Five minutes later, I finished and sent it off. Then the voice came back, “You haven’t updated your blog for a month! Get to it!” And to appease him (her? it?) I decided to copy-paste the testimonial here.

What I like most about Abbey College were the teachers. They work very hard to ensure that all students work to their best of their capabilities. Not only do they teach the syllabus thoroughly and clearly, they also encourage us to work beyond our textbooks. Apart from teaching, the Abbey staff are also extremely brilliant at helping us students navigate through the university admissions maze that is UCAS. I was given great support on constructing my personal statement, and the college organised mock interviews to ensure I’d be ready for my Cambridge interview.

The other great part of Abbey College are the students. Students from all over the world come to Abbey, giving it a uniquely international feel. The students are generally very friendly as well, and are great fun to talk to. I personally had a great group of friends with which I could discuss certain topics we were studying, or just as easily talk about the most inane conversation topics. And practically everyone is staying near other students, I never felt lonely or bored in Cambridge.

Speaking of Cambridge, the city itself is an amazing place to be in. Cambridge is quiet enough that you can study without interruption, but there’s plenty of things to do if you need to go out. The school itself is located far to close to many good restaurants, which unfortunately meant I gained a lot of weight early on. There’s also a cinema and bowling alley barely five minutes from Abbey, and the city centre with its infinite number of shops is a good place to spend your weekend (and money!). And of course, Cambridge University is tantalisingly close, which makes great motivation.

“Now start writing about your experience at Cambridge!”

Too lazy, I’ll do it some other time.

“NO! You procrastinate too much and you keep wasting time…”

On my first day of forced imprisonment, I found out I had bigger problems. I had to walk for minutes between classes. Classrooms were not made of gold-plated steel or ivory. We were expected to study. The school did not provide chefs from Italy. The school did not provide food at all. There were no massage sessions. The indoor swimming pool was non-existant.

I was appalled.

But something miraculous happened.

I enjoyed myself while I was there.

And 18 months after I began, I managed to survive! In fact, I thrived in the UK. To me, those months in Cambridge doing A-Levels were exhilaratingly fun and interesting. So I’d like to say my thanks to some people:

To the teachers of Abbey College, you are the greatest set of teachers I have ever had the pleasure of sitting down and learning from. Whereas when some teachers teach the information goes straight from the board to the notebook without ever passing through either brain*, when you guys teach I always understand and memorise things until the day before the exam. To Helen, Tanya, Chris, Darren, Heather, Stuart, Ross, Boz, Richard and Sue in particular, thank you for bearing with me for the many hours I was in your class, making sure I don’t fall asleep in class (well, usually), teaching beyond the syllabus, marking tons of exam papers and for being caring, concerned teachers. I couldn’t have done it without you. :)

To Andrew, thanks for introducing me to Doctor Who. And board games. Oh, and making sure I was never able to ever think I was good at maths.

To Julian, thank you for… um… doing whatever it is you do. And board games also, I guess.

To my brother, thank you for doing the laundry sometimes.

To my sister, thanks…?

Penultimately but not least, to all my friends, thank you very, very much. There’s so many of you and I don’t want to single anyone out (and if I listed all of you I’d definitely miss one out), so to all my friends I am grateful for the stupid things we did together; the homework and notes we suffered through; the silly nights spent together; the odd conversations held at staircases; the times we ran to classes; the many, many “Good luck”s exchanged; the cooking nights at Jiann Lee’s my house; the milkshakes; the informal LAN’s; the let’s-chat-while-unlocking-our-bicycle-and-standing-awkwardly-in-the-cold chats; the May Ball; the charity event; the long walks; the short walks; the food shopping trips; Nando’s; NANDO’s; the terrible games of pool; playing Shadow Hunters, Settler’s of Catan, and the many other board games; that night when you pumped me full of alcohol; for letting me sleep on your couch and leech your internet; and for being generally the best friends one could ask for.

