10th of July 2008

Today I went through a hundred and ten minutes of the ever so droll Thermuddy (new nickname for Thermodynamics), and a repetition of a part of a subtopic of Physics last semester, in Process Chemistry: the whole photoelectric effect zing and ze wavelike behavior of mazzer.

Physics has never been my forte, and when I'm faced with a distorted picture of a manometer I just feel even more like snapping it (the U-shaped little tube) to two (though I doubt just my bare fingers could do it), but responsibility is an obligation, yes?

So then after muddy I had lunch – for the first time! – on my own – and it was fun! I have to confess; I'm still building up my independence, going to and fro classes without my friends, running errands alone when I can. So as I was scanning one of the four cafeterias in our S&T complex (yes yes I know! Lucky us engineering, pharmacy and medic students!) for a place to land my butt and chomp on excessive calories, I spotted a lady sitting by herself and asked if the three seats at the table were vacant. She said only one was booked, so I sat down and had a little chat with her. After having bought a plate of chicken rice (the particular café I went to was popular for that one dish) and a bottle of mineral water, I found out over our little talk that she's a final-year electrical engineering degree student, waiting for a guy friend who promised to buy her lunch) it was fun, by the end of my first lunch alone (*lol* that sounds funnily lonely though!) I got to know two EE senpais.

Call me whatever, but I like interacting with (certain) strangers. It's the feeling of making the most of a possible once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: making the right impression, breaking the wall of noncommunication, spreading the love and smiles - it becomes a learning experience. ('learning experience'? how very commercialize-y advertisement-ey.)

I'm still itching to tell my dad about our class's foreign student, from Yemen. Since Abi had just got back from Sana'a last two weeks, it would be fun to tell him that the dude is from the capital too. We girls in our class love to tease each other with the poor dude as the main subject. At the end of thermuddy, though, when I was asking him about his country, I swear the whole class went quiet and were tuning in to our short conversation!

Anyway. Can't dally. Tomorrow's Calculus, and all the integration and differentiation formulae should've become fossils in my head by now so I gotta dig 'em up before I get involuntarily dumbfounded in the face of intimidating trigonometric equations.

Today's add on the wish list: a trip to Cape Town.

19th of July 2008; 0222 hrs

Head's aching. Because there's no class yesterday, the night before my elder brother spirited Abi - who was unwell – and me off from campus. It was a last-minute, because-of-hormonal-imbalance plan: when Abi called to ask if I wanted to go home, I was feeling crushed and wanted some sort of physical refuge. So off I went in my blistered left foot thanks to my new three-inch wedges which became the source of accidental envy of my dear friend Maddy (next time I wear it must put on plaster beforehand) and slumped my sack of a bag, a small laundry basket (I was planning to wash 'em after muddy but there was a change of schedule. Besides, the WASHING MACHINE is an electrical appliance, an invention worthy of praise and affection where back pains after fourty minutes of leaning over the sink and dry hands due to direct contact with detergents are not favourable.Love thy washing machine, though prudent be in utilizing them.) and my code-named lapelle bag.

Objective: let the love and presence of Ma, Abi, Nafisa, Salam & Amin patch up holes of security. Side goal: search for materials for Chemical Process & Sustainability's assignment. Ended up doing: watching two episodes of Neo Angelique ~Abyss~  -Second Age-, staying up with an ill Nafisa to let a sleep-deprived Maman get some shut-eye and got to eat fave mushroom soup! Ma accidentally made it salty but I don't care, it's still cooked by her.

About sometime around 1 am I went to bed, woke up about half past four to perform Isya and continue wazifa, then went back to sleep until I woke up to see the clock silently nagging me with "IT'S ALMOST NINE!" so I went down and had two slices of beloved green-pack Gardenia (I miss you wholemeal bread!) with tuna and winny, with the iced lemon tea Ma made (Dude. Since when did I start recording what I have for eats?). A much-better Abi promised to send me to college around 10.30 am and since it's Friday, the baju kurung definitely defeats the black pants to go to Calculus lecturer's office and later the library, so after folding my washed clothes (thank you washin machine! And kakak for hanging em outside) which were still about 0.2% wet into the laundry basket, I waited for Abi and Amin to finish eating to get into the car.

