Category: General

I hate chain of calamities. It’s when all of a sudden your luck changes and bad luck befalls on you. It started this evening, when I handed in my Add/Drop form for the application of Japanese language to Nicola Wragg (our undergraduate officer). I thought my application was accepted entirely but apparently it wasn’t. I still need to get the Dean’s signature. Fine, all I need to do is talk cock to him and plead for a signature. I went up to his office but he wasn’t around. Fine, I’ll talk to him tomorrow and I decided to head home to cook lunch. It was raining heavily. Fine, I’m wearing my windbreaker. I reached home soaking wet and headed to the fridge straight to take my bacon out but unfortunately the bacon was frozen. I can’t remove them piece-by-piece. FINE, I’ll remove them with a knife. Ouch, I accidentally poked my thumb with the knife and it bled. FINE, it’s just a small wound, so fuck it, man. Few seconds later, while I was cutting the bacon, it went out of position and ended up hitting my index finger. Blood oozed out slowly from the deep wound. Oh fine again, thank god it didn’t slice my whole finger off. I washed the wound with antiseptic, wrapped it with tissue and cooked. Melody text messaged me while I was halfway cooking. I was worried about her when she suddenly stopped messaging me for couple of hours. I even got Ben to call her but she didn’t pick up. She said that her phone ran out of battery. That explains the sudden stoppage of incoming messages. My luck changed after that. I guess all my bad karmas were exhausted.
– 7:00PMMy application for Japanese language course has been accepted! No more boring Law and Medicine!
– 1:40PM

Fuckup server had couple of problems for the past few days. I just fixed them all.

Bad news, Internet will not be installed at my house today. BT broadband rejected our application because Chuo Ming’s account didn’t have enough money to pay for it. We’re going to reapply for it again but it would take us a long time for them to install the Broadband for us.

Vodafone barred my phone. I cant call out to anyone but i could still text message people. I confronted the Vodafone officials today and it seems that i’ve exceeded my credit limit.

What a day!

13 October 2002 Sunday
I sprained my thumb while playing basketball today. It happened when Jason and I were rushing towards the ball, I managed to get hold of it but Jason on the other hand missed the ball and ended up smashing his hand through my thumb.
It was raining halfway while we were playing. Feeling unsatisfied, we ignored it and continued playing. I ended up with fever throughout the night.

Updated album section with Cyberjaya rave pictures.
– 11:07AM

Waking up in the morning could be horrible sometimes. My room temperature drops to 18 degrees in the morning.

Japanese class was good. We learned about numbers. It’s pretty hard especially when you had to translate your phone numbers into Japanese.
Since we learned couple of sentences for the past few weeks, Miss Nagai (our lecturer) urged us to converse with others in the class again. However, the conversation lasted just 2 minutes. We ran out of things to say in Japanese.
– 12:41PM

I finally set up a computer network in 16 Watson Rd after numerous tries. I’ve been consulting Wei Chen about it for days and finally today I linked 8 computers in 16 Watson Rd.

There were 2 obstacles while we were installing the network. Firstly, it was the set up. Every computer has to be set up manually in order to connect to the network. There were loads of problems in the beginning but I manage to solve it all.

Secondly, it’s the LAN cables. Thanks to Chuo Ming’s brilliant calculation, we had excessive cables and it was lying all about. All of us had to organize them so that it doesn’t look messy. It took us couple of hours to fix and sort out the cables.

In the end of the night, everything is done. All the computers were connected to the network but the only thing that is missing is the Internet connection. It will be set up next Monday.
– 11:50PM
Missed Japanese class today. I couldnt get myself to wake up. I guess i’ll attend the replacement tomorrow.
– 12:00PM

I’m still not sure whether I could take Japanese this year. I already handed up the application form with the Japanese Language modulator�s approval signature on it. However, it�s not decisive. The department still could reject my application. And now, I�m stuck. I�m don�t want to drop my current subject, Law and Medicine, it�s boring. If my application for Japanese is rejected then I�ll take Forensic Medicine. The problem here is that the uni�s approval will only be given in a week�s time and therefore if my application for Japanese is rejected, I have to reapply for a module change again. Furthermore, this means that I have to attend the Forensic Medicine classes in the meanwhile so that i wont be clueless in the class when i�m accepted into Forensic Medicine.

