Prologue: Hello. It's me again. How ya doin? Me? Still alive. Nothing memorable happened in my life so far anyway. And oh when people says about idle mind is devil's playground, I would think that the devil is actually having a carnival inside my mind, Rio style. Dang the recent series of weird dreams and horrible nightmares has been ruining my nap and sleep all too often!
With the later half of my September covered in the previous post, it's now to start off with update relevant to the month of October, to be precise approximately the first week of October. But before that!
 |
| Have you guys (note: USM-ers) noticed that USM's main website got itself a whole new facelift! And I say, the whole new interface is definitely much more sleeker and in line with the newest branding strategy that USM adapted for the new APEX era. I think the website is still constantly updated though with tweaks here and there so there might be link that is not working for the time being. And one painfully obvious thing that's mising: The BM version for the website. For some reason, I can't see the tab for BM version of the website. Not that I don't know how to read English but ya know how society these days being apeshit about inclusiveness and what not. Or maybe the BM version is still under constructed while waiting all the press release and such to be translated into BM or something. So yeah, this's USM new image, complete with the Chancellory Building adorning the header prominently and gloriously with the new slogan Transforming Higher Education for a Sustainable Tomorrow. |
 |
| Another upcoming change: a whole new student information portal take shape in the form of Campus Online. They still use the same login password for our Healthycampus Portal Account though. Does this means that Healthycampus Portal will be phased out for Campus Online? If that's the case, I am so gonna missed Healthycampus for accompanying me (and everybody else) for years and its new reincarnation is slated to take over it as the portal centre to USM student's life... |
---------------------------------
 |
| 1 October (Friday): Went to Professorial Public Speech Series delivered by Professor Ooi Keat Gin in commemoration of his inauguration as a full-fledged Professor of History. This means that the School of Humanities has added yet another professor in their ever-growing, ever experienced faculty member. Who dare says Humanities are the weakest school around? Best of all, his expertise/focus of studies is very relevant to my interest, which is the Post WWII History of Borneo! Anyway, it was held at DK A, the main event/protocol hall for School of Humanity. The hall is attended mostly by other faculty members (including a few all too familiar faces from BMBATI section...), friends and families. Notice that I didn't mention students. Because students who attended this speech can be counted by ten fingers and basically everybody else there are...adults. Which scares me shitless. (like when Prof Mhd Haji Salleh sat in front of me joined by Dr. Noni. And because I am just a "student", I am not entitled for the speech series complementary booklet. Pfft. Anyway, the event started with what I think as one of the most embarrassing multimedia slideshow which juxtaposes relatively homely picture of Prof Ooi in his daily life and work (he shares the common hobby of cooking with his wife and sisters.) with the most overtly DRAMATIC, POETIC and GLORIFYING narration EVER. I swear I almost laugh out loud by the sheer incongruousness of the whole image vs over the top narration. But I maintained my composure and the agonizing multimedia's over to give way to his speech: The good, the bad, and the horrible side of war towards South East Asia in the 20th century. His speech started with the reasons why war started as reasoned by various scholars (Apart from the usual socio-economic and nationalistic reason, interesting one includes biological reason that human tend to succumb to their animalistic behavior/instinct and demography reason which mentions that volatile region in the world has a disproportionately high number of youth in the general population. The presentation moves on to present the different facet of war in South East Asia in which can be clearly observed by the atrocities done by all sides, the blatant human right enroachment and basically death and suffering of the people. One particular one is RAPE that especially GANGRAPE (solidarity among man in army. Fuck man.) will occur in any war zone perpetrated by the army towards women, calling the ultimate humiliation and degradation of human and losing side of the war. In the end, the whole slideshow is basically 4/5 bad and horrible side of war while about only two slides is devoted to talk about the good (war precipitated nationalism in SEA that leads to resistance towards the colonialist). He concluded his speech/presentation that there's nothing much to learn from war and war is basically human's feigning extinction/destruction of self. The end. Very enlightening speech indeed! |
 |
| Another reason that I dropped by there is because that I am eyeing for their free lunch. It's a full lunch that comes with Chicken, beef, vegetable curry, watermelons as well as bubur cha-cha (or something) for dessert. Very sumptuous but I had to be muka tembok because I am waiting in line with all other adults while I am just a measly student. And I decided to sit at one lonely corner to avoid any unwanted attention from any faculty members (note: my lecturers) from noticing me. In fact, I didn't even go for a second because I just wanna to escape there as soon as possible, being trapped in such awkward social situation. But of course after I had a full lunch la! |
----------------------------------
 |
| 3 October (Sunday night): USM is throwing off yet another party to show off their graciousness and care for student!!! OK fine, it's the USM-wide Raya Celebration and I only knew it if it wasn't for ChengFai and Syahmi mentioned about it the day before. Key word here is free raya food. |
 |
| Looking towards the main stage and the VIP seats. The VIP for that night was Datuk Seri Khaled Nordin, Min. of HigherEd, accompanied by almost all the top leaders of USM, namely Prof Dzul the VC and all the three DVC and various other USM officers and lecturers (yeah again, I spotted familiar faces which I yet again try to hide from because of my sociophobic tendencies). |
 |
