Almost 2011

So it's almost a new year. Christmas was nice. I visited Amanda and Carmeni. Amanda had a nicer tree and tastier food but Carmeni's family served a really tasty drink.

Amanda's dog, Walker, had eight puppies. Six of them died, I buried one.

I've been sleeping a lot. It's been nice.

I finished watching all the Community episodes yesterday. It's a good show.

Hannah had me drive her around a lot to visit kittens and such.

For Christmas, I got The Road from Hannah (dang good book; I read it in a day) and a bunch of Coca-Cola contour glasses from Amanda (so cool!) and I got some jeans, a belt, and a polo shirt from my mum. I also got a flashlight from my dad, I think. I drew Hannah in the Secret Santa, so I got her a "How To Take Care of Your Kitten" book and a Buzz Lightyear watch and some other stuff.

Tonight there is going to be a New Year's Eve party at my house but not many people are coming. Amanda and Joanna will be there, which is good. We'll probably order pizza. I got the keys to the roof so we'll have an awesome view of the fireworks, which will be nice. I also got, like, a buttload of snacks so that should be good, too.

Aside from that not much has happened.

Updating for Updating's Sake (and of Course this Grew into a Longer Post than Intended)

I have a lot of unread items on my Google Reader feed. I have three weeks of webcomics to catch up on. I have two weeks to blog about. I'll do that all later. Like, end of the month later or something.

I'm going clubbing tonight with Amanda and Milan and the rest. They said it's cool if I bring Corinna along, so I'm going to see if she wants to come.

Tomorrow we're going to Gua Tempurung, and then after that we're going to Cameron Highlands. We're using my mum's car because she's in the Netherlands with Hannah for my grandmother's funeral. I spoke to my Oma a week before she went. She sounded small and a little bit confused. She's with her husband now, I guess, so that's nice.

I don't have any more maternal grandparents.

Yesterday (technically, today), I was at the office for a long time. My shift ended at nine, I stayed on until ten watching the new Glee, and then I called Sara on Skype and talked to her for the next three hours. There was only one other person at the office. I moved all the abandoned chairs to my area of the cubicle farm. I felt like a furniture king. Anyway, I decided to hang up at 1:30am so I could go home and get some sleep, so I did. My card wouldn't work in tagging me out, so I had to get the other guy to let me out. I then realized that I had left my keys on my desk, so I had to yell from outside for him to let me back in. He was a patient dude, luckily.

When I got to the car, there was a dog napping underneath it. It had a hurt paw. It looked really cute. I took two pictures, but I can't upload them right now because I didn't bring my transfer cable to work.

When I got home I lost Ian's USB stick. I went back to the car to look for it, but it wasn't there. When I came back upstairs it was lying on the welcome mat. I felt a bit silly when I noticed that.

Jan was still awake, listening to the Ricky Gervais show. I took a shower and went to sleep at two-thirty.

The next morning I went through my morning routine, ate some sausages and bacon with Corinna and Aunty Rosie, and checked my e-mail. Then I went to work.

So far work has been okay. It took me a while to log in because of some technical hiccups, but it just meant that I didn't have to answer calls for the first twenty minutes. We were supposed to have some important clients visiting, so I wasn't on Tumblr or Conquer Club the whole day. For my break I went up to the roof and I saw that I had a text from Amanda asking if I wanted to go clubbing. I like getting drunk and seeing my friends get drunk, so I said I would.

When I got back I went up to the ops team to talk to them about something, and someone had left their phone on their desk. Nina (the nice lady in charge of approval for lunch and breaks) wanted to hide the phone. I asked if she wanted me to take it down to Sukarno (my boss) when I went back to my desk, since apparently it's his last day and it would be a nice (albeit short-lived) going-away present. She said she did, so I did. I'm not sure what he's done with it.