Last but still not least, to my parents, thank you for caring! You’re always there (even if you’re not wanted :p) to make sure I’m doing well. Thank you for working hard to make sure I have the best in education and life, and for making sure I grew up to be a responsible, smart, excellent, hardworking, humble, caring, interesting, handsome, amazi- (ok I’ll stop now) young man. You’re the best parents a boy could ever ask for. I love you two! :D **

Those were 18 months not easily forgotten.

* Ok, I stole this from the Cambridge Study Guide.

** You’re welcome.

It’s a good thing my first paper starts at 1.30pm.

I must admit, I’m nervous. I’ve never gone into an exam nervous. I hardly ever study during school term, but as soon as exam term hits, I always plough through exercises. Sometimes, 2 days of intense studying and I feel like I can take on anything the paper can throw at me.

But I’ve been revising STEP papers for over 2 months now, and almost exclusively doing STEP for the past two weeks. Yet I don’t feel confident doing STEP questions; half the questions I do I make a fatal (often stupid) mistake somewhere. And it’s slowly driving me mad. Whenever I slow down to do a question carefully, I end up overthinking the question. When I try to go with the flow, I miss out on a crucial point.

It’s frustrating, and I don’t like doing frustrating things.

And I can’t forget about the A-Level papers which are just lurking about. The 4 maths papers are bot too difficult, but I fear I end up forgetting some crucial thing in the middle of the exam. Too often the questions require some very specific method and while doing past papers, I sometimes forgot what to do (especially M4).

Oh, economics. It’s not part of my offers for Cambridge or Imperial. I’ve hardly studied economics over the last month. It’s not that I don’t want to, but every time I touch economics I feel guilty that my maths level isn’t up to par yet. I hate purposely neglecting a subject but I don’t have a choice here.

Maybe I should listen to my own advice and go outside. I’ve been living like a recluse the past two weeks, only leaving for the occasional lunch with friends or for necessities. Perhaps I should have gone swimming to clear my mind, or just taken an hour off to cycle around town. Something to get away from the study table.

But anyway, it’s all in the past now. In exactly 12 hours I start my exam periosteum with, perhaps, the most important paper of all (STEP 2) and on Wednesday I take STEP 3. I know that on Wednesday afternoon, once time runs out and I’m forced to put down my pen, I’ll breathe a sigh of relief, because I can finally relax. (And by relax, I mean study for the rest of the A-Level papers).

But really, I should go to sleep.

Dustin North resigns from CILC.

Datin Frieda Pilus’s response.

Miss Sam’s (the other teacher) resignation letter.

Dustin North’s follow-up.

Please be sure to read at least the first two links fully before taking a side.

(By the way, it feels to me that Miss Sam’s letter is suspiciously similar in style and substance to Dustin’s own writing.)

1. Go to any Wikpedia page.
2. Choose the first link which is not in italics or in parenthesis (brackets).
3. Repeat.
4. Repeat some more.

Eventually you will end up in the article Philosophy. Always. Well, almost always.

Source: xkcd

I brought my computer in on the following Monday. The diagnosis was either a faulty hard disk or faulty cable. It turned out to be the hard disk so they replaced it and (kindly) returned the old disk in case I ever needed the date on it. But the repair cost was horrendous: £144 for the replacement of a hard disk and service charge! Absolutely ridiculous. Luckily I bought the extended warranty (Applecare Protection Plan, because “extended warranty” doesn’t sound fancy enough) so it was all free.

But the best part: they called me up two hours later to pick up the laptop, even though they said it’d take a few days. :D Awesome service time, I’m glad someone spent 15 minutes quickly changing the hard drive.

But of course, in the world of computers, problems keep on arising. First problem: since it’s a new disk, every bit of data was wiped. Luckily I had backups of my Mac side, so that was fine, but my entire Windows system was wiped completely. I lost all ~200 replays of SC2 :(

And of course, as a gamer I had to install Windows, or else I might fall ill from boredom. As I put in the Windows DVD, my DVD drive began to rebel. It started making a ‘whirrrrrrrr whiiiiiirrrrrr WHIIIIRRRRRRR whiiirrrr…..’ sound which then repeated every 10 seconds for 5 minutes. It also refused to eject the disk until it finally gave up and stopped whirring, whereupon it spit out the disk and complained about how empty it was.

