Feeling: serene yet worried
Listening to : Drop It Like Its Hot - Snoop Dogg

Sorrryyyy for the long hiatus. The last coupla of weeks have been absolutely fuckin mental....

First off, there's the whole X-raya thing. After some delegation and stuff, i managed to pass control of caroling and raya songs to people who knew their shit, and i just had to take care of the script and the actors. After numerous rewrites, mental blocks and actor mods, the script is finally kinda solid, and just in time for X-Raya tonight. Hope all that shit goes down well.....

Week 9 and 10's gonna be beaatching as well. Got a coupla major courseworks due week 10, and a test on monday of that week itself. Seeing how time is juuust slipping through my fingers, and how notts games is gonna telan a whole saturday, i'm gonna seriously start workin like a mo'fucker. Oh yeah there's gonna be the last soul nation of term this friday as well. ...buwahaha.

Raya was just freakin surreal. I was soo geared up for raya to be on Sunday, so it was really really weird to find out on saturday morning itself that raya WAS on saturday .You'd think after 3 years here i'd learn. Didn't exactly rush either. After the odd distraction here and there, ended up in London late evening, at casa de Pinky for dinner.

The chaos isnt over yet - supposedly the raya makan at Malaysia hall was at 12.00 noon, as was stated at their website and their announcement to all UK msian societies. But then some people started saying that it was at 9.00am, then later said yeah it was at 12.00. When we got there at 12.00 most of the people i bumped into were already on the way back. Soooo saayang. Sigh. At least got some quite nice food. Later had a quick bite at Momo at selfridges with the Pinky household and scrambled off to join nadia back on an earlier train.... later that day also went to one of the posgrad students' open house on campus.

Yeah like i said last couple of weeks passing by like a blur......haha.....been missing fencing cos of x-raya rehearsals, so got no stress release, but definitely having fun otherwise. ( scratches neck in mirror) . Hope i really don't die of exhaustion by the end of week 10....Photos most probably to follow, and even maybe a long overdue rant or two once i manage to sit down and spout some crap.......till then, stay tuuuned!

Psych!!

Just the other day i was expressing my opinion that seeing the minute hand of an analog watch drawing near to the 12 had a more pressing sense of urgency than the numbers on a digital watch when it comes to being late for something. I guess the powers that be decided to have a little laugh with me based on that statement -

I had a lab at 11.00 am, so , like, i set my alarms for 10.30 in the morning. After going to sleep around 6-ish (okay didn't get THAT much work done) i woke up later, picked up a watch in a blur haze and saw that it was a quarter to. Not missing a beat i jumped outta bed, brushed my teeth and flew off to the lab - luckily they took attendance early on - suddenly i wasnt on the list for that slot, checked that i WAS on the 11.00 on my schedule, only THEN to finally look properly at my watch(analog , of course) and see that the little hour hand was at 9. Whoop-fuckin-eee.

About last week? I malas already la - dah semangat writeup ( okay, co-wrote) quite a hefty post covering all the crap that happened since my last post in detail, some error in mozilla took out everything. So here's a lazy-ass bullet point recap :
- Soul Nation , 2 fridays ago. Good
- Juinn's Halloween party the next day. Fun
- Lots of time wasting over the next week, including MSA stuff and really really random roaming about and a lot of staying up late for sahur, and staying up period.

Strangely short on boredom, free time as well. ( no, no one's complaining) AMazing how fast time is flying. Oh yeah - working at the Learning Grid is sweet! - nothing beats doing coursework on your laptop hooked up to a 42" plasma....(grunt grunt grunt) .

Hockay gotta run back for that lab now. Yes i double checked the clock.

Listening to : Josh Groban - Starry Starry Night
Feeling : Nostalgic, actual physical pain

I was just enjoying a quiet night in today after workin till 6am the day before on something i didn't even have to submit ( and because i cant really move much anyway after today's fencing) , when i decided to clean up my 250 gigger. I also updated my photo backups - and flipped through a couple albums. Hahaha - suddenly missed all you crazy Linstead people again - sigh . Thought of putting up some of those classic ones, but there were just too freakin many. (louder sigh)

Had our first proper MSA commitee meeting today. Apparently to warm up my bootsies for MNite i'm in charge alone of the Raya/Xmas celebration thing in 4 weeks - a quick 15 min skit, and the odd performance . Hope i can make sense of the random ideas in my head for the skit.

Another overdue update.....

Last week has been kinda busy, interesting AnD fun! Lets see...where to start -ooh how about a little rant to warm up. Jac, for the duration of the next rant you are a SINGAPOREAN, aight!

Freaking Hongkeys!!

Good god in heaven - what the fUcKiNG HELL is wrong with those people!!! All the hongkeys i've ever met through Oundle, Imperial and Warwick are outright utter abberations of human nature!! Seriously - they go all out to stand out - from fuckin annoying fake accents, dressing to the point where even vivienne westwood would even say " oh puh-lease dahling", dragonball hairstyles and whatnot. They are of course bitterly clannish, refuse to speak english unless its a life-or death thing and talk like they got loudhailers for nostrils and ALWAYS sit on the outer empty seat on buses and trains.

There are quite a few Warwick blogs ( all students are encourage to keep blogs on campus servers) that condemn their unwillingness to conform and the quality of their english, and a few of my M'sian friends have also noted icy 'cari pasal' stares of death from said hongkeys whenever they are seen with some of the pretty-ish hong-kong girls. They are also soo short on social graces - they chew like open wood mulchers, have halitosis that can melt a biohazard suit and they have no concept of what a queue is. wAArrgh - instead of spending their money on their oh-so tacky digs and LV and Gucci they should hire a whole army of finishing school instructors to whip them into passable humans. Jeez

Aaaah that felt good. Now we return to our regularly scheduled blogging... ( okay jac you can start reading again)

A Week In Words

Thursday - Pretty much relaxed day. Caught up with some Management and Manufacturing reading, and went to the International Society's HEAT event that night - arabic, salsa, greek, bhangra etc. Wasnt as fun as the last HeAT during orientation, but that was party because despite intense badgering, the only person Nadia and i could get to go was Taib. All the others bloody didnt come or FFK.

Friday - A helluva long day - was out from 1100 to 2300. Started out with another CAD lab, then lectures from 2-6 with one break in between. Then Taib and i had to go straight to meet up with the other fencers for the fencing social - all you can eat chinese in coventry. Pretty darned good for 12 pounds. Got back stupidly stuffed.

Saturday - Slept in, then lepak in Coventry with taib - he went to get a haircut, but ended up hair-cutless but with a new pair of shoes- hahaha. I just checked out the asian market there and got some stuff to cook dinner and instant noodles. Rained the whole bloody there tho. That night made thai sweet basil beef, sayur campur and rice for dinner - Wave, kiok sin, nadia and cheryl joined. Plans to meet up with some other jokers for drinks later didnt work out due to some ' communication ' problems - hee hee hee. Tesco was closed to so no one drank. Sadness.

Sunday - Woke up late the next day - just in time to get some 'work' done, and then went to the gym with Nadia. Suey like kok - the minute i left the hall it started raning like mad, and the second i got there it stopped. Ahh....forgot how shiok it was to bukak puasa with a nice swig of water when you're dying on the treadmill.....Cooked again that night ( baked pandan chicken - no oil - not nearly as pandan-ish) for the same party sans Kiok.

Monday - Kinda panicked when we all learnt that the Aesthetics of design coursework was due that day. Sommore couldn't finish it before 12 because of the Warwick MSA AGM. Luckily many ppl had problems with the online submission so i hope they'll be lenient with it. Finally - my knowledge of artists and designer products came in handy.

Also learnt about the AGM at the very last minute - went there just to see how it went. Had absolutely no intention of running for anything - until i saw that there was a post specially for running Mnite and their other cultural events the cultural officer. So on the spot i cooked up a bloody cock speech ( actually used only half of it) and i got the post! yay! I'm not gonna let the fact that it was 3 ppl running for 2 spots take away the glory but there - haha at least the other winner was last year's one who ran again. At least got someone to clean up after me! Semangatness!!!

Tuesday - normal-ish - got my new epee from leon paul(sweeeeet). Normal lectures, normal work . Can't wait to christen my epee tonight with some serious bruising!!!

Thats it for now.....the next week should also be fairly interesting, what with the first commitee meeting and Soul Nation on friday...yay

Feeling - tired but full
Listening to - Khia - Lick It Good

LUummpHAAR my procrastination is kicking in again - leaving behind some maths to the very last minute for my tutorial tomorrow. Oh well - at least its pretty doable calculus. And some stupid Excel skills thing i finished in a half hour. Supposed to start after my chinese takeaway and an episode of Samurai 7 but now i guess its after i finish blogging- hee hee hee...

The weekend was quite alright - made it to casa Pinky around 10-ish ( which was strangely overrun with slugs outside) . Aside from the normal silliness we just watched Zatoichi and White Chicks with a BK break in between.

The next day i amazingly managed to do all my essential shopping before noon - picked up the odd stationary and chocs at Selfridges ( gave the Mens dept a pass) and got some schweet new kit at Leon Paul - a pair of proper fencing shoes and a ganas Podznyakov saber( jealous ar jac?:)). Caught up with Darren, Fong May and her sis for lunch( didn't eat, of course) and then raided Harrods for some krispy kreme just in time for breaking my fast. Rounded off the day with a sweet japanese dinner with them too ( fINAlly ate at that hidden place at Picadilly Circus) .