Off we went, then, arrived at college, made plans with fellow girls to go to lecturer's faculty (which was not the same as ours) so we took the bus because in that sun hiking up hills in our baju kurung was definitely an uncomfortable decision.. only to arrive back at the initial bus stop after a full tawaf of the university because in that sardine tin, the bells weren't working and we missed both of the nearest stops to the desired destination. MAN. It was funny, but yeah in the end we braved the fictional mountains and, bathed in sweat, reached his office guided by our guy friend. Our way back? The bus, please. What more with our new green thousand-plus paged, hard-covered Anton books.

I didn't feel like having lunch, so I'd rather not type about what I had as a substitute for meat and veggies but I did manage to read a portion of the day's paper (I ain't no staunch supporter of the man, but I don't believe that DNA samples alone could prove whether or not a person is guilty of a crime) while waiting for the azan because after Zuhr I'd promised a classmate to go to the library together. While I was online there, an acquaintance from way back in EduCamp sent me two chapters of his MapleStory fanfic and asked me to comment on them. A must read, this dude has really good English!! Speaking of which, I miss a particular EduCamp facilitator, a Chinese student majoring in.. something related to computers. Not sure which. I hope he's fine, and over the phase which had been troubling him.

This afternoon, actually, I was SMS-ing with an interesting dude whom I think I have a very, very little crush on.. and it continued until the evening, after I'd taken part in our class' discussion of our faculty's annual dinner whereby we'd have to perform something (we'd decided on either a dance or a comical show).. and when he asked me out, I freaked out.

What is it with me, I don't know. An explanation I can come up with is apart from believing my Uki is still out there somewhere (ROFL – believe me if you may), I don't want to be anywhere near the binds of a relationship. I figure if I'm ever going to be with a(n unfortunately blessed) man it might as well be the first and last relationship of the kind that I'd ever have. [cue: Morinozuka Takashi - Itsumo Soba Ni]

This has happened before, this whole oh-no-i-don't-want-to-go-any-further moment with former crushes. I might be idealistic, but I have always thought that when he comes, I'd know. But then I remembered, "maybe you started to compare to someone not there" and thought, should I give it a shot? Though so far, what I'd usually do is discreetly steer the ship right back on the 'friends' track. Or more accurately, tiptoeing on the fine line to cross to the safer side is what He makes me do.

I should not toy around, I know. It is not good to lead people on when I have no decided direction.

*little sigh*
I kept on rereading his SMS-es, though. lol @ me.

Anyway. Really, there's a lot more of stuff that's happened these past few days, but they can't make it to the blog. It's 3.20 am now. In five hours' time there's this program for first-year students I have to attend, and I still have not read chapter three of the drollymoddy nor gotten myself more familiar with the array of choices served by the AutoCAD, nor practiced karukurusu. Nor finished reading El Shirazy's bestselling Ayat-ayat Cinta Ma bought for me while we went shopping last Saturday night.

Even if I'd just slept around nine till twelve before, head and ears still ring. Think I'll just iron out another baju kurung for tomorrow, possibly open up a page with a P-v graph of phase change of saturated blah blah near my pillow and dream about it tonight (todawn? tomorning?).
Hopefully, hopefully, my heart can find a little piece of peace.

lotsa love!
xoxo       

Ps. Q: Can peace come in the form of Big Apple doughnuts?
     A: Probably not, that's probably driven by the evil hunger hormone that comes with insufficient REM.

2213hrs

When I was in school, on average I can say that my days are like 24 hours of a weather. If today is a fluffy white day with an azure background, tomorrow could be grey skies, the next an orange-hot energy-draining day. Storms happen once in a while, but in particular, near the end of August 2006, there was a week-long drought.

Now, in university, a day is an unpredictable play, a random sequence of the different faces of the weather. There's a lot to feel in 24 hours, ranging from the infinities of +y to –y when you surf on the daily wave of sine.  

