It's that time of the year again... to drag a bus-load (make that 2) of Malaysians up to Nottingham for 'the Games', make sure everyone gets a sandwich and a drink, ensure that all the players are where they should be at the right time, and then hit the town (but returning in time to cheer which ever team gets into the finals... I predicted Basketball and I was right!)
So after meeting up with Amar, who's positively haggard... what have you done to yourself, man?... Lionel and I left Notts Uni to do the tourist thing. I called Jilly who had some trouble giving me directions to town and to Nottingham Castle as she said it would be quite complicated. Guess what, Jilly? I got on Rainbow 5, just as you said, and got out when I saw the 'Robin Hood Tales' and lo and behold, what was right in front of me? Nottingham Castle! (Which was quite a dissapointment... I mean how many times can you try to burn and destroy a castle?)
After awhile we got tired of the whole tourist thing (especially when we started to see Malaysians with cameras at every turn), and we came to the conclusion that Robin Hood was overused. It wasn't just the 'Robin Hood Tales', 'Friar Tuckers' and 'Robin Hood' estate agency... it was the Robin Hood Knights Tandoori Restaurant that did it! And Adrian swears there is a Roo Bee Hoo Chinese Take-away in Notts too! I'll check with Jilly on that one!
Lionel and I eventually made our way to the Christmas markets (quite reminiscent of the markets in Austria and Germany) but after a really good pub lunch (London pubs completely outdone in this case!) the shopping bug got the better of us (oh alright, just me) and I returned to Notts Uni just in time to support Basketball finals with a new coat and a new pair of boots. Lionel and I unfortunately got off the bus at the wrong stop (the Lakeside) and thus walked the entire length of Notts Uni back to the sports centre in the dark. Its times like these you just have to love the bright London lights!
Well, IC MSoc did a great job at the Games. We didn't lose that many first rounds. *grin* and we were all so good and got on the buses on time! And didn't give Charlotte a headache, I say cheers to all of you!

And just for overkill I'm going to post 2 blogs in 1 hour. Don't you just love my sudden spurts of narcissistic information?

I'm beginning to find myself too annoying anyway. There's something seriously wrong when your own voice annoys you. Oh hell... who else have I been annoying?

I've been fervantly praying for more compassion. Some weeks it works, some weeks I just bloody want to piss everyone off. I'm starting to think I suffer from multiple personality disorder. Coupled with postponing homework disorder and falling asleep in lectures disorder (but at least I go for all my lectures... digital doesn't count).

Last Friday was Chris's surprise birthday party. They tried their darndest to get him wasted, they did! But, for all it was worth, Chris was still sober enough to talk to me about Membership Cards at the end of the night! You go, Chris!

I'm still working hard on the M-Nite script (practically trying to breathe life into it). What is scary is that after more than 6 months of working on it, what if the story flops? It's silly enough as it is. The gags and the witt jokes cover up a little, but it won't save it from drowning. I really hope Ayish and Dzam have more optimism with it than I have. CL too.

Going to watch Pagoda Street (a Singapore Playhouse London production) tonight. Hopefully an asian muscial will inspire me to be the astounding M-nite playwright I am trying so hard to be. I want to write a musical next time, dammit. (mumbles to ambitious self to shut up)

This Saturday I will be in Nottingham, hopefully exploring Nottingham town and NOT waiting at the sidelines to watch our teams trash other Malaysian teams (which is a given). I promise to come back in time to support the teams that do get into the finals, though.

Week after that, I'm going to Canterbury and Dover. It's nice to get out of London and finally see the white cliffs of Dover.

And 2 weeks after that Lionel will be in New York, and I will be home!

That's enough spam for another 2 weeks, I should think! Cheers!

Sometimes it's hard to be a proud Malaysian, particularly when your own politicians, (nay, Deputy Prime Minister) make comments that allow for the entire world to point fingers at my country and laugh out loud.

Take a moment to read Najib: NS needed because schools failed in integration from The Star, and then ask how an entire government can admit that their school systems have failed to integrate the young and teach them to mix without care of race, religion or background... and yet, they do nothing about the root of the problem.

Yes, we cannot change the system of having vernacular schools. But why implement NS when most young Malaysians have left school? If it is to be a 3 month 'OBS camp', why is it not implemented while we're still in school and can make the best out of it?

They don't try and change us when we're still in our formative years. When we're young and impressionable 13 or 14 year olds. Instead they try and change us when we're 17 or 18. When we're rebellious and no longer want to be labelled as children. When some of us are already working full time, married and worse still are already parents!