The fire escape in this building has "no smoking" signs on every floor, but even during an actual fire you're still more likely to die of smoke inhalation on the stairs than you are inside the actual floors. I guess illiteracy is like mouth cancer and coughing: just another side-effect of cigarettes. I'd pity smokers if they weren't all so stupid about their mortality.

I only really have to write about the weekends. I need to write about Halloween and Batu Caves and Megamind and Tropicana City Mall and that's pretty much it. Should be pretty simple. Work days are all the same anyway.

Oh. I also need to upload all the pictures of me with the snakes and the bearded dragon and Catholic Jesus up at Batu Caves. They're on Corinna's camera; I have to remember to get those from her sometime.

I don't know what my opinions are regarding Sara Elizabeth Madren. On the one hand I really really like talking to her, on the other hand I can never decide if I'm infatuated with her or not. I'm pretty sure I will be tonight, because I'll be drunk and I'm infatuated with every pretty girl when I'm drunk.

I'm running out of money. After tithing RM400 to Beacon Life Training Centre to help buy stuff to help the special needs kids, I think I'll only have, like, RM300 left. I'm probably going to spend RM200 tonight and maybe half that tomorrow (not counting petrol), so I'm going to have to starve a bit near the end of the month. Oh well.

Man, it's gonna suck to be unemployed again. It's gonna suck worse to be in university, but at least I'll be able to make new friends. It's the in-between period that'll get me. I'll be pretty bored. I should get a laptop and install all the awesome games of the past three years on it. That should tide me through.

I need more money.

The Last Two Days in Under 30 Minutes (Hopefully)

On Monday I went to work early and I came home early, too. Daylight savings time had come into Australia and New Zealand, so from now on I am starting work earlier and ending work earlier, too.

I also got my roster. It said I had to be at work on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday, all at 6am. I asked my supervisor about this and he said that I could come at 7am on the weekdays, so that was nice.

Work was okay. About halfway through I started to get sleepy, but I made it to the end of the day and when I went home I was in bed fairly early. I just finished watching The Infidel (I had begun watching it in the morning) and then I went to bed at 10pm. I had done my exercises long before my shower. I should do that more often, it takes so much less time to go from doing things to being in bed when I'm on the computer.

Tuesday I woke up a bit late. Later on in the day I changed my alarm tone from "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" to the opening music from CSI: Miami (YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAH!). Anyway, I got to work at around 7am, but I had to wait outside the doors for fifteen minutes before somebody showed up who could tag me in.

I worked through the day. Halfway through my nine-and-a-half hours (right after lunch, I think), I felt really tired and my performance suffered. It also suffered because I got a lot of calls from people whose phones all had this same problem whereby I would hear everything I said a few seconds after I said it. Hannah was right, I am bloody annoying. I couldn't concentrate with me talking in my ears all the time. Some people got quite upset.

Also I answered a call from a French guy in France. I could not help but smile at his accent. It was so amazingly... French. And not the sexy French that Amanda would probably be thinking about, but the frog's-legs-and-surrender-and-cheese-and-w(h)ine-and-effeminate type of French. I'm sure he was a nice guy, it's just that his accent was too French for me to hold a straight face and it was also too strong for me to help him with his problem, so I stumbled through the French HP page until I found the number for the French call centre and directed him there. I'd like to think his call was picked up by a typical Indian call centre, except everyone there wore berets and pretentious moustaches and spoke wit ze... ow you say... eavy French ixaunt.

After work I got my contract. There are large chunks of it devoted to patents and inventions. At the end it says that the terms I agree to will survive the termination of my employment, which sounds pretty sinister.

I drove to Amanda's house and we went to Devi's with Milan. Our conversation was about penises and masturbation and a little about other things but right now those two things are the only topics I can remember. In two weeks' time, Milan and Amanda will be buying me ice-cream. October twelfth. Start saving, you two.

Milan went home and Amanda and I went to pick up Geraldine from tuition. She thought that Aunty Rosie's car was Amanda's car. When I clarified things for her, Amanda and she simultaneously asked why my maid had a car. My answer to them was "Why wouldn't my maid have a car?"