Thanks partially to my kind roomie, I woke up in time to perform Subh, then took a shower (I even washed my hair! Which is unusual because this is not home; here I'd usually wash my hair at night and not first thing in the morning) had brekky and stuff and stuff and by 8.05 am I managed to slap on the Peanuts plaster I managed to grab from home the last time I went back (no other choice) on the red, red blister (sounds freaky but I like the colour, it's been quite long since I last saw such a colour against my skin) and marched ahead to the faculty together with my close classmate Farah.

The first two hours of the program was a picture of an extremely packed lecture hall (imagine 230+ students in a room with only a capacity of 100+ - apparently all the other bigger lecture halls were booked), a cold one at that, as it was a melancholic-themed sky; grey, windy and drizzly – and the door was open, welcoming the chilly breeze in. My seat was the stair, directly facing outside. I tried my best to listen to the talk as if the wind licking me was one source of energy when it was producing the exact opposite effect. The associate professor who gave us the talk asked us to list down our positive and negative qualities, but I can't continue after wrecking my brain for about five minutes, trying to find more to write other than "rational sometimes", "impatient sometimes", "always willing to try", "fickle sometimes", and "hard to forgive sometimes". This is against what I believe; that I shouldn't pick a good adjective and stick it on me like it belongs to me, because it doesn't. Everything is by and for Him, good or bad. I do see the "soul-searching", muhasaba side, though, that it's good that I'm searching for what doesn't make me better. It's just that credit's all His. Besides, even if I'd ever list them down, each adjective would be followed by "sometimes" – one thing I notice about me is that I have opposing sides that come out at different times.

So it ended, and apart from receiving an achy rear end as a gift, I walked out of the lecture hall reminded of the short time we have here. Life is but one breath, Shaykh Mustafa al-Alawi said. We proceeded to another place to have a little brekky and were divided into groups of about 20+. I got to be in the same group as a few of my foundation ex-classmates, which was really nice, and our facilitator was our foundation studies' program coordinator! we were then divided into smaller groups of 5-7, and were given two  tasks which involved presentations; one where we'd have to talk about a current issue, and the other a random topic for public speaking. In my group, I was actually taken aback at how quite adamant one member could be about things. I'm stubborn too sometimes (which Cap girl is not?), really I am, but inshAllah I think I can see it when I have a lost cause. I hope I'll never be ineffectively uncommunicative. Despite the miscommunications and incomplete cooperation (wow I wonder how working life could be), we managed to scrape through, thank God. For the first presentation, I was chosen by a member from another group to explain about my group's topic: about the refusal of King Albert II of Belgium to let the PM, Yves Leterme step down after just four months in office because the PM couldn't solve the dispute between ethnicities in hostility, one Dutch-speaking, one French-speaking. Though I had prepared, I was quite surprised I was chosen, though, because the aforementioned member wanted to go and present it to the 'class'. Then came my turn to choose someone from another group, and I asked this dude who (practically) had "I'm confident, but try me if you dare" written on his forehead, and he went and talked about our education system, about the sciences and maths being taught in English. Then there were other tasks, and at the end of it all (which was an hour earlier than formally scheduled), I could sum it all up as "fun experience" after having our pictures taken and goodbyes exchanged, so you could imagine me in moderately high spirits after going through adrenaline-worry and adrenaline-nervousness the hours before.

It was around 4.35 pm, so I called Maman and asked if she could pick me up so we could go together to our relatives' (our weekly routine, Saturday is family day for us ). So we went. Around dusk we went home, I had dinner (spaghetti b, and Ma made fave ayam percik! ) and before she dropped me off at college, we went to the nearest mall as I needed to get stuff for Civil Defense and some food (I was going to support the ban of Danish products but it was only after we'd paid that I realized begrudgingly that the apricot oatmeal biscuit I chose was Danone's and God, the stuff is nice).

So now here I am, after having called a fellow group member for our first Chem P&S assignment, I am SO supposed to NOT be doing this, but I can't help it. I've grown addicted to typing out what's inside, up to the stage where whenever there's anything type-worthy happening, I'd construct sentences in my head and imagine me in front of this screen exercising these metacarpal bones.

