One last night

One last night in London, one final post from me.

I think I've figured it out, it's not the parks, nor cobbled stones, nor secret alley ways, nor English tea that I'll miss. It's the friends I'm leaving behind. It's my little brother who's got to cope on his own in the UK now. It's the EE guys whom I'll miss terribly when I'm in need of all-guy bullying to put me in my place. It's the MSOC people I won't be able to gossip with everyday. It's my horrible juniors who will no longer torture me and demand cheesecakes from me. It's my ISE friends whom I'll never have crazy sessions at the union bar with again. It's my beloved freshers who'll grow up, without me.

Each time, I've left a country with no regrets. Psyched myself up with cold steely reserve, waiting to start a new life, waiting to see what beckons. I'm excited about Hong Kong, and yet apprehensive as usual. The work, the stress, the possibility of growing fat and old and alone... well not that alone, seeing that my new household is going to be a great fodder for future humourous posts, however this time I feel like I've left a substantial part of myself in London, or maybe more of a gaping absence, and this last night is going to be a painful one.

Because this time, it's just too hard to say goodbye. At least there will be Fridays to look forward to.

Dimsumgirltalk is officially open. I won't say goodbye. I can't face it.

and so the rain falls...

I can never separate rain from London, or so it seems. Walking back from West End, completely drenched with squeaky shoes, it was refreshing (although I doubt Kit who was drenched from head to toe felt the same).

Despite all my previous posts that mentioned my time in London has outdone its welcome, I will miss this quaint city, its awful weather, and its cobbled stone roads which absolutely kill my shoes. It's hard to say goodbye to everything and everyone. There's only so little time and so many many things to do, and the rain and gloom is making it harder. I've already been back to Imperial twice, and nothing seems to have changed, apart from the fact that I keep on walking in wearing a suit instead of my EE polo t-shirt and jeans. My hangout area is now Holborn instead of South Kent, and I miss my old haunts. But I'm rambling. I think the rain has addled my brains.

Hong Kong will be a world of difference, but a nice change of scenary. Typhoons instead of pattering rain...

Next port of call

If you've been following my little journey around the world, you'd be happy to know that I've sailed back to London and I'm enjoying a spot of good weather that I've hardly seen in my last 4 years here.

It's a little strange to come back not as a student, nor living the student life. No more dorm rooms, microwave pasta and torn jeans.

And I miss it. Amidst all the luxury of owning a working life, I miss that penniless student freedom.
And I miss all of you. London's not the same without...

Just so you know I'm alright...

If it wasn't because my Nokia had died yesterday, and I had to switch on the phone my cousin gave me, I wouldn't have known that the world was searching for me in the aftermath of the steam explosion that rocked midtown New York on Wednesday.


I was pretty far from the area really, and my biggest concern at that time was how to get to dinner on 17th street. But it was pretty massive, and I'm glad to say that my friends in the area are all okay, and besides having the roads shut off for awhile and not being able to go there for dinner, everything has settled down now.

So just in case you were worrying about me (which I am sure you were), I'm really fine. Growing fatter, but fine.

Dressing up or dressing down

I just can't get the hang of it here. New York city is THE city, and should be every cosmopolitan girl's dream. But I just took a look at the clothes I brought, and it's more Penang beach bum than anything else. What was I thinking? That I was going on holiday in Miami?

It's ironic that I am really most comfortable in my three quarters and my cheap birkenstock look-a-likes... when I've been a city girl all my life. From KL to Singapore to London to New York, you'd think I'd have figured out fashion some what. But, hello... I didn't even bring a pair of jeans because 1. it's summer and 2. my old jeans are ripped at the oddest places! Time to go outlet shopping.

I had dinner here last night


I need remember to bring my camera out next time. And the wombat too. I have plans to give it it's own blog. "Igor's travels around the world". I'll introduce Igor later. It's passed out, hungover right now.

