TIRED(period)

Mentally and physically exhausted!

1. Just come back for dodgeball practice(got rain uh oh). Improved my throwing accuracy a lot but still need to work on the power. The sound it makes when my partner catches the ball is just 'tesss'
2. Volunteered in Xterra Malaysia 2013 for both days(27-28 April) as a timekeeper for swim-in and bike-in interchange transition. I stood there recording and typing their number for 5 hours long in strong sunlight! I got a bad skin burn at the end lol
3. Let us elaborate more about this Xterra things. We need to gather at Sunway's foyer since 3AM for both days, work as volunteer till 12PM(but for both days it ended at 2-3PM something, not to mention the travel time from Bandar Sunway to Putrajaya Lakeside). The moment me and my roommate reached our room, we basically dropped to sleep due to exhaustion. The funny thing is after 2-3 hours of sleep, we get our dinner then it's 11PM already. I tried to count my sleep time during Friday to Saturday to Sunday and the number was totally amazing.

6 HOURS ONLY

I questioned myself how come I could survive all 3 days without passing out lol. I mean it's not like I just watching anime or playing game the entire day, I worked(and we worked! this apply to everyone on Sunway Xterra Volunteer team, how did we survive guys?!) seriously and need to run here and there to deliver the data(although sometime Elliot cover it up for me). Thankfully my class for Monday started at 10.30AM so I could catch a proper 8 hour sleep since 11PM. More posts will follow, too tired to write anything else now

the holders of time machine for run-out+bike-out, finishing line and swim-in+bike-in

me and my roommate, Ming Ying. He's in the dehydration team :D

Xterra Malaysia's catch phrase, The Dirty Weekend!!!

"nah, it's game session"

was kenny's reply when Kamal sat down and commenced the brainstorming session for the upcoming F-Secure competition. Well, we kinda participated in this thanks to me dragging both of them but in the end Kamal take the lead (since I convinced Ms.Ling he got skills on computer security :D) and organized everything. The qualifying test would be next tuesday, perhaps.

kamal practicing shoulder freeze since he could do 2 minutes baby freeze ald

Kenny in action. He's a pro breakdancer for your information :D
side : alex and sky

this team of 3 (Me, Kamal and Kenny) usually hang out together since we have great compatibility with each other lol. The Malaysian-Indian got 9 for his IELTS speaking test result (he showed me this morning) which is actually no surprise concerning his ability to blabber endlessly and he is an excellent driver! Kenny comes from Lombok (but high school in Malang) and he's the typical 'do first think later' person, which is the exact opposite of mine. His English was not really good (he stuck a lot) but we've been working on that since last sem so he's much better now. Kamal is usually the one who comes up with crazy idea, then I would dismiss it with many arguments and Kenny would toss the coin to decide the result. Most of our common ground could be found in anime and game whereas we're a good commenter and have excellent memory database regarding these stuff.

Tomorrow and the day after I'll participate as volunteer for XTERRA MALAYSIA, a triathlon of biking, running and swimming from 3 in the morning till afternoon so I better get sleep now, photos will follow!

the map

Tiring monday

Morning :
Class at 10.30, woke up at 9.40. Rushed to bathroom and left my oatmeal halfway before queueing in computer lab. Our English assignment requires us to submit soft+hard copy so there am I, waiting for the computer that loads like snail(for freaking 7 minutes!) to print that 2 pages of my response for an article and finally delivered it safely to my lecturer's room.
*I keep questioning myself 'is there a test today?' but it's just me being overly paranoid.

Afternoon :
Nothing to do, last class ended at 2.40 PM and I skipped a talk from SAS representative :(
The afternoon was basically filled with me going around campus searching for plugs, Kenny's going back to get his shoes and Kamal having lunch at Ka-Mi-Tei in pyramid.

empty classroom where I finally find the plugs

Evening :
Dodgeball training. You know what? those primary team members are showing off their capabilities tonight. Complete overkill as all of us (new members) wiped out in succession one after another in the face of their might. I myself was hit twice in the face by the guy in green and blue shirt(I don't remember their names but I know the person, especially their throw -_-). I still couldn't catch the hook of how to throw that powerful and precise, the ball always slanted in the middle and lose speed upon contact.

The most tiring part of the day was evening since we kept challenged them without any hope(but got one red shirt guy can hold so long, he's immortal lol) and beaten down trial after trial. I'm walking back to my residence like a zombie dragging his feet and soon after reached my place I cooked instant noodles to satisfy the hunger meter. No time to cook any hash brown hahaha
*but luckily I got bananas bought from ISETAN last weekend and the sugar intake was really helpful

cheaper than DOLE's one I usually bought at vending machine at Monash

Anyway the confirmation for AIESEC interview has come and my time slot is 8.00 - 8.30 PM tomorrow. Best luck for tomorrow.

