Living in Liverpool

I wanted this post to be about travelling in the UK, but I decided to save it for next time. The reason being I didn’t think it was fair to just gloss over my time living in Liverpool. Even though it was just over a year’s stay, it will stay with me forever! So in this blog, I am going to summarise my experience of living in Liverpool in the year that followed!

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By the way, if you are reading my blog posts for the first time, do start with my post about coming to the UK.

Arriving in Liverpool

The day of my arrival to the UK was special to me. As I was saying in my last blog post, the University (of Liverpool) had arranged for coaches to take us international students arriving at Manchester airport to Liverpool (places of accommodation). And on this coach transfer, I met my first friend in Liverpool. He was a guy from Pakistan, who had come to do his masters, similar to me. And we were both booked into the same student halls.

Now for those who don’t know (just in case), India and Pakistan (and Bangladesh) were carved out from the same piece of land by the British in 1947. And since that day, India and Pakistan has been bitter neighbours and involved in a number of wars, conflicts and military standoffs. The political establishment in both these countries have taught us to hate the other as our mortal enemy. Fear is a better motivator than love, after all.

So, meeting a Pakistani for the first time and realising they are pretty much in the same boat as us Indians, politically speaking, was kind of an eye opener. This is not to say that India hasn’t been at the end of many terrorist attacks, masterminded by groups based in Pakistan, which has taken countless innocent lives. The most horrific one being the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. One which we will never forget.

But this is to say that general people in Pakistan have nothing to with it any of it. And they are as helpless as us Indians, if not more. In fact, the people of Pakistan are now facing the same demons that India has been facing for years. And we cannot win this war by hate, or the divide that our political overlords actively create for us.  The only way is peace, understanding and working together. I know, a guy can dream!

Making Friends

Anyway, so I met my first friend on the bus to Liverpool and he happened to be a Pakistani. And I was so grateful for the friendship. It is through him I met several other students, that he knew, and started to build a friendship group of international students in our accomodation halls. It was primarily made up of Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Hong Kong people, Taiwanese, mainly Asian people. But we also had some Welsh and European representation. And one of them, went on to become a very good and lifelong (I hope!) friend.

My student apartment had six bedrooms, each about 12 square metres, with an ensuite. Each bedroom was occupied by one student. And then there was a communal living room cum kitchen, which was shared by all six students. Nothing grand, but very functional.

And it is here that I met my Welsh friend, who was studying Architecture. Coincidentally, he was put on a wrong contract by the University accommodation team and therefore, wrongly assigned our flat. And from flatmates, we became friends. Even though he moved out to a different flat in about a month, this time with the right contract.

Student Routine

As student, we spent our weeks attending classes, working on group assignments, and doing our individual coursework. But the weekends, were different. Well kind of. We didn’t have to attend classes, but still had to work on coursework. However, we all made time to meet as a group in one of our flats at least once a week for an international potluck. Followed by games like Uno, Pictionary, etc. And to be honest, as much as I loved the potluck, I absolutely hated the games. Even though, I am a big games fan and do at least one boardgame day a month with my friends now.

Our class composition was very cosmopolitan as well. But again, mostly Indian or Chinese. It is only after I reached these shores and started by MBA, that I understood that a Masters degree isn’t a valuable thing to have here. Unlike India, and rest of Asia. So local students would rather be in work straight after Bachelors (or even school) than get into fresh debt by studying masters.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t add much to your career, unless it is a specialist area you are studying and want to progress in that field. A general MBA, not so much. But for international students, it is a door to help you get there. The rest is up to you and the markets. If you are an aspiring international student and have any questions about studying in the UK, feel free to reach out me.

Coming back to our class composition, the good thing of having so many international students together what that we were all kind of in the same boat. Studying in a foreign city, on your own, with stuff to deal with. The Management School of the University provided us with all the support that they could to make us feel comfortable and settle down. Our course director and course administrator were amazing in helping us feel welcomed and settled.

Lifetime of Friendship

From our class, as you can imagine, a lot of us ended up as lifelong friends. We might not speak to each other every other day, but we know that we are all here to help each other. And I am grateful for that. That is of course if you can get hold of them, in the first place!

We helped each other not just through the coursework, but also life in general. Life as an international student in Liverpool (or as a matter of fact anywhere), wasn’t just all rainbows and unicorns. It was full of its ups and downs. But all knew that we don’t have to deal with that on our own. Living in Liverpool was an experience never to be forgotten.

The Last Stretch

The two semesters of classes breezed through. In the third semester we had to write our dissertations and some of the international students decided to go back to their home countries at that time. The worked on their dissertations remotely. For the rest of us, this was probably the first time we had some time at hand. I mean technically we should be using all our time in the library and working on our dissertations. But if you have ever been a student, you know how we always like to leave things to the last minute!

And so did most of us. That summer was a lot of fun. We didn’t do anything extravagant (we were students with hardly any spending money after all). But we spent a lot of time hanging out, playing cricket, visiting nearby towns/cities and having general banter. It did keep us going. However, when you do that, invariably you are rushing to get your dissertation as the deadline loomed. So, on the flipside, there were countless all-nighters in the library, zombie walks during the day and some of us even let out a tear or two. At the end of the day though, it was all worth it!

Nearing the End

Whilst working on my dissertation, I had also applied for a couple of graduate entry jobs (I told you before that Masters doesn’t mean much in the UK). I didn’t get an interview in the first company, even though I had passed their online exam, due to visa requirements. That was the first time the challenge or privilege of not needing a work visa struck me the first time.

Luckily for me, I didn’t have to wait around for long because the second company I had applied to was happy to sponsor my visa, once I cleared their online tests, two rounds of interview and an assessment centre day. Hello, KPMG! I chose to base myself in Manchester, thinking that I will still be able to visit my friends in Liverpool (which is about at 50 min train ride away). But unsurprisingly just like me, all my friends moved out of Liverpool for their own career journeys. So after about 18 months from our graduation, almost none of my friends were living in Liverpool any more.

I don’t know what I was thinking with my rationale of moving to Manchester! In hindsight though, I am glad I chose Manchester after living in Liverpool. It is a great city to live in. Albeit, Liverpool is still a better city is many other ways (hello Anfield!).

Living in Liverpool

Overall, that year in Liverpool is probably still one of the most difficult, yet fun and satisfying year of my life. The stress, the camaraderie, the learning and eventual MBA degree with distinction made it a very memorable year. And I also started my first travels in the UK during this year. I managed to do all the three mainland countries in this year. Northern Ireland wasn’t to be visited for a few more years. And that trip was horrible, yet special in so many ways. But that is a story for another day.

In my next post, I will write about the places I visited during my year at Liverpool and my key memories of them. It will be my first post about travelling in the UK. Because there is a lot to cover in the UK and I don’t think I can do them in one post.

For now, thanks for reading this post. Hope you have enjoyed this whistle stop tour of the time when I was living in Liverpool. As always, feel free to leave your comments below. And if you like it, don’t forget to share it with your friends and family. Finally, if you want, you can fuel my coffee consumption by buying me a coffee.

Till next time!