This isn't a problem of patriotism. This is a real social problem which exists in our society, whereby we don't tackle the root of the problem. Instead we try to fix what is broken, and at the same time allow the rest to continue breaking, so we can fix it.

Shame on you!

Ladida...

Here's to a lovely autumn day. Azure blue skies with nary a cloud. Bloody 6 degrees weather. And shivering icey fingers (thank goodness I never went to medical school... my patients would have died of shock from cold fingers!)

We're all at home awaiting the arrival of Amar. Except for Lionel. He's in Nottingham playing volleyball and probably grumbling about it.

So what's been up since all hallow's eve? It's hard to recall. The last 2 weeks went by in a flash, and now its the weekend again. In short this is how the last 2 weeks probably went (probably, because my mind is in quite a blur, wreck by committee dissentions and piling up homework and unvisited relatives)

• Started first round of M-nite auditions. 4 hours of listening to auditionees (whilst trying to film them... smile, you're on Candid Camera!) and I'm sick of my own script. Wrote a whole new scene in one night for the second round of auditions. I'm starting to really like Leslie's character, even if he is the baddie. Finalised the main cast yesterday and e-mailed all the final auditionees this morning. I hate dissapointing people, because I didn't get a role in the main cast myself last year and it was downright annoying to find out people who simply couldn't act had gotten a part (and I don't mean any of my comm members - I thought you guys were brilliant). Nevertheless, our final cast has a damn load of talent. I'm now trying to fit in supporting cast members, because we just can't waste all that lovely lovely talent!
• Pumped up the inflatable sofa. Very comfy for watching movies on, and I suppose Amar can use it as a bed when he comes down to London. Got an idea to fill it up with water so it becomes a water sofa bed... but decided not to, in case Yi Shan decides to rear little tropical fish in it, which he really thinks is a brilliant idea!
• Met up with Michelle and Andrew who were down from Sheffield for the weekend. Ying came along too and was surprisingly the earliest. I kept a look out for pink flying pigs. We had crepes at the Creparie and then bummed around in my room for awhile. Ah... I feel like I've done my bit with keeping up with old friends.
• Went round to Kristina's for a little potluck dinner together with all the Emperor's gate people. German pancakes and salad, roast duck and chicken wings with chilli char siew sauce and not forgetting Marvin and Jac's wine... cannot imagine a more international feast. Quite a merry night just chatting away and listening to renditions from Kristina and Marvin (who was attacked by a "No, hombre, no" speech impediment).
• Finished reading half of Dorian Gray. Fell asleep while reading it last night. Lionel claims I was talking in my sleep. Don't like the idea of self portraits anymore.

And so that pretty much rounds up my boring two weeks. I'm trying to ignore my homework but I hear Laplace Transforms calling. Integrating e^x^2 is interestingly quite a challenge still even though Ying says it can be done. I need to work on double integrals.

More Hallowe'en photos...  

Jac the little witch, carefully slices her pumpkin 

Lu scopes out the pumpkin's innards 

Some scary shit 

Mr Spock pays a halloween visit 

This is what science students do for thrills... toss some methylated spirit on a lit candle and watch flames burst and sparkle inside a pumpkin!  

Can hardly tell Fidel apart from the pumpkins!  

A family photo! 

pumpkins keeping watch at the window... doesn't Cartman look absolutely cheerful!  

How to carve a Hallowe'en pumpkin - Step 1: Choose a nice, round, preferably orange, pumpkin... like this one!

Step 2: Draw a hideous design... or dotted lines for the lobotomy operation

Step 3: Carefully carve out its eyes, nose, mouth, pimples, warts etc.

And voila: You have your very own cute jack-o-lantern. This one was christened Cartman!

Yesterday was one of those, 'lets go out and walk about London' Saturdays. The weather was so tempting. Blue skies, sunshine, warm weather (and by warm I mean 15 degrees). You'd be damned to stay indoors (especially after 1 week of drizzly, gloomy weather).

So, thanks to the blasted suspensions on the circle & district line, we walked from St. Pauls (which is dissapointingly being renovated, and on top of that there is an entrance fee of 6 pounds... to see a church? Why??) to Tate Modern, across the Thames. Tate is pretty depressing, situated inside a dismally lit old power station. But the art is fantastic... not my favourite (except for the surrealists and andy warhol) but very impressive.

After about 2 hours of trying to make sense of all that modern art, we headed to Covent Garden, hoping to eat at Wagamama (2 for 1!!) but ended up munching on jacket potatoes and wandering around my favourite magical square in London, before taking the bus to High Stree Kent to meet the rest at the Wagamama there (2 for 1!!).