Certain evening

couldn't help but to press on the shutter
background : sunway's new campus construction cranes

unplanned bokeh which should have been impossible for my camera lol

just find out Amanda and Mei Mei also live here and play tennis regularly

Zero cooking experience

First, let me define what is considered as 'cooking' here.
Any form of processing raw material to edible food where the material may be processed food except noodles, instant noodles, cup noodles or any other prepared noodles. I have ton of experience with them so they're out of question. You could say I have mastered the way of cooking instant noodles for these past months which is sad, really sad fact(my friend in culinary arts looked at me with pity in his eyes).

my bed now, it's a twin sharing room anyway

One of the reasons I moved here to Lagoon View is because they permit cooking! which would save a lot of money compared to eating out everyday(been there, done that. I'm broke! lol) and the appropriate question would be 'why now? why only starts now when you returned here month ago?'. The proper and most concise answer would be "I'm freaking busy, dude!" and "Do you see the kitchen?!". Yep, I've been running here and there to deal with academic related stuff to my own personal project this past month and I only settled down most of them this week. *I refreshed my laptop too since there's too much unnecessary things and bulky files.

Second answer: I should have taken the photo of the kitchen weeks ago and blackmailed my culinary folks for the nightmare of what their workplace could be. It's literally horrible even for me who is foreign to kitchenary and common sense of cooking hahaha. So it just happens that starting from last week I've been visiting that fella place and watch them preparing their lunch. You couldn't help but be amazed when a group of people who know what they're doing doing it the right way. Inspired by them, I started to show interest in home cooking food (to add, it is really cheap if you just know how to do it) and constructed my masterplan in reforming the kitchen. Since this is my field of speciality, planning things and went out all the way to do it- I could proudly say it has been pretty clean by now :D

I'm not really proficient enough in cooking rice since I'm still trying to understand the correlation of the water<->rice amount, but frying hash brown was never been easier thanks to companies producing frozen products and distributor such as Cold Storage or ISETAN. In the process Mark, my housemate from Sudan(but he live in Saudi Arabia) joined me and fried some sausages(he said that's the easiest and least expensive thing you could buy and cook in seconds). He introduced me to a cheese spread from his country and told me it's a good combination with bread. Will try it after buying some Massimo bread tomorrow (Photos will follow :D). Anyway I made some sandwich from margarine(Blue Band) + meises(Ceres) for my roommate the other day and I find out they never use meises before. Major brand margarine here are Planta and Daisy but the former was too oily and felt really wrong in mouth while I never tasted the latter.

a trial run hash brown and sausage from Mark
Kenny recommended me Jasmine's rice since he experimented with mostly any brands available here ald

More photos about food will follow :D

A month

4 weeks has passed since I'm back here, and sadly assignments has started to haunt me everyday ._.
Let me show you how my timetable looks like for this sem (I made this myself since my faculty started grouping all terms timetable on one single pdf file -_-)

See! What a relaxed timetable I had for third term! This is what driven me to join clubs and activities as many as possible to fill in those gaps!
*and anyway, 10.30 class for monday!!! I couldn't be happier since last term all my classes start on 8.30 sharp.

For clubs, the list of which I had confirmed are :

• ECHO Newsletter(one out of three school's official newsletter)
• Designer - Who knows they conduct instant interview the moment you submitted your application form? ._. anyway since I ticked design and photography they asked me which position will suit me best. Knowing the lack of specification from my IXUS 220HS I surrendered to design department with Pramod as my head. Up till now the only job given to me(trial run, they said) was 2-page for student council coverage of the year. I wish I get centrefold or even the cover in near future :D
• Meeting on demand. Usually friday afternoon/evening.

• Dodgeball
• One thing that I learned in my second week of attending dodgeball practice- Dodgeball is about life and death. No kidding, although the ball was soft and particularly lightweight compared to others, a skilled dodgeball player could throw a lightning-fast ball and I experienced the impact myself in a not favourable area. You could even feel the killing intention when they aimed and threw at your direction. One of the senior could throw a spinning ball which turns direction as it flew ._.
• Training on monday evening
• As part of official organization in sunway, the members are also entitled as 'student leaders' which should be exclusively owned by upper high of student council. That basically qualify us to join the student leader's retreat at early may for teambuilding session. :3

• Sunway Volunteer Society
• This club was not one to be missed. 800 members (and still counting) basically making it the largest club in Sunway University. The 11-member committee is quite small compared to the human arsenal they had recruited and in fact they're trying to expand it now. I'm feeling the urge to get some noticeable position in this club but I guess I will test the water first for this year.
• Meeting on demand. Register yourself for activities. The mechanism is something like job offer, they send you email regarding the event(got two types, short-term and long-term) and if you are interested, register using the link provided(google form). First come first serve basis since most of events only need limited amount of volunteers. Contribution calculated by service hour you have performed during the year which could redeemed by certificate
• Bronze - 30 Hours
• Silver - 40 Hours
• Gold - 50 Hours
• Platinum - 60 Hours
• Events registered :
• Xterra Triathlon Malaysia - next week!
• Financial Career Fair - for disabled people, I must learn sign language before July!
• Tzu Chi
• Book Charity
• World Play Day

