To me, Monash University Malaysia is honestly a place like no other. As cliché as it sounds, it has everything to do with the warm, friendly, fun and energetic atmosphere which is something that most definitely cannot be found anywhere else simply because it comes from our fellow Monashians themselves.
Someone once said that personal experiences are great stories to tell. Thus, here is my experience and personal take on the MUSA Day 2017 which took place last Friday morning. It started out with students excitedly chattering away loudly. My friends wondered what activities were going to be carried out but I was just too sleepy to care much about it. However, all of that was quickly changed by the masters of ceremonies, Z and Lawrence, who were very encouraging and changed my mood (and most probably others’ as well) by increasing our level of competitiveness while we were making each of our group’s war cry.
Even though our group didn’t get to perform the war cry on stage, I felt that the representative group from each school, including my very own School of Business did a great job in demonstrating their creativity, teamwork and school spirit. However, the heat of the competition really got to my group during the games when we saw the other groups running from one MUSA member to another shouting ‘Are you the ________’ MUSA member that they were looking for.
You know that the games had really kicked off when war cries could be heard at various stations, and not to mention the contagious laughter of the participants, the MUSA member and all of the buddies as well. In my opinion, the loudest would have been at the Activities Officer’s handless-football-carrying game. One of the engineering groups we were competing against used their stomachs and thighs to carry the ball and one pair almost fell on one another trying to carry the ball without using their hands.
At the General Secretary’s station, we were asked to sing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” with an accent, but the group we were competing against sang it following the tune of the Pineapple-Apple-Pen song. They were from the School of Pharmacy and they were definitely creative. The charades game was really fun where my friends had to reach their hands into the slimy rubbish bin with the supposed ‘frog’ to look for a marble. My friends and I could be heard groaning and squealing (because our group had a lot of girls and we’re allowed to squeal) when we dropped at least 4 of our water balloons during the Vice President’s game.
I’d say the most interesting part of the day was probably when I fell off one of my friend’s back during the water games at the Treasurers’ station but we won so as Brandon said, “our hard work paid off”. The day wasn’t all that bad though because we really had a lot of fun during the MUISS dancing game, Twister, Frisbee Tic-Tac-Toe and Captain Ball games, though we did lose quite badly to one of the Engineering groups in the latter but won against another Engineering team in the former.
In the end, my team didn’t win (obviously) but it was a really good way to bond and have fun. From a larger perspective, I think MUSA Day was definitely a great way to integrate students from different schools together in a lively and energetic atmosphere. It was also a brilliant way for us new students to get to know the MUSA members and understand their job scopes, to promote certain events such as the Wom*n’s Futsal event and to recruit new sub-committee members. I pray that this is only a preview of all the fun we will be experiencing at Monash. Good luck to all the new students and thank you to all the amazing MUSA members for creating this wonderful experience!
Stephanie is a new student who participated in this MUSA day as a freshie. If you would like to submit an article to be featured on the blog do drop us an email at musa.editor@monash.edu!
Words by Stephanie Leng
Photos by Andrew Peter Lim and Christopher Oh
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