Canary Cage Musings.

Prologue: Oh but first thing first,

Source. Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri dan Selamat Bercuti kepada semua rakan taulan dan para kenalan! Semoga kedatangan bulan Syawal ini dipenuhi berkat dan dicurahi nikmat! As the holy fasting month of Ramadhan comes to an end as the sun sets on Wednesday (7 August), the arrival of 1st day of Syawal the next day Thursday (8 August) marks the celebration of Eid-al-Fitr (or in Malaysia, Hari Raya Aidilfitri). Aidilfitri celebration in Malaysia is usually filled with open house in which mouthwatering feast of rendang, satay, ketupat and kek lapis (this one is Sarawak specific obviously) will be served for throngs of visitor, a time of rejoice and camaraderie. This years is different for me as I consciously choose to stay back in Penang thus missing out again of my almost yearly routine of tagging along with parent to visit their colleagues.

This is the only bit of Raya festivities that I managed to catch (i.e switching on my camera and scurry over to my window) on the night itself.

....while this Nasi Kerabu that I had last week is probably the only Malay cuisine that I had until tomorrow and I am not even sure whether the Malay section of Sungai Dua Pasar Malam is going to be operational or not since it's only the third day of Raya.

Anyway, it has been ten days since I've moved in to the new place. I've just paid my first rent for the month and I've been slowly getting the hang of living off campus. For a start, I still haven't seen my housemate (apart from her slipper at the doorstep) even once because of her working life and constant going home on the weekend which only means good thing for me because I got the freedom of the house for most of the daytime. Besides that, it sure feels good to move back to top floor again which guarantee airiness at all time and mosquito free. The bed I am sleeping now is a Queen size bed which enables me to sleep in whatever position I want complete with extra pillows.

This is the view I got to see from outside the window these few days. Rainy and cloudy morning.

Most importantly of course (and the main motivation in choosing this place) is that it has a fridge and a rice cooker which finally enables shopping choices (vegetables, hotdogs and finally KAYA spread!) that I have never done before during my campus life and oh yeah, Tesco Extra is just about 10 minutes walk from my place. In fact, I've put the rice cooker to good use for the past few days because of curiosity towards a line of tune product by Ayam Brand called thingamajig Tunamagik in which it's only instruction is to mix the content with two bowls of warm rice and a ready meal is served which totally fits my lazy lifestyle. All I need is rice (bought about a kilogram of rice just for this three cans. Tesco do sell loose fill-as-you-need rice.), pakchoi (green), eggs (originally bought for instant noodle, still have some leftover) and hotdog (a bit more of "meat" content so that it wouldn't be too bland)

Keen on experiment, I bought all three Tunamagik available.

Day 1 (Thursday) with the Sambal Tunamagik: sort of failed because I overestimated both the amount of rice and water needed to cook making the resultant mix kind of bland. In fact at this point of time, I still haven't bought my hotdogs yet so it's only pakchoi, tunamagik, egg and rice. In fact, I have to make another trip there just to buy Campbell instant soup (the add hot water kind) as complement for dinner and hotdog for future cooking.

Day 2 (Friday) with Tunamagik: more successful than last time because of better water control, lesser rice, more pakchoi and addition of hotdog. Still a bit bland though so good thing I still have Campbell Instant Soup.

-Still have one more can to go though so stay tuned!-

Of course, the new place that I am in is still not a perfect place to be particularly with regards to internet (or the lack of it) which left me reliant on my money guzzling Yes4G forcing me to make trip back to campus (good thing there's no one there now) in order to satisfy my internet addiction and keeping precious bandwidth spending lower. I've certainly taken the constantly available USMwifi for granted despite its frequent network fuckery and firewall. Can't wait for the PenangFON technician to come and install proper fixed ADSL internet which is the proper choice for a sociophobe me that stay at home most of the time. The room size is actually just slightly smaller compared to my previous room in campus but when a queen size bed is added in the middle, the amount of usable space within the room suddenly become pretty limited. As I lightly mentioned in the previous post, I have to buy my own cloths rack, table and chair which I have no idea what am I going to do with it when I finally moved out. Being off campus also means it will be quite a walk if I ever need to go back in campus to settle stuff and it doesn't seem to be closer whichever gate I am going to choose to enter the campus.

Another thing I've to bear in mind is none other than my current situation as an extended graduate student stuck in limbo in which this factor alone cast an unshakable looming and horrifying shadow from my otherwise blissful bachelor pad living. In fact, it was my third (could've and should've been last) anniversary of being a grad student about five days ago...and I only recalled about it yesterday.

Hence the title for this post, a comfortable but trapped existence, a canary cage.

Epilogue: Phew, finally confirmed my participation in the upcoming conference (and only when the website were updated with the schedule!). The only good thing about being grad student is of course getting your expense covered if we ever go to conference to present. Now, better get my procrastinating fat-arse back to work.