This past Saturday started like most Saturdays: wake up at 11 am, stare drowsily at my iPhone and hit snooze. Go back to sleep but don’t actually sleep; instead, think about the meaning of life, the purpose of existence, a new Sentry-heavy Protoss build against Terran, food, how much time I’m wasting thinking about things in bed, and the universe in general. Also customary is the willingness to skip breakfast to enjoy a better blunch (if brunch is between breakfast and lunch, then blunch is between brunch and lunch).

I spent the rest of the afternoon finishing all my economics homework so I wouldn’t have to rush it on Sunday night playing Starcraft 2.

By about 5pm a bunch of us (10? or thereabouts) were at Yippee Noodle Bar ordering noodles (and the odd rice) to eat. Yippee noodles are delicious, give them a try. Then we went to Christ’s College for the play. All we were told when we got in was to follow the white signs to the theatre; our large group of brilliant future minds got lost twice. At last we found the theatre and sat down…

All of us. Some are hiding :/ Picture by Stephanie Cheng.

While waiting for the show to start I was also wondering what the CUMaS meant. Cambridge University Malaysia Society? Then why bother putting a lower case ‘a’ in the acrony- oh. I see.

Seeing as the website, facebook page, ticket and programme book all had zero information on the play’s story, the only thing which allowed me to guess the story was the title, “What Are Friends For”. I had some ideas:

• A touching story about how friendship connects people. The value of friendship in our lives.
• Dramatic comedy about friends in Malaysia.
• Explosions and aliens.

I was pretty sure that the first idea would be the actual play, but that most of the male population would enjoy the third option.

Anyways, the play happened to be about four friends from high school who went their separate ways for college. It starts off with them reuniting during their summer holidays in Malaysia. Then inject drama, relationships, and comedy into the story.

And the result is a surprisingly good story about these friends and their lives. The writers managed to interweave four storylines (the friendship, and three of the main characters families) together without making people confused. At the same time, the story is surprisingly realisticly told, and it truly made me feel that the events could have (and definitely does) happen in real life. Parents controlling their kids’ lives, trust among friends, broken families, troubled childhoods; it’s all there and I enjoyed every moment of the story.

Some highlights (paraphrased from memory):

• Mrs. Lim: “That boy ah, studying at that university with an animal inside ah- what’s it called? Cowford ah?”
  Sue Ann: “…”
  Sue Ann: “He’s studying in Oxford.”
  Crowd: *uproarious laughter*
  Sue Ann: “It’s almost as good as Cambridge. *pinches fingers in the air* Almost.

• Any scene which involved Ashvin and Sue Ann alone. This will single-handedly raise girls’ expectations on how guys should compliment them.

• The hilarious breaking-the-fourth-wall Facebook monologue which was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant writing which is impossible to replicate here.

• The final conflict scene where the main characters meet and end up screaming, shouting and accusing each other. Great scene.

• Cute, young boy on stage who couldn’t stop laughing and made everyone’s hearts go “AWWWWWWWwwwwwwwwww sho cuuuutte” for the three minutes he was on.

After the show (which sadly, will never be shown again :[ ), we stood outside for a while taking pictures (blegh). Then we began the slow, long walk back to my house. Over the course of the 40-minute walk (which should have taken 20 minutes), we rejected Pizza Hut, were slurred by a drunken hobo, a relationship was revealed (taking the number of relationships in our group from 3.5 to 4. :p ) and most sane people went back to their houses. But about 11 of the 25 actually made it to the house. We played football (on the PS3), played poker (without actual money) and played a drinking/confession game (without any alcohol).

._.

But in the end, after knowing a little more of each other and knowing a few new magic tricks, everyone left by 2am. I went to sleep happily after enjoying the awesome day and the charming parting smile :)

Long fun day :D will have to blog about it soon.

March 13, 2011 10:58 am via Seesmic for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@jiannmeng

Tan Jiann Meng

(D for distinction by the way :D)

I’m happy :) Now, it’s time to leave Malaysia. Goodbye everyone! To all my friends, family and of course, Raina, thanks for the great, awesome time while I was home!

Boxes, I have them.

…at least twice I have said, “I’m going to buy boxes,” and people give me that funny look and ask me why I’m buying boxers.

Here’s a pile of papers after:

1. Mathematics C1
2. Mathematics M1
3. Physics Unit 1

11 more papers to go ^_^ Watch this space.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010. I leave the house to go to school.

Note the snow (click to enlarge)

10 seconds later, I turn the corner.

Snowfall; it's pretty.

