The Orange Building

"...and finally the elite group! IR students,meet me at room EA30. Dont linger around; leave that to the scienctists", Dean of Arts & Social Sciences.

A new beginning. Don't know if he'll still call us that after spending more time with us! I am just relieved that induction was not as awkward as the one I had in Taylor's. :P Will spend a lot of time in the orange building I guess. Class should be interesting,what with expected arguing in the classroom and such.. Bring on the sarcasm! ;)

Again, as with how I approach other new beginnings - I don't quite know what to expect nor do I expect it to be easy, but I do hope that it'll be an excitingly brain-stimulating experience. I wouldn't mind so much having my 'working Sundays' back again.

60 sen

Funny how such a small amount of money could take you a long way. In this case, it took me to Jelatek.

I was in a hurry to get to Jelatek from Ampang Park lrt station, the lines for the ticket machines were long, even longer was the manual counter's line. I saw a guy in front of me having trouble getting the ticket, and I was ready to give him a crisp RM1 note, not knowing that I would need help myself later. The guy eventually left and soon it was my turn and I immediately discovered his problem; "Exact fare only".  I checked my bag, hoping to find 60 cents but found none. Thinking fast, I looked around, at least a dozen people behind me, and did the only option I had - asked randomly to the people immediately behind me if they have change for RM1. The two Chinese guys behind me helpfully checked their pockets but they like me, had none spared. The first guy politely went on to buy the ticket (the other later faced the same problem and I stared helplessly at him), while I stood there already reluctantly realised I had to go on to the long manual line. Suddenly, the same guy who just bought the ticket called me out and gave me 60 cents. I hastily thanked him in my surprise.

Simple act of kindness that should be copied. :) So, thank YOU again for saving me from having to line up at the long line!

Merdeka Malaysia! (Part 2)

The next morning, we almost didn’t go to the Merdeka celebration at Bukit Jalil. We got up, sahur, once again being indecisive but took our shower anyway, and fell asleep. It was not until we dropped off Anna who had to go to church that Aneez suggested we could still go check out Bukit Jalil.

Once again, we were surprised at the empty roads. We had a clear traffic all the way to the Bukit Jalil car park. We had to part a bit further away from the stadium where military trucks were parked. So, from there we were already excited. We walked past A LOT of men in uniform on our way inside; including members of the 21 Skuadron Istiadat Berkuda, looking very macho in their red uniform. Unfortunately we were still warming up our brains from the sleep. So we walked through a door where there was a reasonably  big crowd gathered at the corridor. We thought the level above would have more space but we couldn’t be more wrong! Every other door we walked through was jam-packed with people and there were even more people watching the ceremony on the projector screens and big TVs along the corridors of the stadium. So we spent 10 mins just walking around the stadium to end up where we were in the first place. Aneez and I managed to get a good view of things. We stood there Ooo-ing and aahh-ing at the lights, colours, and couldn’t help but glanced up every few seconds at the row of the royal guards sitting macho-ly , looking down at the show while others (even the army) were waving our flags like baboon, singing along to patriotic songs proudly. SO macho! Aneez snapped a lot of pictures of the event,taking pictures of the colours, those macho army men, the marching band, which was fortunate since I didn’t bring my own camera.

 will put up my own pics soon. this is a bit too dry without photos :)

The real hype of the event however was, for the lack of better word, the “after-party”.  As the event this year was held indoors, the participants stayed at where they were and so did a large number of audience. We continued to sing songs, waving our flags (with a much better view) after the Agong and VIPs left their seats. And we took this opportunity to take a lot more pictures of ourselves at the historic event. =) We stayed there long enough until the organiser came back to talk to the participants. By this  time, we were sitting at the top level of the stadium where it was quite steep (and where the men in red were sitting ;D)I clung on to the chairs for deal life to get to a seat. The organisers were announcing the additional day offs for various bodies involved in the celebration. The big screen in the middle of the stadium, instead of showing patriotic song lyrics or pictures relating to merdeka, it was showing comments at the announcements. Words such as “hahahahahahaha” “xyah cuti” “:(” were seen on the screen. We left the stadium after a while and made our way slowly to the car, just enjoying the view of a sea of men in their respective uniforms. We wanted to take pictures with them but unfortunately, our phones died on us & we had no other camera so we had to make do with our eyes and hope that our memory won’t fail us. *sigh* To make matters worst, we couldn’t find any of the royal guards anymore but things took a better turn when we found the 10 PARA gathering at a parking lot nearby where out car was parked. We stood there, looking at them as if there were performing anything, thinking somewhat bitterly about the phone that died on us. We sat on top of the hill, looking down at them until they made their way up and we hastily made our way to the car. And was still looking at the whole bunch of them walking as we drove our way out on to the still mysteriously empty roads