Actually managed to leave early-ish the next day. Met up with (introducing)Nadia at Euston to catch a train back - would have left a little earlier if sOMeONe kept her wallet herself hmnn? Too shacked to do any work by the time i got back.

Normal boring monday. Normal boring TopB. Supposed to come early for the fencing session today for team tryouts for an away match on Weds , but because of the IMechE talk we had to go to i was kinda late and they'd already picked the sabre team by then. Wasnt a total loss though - out of the three they picked i beat two, and somehow i managed to give the third a cut under his glove. They'd better bloody well consider me for the next match then.....

And that pretty much sums up the last coupla of days. Too tired and too lacking time to be particularly funny or rant-ty. BtW guys if its rants you want, do check out marcus and roger's co-blog - haha wickedly bitchy for a site just ran by two guys!! ( no i'm not simply putting up the add - sure mati one...hahaha) . Till my next post.... i'll just leave you with the mental image of Tao singing the song i was listening to....

My back, my neck.....

Bleurgh - obviously, a whole day in the cold cold rain at Alton Towers yesterday didn't do much good. Woke up with headaches and a bitch of a sore throat - obviously felt fookin 'orrible. To top it off, my wisdom teeth have picked this moment to come out - praying like hell its gonna be pain and problem free.

Speaking of waking up, i was so dead tired after the day out and fencing too, that i slept through both my alarms. Luckily, i happened to open my eyes as the clock was at 8.55 - i had a 9.00 lab. Clocked a new record - from bed to lab in just about 6 minutes....... just threw on some random clothes and ran like fuck...luckily it was only a solidworks CAD lab, and i was wayy ahead on that particular assignment......

I guess i'll be coming down to London Friday night cos Leon Paul closes early on saturdays, and thats the main reason i'm coming down this time.....hmn....who to crash with ar?

Feelin - aching in places i never knew could ache ( body wise, not any syrupy wishy-washy emotional aches)
Listening to - Kanye West - Jesus Walks ( bum - bum - bum bumbumbum)

Hockay i have a lot of catching up to do again, so bear with me as i do this in my lazy-ass reverse chronological style again...



Adrenaline Overdose

Skipped a tutorial today ( yes i told my tutor in advance and YEs i did all the work) to go for the Warwick Msoc's day trip to Alton Towers. Schweet amusement park - mostly it was pants but they had some good roller coasters alongside all the normal fair-ish crap. Noteworthy mentions -

- The haunted house , where some pillock thought it'll be cool to convert into this laser tag-ish thingy - its like a normal rail ride through a haunted house, except you're busy shooting laser taggers at lights all over the place which is kinda stupid because you don't even notice any of the typical haunted house pop-ups and shit - like they'd actually scare you anyway. And you get points.
- Hex, where you sorta tour part of the old castle 'under restoration' , watch cheesy dramatization of the legend behind the 'curse' on the family who lived there, and end up in a room where they spin the seats and the whole ROOM in a tumble dryer style so that is seems like you're doing complete turns around the room.
- Air and Nemesis - vicious roller coasters - the first straps you in in a crawling position so its like you're flying, and the latter leaves your feet dangling, and its bloody fast and violent. We rode both twice.
- Oblivion - another roller coaster that only has one drop...but its a long vertical one....yeeks.

Despite it raining pretty much the whole damn day, we also got on a load of other rides and had oodles of fun.....

Got back just in time to go off for the fencing session. Beat the team's tresurer and drew with the captain at saber - go me! Need to get a new saber now tho - my blade's got more kinks and bends than a talmuddic jew's sideburns...which means..ANOTHER LONDON RUN!

On top of my game, so far!

Getting a little more into work this week. Had an actual workshop lab, and some math and concepts( mostly the physics and mechanics) work. Totally pimping at the CAD solidworks lab, and doin sweet on the circuit simulators as well. And i'm soo gonna own at the aesthetics of design module i'm taking - its basically the basics of a-level art again with a skosh of engineering considerations- i'll be needing some pretty specific art stuff which i cant find in bloody coventry, which is another excuse for a LONDON RUN!! Just hope i can keep this semangat-ness up. Ganbate!!!



Campus Nightlife?

After the first week, you pretty much know what to expect of the union, and realized that only like, its only worth going like once a week on certain nights, or sometimes two. If nothing else you can always chill at other peoples rooms.....or join hallmates and the fencing team drinking. Man i've got seriously crazy people in my hall....haha the last two drinking games i missed, when i got back one feller was crawling half naked on the floor and one feller was totally passed out in the common room. But they're quite a bit nicer than most of our Linsteadian hallmates.....

Alrighty i better go get some freakin sleep - bloody 9 am lab tomorrow. Night y'all - probably see you all again this weekend hmmn?

The vertical drop at Oblivion - this shot doesn't quite show you how long it really drops! 

Part of the happy M'sian crew at Alton Towers - Darren you'd love em - all but one are from Taylors! 

Feeling : Happy-ish, but dead tired
Listening to : Anuar Zain - Semua Untukmu

God I love that song - don't really know whether its the lyrics or the melody but i've been listening to it loads over the past couple of months. Funnily enough, i remember someone telling me that i looked kinda like him ( ages ago, before he presumably stopped cutting his hair and sold all his razors to raise money to make his recent album) . aaAAnd thats the bit of random Amar rambling for today..

Just got back from London and finally finished unloading and unpacking all my worldly posessions on this side of the world. Sorting and tidying up is an adventure for another day i say. Got into London around Saturday evening ( damned coventry buses and london tubes) , and took the 2200-ish train back Sunday. Lu and Yi Shan were nice enough to help out carrying the last shipment of my effects from Gloucester to Euston station.

Quick summary of the fun-fun adventures over the weekend :
- Hiccuped right through from friday morning until sunday afternoon. Whoever put that bloody curse on me better own up - i have my eye on you Naruto fans....
- Got ushered into the kitchen to help cook dinner as soon as i arrived at Casa de Pinky. Hospitality.
- Scared Vivian by leaping out of the closet in their room. Fuckin classic.
- Sibuk-sibuk a bit at IC's international fresher's lunch-thing. Didn't actually eat lunch though.
- Had lunch with the big D and the F to the M at Ikkyusan, Chinatown.
- Had dinner with Lionel, Charl, Yi Shan and Lu at Nandos while the others went to Four Seasons

Feeling : overly smug with myself
Listening to : Terror Squad - Lean back

I guess i should be living in fear right now. Had such a good time at Soul Nation on friday night i'm bound to have some major bad luck coming my way if my karma is still how it is. Waay better than the orientation thingy last week. Music was not as good, but its alll in the company innit?;) Tried to get drunk again. Still failed after a snakebite, a smirnoff, tequila, 2 aftershocks and a coupla other random drinks. Oh well - i have more fun dancing sober anyway aiiii?

First week here wasnt so bad. Being the repentant little boy i went to every single lecture and seminar no matter how boring or irrelevant it was. Got a little headstart on the reading and assignments too. Still no course material covered in the lectures yet though. Think i'm gonna like how the course is laid out.

Of course, my parents also wont bloody quit about telling me to mix with the locals too, so i did. Buwahahaha showed 'em a thing or two - had really fun drinking games Monday night. Gotta teach you this one game called '21' . Some really nice, fun people in my hall. Feeling less and less devoted to the idea of moving out.

Sides that also attended the teams fencing session. Bole la....but my legs hurt like fuckin hell after that - serves me right to leave them on the freakin couch over the whole of summer. They still hurt today, but i somehow made do at the union. No doubt they'll still protest when i haul them off to london Saturday for a final stuff run. Hahaha i'm counting on you guys to kick me out by saturday night....pleasse?

Well thassit i guess. Sorry for the curt, short update. Its almost 4 am and i AM fuckin tired. See y'all later...

LuMphAAARR!!

MAN my run of bad luck never ends. Just today when i was getting my uni card done - getting my photo taken and the card printed on the spot - the whole school network went down just as i got my photo taken. A freakin hour of waiting for nothing. Gotta go again to the panorama room tomorrow lor...

The delay in my student number also extended to a delay in processing me thru on the engineering department - my name wasnt on the list yet, and i'm still waiting for my timetable and tutorial group. After i went to the UG office to check it out, they were also about to enter me on the records when the network went down.

Seriously - this is getting a bit too far maaan.....did i step over someone's grave or something?

Man its gonna take me a while to get freakin used to freakin westwood. Its freakin far, and everytime i come back a different way i get lost within the westwood campus itself. Oh well - fingers crossed on that transfer.

aaAalrighty then ...

I meant to post last thursday because i was in SUCH a good mood - explanation to follow - but then a chain of events started, further extending my ridiculously good run of bad luck . Here's a quick breakdown of what happened

Saturday - flew into London with my dad
Monday - Stayed over at Coventry
Tuesday - Signed up for the orientation program, dad buggered off to london for meetings
Weds, Thurs - fun fun fun on the orientation program
Friday - went down to London - met up with Darren, Fong May,Lim, Lu and Jac. Stayed over.
Saturday - Still in London. Stayed over again
Sunday - Made it back to campus

Now to fill in the gaps....