When we reached Amanda's house I took Walker on a walk so that she could pee because Amanda couldn't do it because she had to pee. After the walk we went inside and then we went out again so Amanda's mother could run some errands. Meanwhile, Amanda and I stayed in the car and talked about domestic abuse after hearing that one Eminem song on the radio.

When we got back I stole the remote control so that we could watch world news instead of E! News. I tried to educate Amanda's family on how Kim Jong Un is a more important figure than Ellen DeGeneres, but they were women so they didn't understand. They didn't care much for the latest news on the Israeli naval blockade, either. At least Geraldine took interest in the trapped Chilean miners, though. I thought it was quite fascinating that she had never even heard of the mine disaster before. It must be nice in her head. Very... Local.

Anyway, after world news we watched a program on Nat Geo Wild about cats in the womb. I knew most of the facts already, so I tried to say them all before the narrator could. I was hoping to impress someone with my knowledge, but I don't think I achieved any reaction from anyone aside from annoyance. I did learn something new about purring and roaring, though. Also, cheetahs are fast. Also also, Amanda and Geraldine are still grossed out by birth, even kitty birth. Good luck to their future midwives, I say.

After that I moved to the massage chair and watched a show called Desperately Seeking Sheila. I hope Georgia and that cowboy dude work out. They seemed nice.

After that, Amanda tried to watch Friends but the disc was not working, so she watched House instead. The start of the episode was very interesting, and I wanted to know more, but the moment I left Amanda's place I lost all interest. Here's my guess: it wasn't lupus.

I'll be dropping by Amanda's again on Wednesday to help her move stuff because we didn't actually move anything today. After that we're watching Cloverfield. Yay!

I met one of my neighbours in the lift. She walked in when I was singing Stacy's Mom to myself. We had a pleasant (if slightly brief and awkward) conversation.

I need to do my fake push-ups, and then I'm going to sleep. I will only be asleep for two and something hours. Oh dear.

I Am Still Blogging, Hannah

I haven't quit blogging, it's just that I haven't been on my computer since I started work on Monday and as such I haven't had much time to update this blog. But I'll get to it eventually. There isn't much to write about this week, my days have mostly gone like this:

1) Wake up
2) Get ready
3) Wake up again from a nap that was taken sometime between items 2 and 3, suddenly realize how late I am
4) Rush to work with my dad or Aunty Rosie or on my own
5) Work for a few hours; don't remember enough about any calls to blog substantial amounts about them
6) Costly lunch
7) Take a break, maybe sneak in some Conquer Club in between calls.
8) Work for a few more hours; maybe get one or two interesting calls
9) Go home
10) Hang out in Hannah's room/Do exactly one interesting thing/take a nap
11) Do exercise and take shower
12) Go to bed relatively early.

Well, on Wednesday night I went to watch a movie and on Thursday I went with friends to surprise Nicholas at the airport before he left, but that's about it. I'll blog more about those later, I guess.

I will definitely be updating the previous post with more information about my first time clubbing. This is a blog-commitment. It is, like, the closest I can get to making a promise without actually making a promise.

Gotta take Hannah and Yii-Huei and Ebony to malls now. Should be fun.

Before I go, here is one picture from Facebook for this post:

Nobody Ever Thinks About Me

The title is hyperbole. Still, I'm hardly feeling extremely happy right now.

So today I had my "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" alarm set for 7:42am, and then I had "I Feel Fantastic" set for 7:50am. This way I could be roused out of a deeper sleep by my first alarm, then (because it is a relatively gentle song), I could sleep through it until my second alarm went off so I could get ready for the day.

Just my luck, then, that my dad woke us all up at 7:40am by turning off the air conditioning and fan and opening the curtains. Ian got out of bed first, which meant that instead of plenty of time to get ready by virtue of being the first one up, I would have to wait for Ian and Jan to get ready first and then rush to get ready before 8:30am. If only my dad would have waited ten more bloody minutes, then my morning would have been perfect.

