Freshers. Family. Food!

Freshers’ Tea, our first OUMSSA event of the summer, was a boisterous affair held on 17 August at The Florida’s function room. The 75-strong turnout proved a tad too crowded for the room’s official capacity of 50 people, so some resorted to socializing outdoors, notwithstanding the heavy showers that afternoon.

Look at 'em crowds!

Being a society comprising mainly conservative Asians, our committee settled for a sexual division of labour in preparation for Freshers’ Tea – females to the kitchen, and males to the hard (logistical) labour of moving ice boxes. (With that said, shifting some 80 over baguettes, numerous cookies, cake, and three different sandwich fillings made in anticipation of 100 people was a feat that the girls accomplished single-genderedly!) Meet our (all-female) team of lunch providers, who hand-made and wrapped sandwiches on the spot for hungry freshers and OUMSSA members:

Since the Tea was from an awkward timing of 11am to 3.45pm, an assortment of other kinds of food was provided as well for tea – kuehs, cookies, cake, crumble, and such. Special thanks to Shinny, Nicole, Sandra, and other lovely OUMSSA members who might have contributed a sincerely baked dish or two!

Then the structured mingling began proper. First, by subject:

Meet the energetic economists!

Hello hungry historians!

And here are the loquacious lawyers! (this photo does no justice – pun unintended – to their actual numbers.)

Hello gregarious grads!

Next, we met in families. Here’s a heartwarming sample of a conscientious single mum doing her best to entertain her three children as her hubby, miles away, gallivants in summer school.

Three cheers for Choi Choi!

Although Freshers’ Tea is an event attended mostly by freshers and second years, some rising thirds and fresh grads were spotted in the crowd too.

Hello rising thirds!

Amongst them is a bespectacled, curly-haired fresh-faced fresher named Mike who claims to be studying Classics.

It was all in all a wonderful afternoon of eating, socializing, languishing in the air-con and getting to meet the incoming batch of freshers. We look forward to Freshers’ Chalet, happening in less than a week’s time from 14-15 September – more fun and (decidedly incriminating) photos are to come!