Of course, being in close proximity to my father for extended periods of time, especially travel, can be highly stressful- nuff said about the first coupla days then. When i got to the orientation registration, i still didn't have a student number because the UCAS clearing info hasn't gone through yet. I was given keys to Claycroft, a nice hall near the center campus, and i was told it was gonna be a permanent fix but the paperwork comes later because i wasn't on the system officially yet. I later found out that i'd get my student number the next day, so i can enrol online in time to make the actual enrolment friday ( you had to enter your details online first) .

soooo i proceeded to participate in the orientation program. Malaysian # 1 - a cempakan junior who somehow recognized me - shivers. Malaysian # 2 - a random postgrad. Then it picked up - a whole whack of people from Taylors and many others too. Of course, there were the international students too. A buttload of exchange students from Eastern Europe and Germany especially, and India Indians who spoke better english than the local indians. Amusing reminder of IC - a bruneian called Lu ( Lutfi) and another German Kristina.

The programme basically consists of meals around campus, tours , speeches and parties at night in a massive marquis with performances like salsa, african drums and the like. There was also a tour of Stratford-on-Avon ( Couldn't get on the Oxford one cause it was overbooked and i was late because i forgot my ticket) . The really fun bit was the International Society's clubbing do at the union on thursday - loads of great music ( well by my account anyway) - arabic, bhangra, latin american etc etc. Let's just say i made up for the last few months of really bad clubbing aaaAAiiii! Haha some people thought i actually had dance training. Kembang giler!!

After my legs cannot tahan anymore i wernt back la - i was just about to blog after checking my mail when i got an email confirming that the accoms office had made a mistake - i was actually in another hall - catered with horrible food and the furthest from the main campus. cOCKS. So the next day i had to move out to the other hall -

Problem 1 - i had already stocked up on food for the next week
Problem 2 - the accoms office couldn't get me any transport that day

After a couple of hours of suffering i finally managed to shuttle everything over and i joined a couple of the guys in Coventry before bouncing off to London to see the jokers up there and pick up some of my stuff. I was ready to crash for the night - got a quick overnight bag but i ended up staying till sunday because of rail works on the Euston -Coventry route. At least i didn't have to come back again Sunday cos only then we could get access to Ee wen's place.

After repacking and resorting my stuff i got on the train back carrying bout 70-80 kg of my stuff. Needless to say, i was in pain by the time i got back to Westwood. Furthermore, i missed some little orientation things on the weekend, and also a hall meeting earlier today - haven't met too many of my hallmates as most of them came over the weekend. Got some major socializing to catch up on.

Amar's Bad Luck Checklist

Lets see what hit me in the last couple of weeks -
1. The whole visa fracas
2. The major fuckup by the Warwick accoms office
3. Despite informing the bank in advance of my address change, my bank card still got swallowed
4. had to go mangy for the weekend because of the totally random railworks.
5. umm.........cannot remember.....
6. I seriously swear there were 6.....just a bit tired to remember now.

There had better be a whole fuckload of good karma coming my way. If i semangat i post some photos soon from the orientation. Till then i'll just brace myself for the next wave of bad luck.

Bonjour mes amis, comment ca va?

Its been a mildly interesting week. Boring ass weekend though. Most of the outings we planned for friday and the weekend never happened to i was stuck with my parents again. arrRRGh.

Saturday - a boring boring blur

Sunday - foolishly remarked about my not playing golf for a long time in the prescence of my dad. Got hauled off to RSGC - luckily it has been raining like, every other afternoon so we were stuck at the driving range. 300 balls and a square metre of divots later i was sooooo bored. Despite slicing , topping and hooking half my shots i still outdrove my dad. yay. Food at the club worse than ever.

Monday - dinner out with parents, followed by more freakin dota later.

Tuesday - the real fun begins. Went to VFS to check up on my still pending visa after a week. Couldnt call because the lines were seriously impenetrable, and the high commision didnt take calls on visa matters. Waited for 3 hours to find out thats its still pending, no other explanation. Fired off emails to VFS and the high commission .

Wednesday - got a reply from someone at the high comm. Apparently they told VFS on monday to contact me and ask for my original unconditional offer. Funnily enough, the officer i dealt with last week said that the copy was fine and they didnt want my original. Yet when i went on tuesday they didnt say anything about that. Obviously i was rather pissed. A few assertive phone calls and emails later and the high comm agreed to let me bypass VFS and deal with them directly. Went down to the high comm and dropped off my offer letter.

Man i swear British immigration must have some personal vendetta against me. I hope some guy goes postal at the tiny VFS office and hoots the fucktard officer who handled my case. If they don't get this done by friday, there's no point in even just picking up my passport to make the flight because they dont issue student visas in the UK anymore - you cant even apply at the immigration place in east croydon like i did last year ( 12 hours, 250 pounds and the bitch gave me just one year) . Judging by my current luck i better write in advance to the bank so the don't swallow my bank card when i use it after 3 months of silence like last year.....

On another note, after reading charl's account of the IC freshers thingy, i suddenly remembered again how much i'm gonna miss all you crazy hall people. I'll be definitely swinging by london now and then to catch up - I'm sure going down from warwick to london will be a helluva lot easier than going down from KL-singapore with my frickin parents watching my back.

For now, i guess i'll just scream at more paper-pushing syncophants over the phone and get a head start on my packing. Fingers crossed on my visa!

ps. - will somebody help me get that freakin Franz Ferdinand 'matinee' song outta my head?

Lo and behold, i have returned!

Where have i been for the past month or so? Well pretty much in and out of home. Whenever i get online it isnt for much except to do mail and read comics so i never bother to turn on MSN either - what more to sit down and blog. Apologies to you, my loyal readers/really bored people. Still kinda on hermit mode when it comes to checkin up on friends who arent in town - sorry IC people!

Lotsa little things to recap over the last month - so lets start with the important ones first:


The big stuff..

After goin through a messy coupla of weeks sniffing out places for clearing, i managed to get a place doing Mech Eng in Warwick. I got offers from Kings and Queens in London, but after ages of weighing the pros, cons and merits of each decision i settled on Warwick . Man...i'm gonna miss soo many things in London, especially you crazy IC people - don't worry though i AM gonna swing by every now and then. As for the status of my scholarship , its pretty much a " keep in view" case over the next year - corporate talk for "see how first". I'm flying off on the 18th to catch the orientation programme.

Well thats pretty much the ONLY important thing.......

A month, in bullet points

- Too much Dota. Dota Dota Dota. Seriously guys is there nothing else?

- Darren, Lionel and Fong May came down for a coupla days. Lotsa fun. Haha FM you didn't think i'd forget about your quote of the day hmnn?

" I didn't come today with a sign that says 'poke me'"

Don't ask....

- Cooked dinner twice for the dota gang back home - an arabic dinner ( lamb tagine, grilled chicken on hummous, briyani-ish rice and tabbouleh salad) and a crap spanish dinner ( soggy Paella, bad gazpacho and tortilla y fritatas- NO it wasnt telor goreng with potatoes) . Apparently Adrian was the only casualty after some "results" from the paella.

- Caught AvP. Great for a typical summer flick - thumbs up on the viscera but hideous plot and character development. The silliest part has gotta be when.... SPOILER......the only human survivor casually teams up with the predator. At the moment, cant remember what other movies i've seen...

- Made to play secretary to my dad for a coupla days. Since i had to tag along to settle my bank account, flight ticket and Warwick stuff with MABECS here he made me do a whole shitload of other admin stuff for him too.More on this in the section to come..

- Applied for my student visa the other day at the new UK visa center at Wisma MCA. Tiny place, bad service - people were being turned away for little things like not cutting off the borders on their photos and stuff. I myself had to get my photo redone and come back later as they stricly needed photos with a white background.

- Of course, more Dota. A pox on you , Blizzard!

Back to good 'ol ranting and the like...

A particularly stressful period was when my dad made me follow him around running errands. Long term exposure to his habit of narrating everything and saying redundant things can be bad for your blood pressure along with his insistence of doing everything his own convoluted, archaic way. Among my oh-so interesting jobs was syncing up stuff from his secretary's computer with his computer. For some reason, while i was away he got a Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop with a 128 meg GeForce and a gig of ram, an ultraportable Fujitsu Lifebook and an HP iPaq PDA. All were pretty much in mint condition except for being taken out of the box and moved around. Big, pretty paperweights. RrARRRgh. At least i might "commandeer" the iPaQ after he forgets about it. Eeexcellent.

I'm sure at least a coupla of ya have heard of Jojo - an upcoming 13 year old (!!!!) R&B songstress. Not only is her voice quite the powerful but she's pretty...ermm...developed for a 13 year old. Short of sounding like a freakin pedo ( FiNE Alex, at least Emma Watson's almost legal) she could really be worth watchin out for in the next coupla years.....

Aside from sharing laughs with my mother over evil, inappropiate things, and my aunty still going "pray pray pray" like a broken record, i pretty much can't wait to get away from home again. Once i get back to some quality online time i'll get with updating my photos page and spiffin up this page - probably gonna play around more with the colours and formatting on the entries. Till the next time i actually blog, keep it tight, homies!

13? You gotta be kidding..... 

Thar he blows - off the starboard yarn! Arrr!!