Thing was, it wasn’t empty, as it was perfectly fine on other laptops. So I spent the entire afternoon trying to install windows without actually using my DVD drive, first by trying to use other laptops’ DVD drives to remote install, and then trying to install by ripping the image file and using Parallels or VMware Fusion. I must have wasted at least four hours and after I gave up my Sunday went from OK to bleh.

So today I went to the Apple Store again and they replaced the drive in an hour, after telling me it would take several days. Oh, and they would have charged me £94 if it wasn’t under warranty.

I don’t know what to say, Apple. On the one hand, you fix things so quickly that I can’t help but admire your efficiency. On the other hand, you would have charged me £238 for two really simple repairs. And your hardware failed me twice in a week.

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

I’m happy with my results :)

By the way, if you’re interesting in the grade boundaries, look here. And if you want to know the difference between raw marks and UMS, read this.

Make a cheap, portable small box with a solar panel on the top. Inside the box make a little machine which extracts carbon from carbon dioxide (I don’t care how, make it cheap and simple). Now the box spouts out oxygen and deposits carbon inside a little waste box which you can clean every month or so. All for free since it’s solar powered.

Then I noticed a fatal problem: this already exists.

It’s called a plant.

• A*AA in A-levels, excluding Economics.
• Grade S in both STEP Paper 2 and Paper 3.

Let’s analyse:

For A-levels, I already have an A* in Mathematics so that’s in the bag. For Further Maths, I must score an average of 80% in 6 papers (called modules) out of 9 that I’m taking. (Not exactly; I already have a 97% in Further Pure 1, so the average I need for the remaining papers is slightly lower, plus I can rearrange my Mechanics 1 or 2 paper into the Further Maths grade instead of Maths if needed.)

For Physics, I currently have 295/300, or 98.33%. To get an A (80%), I need another 185/300 in A2, or 61.67%. This should not be difficult.

For Economics, I could fail it and it wouldn’t matter in terms of my offer. I’d lose all my pride though.

The STEP papers are something else. Whereas all the above are achievable (I would even dare call it… “easy”), STEP papers are… difficult. An example is in order:

STEP Paper 2 2009 Question 1

Two curves have equations x⁴ + y⁴ = u and xy = v , where u and v are positive constants. State the equations of the lines of symmetry of each curve.
The curves intersect at the distinct points A, B, C and D (taken anticlockwise from A). The coordinates of A are (α,β), where α > β > 0. Write down, in terms of α and β, the coordinates of B, C and D.
Show that the quadrilateral ABCD is a rectangle and find its area in terms of u and v only. Verify that, for the case u = 81 and v = 4, the area is 14.

There are 13 questions for each paper. 8 are pure mathematics (like the one above), 2 are probability and statistics questions, and 3 are mechanics questions. They will mark your best 6 answers to any questions, with up to 20 marks per question. In general, to get an S, I will need to answer five questions fully and a sixth partially in STEP 2, and four questions fully in STEP 3. To give you an idea of how difficult this is, the above question (and the whole of STEP 2) can be answered using only knowledge from the Mathematics A-Level subject, whereas STEP 3 requires Further Mathematics knowledge. Technically, if you’ve done your SPM Further Maths, you have enough knowledge to answer the question above. Good luck.

My entire focus for the next six months is to study sufficiently to achieve an A* in all subjects, and spending the rest of my studying time on STEP. It should be pretty fun.

Fun Fact: The full name of Trinity College is: The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity.

Dear Applicant

I am very pleased to inform you that you have been made a conditional offer to study at Trinity College. Many congratulations!

…

Speechless. Just absolutely speechless.

How my day went? That is a long story. But it’s a good one.

It’s glorious Friday. The only day school does not start at 9am. Of course, I exploited the hell out of this and woke up at 7.30am instead of 6.30am. It’s the only weekday I get to wake up late.