Then

THE SNOW POURED DOWN
IMAGINE A RAINSTORM
BUT ALL THE RAIN TURNED INTO SNOW ON THE WAY DOWN
AND THEN IT HITS YOU IN THE FACE

I had to take out my umbrella and shield myself. Two minutes have passed since the last photo.

This is the same road as the previous picture, but further in front.

Looking back.

So I walk, umbrella shielding me, for 10 minutes until I reach the Abbey College building on Station Road. I ask the receptionist for an envelope addressed to me, but apparently it hasn’t arrived.* So I leave the building and head to Regent’s Terrace, where my first class is.

Well that was fast.

*shrug*

Cambridge, where snow can come and go in 15 minutes.

*The envelope was there, it turns out the receptionist filed it wrongly. I collected it about 4 hours later.

I’m studying A-Levels, doing Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Physics and Economics. To make it clearer, I’m doing: Maths, More Maths, Scientific Maths and Maths About Money. You can probably guess my favourite subject.

Now I’ve been here for just over two weeks. I”ll talk more about life in Cambridge next time, but for now, let’s rewind to the 1st of January, New Year’s Day, which is also the day I left KL for good. There was the numerous, numerous goodbyes before this. Some were nice goodbyes, and some were very, very sad goodbyes…

But anyways, that day my parents and I left from the LCCT on AirAsia. I know many of you think, “AirAsia?! That cheap-lak plane? Aiyo, so uncomfortable… how you survive?” and probably “AirAsia sucks!” as well. And in a way, you’re right… they take off from a small, hot (not much air-con) airport, they charge you for everything (including water), they only let 15kg of luggage (MAS does 20kg, and 30kg for students)… but when you buy AirAsia XL, it’s all worth it. Really. Take a look:

These seats also recline to become a bed. Awesome.

The flight took 8 hours, mostly spending my time fiddling around with the MacBook. The airport was Stansted Airport in London. Stansted is to Heathrow what LCCT is to KLIA, except Stansted actually looks really, really nice.

Anyways when I walked out of the airport, I experienced my first ever winter! It’s hard to des- actually, no, it’s easy to describe:

COLD

We slept in the Radisson Hotel, right next to the airport. The three minute walk is really easy, except for the fact that:

1. It was cold.
2. We had to carry 9 bags of luggage between the three of us.
3. It was really cold.
   

Cars around the airport.

Signboards.

The Radisson hotel is… (click!)

The next day was Saturday, so my dad rented a car (\o/) to drive us to Cambridge. But the best part of the morning was seeing this:

Never before have I seen such a skyline...

As for the car:

Car frost! I love winter!

Interestingly, most cars in the UK are manual. Imagine that! A first-world country where (I think) automatic cars are not the most popular.

We drove about 20 minutes to Cambridge, thanks to the nifty little gadget called GPS. If GPS wasn’t invented, the world would be pretty lost.

Eyes on the road, eyes on the road, looking like a fool with your eyes on the road. (I kid, I kid)

Thank you GPS-thingy!

Finally we arrive in Cambridge. My accomodation is a small apartment called Purbeck House. I’ll post much more about this next time.

After I settled down a little, and after my mum made a full appraisal of the room (she is very good at doing that, in fact, I think all mothers are good at that), we drove to the city centre of Cambridge. There’s a supermarket called Sainsbury were we bought tons and tons of foodstuff. When we piled them all on the cashier, I remember this conversation with the man behind us:

Man: Dear God, that is a lot of food. Do you have a big family?
Me: Oh, no. I just moved in here, I’m living on my own.
Man: Oh.

I think we bought: bread, cup noodles, plastic utensils which looked like metal, plates, cups, sharp knife, water kettle (the electric ones), chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, biscuits, dish cleaning liquid, detergent, tea towels, containers, soup powder, hand soap, tissue paper, toothpaste, toothbrushes, hot chocolate powder, shower gel, shampoo, paper plates…

Ok I can’t remember everything. But there’s a good half of what I bought.

Once we transferred everything into the car, we ate some Spanish food nearby, nearby being the key word because somehow, the temperature dropped ever more. I can’t exactly remember what it was we ate, but it was pretty delicious. And then it snowed.

You can't see the snow very well... unless you click on the picture!

It’s my first time seeing snow! I ran out and let the snow fall on me for about 10 seconds. Then we walked quickly to the car because it was cold. Snow is awesome if it wasn’t freezing.

I think I spent the rest of the day doing nothing in my room…. oh I remember. I was admiring my 4MBps internet connection in my room. :D My parents went off to the Doubletree Hotel in Cambridge to sleep.