Sor-or-or-heee for being off radar for like, almost a month. ( Whoa, randomness - serious deja vu). Well i was away for quite a coupla days off to my other hometown, but i've been languishing away at home most of the time besides the cybercafe trips(gettin really boring) and the odd movie. Saw I, Robot ( not too bad at all) House of Flying Daggers ( typical kung fu flick ) , Mean Girls( hilarious), King Arthur( mediocre) .

Not having too much fun on nights out due to a random 12pm curfew by my parents ( thanks to the Darren Kang case and some other random shit) . Otherwise i've been reorganizing pretty much anything in the house i can lay my hands on. Strangely reticent to go online, much less start up MSN or even blog. Why you ask?

Like a ton of bricks, one by one on the ballss

Yup its my results. Even after expecting the worst it kinda hit me hard. In a nutshell, managed to scrounge a clean pass score-wise, but failed programming hideously, and logic too. Could have sworn i did better on at least a few of the theory papers. Funny thing is, programming is the only thing you cant fail or retake. Needless to say i definitely wont be going to second year computingat IC. As of press time, im still trying to smooth over a course change and also deal with Petronas about it. Possibility of staying in IC's kinda grim at present, so i'm also liasing with some other unis with possibilty of another place.

Needless to say all this is taking a heavy toll on my stress , sanity and ...well everything. Luckily all the drama in my house was confined to just a few days - my father himself failed his medics a coupla times ( ended up with an agric. degree) but my mom's another story. All the emailing and waiting aside, i havent been sleeping well at all and my eating patterns are totally off whack. If it werent for the odd hours out with friends i would have totally gone mental.

Thats about it. Lets not talk anymore about that - anyone who raises this issue to my face will lose a kidney or two sooner than he or she can say "hey at least then its lucky that you havent signed any lease contracts yet". Obviously this covers any sanctimonious "i told you so's" , any sentiments of pity or any patronizing. I'm already lost enough hair( brushes more off his keyboard) thinking about what went wrong, post mortems and shit. I will get through this. I will redeem my honor. ( amar ululates) .

On the flipside, lookin forward to see you guys from down south this weekend! I'll see if i can get my curfew revoked for a while....

Of Sneezes and Saffron, part II

The minute my dad and i arrived Wednesday afternoon i was put to work by my aunty - joined my cousins who were running around like drones waitering and helping out in the kitchen. Never ending flow of relatives and well-wishers coming in all day - most of which hardly missed a beat to pay their respects to go straight to the food. Imagine waiting on hordes and hordes of seriously kampong people, dressed all in black when its 40+ celcius outside.To top it off, not many of them spoke english OR malay.. This went on through the night and until lunch the next day.

After lunch and another barrage of ceremonies the next day, our entourage brought her to the temple for final prayers at the crematorium. FInally had some rest after that. THe next morning at the temple when we picked up the ashes we had a lunch for the immediate family at the temple. Just as luck would have it, that was some special monthly day or of worship where people come over to the temple and offer food to the priests for blessings. Needless to say there were lots of random kampong moochers at our lunch in the main temple dining hall - some of them even packed our food to go. Started the drive home around 3-ish - parents made me drive. Boring ass-4 hour drive on the highway.

Idle hands are the devil's workshop

Next couple of days were pre-tty boring asides from a coupla friends coming over and the odd cybercafe/supper sessions- and of course the odd 1-meal a day binges- i don't think i'll be eating Nandos again for a while after scarfing a whole Peri Platter ( 1 chicken, 3 sides and a salad) all by myself at lunch with my parents Saturday. My capacity for gorging has fully returned, but then i'll be full for the next day or so...

Some of the more notable acts of boredom include:
-Sharpening everything with a blade in the house
-Spear-fishing( with a sharpened broomstick) for rats behind the house at dusk - caught one!
-Reorganizing all upstairs bookshelves.
-Putting sharpened sickles and parangs to use - some cosmetic gardenwork

Time for another overdue update between sleeping and Blogger being down...

Part 1 : Of Sneezes and Saffron

The four of us drove down to my grandma's place on friday ( 2 July) . Quite a few of my aunts and uncles were already there. Not only was it sERRIOUSly hot, there was no water in that area of the state as well - and as expected, hardcore sneeze attacks came along pretty soon cos of all the dust and mangy dirty cats around the place. Unpleasant. Boring too as none of my cousins were there yet. At least caught up on some proper Thai food.

1 day short of being completely bedbound and semi-comatose for an entire year, my maternal grandmother passed away around 1.30 am sunday morning. Almost everyone stayed up well into the next day helping with the planning for the numerous ceremonies to come. By noon busloads more of relatives, a small procession stage, tents and monks in many many shades of orange had appeared. After some last rites/blessings thingy ran by a coupla priests and a "specialist" involving most of the family she was put into a coffin and put up under the shade outside in a typical lying-in state arrangement after being injected with formaldehyde. THe formaldehyde will probably come in handy as the numerologists later decided that she would be cremated the coming Thursday after a 3 day wake and a couple more ceremonies.

Hence, in an uncharacteristically merciful act my mom let my dad and i fly home sunday night so we wouldn't get in the way of all the arrangements and rituals aANd because the house was kinda packed too. We'd be flying back in wednesday afternoon for another ceremony before the cremation and another bunch of ceremonies. Hopefully driving back friday.

A merciful release for my grandmother - she had been suffering from crippling athritis, rheumatism and the like for the last 11 years to the point of near total incapacitation.

Part 2 : Banana Leaf Madness

On monday, managed to meet up with charlotte, lionel and soha. Started with the first two dropping by my house to wait for soha to finish teaching at BBBS. Ended up with them staying for 2 hours-ish and laughing at my old photos. Poppycock. Later picked up Soha and at at a banana leaf place somewhere near UM. Went mental to the point of being full for the next 24 hours. Nasty, nasty things must have went on in my stomach. After that we just dropped soha off and chilled at casa de kinky until they were nice enough to agree to a drink at 1 Utama so i could scamper off later and meet my dad for a 9.30 show that he preemptively booked me for almost a week ago- Spider Man 2. It was quite okay...about as good as the first.

Part 3: C'mon, something other than Warcraft?

Spent the better part of the morning clearing out my room of junk , reorganizing the upstairs bookshelves and redoing the mess of wiring in my room. Later had dinner at 1 utama with zkerng and we joined the guys ( more like got there first) at silver surfer for a much missed cybercafe warcraft marathon. There was like..10 of us - total all out swearing, cursing madnesssss. Got slighty less hectic with the pussy hero map. Played like , from 10 to 2 and then had our customary post-mortem discussion at the mamak followed by cocktalking and reminiscing. Nobody was really eager to drive back cos it was raining like cock. Oh yeah - speaking of driving - first time i drove out of BU since LAST summer. Didn't bang anything or get lost in the rain- go me!

Still waiting with baited breath for the e-mail or snail mail that'll say that i either need to resit a paper or two, or god forbid, completely failed my bitch of a course. Those were supposed to be passed out from the 2nd onwards - well its already the 7th, so i'm still keepin my fingers crossed. If i don't get it next week i'm calling anyway to make sure they didn't screw up my address....haha i'd be completely over the moon if i don't hear anything from them till the end of the month which means i passed clean.....i can only hope....

Ahh.. realized how i missed my mother's dulcet voice when she issues orders and imperatives( 99% when she opens her mouth) to my father and i. bleurgh.

The next whole weekend hangus - got dragged back to visit my bed-ridden grandmother - she has been bed -ridden for the last like, 4 years. God forbid that she actually passes away anytime soon, then i'd have to stay even longer - thai funeral rites are apparently rather long. Sorry if that sounds insensitive. I just don't like how my mother drops her orders - yes i KnooWWW all mothers are like that, but i'd probably have both sides of the family behind me if i say that she's more than a little pushy. Hope i don't miss too much lepak/gambling/eating/clubbing time. It is after all MY holiday, dammit.

Speaking of clubbing, a coupla of us checked out the new Zouk in kl. We went on thursday, which was " Ghetto Heaven" and also ladies night. NOt only was there far more quantity than quality, there were also LOaaDDS of mat kampong and mat motors and other random mats trying to show off their rather dubious "moves". Dance floor was packed as hell, but the music was good and the drinks were not too expensive.

Played badminton the other day too. Amazingly played a bit better than on the odd occasion i did back in London. Must be the weather or something. Still feeling the pain today - aching grip and leg pains - those 'clicks' and 'clacks' in my legs during the game can't have been beneficial...

Anyways, hope the weekend rolls over with no incident( if anyone sees the Reaper, try and invite him to yum cha or something). Lookin forward to good ol' gambling sessions and all the cursing over cybercafe Warcraft....

Its good to be home.

Well... better anyway - until it gets boring. In the 6 months that i've been gone, Kaknab's cooking has fallen even further from grace, the kitchen has been ( horrendously) redone, and my dad's bought even more crap he has no use for. At least my mother didn't fry ( or even learn to connect) my Streamyx router - i'd DiE going from 1mB/sec college ethernet back to dialup. Haven't started on my culinary hedonism yet except for a nice japanese dinner at M.O. the other day - my stomach should return to full capacity soon enough. Oh well - that and the fact that both my parents have become ardent followers of Akademi Fantasia.