Late or no, it’s a great morning. My dad went back on Wednesday, so I’m all alone in my new place. It’s a 2-bedroom apartment which looks amazing. After living in a hotel and a bed & breakfast for the last two months, I really love the feeling of waking up in a house, in your own bedroom. I can just walk to the shower, use it as long as I like. And the shower doesn’t feel cramped. Hot water flows at decent pressure. There is no scrounging for soap, no peeling at soap packets provided every day when they clean up your room. There is no need to share shower and sink space with the owners of the house. It’s all for you. You take this for granted, but it’s one of those things you really enjoy after being deprived of it.

(There’s a whole story here about the house, the week with my dad, which I have yet to complete. Another day.)

The kitchen! The frying pan still contains oil from cooking eggs and bacon; I better clean that. The plates from the past 2 days are still in the sink, rinsed but not soaped properly; I better clean that. I eat a weird mixture of Frosties, Doritos, chocolate biscuits, and that weird peanut food thing which I never remember the name of, but comes from Malaysia and tastes exquisite. My morning drink is the usual, boiled and filtered dihydrogen monoxide (also called DHMO, or H20). I bring my laptop to the kitchen table. While I eat, I leave Skype on. Maybe she’ll come online? It must be about (9+8)-12 = 5pm back home?

As I finish, she’s still not online. But as I surf Facebook book, I see Aniar Gnok has messaged me. She is online after all! We have a pleasant, slightly dramatic chat. The message is clear: there is much to be missed by my inability to video call. I know this will resolve in a week, but still, a week is quite a long time. Time speeds up quickly, and eventually we have our own work to do. Goodbyes are shared.

Surf the net a little. Oh wait, I have Economics homework… eh, nevermind. I have time after Physics class. I can do it then. Oh, 15 minutes to school already? Better pack up and go.

Should I take my raincoat? This whole week I’ve gone to school with it every day. It never rained once. I think I won’t this time.

I open the door. It’s drizzling. But still, I’m far too stubborn to change my mind. I decided that I wouldn’t wear the raincoat, so I am not going to wear it. Simple. Anyways, as I cycle to class, the rain is barely drizzling anyways. It’s not that bad. Of course, the jacket is leather, so I am a little worried that leather gets spoiled by rain. I think it does anyway.

Enter room C2. The lights are off, everyone is gathered around Richard (teacher) who is slaving away at a electron accelerator. Through the class I have no idea what he was doing. Actually, I have no idea about half of what he is doing. The part about electrons, and the beam being deflected when subject to an electric current was easy enough, but when he began to talk about earthing the voltage source, and using the magnetic force of the coils to un-deflect the beam, I started losing track. My attention span was roughly inversely proportional to the number of wires used in the experiment.

By the Law of Conservation of Attention (attention cannot be created or destroyed, but can be used on something else instead), my attention had to be redirected somewhere. That ‘somewhere’ was the plank filled with oil and iron fillings. I spend a good 30 minutes playing with magnets, iron fillings and gravity (and also did a magic trick. Fooled Shu Hang for 5 seconds). Magnetic field lines went up on the board, and although I understood everything, now I can’t remember what he was talking about.

Sometime during that class Shu Hang suggested that we go to the fireworks tonight. Being completely unaware of any fireworks, I dug a little deeper (read: asked Germaine). There will be a carnival at Midsummer Common, with fireworks at 7.30pm. Do I want to go? YES.

Shu Hang asks if there would be a merry-go-round.

I cycle back to my home and do my Economics homework while trying not to fall asleep. I barely succeed. This time, before leaving, I take my raincoat. It wasn’t raining.

Economics whizzes past. I go over to Shu Hang’s house to drop off my bag, and since it wasn’t raining, the raincoat as well (!!!). The five guys who had bikes (me, and four others who do not deserve to be mentioned) cycle to Nando’s for dinner.

I must digress here: NANDO’S IS DELICIOUS. CHICKEN FRENZY. DELICIOUS.

Ok.