In the Big Apple

It took 22 hours to get all the way here... and now I have no idea where to go. It's taken awhile to adjust to the orientation of the map, and figure out where everyone is in this hotel. I couldn't even understand what the taxi driver from the airport was saying!

"You wannago marnarten?"
"Huh?"
"Marnaten?"
"Wha- oh.. Manhattan, yes please, Manhattan"

I'm not even sure which way to face to see the statue of liberty, which is really not very far from where I am.

Oh well, I guess I'll get my bearings right tomorrow.

Goodbye Home again

Do you know how hard it is to leave home?

Every year my time spent at home has been getting shorter and shorter. And now that I've finished university and everyone expects me to be home for good... I have to disappoint them and tell them that my next port of call is new york, then london and finally hong kong for good.

Keep in touch. Tell me about your lives, hopes and dreams. Tell me if you're getting married, becoming parents, or even god parents.

Cos goodness knows I'm really bad at doing just that

Tagged again

I could lie and say that I'm bored and this is my last resort for entertainment, but you know that won't be true. I love talking about myself more than the next person, so why wouldn't I do a meme especially if I've been tagged by Heng Kai?

1) Name one person who made you smile last night.
Er, Sugs I guess. I was out with her getting a manicure and we were gossiping which makes me laugh a lot.

2)What were you doing at 8:00 this morning?
Sleeping

3) What were you doing 30 minutes ago?
Eating. Number 2 and 3 are pretty much my only activities right now.

4) What was something that happened to you in 2006?
I got treated to Nobu... twice!

5)What is the last thing you said aloud?
"I'm going to my room to take a bath." ... clearly I haven't, yet...

6) How many different things did you drink today?
Water (it always begins with water doesn't it?), tea, soya bean milk and some Herbalife cappucino milkshake thingee which always gives me goosebumps

7) What color is your hairbrush?
Sparkly purple. I'm serious!

8) What was the last thing you paid for?
A manicure... I'm trying to be a girly girl, truly I am!

9) Where were you last night?
Out with Sugania since the guys decided to ditch us at the last minute for their mummies and daddies! Such mummy's boys!!!

10) What color is your front door?
Dark brown I believe. I haven't really looked at it carefully.

11) Where do you keep your change?
I'm not telling you. You might steal it.

12) What is the weather like today?
Sunny! Just the way I like it. Why do people complain about Malaysian weather? I think it's gorgeous. (and I do not suffer from sunstroke, thanks!)

13) What is the best ice cream flavor?
Erm, I dunno. I'm fickle about ice cream.

14) What is something you are excited about?
Helium filled balloons? Pink stuff? Shoes? Dali paintings? I'm generally a pretty exciteable person...

15) Do you want to cut your hair?
I don't know what to do with my hair

16) Are you over the age of 25?
Not yet!!! And I will refute this question for the next 6 years!

17) Do you talk a lot?
Ahahahahaha... hell yeah! (If you don't agree, you just haven't talked to me enough)

18) Do you watch The O.C.?
Nope

19) Do you know anyone named Steven?
Several. Relatives, friends, colleagues... Steven's too popular a name!

20) Do you make up your own words?
I'm not sure. I talk to myself a lot and I seem to understand what I say.

21) Are you typically a jealous person?
No, it's more fun to stir the green-eyed monster in others

22) Name a friend whose name starts with the letter “A”
Anushia Ashokan (That's 2 'A's for clarity!)

23) Name a friend whose name starts with the letter “K"
Kim Png... gosh it's hard to think of a K name that isn't Kenneth!

24) Who’s the 1st person on your received calls list?
Er, this relocation company guy I was just talking to.

25) What did the last text message you received say?
Now this is encrouching on my personal space!

26) Do you chew on your straws?
Nah, they're not very tasty...

27) Do you have curly hair?
It's generally wavy in all the wrong directions

28) Where is the next place you’re going?

