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.

(For 5/11/10)

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:

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.

We went for the rides:

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.

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.

Thursday, 27/11/10

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.”

There is no more inspiring tale than the tale of the Bigkat chocolate bar:

http://lokwi.com/item/994

School was over. I could relax. For today at least, there was no homework, no distractions. I could sit back, read a book, do some university research.

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.