55 Dozen

June 28th, 2008

Frankly, I prefer classes spread over five days than a cramped four-day timetable. Sadly I’m forced to comply and follow the decision of the class. Starting next week I’ll have classes from eight to two on Mondays, then Pre-Calc at five to seven. Four hours of Physics on Tuesday. Fucking sick. If I pass out from lack of lunch Ill sue the university. On the other hand, I could fast. Thursday’s timetable is a bit whack too, conviniently. God must be telling me to fast on Mondays and Thursdays for the next twelve weeks. Hmm. I don’t know if I’ll be up to it though. My stomach is often retarded and I lost weight. So annoying. My most comfortable pair of slacks spent majority of time sweeping the floor. My jeans became a dignity hazard. Like they’re going to pop up if I did a jiggle. Will have to wear belts again, how poo. I will bring a lot of food next week and avoid low-fat yogurt and such things.

In uni they teach at the speed of light. One chapter a week, six hundred pages to finish this trimester, a ton of algebra to be calculated in your head. Unfortunately, not everyone learns at 3×108 metres per second. Our Physics lecturer suddenly asked, “Who didn’t understand what I taught yesterday?” A few raised their hands, and the rest of the lecture (about a hundred of us) followed suit. I would certainly quit if I was him. Besides, I utterly suck at teaching. It’s like I’m unable to dispense knowledge and end up yelling at the unfortunate student. Oh well. Anyways, at the moment I’m superscared of flunking. Is this even the right course for me? I know I just want the title and the respect and the cert, but I’m sure I have a teeny amount of interest in engineering! I could dish out theories annoy my family like my dad does. (How to break a half-cboiled egg explanation of dynamics included.) So far, I’m enjoying. I am merely dense when it comes to calculations. Pre-Calculus is actually sort of nice, in a masochistic murdering-your-brain-cells sort of way. Just need to practice everyday. Screw English exercises, I must study things I suck at and do not like very much.

After twice attempting to stay up, I gave up. It’s impossible. Who wants to study until midnight when you can go online or sleep? By eleven, I would be dying. Going to study while I’m awake instead, or wake up at seven daily. That should do it. I’m so used to idea of being online at night and studying in the morning. Ridz lent me his fat Physics book - nine hundred pages thick. I do not know whether it is a curse or a blessing. It’s probably about two and half kilos - my laptop is way lighter than that.

Syash and I went to Shaid’s brother’s wedding. It was at this pretty place somewhere around the embassies in KL, apparently called Taman U-Thant. I love that area. The houses either look ultra-modern or straight out of a P. Ramlee movie. The bride and groom looked happy. Shaid was the one fanning his brother when they were on the dais. Hillarious. Hung out with Hasif, had a great dinner. The prawns were so chubby and sweet! Dessert was chocolate mousse and icecream with sticky rice hidden inside. Seems like the sort of Malay concoction Fa would enjoy, but for me the mousse was everything. It was quite a cool wedding because of all the video cameras around the place and just about six photographers armed with DSLRs hounding the married couple. I, too, would like a million cameras at my wedding.

Hasif is so adorable, missed him so terribly. He’s going to UiTM in Malacca without warning. So depressing. He said if he went to MMU he would help me carry my Physics book, which is very sweet of him. He’s that cute I probably won’t use him as a manslave and/ or trolley. There is Shaid for that, only he also does not go to MMU. Sigh. Since Shaid’s mum is a teacher, a whole bus (no, literally) of teachers from school came. In a bus. We waved at Mr. J who still remembers us! He is so rad. Didn’t say hi to most of the teachers. We followed Shaid’s mum home, which took forever ’cause she had to send some of his cousins to the hotel. Syash, Shaid and I just sat in her car and talked and laughed until one plus in the morning. He said when he came home … there were 55 dozen doughnuts in his house. Big Apple gave a free dozen for each ten. As an ex-Big Apple worker Syash was proud. When I got home, Fa and Ma were fine with me coming home late. Must because of the baju kurung.