Anyway, I got up and read my Bible while waiting for everyone to get done. Jan took his own sweet time, but I still managed to be ready to go right before 8:30am because I didn't have any contact lenses to put in.

Ian and my dad went in one car to breakfast while the rest of us (and Ebony) went in my mum's. Someone else had ordered the food while I went to buy a copy of the NST and some gum to stay awake in church, so I didn't get any extra hash browns and the order hadn't really been optimized. Oh well, at least my McMuffin was free of cheese and also very fresh and delicious.

After McDonald's, everyone except Susanna, Jan, and my mum went back with my dad because my mum was taking a longer route so she could pick up Aunty Catherine. Along the way I talked about why I was so upset about yesterday, but then my dad interjected and talked for fifteen minutes about mass communication or something, and then I finally got tired of listening and asked if I could have my say so I could finish what I was saying, then Ian got upset and swore at me in front of Ebony and Hannah and my dad. I was being quite an obnoxious shit, though, so you can't blame him entirely for it. I think a 85/15 split (majority Ian) is reasonable.

Anyway, church was quite empty due to the holidays or something. I got to be in charge of the projections. I did the word jumble during my down time. I would have continued with the jumble, but my mum was giving the sermon so I went outside to show I was listening. I found that our church has new Bibles, the second version of the NLT. After the sermon I asked my mum to get me one for Christmas since it's got an infobox before each book and also because it's quite a bit easier to read. Oh yeah, I also need to tithe double next week because the ushers were going out for collection instead of having us come to them, but they didn't come to me in the projectionist room so I couldn't give my RM5. I tried signalling them but they are children so they didn't notice.

While at church I had decided I was going to sleep really early, so I scheduled in my phone to blog at six and exercise and shower at seven so I could be in bed by eight so I could still have plenty of rest before I woke up at five to get ready for work. I'd also hopefully have time for another McDonald's breakfast.

After church we went to visit my grandparents who were over at my aunt's place. Ian and I went with my dad first and the rest of the family was to show up later. There wasn't anyone there at first except for Cinta, so I played with her for a bit until Uncle Simon showed up. He told me to be careful with Cinta because she had hurt her paw, so I stopped playing so rough with her. A little later Dexter showed up and Ian and I told him about our jobs. Then my aunt Mina came out and then she left with her husband to go somewhere for a while and Dexter went to say bye.

Soon my grandpa came out and my dad told us to ask him about his war stories, so we did. My granddad has a lot of good stories, but he doesn't really tell them often. When the History Channel did a documentary on the Malayan Emergency, they interviewed a bunch of my granddad's friends for the documentary, but he declined to be interviewed because he didn't want to travel all the way to KL, and I guess he's modest or something. All that aside, he's also still bound by the official secrets act, but if the government wants to go after him for such a trivial offence after all he's done for this country then Malaysia is a much shittier place than I thought.

Anyway, an example of one such story that he never tells is when he was in a squad of four people and this British guy was supposed to cover his back. However, the Brit failed to notice a communist sniper in a tree, and so the sniper took a shot at my grandfather. Fortunately for the two most recent generations of my family, the gun misfired. It wasn't very fortunate for the sniper, though, since my grandfather turned around and shot him after that. The British guy would have gotten in deep shit with his superiors if it had gotten out that my he failed to watch my grandfather's back, so he bribed my grandpa not to tell anyone, and he didn't. He didn't even tell us, we had to hear it from my dad.

Anyway we talked to my grandfather and we talked among each other as well. I heard about how my grandfather had interrogated Dexter's girlfriend last night and how my other cousin lives in fear of my granddad meeting his girlfriends. Daryl came out and talked for a while before he went to his open house. Wicket (or Wicked. I'm not really sure which and he responds to both, so it doesn't matter) came out, too, so I played with him for a bit.