I went for the Forensic Medicine class today. It�s really interesting. Today we learn about the process Death Certificate and the Timing of death. The timing of death is the interesting one. There are many things that affect the timing of death ie the weather, predations (ie maggots, flies, spiders), body size, location, and clothing. The timing of death is usually done using the body cooling method. The temperature of a dead body will decrease during its death. However, it�s not true sometimes. Events like decomposition will increase the body temperature. Furthermore, the body will be floppy right after it�s death. 6 hours later, the body will be stiff. However, 36 hours later, the body will be floppy again. This is caused by the chemical reaction in the muscles. There were many more things the lecture taught us. He kept on saying that the bodies were gruesome, smelly and horrible. He had to face with it all the time.

Frederick cooked dinner today. Charles went to London last night and Siew Lee is sick hence Frederick and Mindy had to take over the place of the cooks of the house. Dinner was really good. Frederick and Mindy�s cooking were superb. However, I screwed up the rice. I put too much rice and too little water. The whole thing turned out dry. Khai Fei and I tried to save it but unfortunately, it was too late. The rice was inedible.
– 11:50PM

I’m off to London tomorrow morning. It will take me 3 hours to get there. I’m meeting Gin Yew at 1:30PM in Victoria Station and then we’ll have lunch and walk around till 7pm.- 11:54AM

Yesterday’s blog
Muay Thai class was great. It’s our first class today and it was packed. We divided the class into 2 sessions; 6pm to 7pm and 7 to 8pm.Our gym is located at a new place and it’s twice the size of our previous gym.

I got there at 7pm and the first class was already packed. Simon (treasurer) and I set up our payment counter to collect membership fees and training fees. We made 500 pounds from today’s class but we had to pay 100 pounds for the instructors and 20 pounds for the rental of the place. I didn’t need to do much. All I had to do was just help Simon (our treasurer) to sort out the payments.

16 Watson rd cooked roast leg of lamb for dinner today. The roast leg of lamb was huge till 6 of us couldn’t finish all of it.
– 11:50PMJapanese class was again, fun! Our lecturer, Tanaka-san is a silly looking Japanese man with messy moustache and beard. Despite his silly appearance, he is absolutely cute and fun. He made us run around the whole class asking each other’s name in Japanese and then he would pick one of us to recite everybody’s name aloud. He picked me once and thank god i remembered everybody’s name (there were about 20 of us).

I just found out that 2 of my Caucasian classmates could speak Mandarin. Really fluent Mandarin! Apparently they studied in Nanking University for 7 years. I bet their Mandarin is much better than mine.
– 4:56PM

Yesterday’s blog
I attended the Japanese language class today. It was absolutely brilliant. They taught us how to read and write Japanese. The Japanese written language is divided into 3 categories namely the hiragana, katakana and designated kanji. The hiragana is the most formal style (ie in Acts of Parliament) while the katakana is least formal used for conversation etc (i might be wrong, probably is the other way round). The katakan consists of 46 alphabets. We are required to master it within 2 weeks.

Our class consists of an equal mixture of Asians and Caucasians. The sensei (lecturer) divided us into groups and required us to converse with each other in Japanese. Since all we learn today is just asking basic conversation, we could only form 2 sentences (we sound like babies trying to put words together).

I’m trying to drop one Law and Medicine so that i could take Japanese. However, it seems that a lot of people has been rejected from taking it. I talked to the head of the Japanese language class about it and she accepted my application. However, i don’t think it’s enough. I heard that I have to get an authorization signature from the Dean. *fingers crossed*

The class was held in the Art’s Tower. Apparently it’s the tallest building in Sheffield. But to me, it just an old building barely 16 storeys high. The only cool thing is the moving lift. It could only fit 2 people and people have to jump into the lift while it moves. Even though it looks cool, the lift section is the worst place to be. During peak hours, the place will be congested and everybody will be fighting for a place in the lifts.