Cambodia

29) Who is the rudest person in your life?
It might be me

30) What is the last thing you ate?
Dinner, I'm too full to remember what it was...

31) Is marriage in your future?
Strangely I think I'm destined for it...

32) What is the best movie you’ve seen in the past two weeks?
I watched something on the plane... it made me cry... but I can't remember what it was... I guess it couldn't have been the 'best' movie...

33) Is there anyone you like right now?
Johnny Depp, Ewan McGregor... possibly still Hugh Jackman... oh, and Lionel.

34) When was the last time you did the dishes?
I don't remember... I cook... I don't do dishes...

35) Are you currently depressed?
Heavens, no!

36) Did you cry today?
Yes, I had to get my eyebrows and a facial done this morning!

37) Why did you answer and post this?
Like I said, talking about myself = favourite activity

38) Tag 5 people who would do this survey
If you know me... you know I'd say... I'll tag everybody... I really am not fussy... It's your life, tell me about it!

All things must come to an end

When they said university would be the best days of your life... they were pretty much spot on. The last 4 years have had their ups and downs, and thankfully the scales are tipped on the side of the ups! And this blog has been following all of it silently. Or perhaps not that silently.

This blog has narrated my journey, since I arrived home in Malaysia after those arduous years in Singapore, right up till the point of my graduation and this seems like a good place to slot in a happy ending and close this chapter.

Charlotte Sometimes has been a neat little alcove of some of my best writings and some of my worst ramblings, and I although I don't think I'll ever stop writing I do believe it's time for a new phase of my life to begin and with that comes a change of scenary and a fresh canvas to start on.

I'm not closing down right here, right now... but I will slowly start to fade this blog off. Some of you will probably know where to find other stories, in lands where dimsumgirls reside and life rests on a hurricane or two.

Don't miss me for now. I'll be back with more stories to tell...

In the land I call home

A few thousand feet above the ground, I could see the oil palm trees swaying and I felt... like I was home.

The sun is brighter, the sambal belacan is spicier and the family folk are louder. If things stayed this way, I could live in this place forever.

Honey, I'm home.

Master Engineer...

And with my final year project presentation finally tucked out of sight (it was soooo awful, I do not want to talk about it... except at length to everyone I meet), I am now (if I do not fail, touchwood) an ahMeng. Which is better than being an ahBeng, you'd agree.

When I was still a wee lass in school, graduation and earning a degree seemed like such a big deal. But now, I've passed the threshold and I've attained a masters in engineering. I've gone one step further than my parents in education. If I get a first, I'll possibly be the most successful academic in my extended family... a first class from the 9th best university in the world! I've come a long way since I was top of the class in primary one and couldn't understand what that meant ("Mummy, teacher said I got number 1. Why 1 only?").

But after all is said and done, I'm not really sure what I've acheived. And I feel no different from that seven year old girl in the navy blue pinafore colouring butterflies on notepaper. "Mummy, they say I've got an MEng now. What's that all about?"

Printed, Bound and Submitted

There was supposed to be this feeling of ecstatic celebration, like fireworks, like a burst of confetti.

But all I feel is the aftermath of a headache that has just only subsided. I'm not proud of myself, I probably did the worst project in my entire life. It only proves how much of an academic I am not! No, I will never do a PhD. It would be much too painful to subject me to that torture again.

So four years of engineering is drawing to a close, and I'm just as unsure about engineering as when I started. Clearly I abhor research and I have no creativity for design. I liked applying the goobledygook I learnt to programming mostly, but I'm not much of a software engineer. I like signals and telcos and I could live with that for most of my life. But I suspect there is a much bigger picture to this engineering business that I'm just not seeing. That I just can't see yet. It's me and yet not me.

Now that I've packed up my report, it's time to start on my room. Starting with my cooking utensils. It's so sad to put them into a box and say goodbye.

All night long

Report update as of now (without a conlusion) has reached a grand total of 46 pages - thanks to LaTeX and it's immense generosity of line spacing.