Here are doggie pictures:







I got a miscall from a withheld number, which worried me because it might have been about work. I called Sean but he hadn't heard anything. My dad called the house and he found that they were leaving soon. I called the house to ask Hannah to bring my swimming trunks and my sandals. Things winded down after that and they were supposed to arrive in twenty minutes or so, so I took a nap on a chair outside while waiting. My dad woke me up to tell me to go inside to nap, so I did.

When I woke up again, it was five o'clock and Ian and my dad had already gone home. My mum was rushing me to get in the car and I didn't even get to say goodbye to the dogs. I was upset because nobody woke me up to even check if I wanted to swim. It seemed so stupid that they would just assume that when my swimming trunks finally arrived I would just want to continue napping. I got very upset. Hannah apparently had wanted to wake me up to tell me they were there, but she didn't; instead she got changed and jumped in the pool and asked for someone to wake me up but nobody heard her and she didn't follow up. Also apparently Wicket jumped in the pool and swam with them for a while, so I missed that too.

So the drive home was hardly pleasant. I got on the computer and started blogging at around 6:30 (you'll know exactly when, just check the timestamp on this. That's the time at the start of composition, not the time of posting.) so I was already behind schedule, and then there was a hassle about whether Ian or I would go out to buy dinner and where we'd buy it from and what we'd buy and stuff that ended with me very upset and my parents talked to me for a while and then I took a break for twenty minutes to calm down and then I talked to my dad and now we're done and it's almost 8:10 and I'm barely done with this blog post, so I'm an hour behind. I think I'll probably end up in bed at around ten or something. Bleh.

Oh well, at least I get nuggets for dinner. I hope they remembered the barbecue sauce.

Oh yeah, Milan (and the rest of you guys, but Milan is who ctrl+Fs), I told all last night's secrets to Hannah; I hope that's okay. I don't think there's an overlap between people my sister knows and people that you know. Her friend Ebony was also in the room but Ebony is very quiet and there is even less overlap, so you should be fine. Also I got no Facebook messages or wall-to-wall stuff from you so I'm assuming that last night's post checked out in terms of not revealing any secrets.

First Day of Training

Wednesday (technically yesterday since it's 1am and already Thursday) was my first day of training. I was worried that I might fall asleep during training because I last night had slept very late and woken up very early. The worrying was unnecessary because training turned out to be very interesting and engaging and fun. Our trainer was this guy called Hariz, and he answered all our questions and guided us through our first through modules. He also showed us around the office.

Before all that but after waking up, my dad drove me over to 1 Tech Park since all the other cars were in use. For Thursday I'll be able to use Aunty Rosie's, though. Anyway, once I got here I just waited for three minutes for the other trainees to arrive. The other guys were Sean, Ganesh (a more experienced fellow from Brickfields), Jonathan, and Eddy (the guy who had more experience than computers with me. He used to work for Apple). Our training started at around eight and ended just after four-thirty.

The first thing we learned about was Australian privacy laws. They're very important, mostly because there's a $150,000 fine for the company and a $50,000 fine for any individual who breaks them, but also because breaking them means instant termination. As such, I'll try to just mention trivial things here and you won't be learning much about how HP Customer Support works. Sorry, but this job is awesome and I don't want to lose it. Also, $50,000 is a lot of money.

We have a hundred-page training manual with eight modules. We've already covered two. They came to us unbound and I took them to reception to be bound. We had computers, but we don't have accounts so we can't use them yet. We'll be getting access soon, along with work e-mail addresses.

We were told that we'll occasionally get racist callers, so we're encouraged not to reveal our last names and if we have a foreign-sounding name, we should adopt a floor name. Hariz goes by Harry. Ganesh has to figure out something for himself (Garry?). Having two people with the same sounding name is confusing, so Sean's agreed to go by Tuck or Tucker, since that's what his friends called him in primary school. It's good because it means that I can still be Shaun and also because I can now say I know someone named Tucker. Tucker is a cool name.