I keep on thinking of my eldest bro's guitar that I've been trying to learn to play, and I shall make it an aim to one day be able to play the chords for Itsumo Soba Ni. For now I'd only managed to play The Corpse Bride's Piano Duet, but I wonder if there are no corresponding notes on a guitar for a piano? Because there are some notes that I couldn't find the correct strings on frets to hold and pluck for (ja I am a TOTAL beginner, I know nada about guitars apart from what I'd scanned on the Net). I was listening to the Bolshoi Ballet Orchestra of Tan Sri P. Ramlee and was wishing to be surrounded by a live version of Di mana kan Ku Cari Ganti. *little sigh*

Well then. Let's jump off this heaviness. Tomorrow I must to do something academic.
'Night~
xoxo         

Last Sunday, eldest bro helped me move the things I live in (which were stuffed into one large luggage, an enormous carry-all and a basket) into my new room in the college, one I currently am sharing with three other girls from Sabah, Sarawak and Kedah. I was quite disappointed during registration that I didn't get to be in the same room as my fellow course mates – I know I had the chance to, but now that I think about it, I'm grateful that I got the room that I got. For one: it doesn't face the traffic; apart from minimal noise, I can walk around wearing whatever I want. Two: it's on the third floor; inevitable calorie-burning sessions everyday, and three: my roomies are, thank God and please God, nice people (so far).

Since it has only been a week, it hasn't fully dawned on me yet that I am here to get a degree, tests after tests, finals after finals, life after life. Since we'd stayed in the same college and studied in the same faculty last year for foundation studies, my course mates and I chose not to follow the orientation week as we'd already been through that last year. Two out of five days some of us spent at our own homes, as we live in the same state. It felt kind of guiltily good; twice when everyone else was listening to some drone sessions or other, we were out shopping (in our baju kurungs, no less; usually we'd want to join the activity - which required us to wear formal attire - but before they could start we'd change our minds and hop on into the car) and watching Get Smart (highly entertaining!). Well yeah we did try to find out later if there was anything important we needed to be aware of that was talked about during those talks, but 95% of them weren't exactly of our utmost concern, and the remaining 5% we've acted out upon, of course.

I guess after going through last year, I've learnt to surf along the waves of life here. I can expect nothing and everything, from everyone and no one. One thing I'm quite nervous about is joining Civil Defense for co-curricular. New territory, baby. I'll let you in on one not-so-cool secret: in my whole life I've never been to a camp, majorly because of my skin's condition, so I wonder if I should start going to camps this sem. I'd like to try, but then repercussions are repercussions – will I be ready to face them? Hey, the last time I slept in a tent was when I was about six – on the porch for one night with my elder brothers. It wasn't a punishment or anything, we just wanted to try out the new tent our father had bought, so we put in our favourite cushions and toys, had tea and dinner there, one thing lead to another and we ended up sleeping there. The next day? About after lunch, we unassembled the tent. I can't remember if it was or was not because of mosquitoes, but it was fun while it lasted.

Hmm.
Last night I watched the first season's finale to Neo Angelique, and it surprised me that I was rethinking about its substance. The anime is pretty much about a handful of honest gifted persons (Rayne, Nyx, J.D., Hyuga and Angelique) wanting to protect the helpless people of Arcadia from evil with their combined strengths. And when with great power comes great responsibilities, the four hot guys protecting the sweet girl (who was bestowed the light to purify evil) together have to save the world, possibly from a possible traitor (one of the four who is really handsome, in my opinion) who controls these evil beings called Thanatos (that look pretty much like mammoth mollusks and magnified viruses). Dramatis personae:

I don't know, I think the sheer unbelievability of it all is finally turning me off, notwithstanding the fact that almost all of the eligible men in the story is falling for the girl, Angelique; the Queen's Egg, prophesized to be next ruling Queen who is expected to bring much needed joy and peace to the kingdom.
I mean, it induces inappropriate jealousy, you know?

Similarly, in Harukanaru Toki no Naka de Hachiyosho, the main girl is surrounded by eight different guys, but in this one, it's the girl that's pretty much off-putting, try as I might to be indriscriminate - so I only lived through about slightly more than half of the series. The unbelievability factor is quite powerful here, too. Then I tried this manhwa, the Bride of the Water God (I know! Just reading the title can either make you squirm, snort or smirk according to your first reaction), it is slightly ridiculous, but I like that it is drawn with attention to detail. The architecture, the interior, the landscape. But that, too, didn't hold me any farther than the first three volumes.