I’m off to London on Saturday! The ticket cost me 26 quid (fucking hell). It will take me more than 3 hours to get there. Unfortunately, i have 2 problems. Firstly, my dad hasn’t transferred any money into my account yet. I think i still have less than 100 pounds to survive. Secondly, i dont know my way in London. I hope i dont get loss there!
– 4:34PM

6 reasons to keep a diary http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2289919.stm

I was sick of our garden last night. It’s full of weed, not maintained, dirty and filthy and therefore I decided to clean it up today. I bought a pair of gloves for a pound, went to the garden and started pulling weeds. Charles and Alex joined me later. Wen Dee wanted to join but the earthworms that started crawling out from the ground grossed her out.

Cleaning the garden isn’t an easy job. We had to brave through the thorny weed and disgusting insects. While cleaning, our neighbour popped by from his wall. He introduced himself as Dr. Right. We borrowed a clipper from him.

We were totally unprepared for the job. All we had was just a pair of glove, a penknife and a kitchen knife for 3 of us. Each of us had to take turns to exchange tools.

I stumbled upon a stack of wild blueberries (maybe it’s not), I popped few of them into my mouth. mmmm, sweet.

We stopped late in the evening. However, we still have another quarter to clean, guess we’ll continue it tomorrow.
–4:01PMHello again

I went home and took my diskette back to the faculty’s computer lab.

Our house owner dropped by 16 Watson rd today. He fixed the fire alarm and inspected some of the faults in the house. I had a short chat with him. He said that this house is expensive to maintain. They bought it for a quarter of a million pounds and it’s about 120 years old! I asked him what happened to the previous owner. He said, ‘oh don’t know, probably buried in the basement” mmm, that explains the spooky feelings I had this couple of days. hehe

30 September 2002 Sunday
Cooked breakfast this morning. I made myself a ham and egg sandwich.

Frederick and I went out the whole day together. I initially planned to follow Frederick’s car to our Fifth court in the Uni to register but we ended up in the city shopping. I bought myself a duvet (I was freezing last night, all I had was just a thin blanket), groceries and a present for my mum (her birthday is on the 10 of October). Frederick on the other hand spent a fortune today. He got himself a new pair of glasses, a new television and a second hand table.

Frederick wanted to renew his road tax before we register at the Uni. We drove all the way there and waited for an hour for the whole process to be done. At the beginning, we had trouble parking the car. It’s not like back in Malaysia, we cant park anywhere we like. Policemen here are bloody efficient. We saw two muscular policemen on bicycles patrolling the place for illegal parking.

After that, we headed to the Uni to pay our fees. Fifth Court is one of Sheffield Uni’s oldest buildings. It was built in the early 1800s and its designs are impressive. The main building is covered with plants sticking on the wall. The best part of it is that, every season, the leaves will change colours. In autumn, we’ll get a brownish design, in winter, it’s totally blank and in spring, the flowers bloom all over the wall.

Next destination is the city. Parking wasn’t a problem. Fred parked in a parking area. However, it’s not cheap, it costs us 60p an hour (we were in the city for 5 hours, 4 x 60p = 3 pounds!!) We ate lunch in McDonalds. The funny thing about McDonalds here is that they charge you for the ketchup but barbeque and chilli sauce are free. There is a small desk with a level for you to pull to squeeze out the BBQ and chilli sauce.

28 September 2002 Saturday
Melody and I had dim sum early in the morning. I fetched her back about 2am last night and I slept about 3am. I was supposed to wake up at 7am so that we could go for early dim sum but I ended up waking up at 8am.

After dim sum, we went back to our place and slept till 1:30pm. I felt that there’s something wrong. I checked flight details and I got all my timing wrong. I thought I was supposed to leave at 11pm from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore but it was the other way round. I will be leaving Singapore at 11pm and my flight to Singapore from Kuala Lumpur is at 8pm. For the past week, I’ve been telling my parents and friends that I’m leaving at 11pm. I didn’t realise it until later in the afternoon on the day of my flight! I ended up leaving home 2 hours before departure.

Dad didn’t send me off from the departure gate. He dropped Melody and mum at the entrance and gave me a handshake wishing me goodbye.