We got to go to the DC Cafe on the third floor for lunch and break. The food there is great. There are pies and desserts and hot drinks and everything is affordable and the quality is spectacular. Not just spectacular for an office building; if this place was in the middle of a mall or something I'd definitely stop by after movies and stuff. The strawberry cheesecake tart was ludicrously good. It is truly a cafe worthy of Elo's initials. Well, the DC actually stands for Datacom but if you're reading this then you've probably read her blog so you probably know what I'm talking about. Anyway, during lunch I spotted Zac. He was just wrapping up a survey. I talked to him for a bit, but then a stern lady with a clipboard showed up and I figured I'd better leave before he got in trouble.

When we returned from lunch with our newly-bound manuals, Hariz brought in a dead computer for us to dissect. I suspect that he was just trying to get us to remove the hard disk for him since he told us to leave the hard disk out because he needed it for another computer. Ulterior motives or not, though, taking apart a computer was fun. That's when I learned that Eddy knew more than me about computers. Anyway, Hariz came over and explained how the industry works and we got side-tracked talking about new technology like firewire and blu-ray and flash drives (apparently they're made with nanotechnology. I thought nanotechnology wasn't possible for at least the next five years. I must have read that information five years ago or something) and how Microsoft owns the patent on one of the iPod components (I think the scroll wheel) so a fraction of money made from each iPod sold goes to Microsoft which is maybe why all the new stuff is all touch screen and scroll wheel-less. We also learned that there was a new (well, new to me. It's from '09 so in IT time it's quite old) HP TouchSmart thing in the office that we could play with after work was over.

At a quarter to four, Hariz told us we were close to wrapping up. I told him that was a shame since we were being paid by the hour, so since he is awesome he extended the training a bit so that we could be there until 4:31 so that we'd be rounded up to a full hour. After we were done, Jack called us in for a quick meeting. He told us that there were 10 new open spots for part-timers that we could tell our friends about, and they'd have all day tomorrow to interview for the position. Our friends could show up to interview right up until 4:30, but he'd prefer it in the morning. Also, the HP operation might extend until November instead of closing in October, and if that happens we can stay on for longer, too.

Sometime during Jack's meeting my dad texted me and said he was here. Since he was early, I told him I'd be down in ten minutes, and then I went with the guys to check out the HP TouchSmart. It was a real beautiful piece of technology. I started to geek out over it, but I managed to compose myself enough to ask the other guys if they'd like a go on it for a couple of minutes before I fulfilled a nerd fantasy of mine. They said it was fine, so I went to Conquer Club and executed my war strategy like one of the generals in a war room or something. It was brilliant. I hope they get a holographic one in soon so I can pretend to be that badass antagonist mercenary general from Avatar. That would kick major amounts of ass.

Wow. Next time I wonder why I don't have a girlfriend, I'll just have to refer to the above paragraph.

Anyway I went down to my dad and told him how awesome the job was and how I had just earned something like five serious Burger King meals' worth of money that day for the training, which was awesome and interesting and super great. I can't wait for tomorrow. Well, I can, but that's the metaphor that best expresses my feelings.

When I got home I think I took a nap. Aunty Rosie and Ian tried to wake me up for dinner, but I was in too deep a sleep to hear what they were saying. They heard me mumble and saw me roll over a bit, but that hardly counts as a response. Next time you want to check if I'm awake, ask me to add two two-digit numbers together. If I can't give you an answer, I'm probably sleep-talking and I won't remember what I said to you.

Anyway when I woke up my dinner was cold and we have no microwave, so I wanted to go out for KFC instead since I've been craving KFC. Jan didn't want to come with me, so my dad offered to come instead. As usual, there was a transsexual behind the counter. "Anne" was a friendly and efficient bloke/lass, though, and he/she did a good job with my order, so I didn't mind so much. Because it was Raya, though, all the good foods were unavailable. There was no jelly ice cream, there was no garden salad (the first time in years when I consider ordering a salad and it's unavailable. Just my luck.), and worst of all there was no popcorn chicken. I ordered a dinner set and some large wedges to go.