The wedding favours are cute!


Me and Syash.

Good luck to the loons who are off to UiTM, Putih, Adi and Hasif!

Top Bunk on the Top Floor

June 22nd, 2008

I want them to make a movie of Kafka on the Shore. It like so bloody brilliant, why is there no movie of it? I’m sure if they look there will be a sufficiently good-looking good actor to play Kafka somewhere in Japan. I wouldn’t watch it for the bits where Kafka goes all Oedipus, but for the music. Music in a book. Every time I listen to John Coltrane’s My Favourite Things I think of the weird forest with Japanese soldiers. Have I mentioned it before? Prolly yes, I repeat everything I like over and over again. Haruki Murakami has good taste in music. I shall make a playlist of songs from his books in my iTunes in my future notebook, which will come very, very soon.

Fa picked me up for lunch on Wednesday. It’s odd how I miss going out with my dad, me dragging him to girly shops and him dragging me to Bally. Since he had something to do, we went home to Subang after a rushed lunch. So nice. I did some piano banging and can safely conclude, I only play like a maestro make less mistakes if I sleep horribly. We went out again to look at laptops, and not at the sexy XPS. Something much sexier will be coming my way. Oh yes! I cannot wait. I have assignments now. And I’m tired of using the library computer. I once opened (stupid) Ray’s blog and there were boobies. I spazzed and closed. It is not a good idea to be caught with an alleged porn blog. Anyway, I got to sleep at home and went back to uni in the morning.

I got my hands on the obese Algebra & Trigonometry textbook. C’est … obèse! It is 619 pages thick and packed with loads of wholesome numbers. I’d have to go through fifty pages per day in order to finish it this trimester. Utterly mad and dingos! On the other hand, English I, Human Development and Computer Applications are quite light, at least for now. The English lecturer is rad. He’s the funniest lecturer for our group. Thank God he does not happen to teach … say, Nanas. Because sex is not a taboo topic in the class and that girl doesn’t need anymore motivation. He bellowed at the class for sitting with members of their own race. I was sitting with Anis. “Are you Malay?” he asked. “Yeah.” “What’s next to you?” (He really said “what”, hahaha.) “Malay …” I said, and he continued to ask everyone in the class. We were ordered to rearrange ourselves and form groups of four, with each member of a different race.

Mine was with Devan (Indian), Ashley (Chinese) and Calvin (mixed!). Very Malaysian. I wish all the lecturers would insist on this arrangement for group assignments. Anyways, they cannot really blame the students for appearing racist in class. The management was smart enough to have one race per hostel room, and you normally go to class with your roommates. And it would be awkward to suddenly ditch them and not sit with them. If I wanted a monoculture university, I would have gone to UiTM or something. (Sorry Putih, Adi, sis-in-law, Fa, Ma and everyone who went or is going there.) Human Development is pretty fun too. I get to study psychology without taking psychology; pure awesomeness.

Mdm. R: I guarantee you the next theory will be interesting. It is about SEX.

A statement to which the guys cheered.

Ina ditched us on Friday after lunch, so Azlin and I were left to contemplate whether or not to go for the freshie party. No one we knew was going. It was organised by Christian Fellowship so naturally 99% of Malays decided not to go. I mean Malays, not Muslims - the close-minded ones. It’s not like we’d be forced to convert or drink alcohol, sheesh. People like Ken and Daniel just had to go back to their hometown. Ina went to settle some stuff. Everyone else also went back. Most OCs didn’t even hear about it. No one we asked actually wanted to go with us. So we also went back. Then it turns out that some OCs did go! Bah, it would have been so awesome to eat dinner with everyone. I miss my seniors. So lame. Goddamnit, screw our dinner plans, let’s have another party!