My luggages were overweight by few kilograms. I’ve been removing loads and loads of stuff from my bags but it was still overweight. By the end of the day, I couldn’t be bothered removing anything else more. My friends told me that they charge rm113 for each extra kg (students are given 30kgs, I think mine is about 33kg). Fortunately, the lady who weighed my luggages waived the charge. She said, “Your luggages are overweight, but I understand you’re a student, therefore I wont charge you anything.”

Melody cried again when I was about to leave. Mum was steady this time. I gave her a hug before leaving. sad..

I met up with Frederick and Han Choong in Changi Airport, Singapore. We had to transit in Mumbai (formally known as Bombay) for an hour. As we arrived, we were greeted with an amazingly huge airport. It also has a huge fire station on it. Even a middle aged Caucasian man sitting next to was pretty fascinated with it. Our first impression was Mumbai’s airport must be in a state of the art design.
Mumbai’s international airport is a disgrace. Never in my life I’ve seen such an airport like this. Even though it looked huge from the plane, it’s very small. As we got out from the plane, a mustachio Indian guard stood behind a huge fan greeted us. The place doesn’t seem to be fully air-conditioned. I walked to the waiting area, sat down and soon I caught the attention of an elderly Indian family. They kept on looking at me, probably because they have never seen a Chinese before.

The airport lobby looks like a huge corridor with shops on one side and the entrance gates on the other side. There wasn’t any thing special about the place, everything seems to be newly built. There were only one duty free shop and 2 small cafés. The queue into the gates were amazingly long probably due to the fact that one gate consists of 4 to 5 gates.

I’ve been trying to collect Coca Cola tin cans from every country I’ve visited. Feeling dreadfully thirsty, I headed to a small café, took a can of Diet coke and asked whether could I pay in British pound. The waiter replied yes in surety but it cost me a outrageous 2 pounds.

The amazing thing about the airport is smoking is allowed everywhere. Frederick and Han Choong, wasted no time, smoked few cigarettes before heading for the gates.

We decided to have a drink at the café I bought my Cola. Frederick ordered a Pepsi, I ordered a cup Masala tea while Han Choong ordered glass of ice lemon tea. The Masala tea tasted horrible. It tasted like curry (Masala is a spice to make curry)!!! Han Choong’s drink was also horrible. We ended up drinking Frederick’s Pepsi. Fortunately, the manager offered to change my Masala tea with a cup of English tea.

Initially, the manager requested us to pay with British pounds but Han Choong was smart, he handed the manager a piece of 5 Singapore dollar. The cost of our drinks was already more than 5 US dollar. My Masala tea already cost me 1.50 US dollar. The manager grabbed the money without hesitation or enquiry. We took our luggage and head straight to our gate. Surprisingly, Kok Hoong, a well built (he was in the Singaporean army serving as a weapon specialist) Singaporean, I knew from Sheffield was there. We used to stay in the same hall and now he’s going back to Sheffield to finish his engineering degree. We barely chatted. All of us were standing and stoning for few minutes. Suddenly, the manager of the café approached us. He said that the money we gave him wasn’t enough to cover the bill. He requested another 5 Singaporean dollar. I took out Ringgit Malaysia 5 (Malaysia riggit’s currency is much lower t
han Singapore’s) and gave it to him. The manager paused for a while and examined the note and left as soon as he says ‘thank you’. Both of these notes were green and the size of it was almost the same. I guess the manager was confused. That’s what you get for charging me 2 pounds for a can of diet coke!

The security was amazingly tight. Luggages are required to be x-rayed and then followed by a body search and if you’re unlucky, the custom officers will search your bag. The body search was divided into 2 sections namely the male and the female section. The female section is covered with curtains but the male one was openly done.

The journey to Manchester took us 9 hours. I was totally nervous with my cigarettes smuggling plan. I even asked my friends to go through the customs first and then only call me to inform me of the situation. However, I got my luggage early and decided to go through the custom. There were about 6 custom officers standing outside the green lane door but none of them were checking anything, all they did was chatting with each other. I stuffed my cigarettes into my backpack and walked straight into the green lane, by passing the custom officers and there I am, outside the arrival gate, with 10 cartons of cigarettes on my hand whispering, “I am rich!” to myself.