Gonna nap for an hour and a half and pray that there is enough printing paper in the labs tomorrow. Then gonna present my draft to Dr. Mandic, discuss my new results, pray that he lets me include them, come back and rewrite the report, add in all my graphs, all my appendices, and all my code... and then call it a night!

It's gonna be a long, long day...

I have an inkling this headache is going to last all week

So the report is due on Thursday and I have drafted up around 38 pages. Just another 12 more to reach that glorious number 50. After which I can attach all my code and place graphs and pictures wherever I please, until I reach that esteemed number 70.

I hate writing reports. I'd rather just code and demonstrate my work for all to gawk at.

The internet is really, really great...

So at the eleventh hour yesterday, as I was trying to explain my code to a PhD student of my supervisor, he turns to me and says

"Well, I've just discovered that the instantaneous frequencies are meaningless, but when the IMFs are in phase you can locate the spikes... which is what I am trying to do now but haven't succeeded yet"

And with that my whole FYP just fell apart. My entire project rests fundamentally on instantaneous frequencies and nothing else. What he has just discovered almost disproves everything I've been doing! CRAP!

I spent 2 feverish hours testing with other types of data, hoping to prove him wrong (what was I thinking? Me (stupid undergrad) prove him (superior PhD) wrong???). After I had crashed my laptop and was running late for Avenue Q, I gave up and ran (almost) all the way to Leicester Square.
It was crude, it was inappropriate and made me forget about my doomed FYP. I also thought the guy voicing Nicky and Trekkie Monster could have been switched at birth with Eddie Cahill who plays Det. Flack in CSI New York.

So after overeating at a Korean restaurant, and then lazing around re-watching the first episode of X-files (boy do I miss that show!), I started surfing for Avenue Q videos on youtube and came across this:



When Avenue Q meets Fiddler on the Roof... everyone IS a little bit Jewish! Isn't the internet great? (No Chris, not for porn).

News of the world... and all that goss...

Yesterday was an interesting day in terms of fulfilling my gossip quota. This girl is after all gossip/pat-kua/kaypoh central.

The first story wasn't so much gossip as congratulatory news. Congratulations to my ex-coursemate Asa and his wife, my ex high schoolmate, Awanis on the birth of their new baby Azalea! Such a pretty name!

And following more baby news is the one we're awaiting from my seniors Hawa and Kolget. Will keep an eye on that.

And in other less joyful news, while chatting with an old primary school classmate, I discovered the shocking news that an old friend/schoolmate/pri-school mortal enemy had a sex video of hers leaked all over the internet. Apparently all the buzz was in Australia and word never reached Malaysian shores... until now. *ahem* And of course it is now being passed on by vile word of mouth, from girlfriend to girlfriend. The only rather comical part of this is that, being girls none of us know where to start searching for this video. Or as one girlfriend said: "I wonder what keywords you'd have to type into Google to find it? It's not like I regularly search for porn"

Finally at the end of the day, after a round of late night badminton, I arrived back in my room to find my msn blinking furiously. Apparently Iylia couldn't wait to gossip about our Prime Minister's new bride! Iylia and I don't talk politics. We gossip about it like two makciks at the market!

Oh well, it's a brand new day. Let's see what other interesting gossip lies in store for me.

Counting down the days

I never thought the end would be like this. I never thought I'd so desperately want to leave.

So many Malaysians come here to stay, but after 4 years all I can say is - I've had enough, I want to go home.

It's not that I've had a terrible time. I've had the time of my life, and you'd better believe it that I've had. I'll miss the good laughs in the JCR, the endless bridge and Dai dee card games, the running around Europe with a backpack and sunglasses, the snuggling under fleece blankets watching TV in the midst of winter, the waiting for snow, the teasing from ISE everytime I appear at an outing, the free museums, the picnics and frisbees in the park, the running to catch a musical after 6pm lectures, the abundant pubs, the first sight of daffodils in the spring, the Ben's cookies and Krispy Kremes...