Upon reaching home, we realised Marvin had brought a visitor - Kristina!!! My ex-room mate! Thus Kristina joined us for the highlight of the evening - Pumpkin Carving! The household upstairs got 4 pumpkins, while we got 2... one of which has been christened Cartman! After carving all the pumpkins, we lit them up with candles, turned off the lights... and soon they looked like some tourist attraction, with cameras clicking everywhere and even tripods appeared! We then decided to arrange them on the staircase, for better effect, and finally at the witching hour we took them outside for a group photo (tripods and all).

Happy Hallowe'en!!!

The latest batch of Gamuda Scholars with 3 of us old foggies... this was taken some time ago in August... I'm so behind in my photos

And Charlotte returns...

... after a month's hiatus, 3 weeks of school, 2 weeks of classes, uncountless hours of MSoc and even more uncountable hours of NO SLEEP!

Thank heavens for tomorrow's Commemoration Day holiday (who knows who or what exactly they are commemorating as long as they order us to take a break from 9am labs!).

Oh well, here's a brief update of what I've been messing around with.

(Oh alright... I kid you... I can't remember a time when I've EVER been brief!)

Chronologically...
Arrived in hot, Hot, HOT London (after effects of sweltering summer...)
Moved in to my lovely flat (christened Emperor's Gate for obvious reasons!)
Spent at least 2 days unpacking, moving about boxes, searching for missing stuff (fluffy bedroom slippers and 'pink' scarves) and cleaning house (besides house training Yi Shan)...
My laptop got stolen from my own room within 2 days of moving in. Appreciated the police coming down to my flat and dusting for fingerprints, all CSI-like, but would still appreciate the damn thief returning my laptop and ALL my CDs (sobs... my patiently accumulated Tori Amos Collection, my Jewel albums, and all my new Third Day and City on a Hill CDs... bah!)
Welcomed a MSoc Comm meeting in my house, with the promise of Krispy Kremes from Chien Liq... of which I didn't get to eat a single one... sigh...
Ran around in the cold English rain (it's like a christening... a sign that you are once again reborn into the dreary English weather) and subsequently started the infection of the Fresher's Flu!
Set up a rather gawdy booth for Fresher's fair (which attracted more than its fair share of attention... but for the right reasons!) with only half of my wits with my due to the Flu, not to mention bodily fluid which had a mind of their own, and a voice that disappeared after a bout of being overly hyper...
Started lectures in a better frame of mind (had passed on the Flu to others by then...). Love my lecturers this term (save for the balding guy teaching us Digital... who IS he? I think I lost track of his name, and what ever he was teaching, in that first lecture when I fell asleep 15 minutes into it... and YES, it was the first lecture of the term... boy do I have a wonderful track record). My Statistics lecturer has some ISSUES! Of which she proceeds to rant about in class, but it does make probability and Exponential Distributions so much more interesting when she is telling us her problems with calling customer service for her cable plan (of which she is trying to obtain their quality testing stastistics)... and you KNOW you've got a real interesting quirk teaching you Stats when she proffesses to adore Laplace! My math lecturer (Jean-Luc) on the other hand is a Canadian Hobbit! It's quite an achievement for him to reach the top of the blackboard in room 407a! And we no longer QED our proofs... instead we BYU them, which translates to Bob's Your Uncle... go figure! We've got George again for Discrete Math (and I DO NOT gush about George! I really DO NOT!) and yeah, that wasn't a slight of the eye. I have 3 Math modules this term! Really sounds like I'm in the wrong course!
Followed up Fresher's fair with Freshers Meet, and was dragged around South Kensington by 7 or 8 freshers in search of Krispy Kreme napkins, low price Sainsbury's spaghetti and a photo of the dinosaur at the Natural History Museum. We need to rethink these scavenger hunts and the effects on aging seniors next time!
Next up - Pasar Malam! 3 days standing in the bitter cold and pouring rain (drama mama...) selling sarongs, batik, henna tattoos (i'm a certified henna tattoo artist now!), beaded bracelets, teh tarik and satay... but it was fantastic fun! Worth every back breaking minute of it! I can now gurantee that a sarong shawl is all you need to stay warm in 11 degrees weather... that and an infinite amount of adrenaline!
On the side, I'm taking Literature again... and I have the most artsy and faery-like Lit lecturer. She seems almost ethreal at times, and sticks out like a green alien in Imperial (we can be such snobby scientists...). Well it's Hardy, Conrad and Wilde for the next few weeks... whoopee! I'm being forced to READ!
I am also now in the habit of taking German classes on Thursday evenings. Guten ja? Amar you'd be so at home in my German class!


I think I've had enough of typing. I'm going to go look for the boys, who are glued to their computers somewhere around the house.