the operation of nuclear facilities, aircraft navigation or communication systems, or air traffic control machines, or for any other uses where the failure of computer systems could lead to death, personal injury, or severe environmental damage."

It's the first week of my semester, and I already think this is one of the most stressful periods of my life. I have hardly any leisure time at all, although I'm getting enough sleep (if only because that when I get back to my room I'm so exhausted that I fall asleep easily.

I am taking two classes this semester, Structure of Stars and Introduction to Relativity, as well as my semester project. I am finding it difficult to adjust to the academic system here. Back in the UK I could just goof off for most of the year and then cram for a month before the exams, whereas now I have to keep on top of my weekly homeworks, which being in Princeton are quite difficult. I generally have a low attention span, so it's difficult to make the odd hour or two to be productive towards my homework, whereas in London I could take a couple of hours to get warmed up when while cramming, and then put in a few more hours at high productivity.

I was warned some time ago that Princeton would be a high-pressure environment for me, and I have already found this to be true. This isn't because there is anyone breathing down my neck, but simply because I am constantly getting the feeling that I am the dumbest person in the building, and I have to work like crazy just to keep pace. On the bright side, it's making very humble indeed and forcing me to focus on the joy of learning. On the other hand, I wish the joy of learning didn't have to involve working on Friday nights.

It's only the first week, so hopefully I'll be able to get settled down into the routine ....

Our academic programme officially started on Thursday with our first class, which is on the Structure of Stars. The first lecture was on fairly basic stuff, most of which I already knew, so I can't say much about how it'll go. Apart from that, I'll be taking an class on relativity in the Physics department, and we also have a interesting seminar courses where we take turns presenting papers to the other students on current research topics.

I have also chosen to do my semester project with Renyue Cen, a Chinese lecturer working on cosmological simulations. It may seem somewhat of a coincidence that after working with Kinwah for 2 years in UCL, I'm now working with another person of Chinese origin, but honestly, I chose him because he had an interesting project and not because of his ethnicity. (I'll talk more about the project later...it's about the reionisation of the universe but I don't really know very much about it at the moment).

I always knew that Princeton would be a very challenging experience, and it was made clear by people I spoke to that graduate school will be tough, but it didn't quite hit home until I got settled in. There are about 20 graduate students in Peyton Hall (i.e. the astro department) at any time, and obviously I've already met the other 4 students of my intake, but apart from that, I think there's still a half-dozen students whom I haven't yet spoken to, and a couple of them whom I haven't even seen at all because they haven't emerged from their offices. And I've seen the words 'bleak' and 'difficult' used to describe the existence of graduate students here, so that's not too reassuring.

Anyway I'm currently excited to be starting work. I have no doubt that it will tough, but I came here to learn new things, and the challenges I'll face can only force me to learn more things.

At a reception given by the Dean of the Graduate School, I spotted John Nash getting himself a drink. Surprisingly, there wasn't anyone accosting or surrounding him as I had expected. A girl I was talking to said that a friend of hers had approached him for an autograph, and Nash declined and walked away.

I guess that while most celebrities like actors and singers are out to be famous as their raison d'etre, academic celebrities never asked for their fame. There are easier ways to get famous, like joining the Pop Idol auditions.

In the past couple of days, I have had conversations on the linguistic confusion in Montenegro, the political situation in Syria, the Argentinian accent, cosmology experiments, the experience of being in Beirut during the recent war, and carillon bells.

Princeton is shaping up to be really interesting.

So I'm in Princeton now. The flight here was miraculously without incident apart from a slight delay, and I even managed to get some sleep on the flight. These past couple of days, I have mostly been sitting through the international students' orientation where they talk us through the red tape and bureaucracy that we have to wade through, followed by actually carrying out these out. All this was necessary, but hardly inspiring.

My room is slightly small and I have to share one shower cubicle with 7 other people on my floor, which made me suspect that whoever designed the place figured that grad students don't shower. However, I do have the room to myself, and I have also been busy trying to get my hands on the things needed to make the place habitable.

Apart from that, I've been meeting a lot of the other graduate students, most of them international students since we all arrived early, but the American students are beginning to arrive as well. So far it's difficult to see with whom I will have lasting friendships and whom will become 'hi, bye' acquaintances, but only time will tell.

In the meantime, the graduate students in my department appear to have a work ethic that is intimidating (several of them were seen sporting T-shirts saying 'Sleep is for the weak'), but they do seem to be enjoying what they do immensely.

In the mean time, I still have a lot of personal stuff to sort out, but within a week I'll be working my socks off as well.

Many apologies for the long hiatus since my last update. My parents, my brother and I flew out here to London over 2 weeks ago, and since then we've been out to Paris and Switzerland, and I've only had intermittent and brief internet access. We returned to London last Tuesday, and my graduation was last Friday. The run-up to the graduation involved some measure of anxiety when we went to Netherhall to collect the tickets to the ceremony which were supposed to have been posted there. Despite rummaging through all the pigeonholes and old uncollected mail, it was nowhere to be seen. Fortunately, it transpired that there was no problem getting replacement tickets as I had my confirmation letter ready. My ceremony was in the afternoon, so in the morning I showed my family around the university, and when we were in the physics department we bumped into Dr. Furniss, the astronomy tutor. When he saw me he asked, 'Have you heard the good news?', and when I gave him a blank look he told me that I had won the Granville Prize for the top student in physics or astronomy in the entire University of London. It seems that there were only two candidates this year, I and the top student from Imperial College. Both of us had good academic results, but I won it based on my project work. When we got to the venue of the ceremony at Logan Hall near Russell Square, I left my family to get my robes. The outfit involved a robe, hood (which sat on the upper back) and mortarboard, and as I wore these over my suit, it wasn't long before I (and the other graduates) started sweltering in what was a warm summer day. The ceremony started off with a particularly cringe-inducing video extolling the virtues of UCL, narrated by someone with a voice like a breathless paedophile. The provost of the university himself couldn't be arsed to turn up for our ceremony so we had to settle for a vice-provost, although we were honoured with a pre-recorded speeck by the provost. After the obligatory speeches, we the graduates were herded up one by one for a handshake with the vice-provost. Yes, no scroll, no documents, just one stinking handshake to sign off 3 or 4 years of hard work. I got slightly more time on-stage on account of being in the dean's list and having won the Granville Prize, yet it was all of 10 seconds at most. Maybe for me, the undergraduate years are just a small phase in my academic life, and I was always in it for the learning and not the piece of paper at the end, but the entire process felt massively underwhelming. In any case, my family left flown back home a couple of days back, so at the moment I'm hanging around London getting my things sorted out and saying my farewells before I fly off to Princeton on Wednesday morning. I'll be talking more about my trip and Europe and putting up my pics, and of course I'll keep everyone updated on things when I get to Princeton.