When I got home I was very happy with my meal, but I had made a mistake by saving the best piece of chicken for last, because by the time I got to it I had consumed so much grease and chicken skin that I was feeling a bit sick. I pulled off all the meat and gave it to the cats. Faith had some difficulty eating the bit I gave him. He's a carnivore, it's meat; why would that cause him trouble? Sometimes I worry about him. Mercy chased him away when he tried to eat her scraps. She's a mean mother. I don't know why she was so protective, anyway, she had plenty of leftovers and she's probably going to throw up whatever she ate anyway. Why is she even bulimic? Who's ever heard of a cat who cares about her figure?

Anyway Wednesday was a great day and I'm going to bed soon so I can wake up early and eat McDonald's for breakfast. In the meanwhile here is another Bollywood thing that Jan and I laughed at and here is what happens when a cruise ship draws the card that says "Joseph Gordon-Levitt hallway fight scene from Inception" for charades.

Last Class and Doggies (Last Friday)

So Friday was an interesting day.

After my usual morning routine, I went to the bank to deposit my allowance, which my dad had given to me in cash for some reason. While I was there, I also got my Maybank2u account reactivated. Apparently if you don't log in every three months or so, they'll shut you down automatically.

When I was walking back to my motorcycle from the bank, I saw my cousin Daryl leaving McDonald's. I asked him what he was doing in Bangsar and he told me that he had been working here for the past year. Apparently he works in the building just across from Devi's. He saw my mum and my brother eating there a few months ago but they said nothing to me. Nobody tells me anything. But yeah, it was cool meeting him.

I went to the KPD for my last Bahasa Kebangsaan class. I was half an hour early so I reviewed all my material from the past three months. When Ms Belinda arrived we got our marks back for our Tugasan and reviewed what the most important things for the exam were going to be. At the end of the class we got our overall marks. The highest was 42.5 out of 50, the average was around 35 out of fifty, I got 33 out of 50, which meant that I needed to score 17/50 on my final to pass.

After that class was over, and it was only 4:30, so we had finished two hours early. That was nice. Some of my classmates were waiting for the bus, I asked them what their scores were. Roy and Lee Kening both scored 25, and two other people I asked were only 2.5 and 1.5 points under me.

When I was walking to my motorcycle to go home, I heard a commotion behind me. I saw these two German Shepherds bounding around the place scaring everyone with their friendliness. It was quite funny, so I followed them around. They had collars, so I checked them for tags, but they didn't have any. A guard came up to me and told me to get control of my dogs since they were causing trouble. I told him they weren't my dogs, but I took them away anyway.

I spent the next few hours trying to help them find their owner. I wrote about it already but I'll repost the whole thing here in case the link ever stops working and I still want to read about it.

"As I was leaving class today, a couple of Alsatians bounded out of the foliage and started being very friendly with people. Most people did not take kindly to this. I thought it was quite amusing to see people freak out over the dogs, so I followed them into a bus queue. After accidentally inspiring fear into the crowd of pedestrians, they moved on down the sidewalk. I took some pictures of them while waiting for their owner to show up.

Doggies!

Male doggie!

Top of female doggie! Also shoes!

It soon became apparent that the owner of the dogs wasn't going to show up, and they were lost. They had collars, though, so I decided to check them for tags. First, though, I offered them my hand to smell. They were very affectionate and didn't act at all aggressive, so I moved on to a side rub, and then I examined their collars. Neither of them had tags, which either meant that they were unregistered or they were registered but without tags because they had identification chips implanted in their shoulders. They were happy, healthy dogs, so I assumed the latter, but without a scanner the chips were useless.