I finally got my hands on the laptop. It’s not a Mac or anything, but it tempts me to give it a semi-pornographic name, like … Sexy Beast the hp Pavillion dv3000. It’s so shiny. Customising it is so fun, more so after letting it charge for nine hours. I just loaded ten gigs of music into iTunes. How nice to be able to maintain three icons on the desktop. On my literal desktop however, the case is different. Since I went away, forty-six icons have been added to the original three. Utter poo. For now, I’m going to go spaz over my new baby.

You Do Not Run in Slacks

June 16th, 2008

Went out with the gay chums - Stepo, Nanas, Putih, Fen and Putih’s sister, Sarah. It’s nice to have a reunion after Put went for her Harry Potter land trip and Fen to Sabah to exercise and socialise. We watched the new Narnia movie. The guys were not cute. It was not a crap movie. If I wanted walking trees in war I would have watched The Two Towers again, not some kiddy magic show. Quite witty in some places. The views are gorgeous! Having lacked so much sleep in the past week, my concentration was still low. I wondered who cuts the grass in Narnia - it’s so level and healthy. Also, Prince Caspian said something like, “You killed my father!” I was surprised the villain did not reply, “No, Caspian, I am your father.” Things like that. They also should have more blood spilled. It is war, is it not? Surely they can afford red paint. Put gave me an early birthday present from Londonland. I liked it, which is a bit freaky. I wanted to buy a bag of a similar design online. But I do not know how to shop online. Yet.

Anyways … you do not run in slacks. You do not run in smart casual clothes, slacks and sandals while lugging around a bag and a giant file. Which I did. I was late! How disgustingly uncharacteristic. You would think that there are already more than enough latecomers in the world. I heard that the for the first week of uni they won’t have any tutorials, only lectures. That led to me returning to my hostel after a short English lecture to relax on the bed. Only to have Anis reply my message five minutes before the actual class. I called Wan Ling, grabbed my things and breeze-walked away, missing the Faculty of IT by three buildings. So rad.

Wan Ling and I got to Faculty of IT for Computer Applications a little late. We did not miss very much. What is there to be missed in the first tutorial? The lecturer pointed out the objects we see on the screen and their names which we always disregard. Wallpaper. Start menu. System tray. We shall learn about the practically extinct OS - Windows XP - next week or so. And Microsoft Word after that. And how to make spreadsheets and minuscule things like that. I can’t wait to learn C++. I bet ’tis gross.

I went to the library three times today. Before this, after Computer Applications I visited to check it out. There are lots of awesome design books on colour, typography, and such things. The second time I went with Azlin to kill time but was to sleepy to even look at pictures. I am now here with Azlin again. Needed entertainment, urgently, and aha! At last found an unoccupied desktop. There is a bright yellow sign stuck the the monitor, saying …

Accessing Undesirable Internet Sites and Downloading, Chatting, E-mail and Circulating Undesirable Materials are
STRICTLY PROHIBITED

Mmhmm. They might consider rephrasing that. It is quite cosy here. The only people who can see what you’re looking at have to be the ones next to you, and they do not bother to. I didn’t do much today. (A sign of having no life.) I woke up super early because my roommates seem to need to wake up at five and I could not sleep again - my tummy ached like mad. Showered very slowly and took a nap. Got up for English. Our lecturer is so random. He appointed some guy from Puchong as class rep. Minutes later I was appointed his assistant. A coursemate told me I look scary. Because I do not smile. Funny, normally people tell me I look sad, so sad. Just because Johnny Depp is plastered to my retinas it doesn’t mean I should always smile. One who smiles too much may come off as crazy anyway.

I had a tiny burger for lunch, lots of snacks in between and a chicken durum kebab for dinner. No idea what that means but it sounds like someone’s dead engine. Azlin and I bought Iranian biscuits from the mini market. It better taste good. One ringgit for four bloody little cookies, striped on the outside and has chocolate filling inside. Does not sound too bad. We shall see, later, because we cannot eat in the library.

Lastly … HAPPY BIRTHDAY NANAS! See if I can get you something cute from Cyber. Hee.