We leave Nando’s and it’s drizzling. I do comtemplate taking my raincoat, but hey, this rain will probably go away too, right? It doesn’t. It keep getting slightly heavier every few minutes. By the time we arrive at Midsummer Common I’m quite drenched already. But wow! It’s raining, it’s dark and it’s cold, yet at least the entire town of Cambridge and most neighbouring cities have come to the carnival. There must have been millions* of people there.

(read: thousands)

We look around for the other group of people (the poor, sub-species of humans who didn’t bike through the rain). They are eating carnival Thai food and burgers, in the rain, for dinner. I can think of far better dinners (like Nando’s). Then the fireworks started; I shall do my best to recreate the experience in pictures and words:

PEEEEEEEEEE BOOM

BAM CRACKLE CRACKLE CRACKLE

WHEEEEEEE BOOOOM BAM BAM

BAMBOOMCRACKBISHBAMOOMPBOOOOMWHOOSHBAMBAMPOP

By the time the fireworks finished, I learn about two things:

1. Some people are completely and utterly enraptured by fireworks (no names, i don’t like making fun of people eltjse and shu hang)
2. Despite stealing umbrella space, my leather jacket is soaking wet.

It looks like snow, it feels like snow, but it's rain.

We went for the rides:

© Andrew Dunn

This one is Extreme (it’s called Extreme). It rotates you, while rotating the seats. By far the worse part of the ride was the queue: there is a big crowd around the ticket booth and you sort of push your way through it while everyone else is pushing their way through it. £4 and 15 minutes of rain later we’re in the ride.

It’s really not that scary actually. The harness-seat-thing means that your body is always firmly attached to the seat, which means that you never feel anything like a free fall. It’s more a sensation of moving really quickly round and round. If you know the Spinner in the Genting Theme Park, I find that to be a little scarier than this ride.

© Andrew Dunn

Then there is Oblivion. It swings like a pendulum, but at the same time the seats are rotating horizontally. It is really, really fun!

And scary.

But fun!

Eight pounds poorer and soaking wet, it’s time to cycle to the cinema to watch Due Date. By the time I finally have a roof over my head, my leather jacket is dripping wet :(

One week later, the jacket is dry but wrinkled. Poor jacket.

11.20pm: I’m in the hotel. My dad hasn’t slept since 3am. He’s lying on the bed now, but a minute ago, he suddenly woke up, looked at me, told me to “look at the business aspect of the house”, mumbled a bit, then explained that it was for “making sure… minimum wage”. Then he fell back asleep. I am still quite puzzled by his advice, but I will never forget his words of wisdom.

11.22pm: I have no internet. This is a diary I shall be typing, hopefully regularly, and then uploading to my blog whenever I am fortunate enough to get internet access.

11.29pm: Always be prepared. No internet for 15 days? No worries. Just be prepared. Make sure to prepare everything you need using everything you have. For me, that means a lot of things can be done to waste the boring hours away:

• iPhone. Download apps. Tons of apps. I have 131 apps. 71 of them are games. Many, many hours can be spent here. One important app is VLC player.
• Laptop (Macbook). Have lots of stuff. Games: Plenty of offline, single-player games which I haven’t touched yet. Worse case scenario: Civilisation IV. That should net me a couple of hundred of hours of wasted time. Also, videos. I have Dexter, Firefly and Mad Men, Seasons 1,1 and 1, to watch. Transfer them to VLC Player on the iPhone, and I can watch them anywhere. There’s another 20-30 hours.
• Photos. Have lots of photos, and be quite OCD about arranging them. I have nice big folder called “Unsorted” with lots of holiday photos. Generally, I perform the following process on my photos: Look through every photo. Delete any non-unique photo or boring photo.  Adjust contrast and brightness (only) of every remaining photo. Save photo set at full resolution and compress the set. Copy set over to hard drive. Take photo set and reduce size to a maximum of 1500×1000 pixels for each photo. Save resized photos to iPhoto. Repeat for remaining photos. As of now: I have 5 gigs of photos to “process”. About 4-5 hours down the drain.
• Homework. … Actually nevermind, this won’t take up much time at all.
• New house. I have at least 6-7 cardboard boxes worth of stuff to move and arrange soon. This will probably never finish and I will still be unpacking things 3 months from now.
• Books. Yet to read: Revolutionary Road, To Kill A Mockingbird, Catch-22. To re-read (in case of Cambridge interview): A Very Short Introduction to Mathematics, The Pleasure of Counting.