Life here has degenerated into sitting in front of the computer and firing up some games, and then playing for hours at a stretch, much to my parents' displeasure. One thing about me is that I am unable to exercise self-discipline when it comes to computer games. Some people can manage to play for one hour a day, but for me it's all or nothing: if I play, I play non-stop, and the other alternative is to not play at all. When I'm at university, I obviously have to go the latter route, and I ensure that my laptop stays game-free, or else I would never get anything done.

As it is I'm not getting anything done at the moment. I hardly touch my guitar (an old guitar...I left my concert guitar in London), and a couple of books have remained unread....

I've been back since last Wednesday, and as usual it's taken a few days to readjust (or rather try to readjust) back to weather and the lifestyle back home. The weather rarely gets below 35 degree Celsius at home, and humidity is very high. Add to that the pollution exacerbated by smoke from Indonesian forest fires, and the result was my sinuses clogging up the moment I left the airport. As a friend once put it, I'm like a white person who happened to be born into a Malaysian Chinese family.

I have also applied for, and received, my US student visa within a couple of days of being back. The process was a lot quicker and easier than I initially thought. I had expected to have to show evidence of my links to Malaysia by showing bank statements and other documentation, and indeed while I was waiting my turn I did see several applicants being rejected on this basis. However, when it was my turn I was surprised that it took the lady at the counter only a couple of minutes to sort out my application, and I didn't get asked any questions either (I think the words 'Princeton' and 'full scholarship' was all they needed). Anyway, that's all sorted out now, although when I went to pick up my visa the next afternoon, there was a delay due to a protest outside the US embassy against the events in the Middle East (Malaysia does not have diplomatic relations with Israel, so they have to protest against the Americans by proxy).

I have a few friends whom are back (quite a few of my close friends are in fact abroad), and most of them are working, so for now I don't have much to do on my weekdays, although I'm planning to finish off the work on my first paper and start refreshing my memory on cosmology before I head off to start my PhD.

4 years in London, and it's always been more of a background to my university life than truly being a place. This was highlighted to me when a friend came to visit me a couple of weeks ago. I brought him to Tower Bridge and the Tower of London, and I was gawking along with him because it was the first time I'd been there as well.

It was somewhat embarrassing to never have seen most of the tourist sites in London, but I guess it's just to be expected for people who actually live here. I have a friend living in Hackney in East London who didn't know where Trafalgar Square, a major landmark here, is. Even worse, less than a minute's walk down the road from where I live is the Freud Museum, where Sigmund Freud lived the last year of his life, and despite having lived here for 3 years I've never bothered going in until yesterday (and even then I didn't really see the exhibits because I was too cheap to pay the admission fee).

I will be able to rectify all these when my family comes over for my graduation and I'll have to show them around the city, but I will definitely miss being a Londoner. Getting around town on the Tube and the double-decker buses, walking through streets filled with a polyglot of people from every corner of the world, the over-the-top monuments and buildings, and of course the pigeons.

I'm certain that I will be in London again many times in the future, but it just won't be the same as well actually living here.

I'm finally flying home next Tuesday, and I will be spending a month back in KL for a month before coming back to London with my family for my graduation and a bit of travelling. After my graduation, I will send off my family as they return home, before I fly off to the US on my own.

In the past week, I've been finally getting round to actually preparing for my trip home, by thinking about the logistics of travelling to the airport as well as what to pack. The latter is somewhat complicated as I have to figure out what I want to bring home and what to leave here as part of my US-bound luggage.

These preparations have brought about a strange sort of melancholy in me. A friend thought I was stressed out from the packing, but that's not true as I'm leaving the brunt of it to the eve of my departure.

My schedule for the upcoming trips have been fixed months ago, but it wasn't till I actually started preparing for it that the feeling of being a wanderer emerged from somewhere deep in my consciousness. I've known for years that my ambition has probably uprooted me permanently from my homeland, that for the foreseeable future I still have no idea where this whirlwind will leave me. However, this usually gets buried under the routine of daily life, and there it stays until a reminder of my state of flux, like a major trip, rears its head.

This time, there is additional pathos, as I draw to a close my time as an undergraduate in UCL. I'm heading to Princeton in September, and while I have spent a summer in Baltimore before, actually living and doing my PhD in the US will be a different thing. Also, even though I know that I will be spending the next 4-5 years there, I really don't know where I'll end up after that.

The last time I had the same feeling, I was about to fly to London for the first time as a fresh undergraduate. Now, that chapter of my life is drawing to an end, and going back home will allow me to reflect on things, although I suspect that more questions would be raised than answered.