Sunday was spent the same way, except we did more walking around town. They bought me a new pillow too :/

Monday was the first day of school… I’ll leave the schooling stuff to a new post. That day my parents went off to London for their “holiday” which they spent looking at property. Fun.

Skip two days of school. On Thursday they came back, and before they took their flight home, we ate at a Peking restaurant called “Peking Restaurant”. I know, it’s a catchy, original name.

That's the last meal we had :(

And then they went home… and I was all alone in the UK.

That’s the fun part of course :P

There’s been quite a few other happening in the three weeks after SPM. For my own chronicling purposes, I’ll be writing about the slightly more mundane things here.

Just before SPM I got my driving license! Unfortunately SPM arrived and so did any hope of me driving. Well, after SPM my father let me drive his Golf GTI around, as long as he was sitting in the front seat. I’ll be frank, I was quite nervous at first because it’d been so long since I drove in the test, and a Golf is quite different from a Kancil. Like the indicator signals are on the left instead of the right, and the accelerator and brake pedals are about ten times more sensitive. I pity anyone who rode with me (that’s everyone in my family :/) that time, for they surely had a bumpy ride all over the place.

In those three weeks I drove around the neighbourhood. It’s liberating 8D. I finally got to drive myself, and that freedom is just exciting. Sadly now that I’m heading to the UK I can’t drive for two years until my ‘P’ license expires. Sigh.

My father was nominated for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. He didn’t win, the guy from Sapura Holdings (which is about 20 times bigger than every other company nominated) won, but at least I can tell everyone that my dad was one of five nominees for being awarded an award for being good at selling stuff. Datin Frieda, chairwoman of Cempaka Schools, was there for the woman Entrepreneur award and she won (the only other nominee owned a small textile company I think). Good for her :D

Time to go! It's a nice tuxedo.

My dad + his friends.

One funny story, only for those Cempakans who know what I’m talking about. Cempaka had at least two tables at the extremely formal dinner at the hotel, but everytime Datin Freida showed up on stage or on video, the adults at the tables would do the Tepuk Cempaka. It’s great to see the enthusiasm at such a formal occasion :) (Clap-clap clap-clap-clap, clap-clap-clap-clap-clap, clap-clap).

My family is soon moving to a new house! Currently I live in Duta Nusantara, a nice cosy gated community. We’ll soon be moving to a bungalow about 5 minutes away in Damansara Heights.  It’s so much bigger than my current house…

Funnily, it turns out that Datin Frieda owns the neighbouring house. I guess you never really escape from her.

I have a laptop now! 2.8 Ghz Intel Duo Core, 500GB HDD, 4GB RAM 15-inch Macbook Pro. It’s made of awesome and win.

Another story coming up: when my dad went to Bangsar Shopping Centre, he found out that a Apple store (Mac Studio) was opening there that day, so he booked the mine and my sister’s laptops there before the store actually opened. When we returned there at 2pm, the outside of the store was filled with people waiting in line for free iStuff. Then later the opening ceremony started for some reason, there was a lion dance before Christmas, since Chinese New Year is obviously nearby (2 months is near right?).

Now imagine the narrow corridors of BSC, with the really loud Chinese gongs they use for lion dances, and then remember all the people waiting for the store to open. Not fun, but we already booked the laptops so we had to wait. But the lion dance went on and on with no end in sight (much like this blogpost actually…) and after about half hour, one of the employees actually let us in to pick up laptops. This means that we were literally the first customers into the store, and best of all about a hundred people watched us go in, buy some computers, and leave before the opening ceremony finished. Probably the closest I have ever felt to being a celebrity.

(Boring technical stuff ahead)

Somehow they made a silly mistake and gave me OSX Leopard instead of Snow Leopard. Those idiots >:( So we had to go back and they actually gave me the upgrade CD, with no licensing limits on it. Hah! If anyone wants a free upgrade to Snow Leopard when I come back from the UK, tell me and I might be able to help :D

Also, my dad bought Windows 7, which after wrestling with video drivers for a while, finally managed to play TF2. I think my life is complete.

Anyways, it felt like crap at the start, then the pain wasn’t actually too bad. Then when I rested it actually got worse for a while before suddenly disappearing. Pain is strange that way.

Here’s two pictures:

It wasn't as bad as I though. Also, thank you fibrin and fibrinogen!

It's a pretty bad swelling though.

Quite a silly post I reckon. But here’s a little game to cheer you up:

Spot the moth!

And here’s a few lines of emptiness to prevent a spoiler of the answer.

Actually, it’s not that blank. Hmm.

*drum roll*

Now do you see the moth?