I don’t really like my new room in Sheffield. It’s located in the basement and therefore it’s bloody cold. My room was in a total mess when I arrived. Everybody left their stuff in my room and we don’t have a vacuum cleaner in the house yet. I had to clean the place up for few hours. Furthermore, my room has only a bed, a table and a chair. The wardrobe hasn’t arrived yet. I had to store all my clothes in the luggage bag.

Our place doesn’t have internet connection yet. It will take us a while to register one. sigh
– 3:26PMHello people

Sorry for the late update. My new house doesnt have Internet connection yet. I had to go online in my faculty’s computer lab.

I typed out the blog for the past few days on my laptop and transferred it on a diskette. Unfortunately, i forgot to bring it out with me. fuck man!!

Classes start today. My first class was Intellectual property Law. It’s amazingly interesting. I thought it will be a boring class. Our lecturer is an English woman with a heavy English accent. She is so full of expression. There was once she was talking about Barbie doll. She took the doll, played with it and talked about it. And there was once she played a music cassette to demonstrate something, she danced through the music. I’m going to love Intellectual propety law!

I was thinking of dropping one of my subjects and replace it with Japanese language. I heard they’re the level of the Japanese language is very low. However, it seems that it’s not easy to take that subject. Some of my friends were rejected from taking that subject. Someone told me that the bloody department forbids Asians to take Japanese because they’re afraid that Asians might already know Japanese.

I just found out that i have only 100 pounds left in the bank. I thought i had plenty of money in the bank before i left Sheffield. Damn, i forgot that my bank paid 800 pounds for my accommodation. I just mailed dad requesting for some extra pocket money. Hopefully he’ll bank in enough money for me to travel around. hehe I just love travelling.
– 11:15AM

Piracy..*sigh* That word does bring music to my ears. SS2 Petaling Jaya is always the place to get pirated stuffs. Be it, VCD, DVD, Computer Software or Computer Games. Vendors would be competing for customers by promoting their vcds to them and telling how good/funny/gross a certain movie is. Some would be shouting “sub yii soi ngam mou lou sai” (translation would be something like : Boss, 12 years old porn movie suitable for you?) Fuck man i never once bought porn vcd from vcd vendors as it’s a little too disturbing for the likes of me. Everyone will be assuming that i’m a sick cunt. Not that i’m not though, but one must protect his outer innocent layer. 🙂 There’s always the internet and friend’s who are sick enough to buy them. Hee Hee!! However, it’s really a turn on when u see chicks browsing through the porn section though. LOL!

Like XES said, whenever, the vcd vendors received information that there’s going to be a raid, they’ll all pack up and leave the scene so fast before you can even buy your normal chee cheong farn. In SS2, there’ll be this really big fellow who just walks around the stalls and he’ll be carrying a walkie talkie with him. The other messenger would be waiting outside the JPJ department building (raid officers). Whenever a JPJ truck comes out, the messenger will follow it and observe which particular area they’re going to raid and reports back to the big fellow at SS2 to ask him to stand by. The big fellow then shouts to the vendors to be prepared. The vendors will arrange and put their stack of PIRATED vcds in such a way, when packing up is needed, it would be easier for them to just lift it up and stash it in their getaway van. When it’s confirm that there’s going to be a raid, all the vendors would start packing and just wait for the JPG officers to arrive and fucking laugh at them while making loud noices with their big mufflers from their car. It’s quite entertaining actually to see how these people work in a team and how coordinate they actually are. My god it’s like a fucking cult.

Bass Station it is tonight! WoOO HoOoO!! May have to head down to Salt first though cause Weng will be down there as this is his first time in Melbourne and he wanted to see how the famous Salt was like. Same owner as salt, i think Nouvo is a much better place though. Actually both sucks big time. Unless you’re a R&B freak, you’ll think these places is the SHITS! Lots of Viets and they like staring at you which makes it so uncomfortable. And the worst thing is that your can’t do shit about it. Unless you wanna get your damn head shot off of course. It’s like operation Desert Fucking Storm in Salt. Not surprising people were killed there. Places like Bass Station will never have these kind of crowd and action because of it’s reliability of the security and yeah the crowd are so much friendlier. Although Hard Kandy is pretty dodgey and dangerous but hell it’s really more like an experience to be there then just a normal clubbing club. AsK XES, he’ll enlighten you.

– 1:36PM