Deciding it was still early, we went to the e-Curve to catch a disturbing movie that drove my memory away from merdeka for awhile. Repo Men. We only found out that it was STILL early when we got to the car. We tried to think of things to do in KL, came up with a few but only know where one of them was at. So we finally settled on Muzium Negara where there was surely an exhibition on Merdeka;before heading home and we were feeling fairly patriotic. I couldn’t help but think, How appropriate it is to end our Merdeka Day, at the very beginning.

We sang "Kita satu bangsa, satu negara" loudly dan dengang penuh rasa bangga semalam. I hope we won't forget that today or the days after that. I believe that Malaysians are patriotic, u just have to press at the right button for people to show it. I love Malaysia!

Merdeka Melaysia! (Part 1)

Admittedly, I almost forgot about Merdeka this year. What with the raya preparations going on and all. I was only reminded of it a few days before when I heard a raya song & merdeka song played back-to-back at Tesco. I had a very fulfilling Merdeka celebration that I want to remember forever. So I’m jotting it down here for me to read again in the future and for others who would like to read it. It is simply a narration of my Merdeka Day no in-depth thoughts from me this time. Will add pictures soon. =)

I had 2 very Malaysian days on the eve of and the Merdeka day itself. Started with going around Jln TAR with Aneez, (joined later by Nawal) looking for baju kebaya. Though we got side-tracked quite a few times, we managed to find one in the end. While being trapped in Semua House in the rain, we bought a few the P.Ramlee movies at one of the shops there. After buka puasa and picking up Anna, we watched P Ramlee movies, trying to gather energy and get some rest before going out again for the Merdeka countdown. As we couldn’t figure out where the fireworks would be, we headed out to Dataran Merdeka where, without fail, people would gather at with or without fireworks (expecting the non-existent foreworks). By the time we decided on a place, it was already 11.45 but we were surprised at how empty the roads are. For once, we were asking for the merdeka-jam and we got our wish as we got nearer to Dataran. The road was barely moving that we even had time to chat with the uncle (who later actually got out of the car) next to our car. As we were still stuck in the jam by midnight, we were looking for radio stations for merdeka songs. Surprisingly, hardly any of the stations were playing them at midnight! Mix, Hitz, Fly, habuk pun takda. What happened?? I know the government intended to  celebrate merdeka moderately but isn’t it too much if the radio stations are not even going to acknowledge the arrival of our 53^rd Merdeka Day?? I am disappointed with the local radio stations. We eventually found a radio station playing patriotic songs 10 mins later, but it wasn’t any of the popular radio stations. Anyhow, getting back on my merdeka eve, we were wondering what to do since we were stuck in the car when one of my friends suddenly took out 2 packets of bunga api for us to light up. DOL! Epic! So we lit up those bunga api while in a stand-still jam, screaming, “Merdeka!” and honking our horn and the amused people around us responded and waved at us.

When we got to Dataran, we were greeted by the sight of a sea of people standing in the streets, causing a major traffic jam as the cars couldn’t go through. Rempits lined up the roads, sending up smoke into the air as some of them drove off in big groups. What we first thought was a riot was actually just a bunch of people standing in the roads who seem to be focusing on something. We followed the crowd, walked along the streets as if the roads were closed, walked between the cars, wondering what we’ll see when we would finally get to the point where everyone was looking at. Most of the people there though, were like us, looking around, wondering and expecting something to happen to commemorate the arrival of our 53rd Merdeka Day. It was actually a group of boys running on the streets bearing the Jalur Gemilang. Funnily enough, there weren’t any cops in sight. The only mark they left were their cones, put on one of the road dividers.It was quite exciting, but there was a scary moment when some idiot threw a mercun on the empty road which had A LOT of people standing by it. I even felt bits of it hit the back of my leg. Luckily no one was injured. And at the frustration of the absence of fireworks (I think) someone lit up one of those smaller scaled KLCC-like mercun. Ironically, the mercun was lit up from a place where Bukit Aman was clearly in sight at the back! We later made our way to to meet up with some friends to lepak to end the day in a very Malaysian style.