There’s actually plenty more stuff, but it’s 11.45pm and I need to wake up at around 6am. Adios.

11.59pm: Ok, I was going to sleep. my dad woke up again, asked me what time it was, then lectured me about the importance of efficiency in business, used an analogy by comparing it to finding out about a movie (make sure there’s a good writer, etc.) then talking about how you must research a store). Then he closed his eyes and I asked him if he wasted to bathe. He said, “No,” and I said, “Good, Go to sleep.”

http://lokwi.com/item/994

I looked at the clock on my desktop: 6.30pm. I thought:

‘Why should I be bothered to go out and buy dinner from some restaurant, eat it right there and then, and walk all the way back? Why should I have to leave my room to obtain sustenance for my continued living? What have I done to deserve that sort of punishment? Surely there must be some better way of scavenging for food?’

‘Why, of course! There’s this website from which you can choose from several different restaurants, pick good, delicious, hot, steaming food, enter your address, and BAM! The food arrives at your doorstep 45 minutes later. What a marvel! Technology has solved all of mankind’s problems! Never again shall anyone suffer the indignity of walking to eat!”

‘Burgers! Nuggets! Fries! The food which all* students love, and all* adults hate! So I just enter my address here… click send? Yes… confirmation! It’s coming, the food is coming!’

*phone call*

“……Nando’s? Right now? Ummmmmmmmmm-”

‘Quick thinking required! Should I stay with my ordered food, wait in my quiet, book-filled room and avoid social interaction for the rest of the day? Or is the benefit of eating delicious chicken cooked with lemon and herb with some mediumishly spicy sauce, peas and the most delicious fries ever known to mankind, worth the trouble of cycling in the cold, windy weather, climbing up the bridge, in the middle of a traffic jam? Yes, it is worth the trouble.’

(By now my “Ummmm…” had stretched on to almost one second. I clearly think too slowly.)

“-mmmmmmmmmm ok”

‘Wait what do I do I just ordered food now what how do I cancel can I even cancel the food wouldn’t it be rude to cancel I don’t even have their phone number what am I supposed to do oh wait the website why don’t I click on the help button and see if there is some way to cancel oh wait there is awesome just call this number’

(5 minutes of waiting while on hold, talking to customer service, quoting the order number and telling them the sad, sad reason why I would elect to not want to eat such delicious food)

‘Ok, that’s done with. Time to go: personal item check! Watch; yes. Wallet; yes. Keys; yes. Phone; yes. Phone in pocket, keys in pocket, watch on wrist, wallet in pock- no wait it doesn’t fit in my pocket. Tsk. Jeans pockets, why are you always so narrow? What do I do?’

‘Well. It’s a short ride. Put it in your jacket pocket. Just make sure you check on it every few minutes to make sure you don’t drop it while you’re cycling.’

Ten minutes later:

‘Ok I’ll order a 1/4 chicken with 2 sides. How much is it? How much do I have?”

*pats pocket*
*pats pocket again*
*pats pocket again again*
*frantically throws jacket and checks all possible pockets simulataneously*
*runs out of Nando’s*

Then I check the entire area outside Nando’s. Upon failing to find any black wallet lying on the ground, I walk back into Nando’s. My great friends, instead of consoling me, convince me to cycle all the way back, then cycle on the same path where I presumably dropped my wallet.

My friends obviously want me to exercise.

Of course, no wallet was to be found. Maybe one day, people will just leave wallets lying on the street instead of picking them up. One day.

I still ordered the 1/4 chicken with 2 sides. It was delicious.

When I returned to my room, my burger, nuggets and fries were waiting in my room.