But an escapade is an escapade, let fantasy stay where it belongs, and a weekly fix of cute guys - albeit two-dimensional – is vital for the wellbeing of a healthy seventeen-year-old girl like this one.
Talking about seventeen. During the co-curricular registration session, as I was looking at the activities pictures at the Civil Defense booth, one of the officers asked my age, he thought it's nineteen, so I said seventeen. His face was nostalgic; it's been almost a year since I last saw such an expression. Wanting to figure out himself, he probably thought I was a diploma or foundation student having just sat for the SPM last year, so he asked when did I sit for the exam, so I said 2006. As in most circumstances where we think we're hearing what we expect to hear, he went "Ah..", and the next millisecond: "Huh?". *lol* He began to ask more, but I went and pointed to a photo of a headless body bathed in blood beside a crumpled lump of metal on a tar-coloured road, and asked if that was real. The subject took a good turn there.

Death can't be escaped. If it was written, you can't prevent it from happening. But in the writings of the Sufis, death is desirable, albeit of a different kind. Hmm. Truth. Truth doesn't always prevail, does it? Well okay, maybe it will, at the end of the END, it will. I'm thinking of the de facto leader of the PKR. I'd like to believe that he's innocent, and that puppets are planted to smear him down. But if worse comes to worst, I'm also ready to hear that this is just some planned gimmick.
I think I'll keep most of my thoughts on Malaysian politics off this blog, but guess I'll just say that in the wayang kulit, the puppet master stays well behind the screen, and agents with numbers as names aren't just in bestselling fiction.
Though the last Jeffrey Archer I tried to read, I went straight to the ending after having fought through slightly more than half of it. Am currently trying to go through a translation of Genji Monogatari, but that's also proving to be a real challenge. That's my problem with reading. I make sure I get the gist of it, but most of the time I can't imagine the setting correctly. To say I'm bad at imagining things would be quite funny (though it could be true) as – here's another secret – sometimes I lie in my imaginations before REM takes place. Sometimes I have to reread and reread to understand who's saying what and who's doing what, where, and the where holds the most problem. Maybe it's to do with order: I can pretty much conjure stuff out of my own head, but when something tells me what and how to imagine, I can't quite follow perfectly. In my high school senior's (whom I used to have a crush on) blog, he wrote about him and his sister playing make-believe while driving one of their family cars, involving chaos at the airport with robots fighting their car .  This coming from the same guy who made me pick up Time and Newsweek instead of seventeen and gf when I was in Form Four.

OMG I could go on and on with this. No wonder sometimes people say I don't talk much; it's because I write too much. Hah. And they even say that without having seen my diary.

But why are there too many 'I's? It's worrying me. Should stop.
Lemme share this semester's theme songs: 3 Doors Down's It's Not My Time and REM's Imitation of Life. Tegomass's AiAi Kasa optional.

motto rabu~ xoxoxo

p.s. Somebody please feed me Cadbury P.S. of the Caramilk™ kind!!!!! And Praline Flake and Snow Flake!!!

p.p.s. () i'd like to sing, "if I'm lost, can I look, and will I find you?", "if I fall, will you catch me, will you be waiting?" time after time..

"..you're falling out of reach, I know"

Can you see me?
i'm on this orange plane, my aeroplane.
Flight no. FNCY 139, unplanned departure on Apr 29 2008, scheduled date of arrival unknown - but should touch down before Jun 28 2008, where by then this plane will already run out of fuel.. and it's gonna cost me 200 bucks next.

Sometimes this flight can be boring: i'd peer out the window and wish i was down on that little forest of an island (but that would be dangerous), or running on that green, green field with strands of my fringe flapping on my face (oh i need a haircut), or sleep with the stars watching over me.. but never anywhere near the ocean.
i'm afraid of the sea, and all vast bodies of water, and it scares me not knowing what and how to deal with whatever it is that might lurk in there – an entirely different world.
And then i'd wish i was a dolphin, only to think again that i'd be afraid of the land, scared of what and how to deal with whatever that might touch the earth – an entirely different existence.