| And not too long later, the ground is filled to the brim, probably few thousand students and such. And despite all these students, to my worst sociophobic horror I am left with no gang or acquaintances to sit with. To be precise, ChengFai and Azri went off to sit with his AIESEC-ers gang in which I knew none of them. ShuLi, who I bumped into over there (and I am secretly glad that we did) was sitting with the bunch from the current 3rd year/last year's second year whom I still have a grudge of sort towards the selected few of them for tearing my emotion inside out during last year's series of "incident". Just before I decided that I could just go back back to my miserable little room and eat instant noodle as dinner, I spotted the group of current 2nd years/last years 1st year who I knew some of them and that's when I am slightly relieved that they offered an empty seat over their table. And thus, I am saved from further awkwardness of being anchorless in the sea of people. (even though sitting with them is still quite awkward, it's comparatively less awkward then the other two non-choice or being alone. And Yimin did poke fun about me coming for the food. You little~~~). |
 |
| And thus the event continued with speeches and all (The YDPMPP/SRC President, Wafi still have that perpetual smugness on his face which makes me wanna slap him in the face just to make it gone. Bellend.) And by the time the Datuk Khaled almost reaching the end of his speech, impatient students (like all Malaysian would do) started to line up right in front of the buffet table. And me shamefully is one of them but since everybody else is doing it anyway, might as well do it. When Datuk Khaled finishes his speech, people started rushing towards the buffet table escalating the tension over Buffet table. Heck the event still goes on and it was way before the muslim prayer for meal has started and muslim who lined up for the food has to pray standing up. Very embarassing, very Malaysian which I am, too. And after the prayers, the beeline started moving...very VERY SLOWLY. It was approximately 10m from where I stand to the buffet table which is already considered very front of the line and I took me more than half an hour to actually grab the plate and fill it up with rice. The food itself was alright with two types of Chicken dishes, vegetables (which finished by the time it's my turn to take it.) and watermelon (same thing). Quite filling in the end but definitely not stellar like any other mass buffet. |
 |
| And then the event move on with shows and what not. One of the main event was concert performed by School of Arts Band for the purpose of fundraising for the victim of Tawau landslide and flood. The line-up for the performance besides from the band from School of Arts are just...meh. Probably the few pleasant surprise for the performance last night is the nasyid as well as dance performance by international students. But by the time the event went halfway, almost half of the audiences is already gone, probably went back to their room after filling their stomach or off to Khaleel and Istimewa for chit chat and such. Very embarassing, very Malaysian. As for me, I did intended to go back to my room during the nasyid performance but before that I decided to drop by the lantern pattern thing at the front of the tent to snap a few pictures and that's when I bumped into Shuli again with her roommate, current 3rd year which I didn't have grudge at. Stayed back for the international student's performance which didn't let me down and ending the day with a pleasant walk and chat back to Bakti with ShuLi. It has been quite a while we walked back together, especially after she went off for student exchange and thus extending. Right, Shuli? Guess the initial awkwardness/loneliness is compensated then. |
-------------------------------
Last but not least, some other random stuff that I spotted in campus.
 |
| Someone "conveniently" left this stack of promotional pamphlets about Workshop on how to turn your Thesis into bestsellers. Judging from the location of where this stack of promotional pamphlet was left (inside Bakti Bank Islam) and the language it used (BM), it is obvious that this promotional is targeted towards Malaysian Postgraduate Student, like me. Until now, I still have no inkling of idea of the prevalence of advertisement that perpetuates the obsession towards money addressed towards the feeble minded like those ridiculous MLM scheme or stupid sounding products or Making a fortune through Facebook/blog/twitter etc and all those other similar shit littered around the scenery and cyberworld. Even this one seems fishy even though definitely slightly more legit than stupid MLM fucks. Guess the workshop teaches us how to dumb down our thesis in the name of readability of the feeble minded who tend to twist it back and front anyway and thus making shitload of money out of the feeble minded. Oh we bunch of feeble minded people. Unscrupulous Business people are exist to shit on your face and making you eat the shit wholeheatedly. Yeah, I hated them that much. Why do you care? |
 |
| And here's a random picture of the working hour for USM Treasury/Bendahari USM which I visit every month to pay my rent. Why the hell do you have to locate over the hill. There's not much of a point for me to take a bus since I am staying in Bakti but still I have to walk there and it's very tiring! |
Err, pretty much that's all I guess, for the first week of October. Now to play us off, yet another comic strip courtesy of PhdComics: Piled Higher and Deeper!
 |
| Source. This looks fairly De-ja-vu-ish! |
Epilogue: Here's some background information about me: It's a well-known fact that I am VERY BAD in handling my own emotional wellbeing and I have a temper that will tick off more often than not for the flimsiest reason. I do hold on to grudge and for some reason, bad experiences tend to linger in my memory much longer than the good one. What people say about what didn't kill you will make you stronger, it apparently work the other way around for me. It makes weaker, more fearful of reality, turning me into a sociophobe while me withdrawing deeper into my own bubble. I can list out almost every single events that teared me apart before and adding more misery to my life starting from that jerk aka my former BFF in Primary 3 who insisted that broke the friendship just because of one stupid little shuttlecock. Guess my life is never the same again since then. So now, do you want to be friend with me? In more peaceful time, I am more like a cat or something cuddly and hug-able. Anyone?
No comments:
Post a Comment