Akedemi Fantasia is pretty much a carbon copy of the Fame academy, except not so much bitching and backstabbing - and a coupla of them are actually pretty damn good. Too bad the same can't be said for like, 99% of the people who tried out for Malaysian Idol. Seriously....some of them haven't a fuckin' clue - one lame-o started with a short Nobita/Doraemon skit with handmade masks and then launched into a random old geisha-style japanese song. Another notable one was a girl who wasn't that bad, but she chose a sheila majid song. Big mistake - one of the judges was her estranged ex-husband who has been fighting a bitter alimony battle for years. Boo-yah! The hour-long montage of failed M'sian Idol auditions was abso-fuckin-lutely hilarious - and that's just the penang-ites!

Been sneezing left, right & center - must be the damn haze or something else in the air. Damn Indons and their open burning. Sleep cycle's still pretty screwed up. Its gonna take a while to get back to even sleep timings - slept for 5 hours the first night, 15 hours the second, and i'm still waiting to sleep today. Once i'm set i gotta hunt down you guys back home!

7.00 am now - and its still nice and dark-ish outside. Back to trying to get to sleep.

Feelin - too tired to be excited
Listening to - the sound of people packing all up and down the hall

Yaaay flights later today. Keepin my fingers crossed for a smooth ride to the airport and a smooth flight home ( and another free upgrade, maybe?) Travelling back 'light' - well normal anyway. Managed to store most of my stuff on Weds - we had to hire a removal truck just for the three of us. Hahaha at least i wasn't the guy with the most stuff.

sOOOOO many plans for the last week of term didn't fan out. The BBQs, the picnics, the parties etc etc. We finished the year on a nonchalant note of shopping and starcraft yesterday. Kinda disappointing. I guess everyone was still busy sorting out last minute stuff like shipping, storing and tying up a whole fuckload of loose ends.

We-he-he-hell now..... guys, its been a helluva year. Lots of laughs, lots of fun , lots of stress, and also a bit of drama now and then. I'm sure as we all got to know each other better through the year everyone's quirks, weirdness, and god forbit, the odd endearing trait started popping up. Well i guess living with people is all about putting up with their crap anyway while at the same time being thankful for whichever way they have supported you and made you grow as a person. What goes around comes around bla bla bla bla

enough prissy cocktalk. Anyway the point is its been great knowing you guys, hope to see you all next year( no reaLLY...assuming i get to stay in Imperial ) , forgive me if i have said anything particularly brash or offensive to anyone in all my randomness and have a fun fun summer whatever you are doing!

Feelin - numbing boredom + equally numbing headache
Listening to - whatever the hell comes up next on shuffle

Packing's a bitch.

Gotta finish up packing away all the stuff i'm gonna keep here over summer - a couple of us are storing our stuff over at ee wen's place tomorrow..whoops later today - which means i will be sans speakers and espresso machine for my last two days here ( oh the hORRoR). Hope bringing our ridiculous amount of luggage to Earl's Court will go without a hitch.

The BBQ on saturday was ser-weet. Quite a lot of the scholars showed up . Caught up a little on new scholarship policies and shit ( all the while supressing a chilling sweat whenever the topic veers anywhere near our batches' results , especially mine).

Sunday and Monday was boring besides from the usual beating at starcraft ( damn guardians & nukes). Still trying to find a third person to share accoms with. Still not getting much sleep either - doubt i'll get much more at home while i'm still fucking worried sick about results. Oh well, next coupla of days will hopefully take my mind off them. Gonna mobilize a mob to hit Selfridges on the first day of their sales this Thursday - havent done any retail shopping for freakin ages.

Oh yeah before i forget - the quote of the day - from a female member of our posse who had food poisoning simultaneously with PMS - " I hope god will give you a vagina so you can bleed from it!" (ps. - that wasn't said to me, btw) aand we had some interesting dinner theater to eHUk eHUk....( cats hissing ) ..

2 days to gooo.......

Feelin - tireeed
Listening to - You Knew, Mario Winans

Maaan the hall's "Going Down" dinner kinda blew - Well its not so much that they substituted the karaoke with the 'awards' or the fact that the music was overall worse - its more to do with so few of our bunch actually going. It's not that we're antisocial or anything, but it can be hard to connect to the locals sometimes, some more than others( c'mon, i've been here for three years ). Probably post a few pictures from that later - charlotte in her "birthday dress"? hahaha toldja i'd never let that go....

Ran around for most of the afternoon - sorting out my final coursework submissions, sent some mail and settled some other stuff. So much for shopping. Meant to get up earlier so i'd have the afternoon off to chill, but that wasn't really possible after fencing and mucking about till 5 in the morning.

Tomorrow's pretty booked as well - goin for a BBQ hosted by Petronas' student advisor here with a coupla of the other scholars, and dunno lor what we are gonna do later tonight - see what stories the Amsterdam/Brussels crew have for us....

daaAAmn - i had something else on my mind to write earlier on, but i forgot. My short term memory's gone to absolute crap. Oh well - see if i remember it tomorrow. brrr - its startin to get chilly again...my feet are actually coldddd

6 days to go...

feelin - more bored than an eunuch watching porn
listening to - La Vida Es Un Carnaval, Celia Cruz

GOD wednesday night was boring. Tomorrow had better be freakin fun. Had an early nap and played a coupla games of FT with Darren - haha gotta train him before Lu and Alex gets back....

Funny story - during that nap had a very weird and equally vivid dream - parents and a whole bunch of ex-cempakans visiting me in the hall. Hahaha total madness - got singh( duude you were dressed like some crazy ass rapper) , daim, waris(sans afro), izran, tai uei, edwin, etc etc etc and even some random people from the batch below.

Probably just about dying to get home right about now....might not be totally homesick but definitely starting to miss the little comforts of home - found myself looking on ebay for persian rugs of all things....

8 days to gooo....

Feelin - bored, spaced out, lingering portent of doom
Listenin to - Hey Mama , Black Eyed Peas, Show Me Your Soul, Bad Boys 2 OST, Teamwork, Ludacris

Sorrayyy for the post-less week again (haha lepak larr singh...i'd be back soon enough). Between complying with my edict of tRyiNg not to blog when i'm pissed/moody/PMS-sing and dishing out the whupass/gettin shafted at Frozen Throne and Starcraft memang takde mood nak blog....jangan marah ye?

Yup - you didn't hear me wrong - Starcraft. In our post exam boredom we went on an old-school gaming spree over the past week - Console emulators ( neo geo, SNES, megadrive, GBA, N64) and even the venerable Starcraft. Realized i was soooo out of it. Forgot all the hotkeys, build order and shit. Kept getting beaten upside down , especially in free for alls where i always coincidentally get gangbanged - suspicious.

Just did some errands and some accounting today. Realized i haven't shopped for ages and for good reason - after holiday expenses and other random expenditures here and there ( COUGH eBay COUGH ) there wasn't really much left to go aggro with.Got only 1 month's worth on the accoms claims too...die lorr like that. Didn't wanna put anymore strain on the good ol' amex either after that new pair of specs and the Vidal Sassoon haircut (still, got discount whaaat!!) Shambled off to the bank to cash in a whole buncha silvers and coppers, and spent almost half the amount i put in on a Starbucks mango frap on the way back. Cocksss...

Last week should have been relaxingly idlyll. Mostly sunny ( really REALLY hot - almost like back home) and cheery weather. Too bad i wasn't really in the mood to enjoy myself. Haven't been sleeping well at all - partly because of the shorter nights and morning sun, the thoughts of the ramifications of actually not passing my course(not even counting dissapointing my parents- a first- and Petronas) and the accomodation fracas amongst our bunch.I'm not gonna bitch too much about the subject, but accomodation arrangements got from bad to worse to a hideous mess even an Indah Water septic tank cleaner wouldn't wanna get close to until yesterday when a few of them signed lease contracts after much, much unnecessary stress. Okay, some people had qualms with prices and sharing etc but that doesn't mean anyone can just take charge and just shuffle people around without asking them first? (deeeep breath)Well i'm not sore or anything, i did drag my feet about it and i did look for alternatives, but yeah, whatever. Enjoy your arrangements.

On a lighter note, we've been having a lot more late night suppers and lepaking sessions up in my crib....haha more dodgy videos, late night carbs and playing games till the sun rises ( freakin 2.30am-ish). Don't think we'll be doin much more of that for the next coupla days 'cos Alex and Lu are off with Jed to Brussels and Amsterdam - i would have joined, but i was a bit the broke...haha hope y'all won't get up to tooo much mischief hmnn? Remember to get me those....urmm...yess "clogs", juuuust "clogs"....oooh yeah caught Les Miserables on Monday night as well - not as enthralling as Bombay Dreams but still a classic nonetheless.

I promise to try my darndest to post more!

9 days to goooo....

Feels weird to be finally, absolutely done. Too bad it was an anti-climactic finish though - the last exam paper was followed by two labs, that damn coursework and a programming test on tuesday. Kinda envied the people who topped off the year with their last exam paper. Grr

Hhhaanyway the last coupla days went by kinda fast - maybe the freakin heat just blurred everything. Every morning you just wake up early because you feel like you're in an oven or something. Monday and Tuesday were, like, really really hot.

