Friday, September 27, 2013

In times of weakness

This is an open letter addressed to myself, Leonardy Kristianto in the future.
At time of this writing you're currently recovering from a severe stomach-ache of yesterday's two full-blown cup of coffee in Running Man event conducted by Sunway's Game Show Club, which induce the same amount of throw ups in the night before. If that doesn't really triggers your memories, you're currently on your 3rd design out of 6 for your campus official newsletter - ECHO for the fourth issue of the year, after spending time being scolded in our last issue for terrible time management. Anyway you're doing great now since you decided to take revenge by giving it your best. You're working on Sunway Dance Club's Annual Dance Production - Genesis article in which you never attended although one of your best friend performed there(reason being you're out in town, with your fellow Monashian, Taylorian and Lim Kok Wing's from the same home town having a rare chance of gathering).

Please note that you're typing this while sitting on your dorm's corridor after a terrible sleeping time since your room mate decided to keep the fan on, but don't blame him since this is your own trouble to begin with. After waking up at 5AM you are somehow able to move on your natural instinct of hunger, taking little steps to the kitchen only to realize the stove was out of gas, the induction cooker gone haywire and anything you ate tasted terrible. Thank your room mate for keeping his water boiler intact and for him to save you twice when you are suffering this ordeal too back then when both of you are still staying at previous dorm nearby. All in all, remember to express your gratitude too for that precious friend of yours from the student council that had helped you to purchase your fried rice, in which you barely finished half of it in opposite of your usual big appetite and for him to escort you back at 11PM yesterday.

You have two reasons of why you are crafting these gloomy and out-of-place paragraphs now. First, before you successfully closed your eyes and went into your slumber, you suffered. Living by yourself(not literally, you do have your room mate though) in another country is never as easy as staying in your parent's comfort zone. You are considerably healthy for most times as your involvement with the athletic club developed your fitness and you just love to swim with closed eyes to feel each strokes pushing against the water. However bad times do and would occur and this is just one of those time where you are at your weakest. Negative thoughts often dominate us when we are dealing with something bad and believe it or not, you are even uncertain of whether you could wake up to see another sunrise tomorrow. Thankfully your iron will pushes you through the night, partly because you remember you still have three group assignments to do and Standard Chartered KL race on Sunday. By typing this you hope you remember that you survived the night and are still able to witness the sun rays through the window. Bird's chirping never sounds this beautiful before anyway.

Arriving on your second reason, after realizing that sitting on a chair or any elevated surfaces would make you dizzier than before, you decided to sit on the floor after that quick bites of bread and few sips of chamomile tea. As the relaxation settles in, boredom kicks in too. You are having trouble keeping your mind straight with your stomach and Facebook is never a good idea. You remembered that book they gave you during your participation of Career Conference 2013 after the Leaderonomics talks sponsored by TalentCorp. It was entitled "What's After SPM? - 101 stories, 101 young Malaysians" which wouldn't really make sense unless your Malaysian Indian's best friend concisely explained to you how Malaysian education system works. You are on the 20th chapter so far and realized that lives really varied through different eyes. You have followed the conventional style of thinking that education is your highest priority, descended through your hard-working and caring parents, yet you continuously flipped the book and found unique autobiographies by people on your same age. From journalist to debater to food taster, from an average person to the overachiever and geniuses, from anthropology to industrial management to street busking, the book has shown you the different paths that people took and their ability to fabulously write down their journeys that never bores you from advancing through the pages. You felt as you are nothing compared to them and being one who actively challenge oneself, you sensed the urge of making every moments count starting of this particular morning. Thus this writing, being a method to kickstart your story.

Here's the twist, days ago one of your best friend studying in Bandung Institute of Technology posted something about international book day and according to the post you need to reach out to the closest book on your sight and open page 52 and read the fifth sentences. By coincidence you grabbed this book too and the respective is read as follows:

Busking offers the flexibility of when and where you want to work, as well as the opportunity to see both the kindness and the dark side in strangers.

It was the chapter twelve of the book, sub-titled as:

Busking the Days Away
Azmyl Yunor, 33, is known as a singer-songwriter, musician, and a lecturer at a local private college in the Klang Valley. He performs regularly in the independent music circuit and also does academic research in the field of Communication and Cultural Studies.

Guess what? It's Azmyl! You met him first time as the representative of performing art department when Sunway is having a study expo in your local area, back before you even enrolled into this private institution and to note he's the one encouraged you to give it a try. You both talked about your canon's digital camera and you demonstrated the color pick function in it. Your second time meeting was in Sunway Education Expo or SEE 2012 in the university hall itself where he and his bands performed there.

Your stomach has gradually calmed down in the writing of this last paragraph and you're up for a proper breakfast now. Your house mates had been throwing a lot of confused looks when they woke up and saw you sitting in the corridor and typing frantically while holding a book. Two of them seems like taking a flight somewhere since you overheard their conversation and the fact that they're preparing their travel cases. This letter would end here and whenever you need a reminder of how you went through all the trouble, reflect yourself on this badly composed texts.

P.S. Finish the other books of organizational behaviour and e-commerce on your drawers.

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