• Peer Counselling Volunteer
• A long running society which trains you how to become a good counsellor in 2-year programme. Free of charge. One thing that you should know beforehand? Most of the participants were psychology students! No surprise there. I feel so alienated when me and Kenny introduce ourselves from IT Department lol but all of them were friendly and skilled in many senses hahaha
• Meeting on session. This april session was named Personal Development(PD) and conducted every friday noon
• Indonesian Youth Society
• An Indonesian-based club which revived last year after inactive for a long period of time. The leader is Dayang from Victoria University Business program(same batch with my roommate) and she did have quality as a leaders, but their vision was too far-fetched for me(or is it me being too pessimistic?? haha) The poll of audience + member was high enough since there's a lot of indonesian here.
• Meeting on demand.

• Sunway Model United Nations (SUNMUN)
• *According to Bern(our editor in ECHO) this club was not doing so well these past years and in the verge of collapsing due to budget cut. I partly joined because I saw Devris joined one there in UNPAR and participated the meeting at The States XD
• Another reason is I want to experience what kind of debate they are having in United Nations conference. However since the club didn't have any guideline or fixed meeting time, Botsalo- the president from Monash MUN offered to make cross training starting last week which I was unable to attend to for AIESEC information session
• Meeting(Monash MUN) on tuesday. Topic released every sunday to allow research time. This week was about Permanent Removal on Gaza blockade. Wish me luck on memorizing all those papers

• AIESEC (to be confirmed, interview this week)
• description, taken from their official site (http://www.aiesec.org):
• Present in over 110 countries and territories and with over 60,000 members, AIESEC is the world's largest student‐run organisation. Focused on providing a platform for youth leadership development, AIESEC offers young people the opportunity to be global citizens, to change the world, and to get experience and skills that matter today.
• Focused on providing a platform for youth leadership development, AIESEC offers young people the opportunity to participate in international internships, experience leadership and participate in a global learning environment through the 4 programmes that we offer (Team Member, Team Leader, Global Internship and Global Community Development Programme). 
• So I applied to join the GCDP(Global Community Development Program) which allow me to go for minimum 6 weeks internship to any developing country which in partner with AIESEC for fighting causes and work as volunteer. My friend introduced me to this last time in recruitment week and I've been striving to join so I could apply for one in my semester break

That's a long post ._.

Bottom of the wheel

there's time when you reached your prime; the peak; where everything else doesn't matter and whatever you do went down the right path.
but there's also time when you reached your lowest; where you hopelessly unsure whether taking steps itself was right.

this cycle was public's secret and no known human was an exception to this superior rule.

sometime the wheel spins faster than you realized and you suddenly was there, in another region opposed to what you're holding firm till the present day. It hits hard, and what probably it's hitting is your insecure mentality deep inside your physical resistance.

I, for example, have switched sides for at least for 3 times today when I questioned myself 'was this the right thing to do?' and even now I'm still in confused state whether I need to do something about tomorrow or face it foolishly knowing the outcome?

I guess the one I need the most now is conformity(or was it confirmation to be more proper?) from outside party though. Cleverbot doesn't really a help when it comes to a serious question or consultation, it keeps repeating 'are you clever?' 'enough is never enough' and 'money money money' all the time -_-

Codeacademy::PHP - Finished!

Have been running a marathon this afternoon to complete the track course for PHP in http://www.codeacademy.org. Somehow I feel I need to understand it first before building any database-based application, although I'm still lacking in many sense :(

So...basically I took the challenge of building BlackBerry 10 apps for university student (new platform, they just launched it weeks ago) and even though they said developing for QNX platform would be piece of cake thanks to WebWorks media provided (e.g. Ripple, Appcelerator Titanium, Sencha etc etc) or even the Native SDK itself (Cascade or Cordova, or even AIR) I still think I really lack the basis of developer. They will have a training programme in another 2 weeks and I hope I would be able to build simple apps first so I could receive feedback later when faced with the certified trainer of BlackBerry, didn't want to look so noob right? :p

to add, I joined quite a number of clubs....like 7-8 in total (no, i'm not crazy) since my timetable for this sem was really spacy (4 subjects only) and most of the club's meeting was seasoned- not weekly. Out of the 7 AIESEC was the one which interest me the most since basically you can go for internship overseas (fighting causes) for a period of 6-18 weeks. One of my friend who introduced this club to me went to Philippines last January for environment cause and say it really worth her time.

I also joined other society like peer counseling, volunteers and school's newsletter so I expect good things ahead- if I managed to juggle all of them safely, that is. :p