Boredom and milling around were quickly replaced by the discovery of old-school fun on old video game emulators ( Neo geo and SNES games) and warcraft/starcraft on the network. Yay. Still feeling very listless and bored overall though. Still waiting for the real celebratory mood to kick in. Maybe when my bank account magically refills itself. Till then i guess we'll just stick to our kiddy games and taking dodgy videos. eeRrgh once i settle storage and accomodation for next term i'll probably try and get an early flight or somethin. Wonder if the odd party and summer sales in the last week are worth it....

15 days to goooo...

Wow. That was an amazingly bad attempt at doing serious work. My Prolog notes and tutorials are all laid out and i've got some online tutorials open as well and i'm still just barely creepin along. Didn't help that i raided Sharescan for some mp3s too. Oh yeah - noticed some weird shit going on on Friendster with dissappearing people and what not. Whoaa - the new FT patch is out - lets play it to test the new neutral hero - okay he's crap lets try a new strategy ( countinues playing for another hour). NOW you see why i cant get any work done.

My moodiness is kinda levelling out and is being replaced by my more general disdain for work. Probably all that tea-blending ( killer mix - viennese fruit tea with orange ceylon and turkish apple tea ) and jazz finally worked - while we're on jazz, brief digression - i gotta recommend Jamie Cullum and Katie Melua. The former's a 22 year old who looks like a 16 year old but sounds like part Sinatra, and part Kelly Jones ( Stereophonics) and the other's a cute young thing with a really sweet smoky voice ( think Norah Jones, less nasal-ly). Go get the mp..(eEEhuk ehuk) i mean CDs....

It'll be interesting working against the clock again today on the LAST lab assignment of the year. WOnder if i can ever be sufficiently prepared for the prolog test either. Death, doom, despair - no recent burden doth compare.

Well thats enough time wasted - back to work. Damn birds - why cant they just STFU and let me slee.. i mean workkkk......

ps.- if you though the second paragraph sounded a little gay, screw you
18 days to go....

It was probably a good idea to have postponed my blogging till today. Had i blogged on friday or saturday it would have nothing much more than a constant stream of mega PMS-sy ranting. Not only was i already feeling strangely feral this weekend, coincidentally a few random people chose to heighten my blood pressure as well.

First was my one of my group project mates - also the Computing year rep. I finished my ( more than fair ) share of the research and HTML and passed it over to him a day early to collate and arrange into the frames and layout he already drafted( looks very template-ish).FInal deadline to have our finished pages on our alloted server space was 1700 hrs friday. Here's a brief summary of what happened on that day:

1300hrs- said he finished putting everything together. He'll upload after friday prayers
1630hrs- swung by labs to pick up work, found out our server area still empty. WTF.
1640hrs- got back to the hall and gave him a call. Still fiddling with the page. Give him 10 mins, he says, 'safe' , he says
1650hrs- had the balls to ask me whether i knew how to upload the pages to the server
1655hrs- he finally passed me the pages, and i sec-Exed them to the server. Problem - his frames and shit were in many many subfolders, and those didn't really transfer all too well.
1700hrs- we're fucked. He'll try and claim technical problems and settle with CSG and the assesors

He had better damn well work that out.

Secondly, bumped into an ex-Oundelian ( same boarding house for 2 years)doing Maths whom i so successfully avoided the whole term ( eg 20+ missed calls). Just the sight of that fucking hongkey ( disclaimer - apologies to the people from hong kong i know who are actually not out of their fucking minds). almost made me spew bile ala The Exorcist and turn my head 360. GOD not many of you guys can imagine how annoying he actually is - a hideous ,skinny poseur who thinks he's god's gift to women and sings like a cat being gang-raped by anthromorphic power drills. Those of you who do maths at IC or heard my boarding school stories can concur.

Besides supressing all that pure malice, it was an alright weekend. Managed to catch the third Harry Potter movie. Definite eye candy and very well shot, but you didn't hafta read the book to know that they schmutzed the story quite a bit(BTW yes alex, emma watson's cute, but she's like what, 15? A bit of a pervy kiddy-tiddler now, eh? hehehehe). After the show alex, lu and myself had a little walking tour of the housing around Gloucester ( not by choice ) on the way to finding a 'shortcut' thru to Sainsburys for a midnight run. Fun.

Saturday? Still very little work done. Almost passed out makin the Dhal for dinner in the sauna of a kitchen. Sweated seas and cried rivers ( onions, garlic, chilles and ginger galore) . At least the moghuls feast turned out well - tandoori chicken, dhall and naan. Apologies to any of the old folks with weak stomachs. Would've been better with more lime and ghhhHHEEEE no? Next time i'll make sure to personally deliver any cholestrol or fat in my cooking.

These mood swings have GOT to go...grarrgh.Worryworryworryworrystressstressstress.....just one more lab and programming test to endure.

19 days do go.....

Its been a while since i slept before the sun rose. Damn summer daylight hours.

Still trolling away on the bioinformatics coursework. Having vivian's 'farewell party' in my room last night didnt help - cooked supper, made Pimm's and did the other normal shit from like...12-ish till 5am. Hahaha had another supper cookout from 1am-3-am again today with alex and lu. Cannoot worrkkkk!. God knows how i'm gonna prepare for my prolog final lab on tuesday.

Went to view a schweet flat at Earl's court today - huge reception and three singles - a VERY hard combo to find. One major problem though - the landlord wasnt there and we only had the Foxton's agent to deal with, meaning we couldn't like....bargain to hold the place over summer or whatever. Ultimate buggery - still gotta look around for other options unless sOMe people would mysteriously 'disappear' and free up other sharing combinations.

Planning to write a nice, interesting & insightful piece about my whole first year at uni and post it on the blog sometime soon. Should be some nice revelations and epiphanies in there, no? Will probably start working on it sometime after i settle all the marked work submission and shit. I'd be pretty damn free after that - haha i'd probably post up loadsa random new photo galleries and do-over my Friendster again ( wonder if anyone actually still goes on ).

22 days to go....

bOOM baybehhh!

6 hours to go to the deadline of my second last lab assignment this term. Sooomething about arcs and searching in Prolog. Fell asleep every time i tried to work on it - seriously. Not exactly up to schedule on the Bioinformatics group coursework either. Haven't heard a peep from any other members since like... last thursday so i assume its the same with them. Groaarr - probably will need some help with the Prolog later.

Skipped the hall BBQ yesterday when suddenly everyone else in the our crew decided to naff off and have dinner elsewhere. Probably the thought of queueing for a tiny single burnt hamburger wasnt that appealing. Some went to the Stick and Bowl, some went to Misato and a coupla of us just had some sushi delivered to the hall. I couldn't really leave cos i hat to wait for the M'sian shippers anyway who were like....2 hours late. At least i managed to send loadsa shit home ahead for me for quite a fair price, considering its charged by volume and its door to door delivery. I would have gladly paid a skosh more, considering that i've been through picking up some stuff i shipped home from a freight depot....the horrors ohhh the untold horrors.

hhHHHanyway gotta run down for dinner now. Ciao amigos
( 24 more days )

meri channi channa channo channa channa haii ....oooooooh
meri channi meri channi channa channa bollywood

Damn its still stuck in my head. And i'm STILL in that mood where i feel like flaying alive anyone who pisses me off with a blunt, rusty razorblade while drowning that person in vat of snake venom AND feeding him Dr. Bombay's crap-ass songs on headphones full blast( on a blue ipod mini, perhaps?). Grrr. Roaarrr. Hisss....ANybody in the hall needs somebody 'taken care of'?

Seriously dunno what's really getting to me....

Leeeet's start today's post with a little gem i found while faffing around :

Two men have been sitting out on a lake all day long, ice fishing. One has been having no luck at all and the other has been pulling fish after fish out of his hole in the ice. The man having no luck finally leans over and asks the other what his secret is.
"mmmmm mmm mm mmm mmmm mmm mmm."
"I'm sorry, what did you say?"
"mmmmm mmm mm mmm mmmm mmm mmm."
"I'm sorry, I still didn't understand you." The successful man spits something into his hand.
"You've got to keep your worms warm."

Booyahh - i wish i can be there to see that smirk/wince or even hear the 'ewwww' comin from ya!

Anyways, I've been in a rather evil-ish mood for the last coupla days. Probably its a smidge of stress from having to do really well on the next lab exam or finishing the coursework on time - oRrr it could just be from having to put up with a heap of random crap from random people. Personally i think its either the full moon or just something hormonal ( which is strange, as finally returning to regular gym sessions should result in a more chilled, mellow me). Spent the better part of the day tongue-lashing people and ploughing through anyone who got in my way on a grocery run to chinatown. You'd think i learnt before not to go on a saturday - sheesh. Had i been either an agoraphobic or claustraphobic i would have died like, a thousand times over today. Screw it if it sounds gay - i feel like a class A primo bitch todaaaayy!!

Later Sunday night i made Pho again ( vietnamese kueyteow soup, pronounced 'fur'). Jadi jugak laa....as Lionel suddenly got 'reminded' that he had bar duty we just brought our food down and ate at the bar. As luck would have it the other local girl doing bar duty lived in Thailand for a coupla of years and sOMeBody let it slip that i'm half thai so i got stuck making small talk with her while the other guys slooowwly drifted away - damn you all!! Haha don't get me wrong its not like she's a nauseatingly hideous wench or anything but i was just noooot in a very layan-ing mood today ( refer to previous paragraph).

