memorable convocation

it's been 2 days since my convocation. thought i'd write a little about it before i forget the smaller details :p

the convocation ceremony was held at dewan seri negeri, in melaka. FCM's session was scheduled for saturday afternoon, together with FOE grads. the whole ceremony itself was kinda boring...until it was time for the FCM grads to receive their degree awards! i mean...the chancellor's, president's and other MMU 'bigshots' walk into the hall itself was so slow...think a tortoise would've crawled faster than them! then...the president's speech...a mishmash of bahasa m'sia-english-bahasa m'sia...very sleep inducing...zzzzz. thank goodness i was surrounded by close friends and we typically tuned out all those speech rubbish by happily chatting away. heh :D

the FOE grads' degree receiving ceremony was all prim and proper...no glitches...all polite claps. the FCM grad's ceremony was obviously more memorable! we were all cheering on for our fellow friends...clapping hard for each person and yelling out their names. it was all whoops, cheers, claps, whistles, etc., with one girl even dropping her mortarboard just before she received her degree! hahaha!

what i remember about receiving the degree from the chancellor (tun dr. siti hasmah) was...
me: bow, shake hands with chancellor
chancellor: "congratulations", hand over degree
me: "thank you", big smile

unfortunately, the 'degree' we received was merely an empty casing with MMU's logo on the cover. this casing was designed to hold my e-scroll (CD format) and certificate (printout). this is where my complaints come in:
#1 each graduates' name should've been announced, as they went up to receive their degree. it would have made the convocation more personal. instead, what we did was line up like little schoolkids, and receive an empty casing each. our names weren't announced at all. the chancellor just announced: "...i present these awards...multimedia graduates...names as listed in the programme book..."
#2 each casing should've contained each graduate's e-scroll, cert, and whatever other documents. instead, we all had to go mmu melaka to collect the abovementioned documents. how lame and unorganized is that? or, at the very least, let the graduates collect the documents outside the dewan itself, instead of having to go all the way to mmu melaka

after the whole ceremony ended, there was a mass exodus of people exiting the hall. all the grads were rushing to take photos with friends, family and whoever else who were there. the next hour or so went by in a blur of flowers, soft toys, camera flashbulbs and clicks, friendly banter, hugs and the occasional flying mortarboard :)

the dresscode for the convocation ceremony was formal or traditional attire. i went traditional by wearing a cheongsam. it was a lovely, dark red, modern cheongsam with some beading and lacework on the top of the dress (store-bought, not tailor-made). i know it seems quite shameless, but i really do love the dress. heh :D and over the dress, i wore my dark blue graduation robe and mortarboard. the collar of the robe had the MMU logo in shiny green colour, which was FCM's colour. it was the ugliest colour among all the 4 faculty's colours (the others were orange, yellow, silver)...should've been blue instead :p

will go to the photo studio in klang sometime this week to take graduation and family photos. can't wait for that!