It started off with Saiunkoku Monogatari.
Though i wish they'd had more outfits considering how deep their pockets should be (but hey maybe they just have lots of pairs the same ones) the tale gripped me to my seat, feeding me both sweets and medicines at the same time: thank you God for such dreamy bishies, but i should learn how to cook too. And study as hard for my upcoming exams – i know i'm going to face a lot of that starting this July where, God willing, i'll be looking out for avalanches and tidal waves alike to go through the first year of B.Eng. (Hons) Chemical.

After days and nights of cumulonimbus and stratus taking turns dancing around my heart (once, there was a storm, thunders and all, but most of the time it's just drizzles), tearing up the fog from my eyes hurt, and to prevent further pain, i decided to not continue with the second season until all of its episodes are subbed. That'll take months, but it's way better to know that the literal object of your desire is within view and reach rather than to bite already chapped lips, licking in trepidation, week after week, expecting. Oh hay i could write a list of animes and mangas that i'm waiting for.

Because one of the serums that the Tale of the Coloured Clouds injected into me to wake me up is that i have to be deserving of what i want.

Next on the small screen was Vampire Knights. In the beginning (i'd like to quote my lecturer and continue, "there was a Fatema", but i shall refrain) it seemed good because the main bishonen is bi, (bi as in Japanese for beautiful), but as the story slowly progresses the leading lady began to irritate me – but that's because i don't see things the way she does, or as depicted to do. So i turned to Yami no Matsuei, but after three episodes went straight to the last one and decided to not think too much about it. For now, at least, because the dudes in Neo Angelique ~Abyss~ is playing caffeine, keeping me addicted.

Ah, there's April Vineyard's Fall To Pieces. Reminds me of those few final weeks of foundation studies nearing finals, where i'd sit cross-legged on my bed with my heart singing that song, photons slamming my brains as i wrote down E = hf in red, wishing i was asleep like the rest of my roommates although the solitude, the dim light of the night was somehow soothing. i used to hate Physics, (especially where it concerns electric & electronics) but the Malay proverb of tak kenal maka tak cinta was proven to be true last term; it was lack of understanding that frustrated me enough to make me hate it.

Oh i can hear that strong wind outside.
It sounds awfully like Andante, though, singing for journey and separation.
Hino Kahoko is supposed to play her violin sans magic, starting from scratch, as the title suggests, andante. i suppose it's another reminder that whatever and however you've suffered, moving steadfastly onwards is the first thing you should do. La Corda d'Oro made me rip whatever classical/orchestral/instrumental CD i can find around my house, but it bugs me with something that my teacher in high school once told me; that i am balanced-brained, that i love both fields, but am a master of neither.

By Him, she could be wrong, no? i could be good at something.. though i don't know what that is yet.

Three hours ago i'd just turned over the last page of chapter 39 of Immortal Rain. For a few seconds, looking at the cover of the 7^th volume and longing to be the one on the carousel, i dramaqueenatically wanted to bawl for the next chapter to materialize, but now am trying to detach myself from it as if it'd never occurred to me that Rain Jewlitt is almost everything i've been dreaming of in the one i've been wishing for, in 2D.

Oh, my stomach growls. i'd like my body to use the stored fats instead of processing new carbs.. but i'm not so sure if that's such a good idea. That's no way to appreciate Ma's latest Thai dish. Maybe i'll just grab a banana. Life isn't so nice when you're allergic to bread..

Dear constellations, it's tormenting. It's a torture to feel that this self is not, in any way, enough to be unordinary. Well okay, i have a few unordinary things (and secrets *wink*) to live with, and this life He gives me is not a fiction, but i'd like to make a difference.
Then Go, a voice would call out.
And He is with those who are patient.

i've been seeing a lot of this quotation lately; that sometimes what we love and want is bad for us, yet what we don't like and don't want holds a blessing for us.

Even if it is up to Him – MOVE.

Like i am now, reaching for my blanket. Hopefully when the sunlight opens my eyes, it'll be a new day..
and i'll be on the ground.

xxxooo