Saw Troy Friday night. Well shot, amazing action sequences and all but the story was kinda mangled. Adding the odd love interest or two is fine ( it IS Hollywood) but killing people who aren't supposed to die and vice versa while getting all the other nonimportant fine details correct is just...well...Hollywood. I wouldn't presume to bore anyone with the list of inconsistencies though. But still - coooool fighting.

Sorry about slagging off (the posts) for the last coupla days. Again, i wasn't exactly busy, but god knows my time just keeps on dissapearing despite having done sooo little work.Only things i got left are two labs, a Prolog lab exam and that Bioinformatics group coursework. Graargh...

Saw Bombay Dreams on Tuesday night - schweeet. Very flashy, loud and impressive. Although the lyrics were a bit on the lame side, the music was really catchy and the dancing was...urm..powerful? You could see quiite a few people dancing in their seats (ehEM eHEM). Their portrayal of the many Bollywood stereotypes were amusingly spot on - although they missed a few bits like running around trees and the excessive fighting sound effects. Until this very moment i've been playing the soundtrack cd to the point of having the tunes stuck in my head. Oh well..chai chaiyya chiayya hei!

The rest of the week? NOthin much - no more lectures, so i've just been milling away doing 'research' for the coursework and trying to start on the labs. Managed to catch up on looads of sleep, and started going to the gym again - so bitter the pain, so sweet the endorphines! Really gotta try to swing back into full momentum for work - Topics coursework deadline's on the 4th, and the final lab exam's on the 8th then god knows what i'm gonna do until the 25th...if i manage to settle everything early i'll see if i can go back like...a week early or something...

Till then, i'll try and think up of some funny/random things to put up to spare you guys from reading more of my oh-so-intTUHresting day to day goings on....

cali chaiyya chaiyya chaiyya chaiyya ,
cali chaiyya chaiyya chaiyya chaiyya !

Damn that shit is stuck good in my head....

Still struggling to get back in the mood to work. A tiring but 'adventure' packed weekend didn't help either. Had loadsa fun though. Had a quick weekend trip to Brownsea Island( a really small - 1.5 miles across - island which is a nature reserve and the birthplace of the Scouts) , Bath and Stonehenge. We rented a 7-seater and somehow crammed 8 people in all the way. Jed was the driver, and the others were Lu, Lionel, Alex, Jac, Vivian, Jingye and of course me.

Day 1 - Started on the drive outta town around 7.30 am-ish. After about almost 3 hours, we got to Poole which was another typical touristy English harbour town. Wandered around for a while then got on the ferry to Brownsea Island. On arrival you can already tell that the brits spend quite a bit of money looking after their heritage/history sites. Lots of information about the island's history and wildlife all over the island itself - it had a few private owners, hosted a pottery works which went bust soon after( hence all the pottery crap all over the beaches) and was the birthplace of the Scouts movement, by the handiwork of Lord Baden Powell himself. Everything is very well placed and mapped on the island. Had no problems finding any of the sites. Luckily we had nice weather too. Lotsa mildly exotic birds, peacocks etc but didn't see any of the red squirrels which were supposedly the mainstay of the island. Oh well.

After about 5 hours plus communing with nature( or at least doing our darndest). We took the ferry back and drove on to Bath. Just as our luck would have it, there was a music festival in town, and we had a freakin problem finding accomodation. In the end, we managed to get one double room - we managed to cram 5 people in there, and the rest of us ( yours truly included) slept in the car.

Day 2 - Amazingly the three of us in the car got slightly more sleep than the others. Everyone got up around 9-ish and after b'fast we checked out the Roman baths in town. A few of us felt a con-job coming and decided against coughing up 8 pounds for the tour around the old baths so we checked out the rest of the town while they were at the baths. Met up later and went to chill in the city gardens for a while.

Next, we drove over to Stonehenge. Very touristy place. Mildly interesting but somewhat unimpressive. If it werent for the audioguides i personally wouldn't have stayed for very long. At least i can say i've actually been there though...Stayed for around an hour, then drove back to London- made it back around 7 sharp.

Now its just me - After a much needed shower, rushed over to make the 7pm dinner at the opening of the new Malaysia Hall. Due to various things , among them the Circle line being closed and the District line being screwed over too due to track changes i only got there at almost 9. Food was completely gone, but at least managed to see some people. Hung out there for a while, then had a takeaway from Nahar and took a bus home...tiiiiired.

Oh yeah - put some photos up from the trip. Don't think i'll put anything up from Bath though. The baths weren't exactly pretty. Maybe once we pool our digicam photos i'll see if the other guys got any good ones..

GOd i almost forgot how boring Computing lectures were. We are on our last week of lectures on Prolog, and the lecturer is like....the second most boring one on the course ever. Even people in the freakin front row cannot help falling asleep. What is it about Computing lecturers - they're generally as boring as hell and aren't very good at explaining something despite knowing it inside out.

The fencing demo/showcase on monday went alright. They also broadcast the debate whether or not to host the Olympics in London to the rest of the hall. It was a strange sordid debate - one of the Brit speakers just rambled on and on about role models in sports, and the French speaker spent a good deal of his airtime insulting both the french and the english.

Been wasting a lot of time these last coupla days just lazing about with da crew talking cock, playing foosball/frisbee and talking more cock. Still feeling very sleepy despite managing to catch up on loads of sleep. Probably milling about wasting time is more tiring than i thought. Oh yeah - remembered how freakin hilarious The Emperor's New Groove was at another movie session in my room yesterday.

Sleepy. Need to get more catnaps before i start rambling like a hippie on an acid trip. DuuuuuUUUdeee....

Sweet, sweet freedom!! Finals are over.Yay.woo-hoo...yeahhhfghlabaschmoobyblptffff...

Now that the ball's no longer in my court...still cannot help but worry - constantly making contingency plans in my head assuming i screwed up in my finals. Resits are probably a forgone conclusion - I just hope i can do them at the British Council back home instead of cutting my summer short...Now i'm just waddling about in the shallow pit left behind after going cold turkey from weeks of workin like a dawg ( well...like Amar if he was a dawg anyway)...

So...exams are over - you'd assume i'd be hangin' loose, partyin down, shakin that thang etc.?

Problem # 1 : Term doesn't end till the 25th of June. We've still got a massive group coursework goin - research a given topic and put up a thorough, comprehensive website about it. AAND we're gonna learn another screwed up programming language - Prolog and we'll have an exam on that too. At least workload's gonna be sliightly lighter.

Problem # 2 : For almost everybody else ( bar other computing students) their exams are barely just starting . Sometimes i wonder which is worse - being the only one freakin out about exams or being the only one ambling around goyang telok(shaking balls - doing pretty much nothing )

Well i guess i kinda earned a weekend of extra sleep seeing how many hours of sleep i missed over the last couple of weeks. By friday i was really really running on adrenaline and coffee. Daamn...instead of sleeping the rest of the day and rising later to paaartayyy....i had to go for a fencing training session for monday's demo, then i had to rush back for a quick lunch and then make a 3.45 haircut appointment( Vidal Sassoon - got GQ discount lorrr) . Later on in the evening caught the SingSoc comittee at their leavers' BBQ and their dance rendition of "Superstar" ( no comments). Capped off the night with a supper at Al-Dar( ohhh-kay thats enough lamb for a while) with the guys. Went to sleep thoroughly drained.

To make up for not cooking for the last coupla weeks i cooked on both saturday and sunday. Made chicken tandoori bhuna on sat and tagliatelli carbonara Sunday. Nobody died, but i lost quiite a bit of blood from my left index finger on my cursed Zwilling Professional S ( i should really give that knife a name - something like BloodBlade or SkinCutter )while deboning the chicken. Safe to say that my typing ( and foosball, maybe?) is pretty much impaired.

Finally got around to watching Girl Next Door( found a really bad cinema bootleg on the college network) on saturday night with the regular crew. Typical american teen flick, albeit with a few interesting plot twists and the deliciously delectable Elisha Cuthbert providing the eye candy. Who ever woulda thought that gawky but cute-ish host of PMK( Popular Mechanics for Kids or some shit like that on Discovery) a coupla years back would be an all American, smoulderingly sexy hottie. She kinda got noticed when she reappeared in the last 2 seasons of 24. Anyway, can't wait for the barrage of the leave-your-brains-at-home summer movies coming our way...

Oh yeah - the best of luck to you guys with exams still coming. Enjoyy!

Alriighty i'm almost back to normal - no more mental mood swings. No more random ramblings( apologies for the baaad poetry ) - just 100% Amar goodness. Could be that my last paper is tomorrow. Oh-kayy its fuckin Reasoning ( nastiest bits of logic, math and programming) but still..its like you're at the phase where you just can't panic or worry anymore - hence me blogging right now!!

Summer's almost here in earnest - its like 9.30 pm and the sun still has yet to properly set - and it'll be back up around 4.30 am to boot...people are having little picnics all over Princes Gardens - I can bloody well smell it- and i'm on the 7th floor facing the OTHER side!! Cue summer clothes too....them twins be goin out for walks and shit - foshiiiziee! ( don't get it? too baaad) Too bad i'll probably end up celebrating my end of exams and the glorious weather alone...or with the odd random computing student. I might be done but everyone else is just mostly starting.