I've had an amazing time, but I can't stay put in one place for long. I can't grow roots and acclimatise. My time is up and I have to go back and try something new.

Ironically I haven't started packing yet. It's not like I'm working on my project (which I'm procrastinating as much as I can). I'm slowly working towards my farewell. Beginning with the few gatherings with old society/department/hall friends. Next it'll be the handing in of my final year project, the Summer ball, and then I'll pack up 4 years of my life in boxes, ready to be dispersed. I'll say goodbye to the winter clothes and my collection of scarves which will now be ornamental. My tattered gloves will probably be tossed. My many blankets will not be coming home with me. Who needs them in 30 degrees heat?

I don't think there's any point to extending this post further.

I'm done.

I.Want.To.Go.Home!!!

It sounds a lot louder when screamed in my head.

--------------------------

... the irony of uni life is that, at the end of the day you really have to do some work in order to graduate respectfully... i am saying this in regards to my unfinshed FYP... oh, to be an unfinished song or novel or script instead... but no, i am only an unfinished 50 page report (which hasn't even been compiled in LaTeX without warnings, without errors)... and an unfinished technical presentation where I will wax lyrical about filters and spectrums and white gaussian noise for perhaps the last time...

In my own weird little world

A part of my FYP worked. I was so excited I couldn't sleep and stayed up to program a bit more until I was satisfied with the result. It's only a small percentage of what I am meant to achieve, but at least it's getting somewhere.

It's been raining non-stop since the weekend started. That's the way to dampen my motivation to go to college and work.

Tock stopped by yesterday because he was hungry, and so I fed him.

My neighbour, Gemma, got locked in today. A carpenter came and tried to get to her room from my window, but no luck there. They've had to bust her door open and now there's sawdust everywhere. That's the most exciting thing that's happened today. Apart from it being Ohm's birthday, I guess.

I've made another Oreo cheesecake. That should settle part of my debts with the 3rd years.

I'm bored. Can't you tell?

Things I wonder if I'll regret about uni life

That I never studied in the IC library. Sure I borrowed books and used the computers there when I had no internet. But I never went to the library specifically to study. I hated the atmosphere of despair and desperation of the last minute muggers and sixth cup of espresso chuggers. Where did I study? My bed of course! But that's one uni experience I never was a part of.

That I never joined the clubs I really wanted to. Like Leonardo or MT or even fellwanderers. I did the Dramsoc stint for abit, am in more committees than I would wish to be in, ran two of the biggest cultural shows in IC, and yet I wish I'd done a bit more stuff out of my league. But I've been skema and didn't dare. I don't know why I gave up rock climbing. I wasn't good, but I wasn't bad and now it's been 4 years since I last touched a rockwall. Damn it.

That I didn't really get to know my coursemates in the first year. My first year is a blur of Linstead and a bit of Mnite memories, and nothing of my coursemates and the friends I hang out with now. I wish I hadn't ditched those ISE outings, I wish I had made friends with CL and XQ and Wei earlier (especially XQ who would have been a great help for courseworks), wish I remembered more of my first year than just being in Linstead. Although I wouldn't give up those crazy Linstead memories for the world!

That I never went on the Engineers without Borders programme to help some third world country build a power station, although my mum would say I should just come back to Malaysia because we are a third world country too. I can't build a power station anyway. I could help to program a communications satellite though. But what third world country needs that?


That I didn't do a 3 year course and leave with the rest. But it was fun to hang around for a fourth year and get my masters for doing almost nothing.

That we never went on a road trip. Whether in the UK or back home. We talked about it and never did it. Because we were never in the same place at the same time for long enough.

That I never developed a polished British accent. But that's just crazy talk.

That I've never been to Greece. I've been to lots of places, but I want to go to Greece! Enough said.


And the many many things I didn't get to do... because 4 years of university life isn't enough time.