“Is this a speed dating event?” asked a passerby at the sight of the pairs of chairs arranged closely together with a small table in between at the Foyer.

With red tablecloths, red and black balloons in addition to the soothing soft beats playing from the speaker, it was not surprising that a number of people voiced out the same thought during Flash Friends, an event held on Friday, 4th May (May the 4th be with you!). However, the event was in fact aimed for students to widen their network of friends, albeit in a short period of time, thus the word ‘flash’.

 

In its second installment, familiar faces who attended the previous semester’s Flash Friends were present as well as new ones. The registration went smoothly with the participants having to paste a yellow sticker on themselves with anything they would like to be identified with. While my boring and uninspiring self just wrote my name plainly, other ambitious ones sighted were like ‘Tr(ash)’, ‘155cm’, and ‘Ez but not Easy’. Definitely great conversation starters right there.

So, here’s how it goes. You sit facing another person (a stranger being highly recommended), get to know them for three minutes with the help of the box containing questions to ask one another if needed, have the music cue that your time is up and have one card from the top of the deck on the table flipped in which one person will have to move to another group as indicated on the card (either Spades, Hearts, Diamonds or Clubs).

The ‘flash’ part could not be any truer as I got to talk to around 17 different people through this event! Some MUSA members sighted participating include the School of Medicine and Health Sciences representative and the School of Business representative. Also, conversations flowed smoothly with hardly any need of the emergency box of topics to talk about. Not to mention, the food we had in between the sessions were great and the committee/subcommittee/volunteer team were ever so helpful and enthusiastic in their matching white tops.

Overall, it was a successful event which reached its goals of helping students get to know more people. A big congratulation deserves to be given to the Activities team for planning, organizing, setting up, handling the booth and ensuring the event ran without a hitch! Here’s also a special shout out to Poojani, who stayed until the end despite not signing up voluntarily but still enjoyed herself in the end!

 

 

 

Article by Durrah Sharifah Ahmad Azlan

Photos by Ryan Wee, Celine Chua, Mahrukh Ali and Nicholas Khoo