Had a really weird ass dream yesterday - something about a bus arriving at a tube station instead of a train, a whole buncha cempakans were there ( get this - mr. Kuah was the driver!) and everyone was eating cekodok pisang. I kinda forgot the rest. I really gotta get my Dreamcatcher fixed - if only i can find a shaman or medicine man somewhere in london.

Gonna have a crazy ass Friday - Firstly i'd probably be running on very little sleep once the true last minute panic kicks in for Reasoning. Then i gotta dash over for my first fencing training session since the end of last term to rehearse some flashy moves for a demo we're having at the opening of the Tanaka Business Centre - theyre gonna have some debate about the Olympics there and have demos of random sports. THEN i got more errands to run that afternoon,probably before dropping by at the Singaporean's Leavers' picnic and gettin some free nibbles..ho ho ho... god knows what else is gonna go down tonight, but i doubt theres gonna be much with more exams for other people coming up next week...

Crap better get back to hopelessly sifting through reasoning notes. Really really REALLY can't wait to get back - still like... a month and a half to go. Gotta settle housing for next term, storage for all my crap...

great. now i have a wicked craving for cekodok pisang.Dammit

I apologize in advance - today's entry is gonna be mostly melodramatic ramblings from a very, very frazzled noggin. The accumulation of exam stress coupled with various other annoyances and irritations is reALLY getting to me. Since i've been missing my normal physical de-stressing methods( get your mind out of the gutter, fools) i've fallen back on something i haven't done for a while - drawing and writing. Yeah...so..wham here's something i just churned out on the spot:

In Darkness Therin

in darkness therin i dwell and toil
seemingly burning the midnight oil,
though in reality my mind lies asunder
spent, broken, trampled under

i delve into my work
hoping to recognize, recall
but nary a snippet familiar
nay nothing, nothing at all

saturated, unable to absorb
studying becomes mere folly
inward gloom,sadness, malice and spite
further my thoughts doth sully

charlatans and hypocrites abound
tongues dripping venom and ichor
slander, plotting and deceit
in all its spiteful splendor

alone i stand, lost and drifting
amongst a crowded, tangled web confused
ceaselessly, carefully sifting
what passes for truth between lies obtuse

in darkness therin i dwell and toil
seemingly burning the midnight oil,
though in reality my mind lies asunder
spent, broken, trampled under

Interpret it what-fucking-ever way you wish. Its not a particular critique of anyone of anything. Just random outpourings from my fucked-up subconscious- maybe a touch of Byron there, a bit of Blake here. Whatever. So what if it doesn't sound very "amar". rrRRgh i'm seriously going mental - don't really know how long i can keep up my cheery, random facade....hopefully i'll be able to pull it through the next 3 papers without having to put on a strait jacket.

Haha it seems kinda quiet around here lately.... oOOhh now i know why - there's something wrong with the messagebox...muahhahahaha

Database on friday was mercifully rather do-able...all that cramming and going to the library ( if for nothing more than to just borrow a book) probably paid off after all....Tried to catch up on sleep for the rest of the day, but random shit kept on coming up....in the end by midnight i was still very much behind on sleep. The regular room invasions don't help either !! Finally managed to give my pillow some head ( sorry that came outta nowhere - ehyuk ehyuk!) around 4am

Adding to the excitement, charlotte's nubian queen bimbo of an ex-roomate set off the fire alarm for the second time by doing her hair ( only god knows what these african girls do to their hair) at around 11-ish. Needless to say that fucked up my sleep pattern even further. Managed to crawl outta bed around 3, made a ser-weeet lunch and tried to work for a while ( nope, didn't work) Later 6 of us had dinner as planned at Meshwar, and saw Van Helsing at High St. Kent Odeon. Very stylish, pretty visuals, excellent action but a story that made absolutely no sense. Fun to watch though....

Since friday afternoon, everything was kinda blurly passing by. I think all the last minute cramming and sleep depravation finally got to me. I'm either completely concussed and in my own world of 'who gives a damn'-ness or having those weird ass mood swings again. Probably my psychological anti-stress measures are over-compensating or have completely fried....ORr probably i just need to get out and have some proper fun eeeyyy?

Halfway through my exams....schweEEEt.... just Databases ( tomorrow ) ,plus hardware, discrete math and reasoning( absolute horror) next week. Actually moseyed down to the library and picked up a purty little database book to augment the tinny notes our dBase lecturer gave us. In fact i should be nose deep in it right now. Its really becoming a nasty habit - blogging when i should be goddamned studying.

Had a little fun break after i was done failing my math paper - i was just messing about and catching up on some extra sleep weds nite when Lu and Alex randomly burst in, and before i knew it lionel, fong may and darren were here too and we were watching Ju-On( a lame subtitle-less tv-movie version of it anyway) Typical asian horror - boring ass beginning with the odd bit of stretched suspense and blood curdling images that stick in your head( doesn't work if you cover you eyes though, right Lu? Fong May?). Personally thought it wasn't particularly well written or scary- to this date nothing surpasses watching Ring ( jap version) alone at 3 am in the morning on a howling, windy night in a mostly empty boarding house AND by some freaky coincidence having your phone ring RIGHT after it....The movie was followed by more random faffing about and a singalong to about 3-am ish.

Paid accom. bills and went to the library today. Joined everyone else for frisbee for a while after dinner too. Spent the rest of the day trying to work.....Oh yeah had a japanese tea ceremony ( by tea ceremony i mean making powdered macha green tea and getting scalded by the damn coffee machine when it spluttered hot water on my hand instead of the damned cup). Well back to databases....need some points there to raise my average above passing..:)

Maaan can't wait for holidays to start ....dying to be back home in some nice sun, lepaking at hartamas and eating fuckloads of tasty tasty food.....

"The powers of a man's mind are directly proportional to the quantity of coffee he drinks" : 19th century Brit philospher, Sir James McKintosh

You'd think that with all those study-time espressos, i'd be a freakin Mensa twice over by now......probably shouldn't be complaining though...All that coffee's probably the only thing keeping my mind from goin to absolute mush. Maybe a randomly produced haiku would placate the gods of the Arabica bean:

Fragrant bean blossom
to creamy bitter sweet scent
Drink and study now!

( yes its in 5-7-5 and i didn't forget the season & cutting word)

Y'know what would be really, really useful right now? A conveniently placed life "rewind" button. Wouldn't mind a "Save/Load" menu as well. I'm sure at some point in life - a decision that you regret, something that could have been said better, an irreplaceable loss - whatever the reason might be, you just wish you can backtrack on life. Well right about now, i'm seriously wishing that i was doing another course elsewhere....like Art/Design/anything creative at a nice art college... ( or at the very least Mech Eng, Chem Eng or something more along my line). After 2/8 papers out of my finals.....well....YiKES. Can't even remember why i chose this course in the first place. Kinda regret not following through on the suggestion given ages past by my father to do medicine. Well who knows....maybe some other Amar in some other alternate universe who is doing say....Art at the Royal Academy or Medicine at Edinburgh U is blogging the same thing right now....

*---ADDENDUM---*
Aaaaallrighty....The sun is fuckin' rising, the birds are fuckin' chirping and NOW i genuinely feel like blogging whats really on my mind...

I have been pretty fucking much on fucking edge recently. Exams are one thing...... British red tape and bureaucracy ( don't ask) ? A fucking pain in the ass..... but what's been really pissing me off recently is having to put up with annoying crap from annoying people, one in particular. Those of you who've known me for, like, a third my life would know that i have a high tolerance for crap and it'll take quite a lot to fucking piss me off.....Well...without going into names and details, lets just say that i'm pretty fucking pissed. Its just those little things that pile up over time and you just hold back from snapping at their fucking faces like a fucking piranha on a heroin bender until they curl up in the foetal position and cry like a baby. Haven't had a de-stressing session for a while either - had nobody to fence with, haven't the time or energy for a gym session and just don't feel like drawing anymore. I'm just fuckin waiting for a fuckin chance to open a deluxe can of whoopass on the next person who really pushes my buttons. eerrrrggGGGHHHHH

PHEW....now i feel sliiightly better.....

Forgot to mention that i just saw Kill Bill 2 the other day. Not as much action as the first, but the storyline was kinda better. Really felt the fury in the Elle/Bride trailer fight ( cool eye pluck) , laughed like a damned fool at the chinese chop-socky genre parody that is Gordon Liu's Pai Mei ( HAH ha ha haaa....[brushes beard] ) and went WTF quite a lot of times at those really random what-the-fuck-was-tarantino-thinking scenes( like the pregnancy test assasin and the classroom part) . SchwEEEt movie overall. Wonder what happened tho to the black guy in the movie-trailer( the first one for both parts ) that was supposed to get an ass-kicking from Bill.

Oh yeah....when Waris finally gives up and admits he's gay and we have no more randomness filling up the chatboard here's something that might interest y'all - got the idea from a friend's blog ( cheers pinky!) Its one of those long winded zodiac descriptions of your character and shit. This site goes quite a bit further and adds a lot of other rubbish too - read what is says for an arian male and let the Amar-bashing comments flow in. Be sure to read what it says about you too - enjoyyy!