A guard came over to me and told me to get my dogs out of the area because I was creating a situation. I told him they weren't my dogs, but I'd try to use them. I managed to herd them away from the crowd and back where they came. It wasn't hard, all I had to do was grab the lady-dog's collar and walk her over and her guy-friend would follow. It was obvious that they were in this together.

Once the dogs were away from the bus queue and the main road, I had to figure out what to do with them. I couldn't leave them and go home, since they would go right back to the bus queue and annoy all the Muslims, who can't touch them, and the women, who are generally just scared of large animals. I couldn't call the police since their policy for stray dogs was to destroy them (they have these poles with nooses on the end so they can kill the animals without having to touch them), I couldn't call my parents because they wouldn't want dogs in our car or our apartment and besides our cat would probably murder them, and I couldn't call the shelters because I didn't have any of their numbers.

I tried asking passers-by if they knew the dogs, but nobody had ever seen them around before. I asked them if they had the numbers of any shelters I could call, but they didn't. I could only hang on to one dog at a time, so occasionally one would run up to someone and start sniffing them. The more frightened people were, the more excited the dog got. Soon I was telling people not to run because that he'd just chase them. He just wanted to play, but the way people reacted you'd've thought he was Cujo or something. It was quite funny to watch, though.

I realized I needed some kind of leash, so I wandered around with the lady dog until I came across an abandoned chair with police tape around it. I unwrapped the tape and strung it through a loop in the lady dog's collar. Her friend ran ahead and she trotted after him and I got dragged along for a bit until the tape broke. I restrung the collar with twice as much tape, and after that it was unsnappable.

LARGE DOG DO NOT CROSS

Now that I had a leash I could tie her down and call my brother to ask for the SPCA's number. He looked it up and gave it to me and I tried calling it, but nobody was answering. An American lady walked by and asked me if the dogs were mine and I said they weren't. She asked me if I knew where an ATM was and I told her there was one just around the corner. I asked her if she knew the numbers of any shelters or anyone who could help, and she told me that she hadn't been in the country long and the only number she knew was for the American embassy. I told her they were German Shepherds so the embassy might not be very helpful. We talked for a while and then she left to get money and wished me good luck with the dogs' owner.

After she left I still had no idea of what to do. Meanwhile, the male dog went and took a big shit in the middle of the street.

He is happy because he has just made himself king of the road.

I settled tying some of the police tape leash to a sign and waiting for someone to show up who either knew the number of a shelter or who had a phone that could go online and find such a number. I had plenty of time to wait since my class had ended two hours early due to it being the last class of the semester so the final was tomorrow morning.

I met a few people while I was waiting. There was a lady who went into her office and got the number of a shelter from the internet, but nobody picked up. There was a guy who stopped and told me that the dogs had been around since his classes started in the morning. He tried to help me figure out what to do while his friend stood a safe distance away because of the largeness of the dogs and the smelliness of the poo. He told me that it was very much a bad idea to call the police. Knowing Malaysia, they'd either not so up at all, show up and ask for a bribe before helping, or show up and kill the dogs anyway since it's simpler to just strangle them than it is to scan them and be stuck with the job of returning them to their owners over the weekend. Anyway, after telling me what I shouldn't do, he left with his friend. After him came a Chinese guy, Max, who noted who "taming" the dogs were. He called a friend who used to volunteer with animals and asked if he knew someone who could help. Meanwhile, I called various vets to find out if they knew the numbers of any shelters, but they either weren't picking up or they were out of the office and unable to help. I then met these two ladies who worked at the college. They got along well with the dogs, and the dogs got along well with them.

Max came by and said his friend knew a guy, Ka Lim, who ran a pet shop and that guy was coming over to pick up the dogs until the shelters opened again. Ka Lim said that he would be here at around seven o'clock because traffic was insanely heavy. It was around then when I realized the reason nobody was answering their phones was because it was Friday, and everything closes early on Fridays because the Malays have to go to the mosque or something. Anyway, Max gave me Ka Lim's number and then left to do whatever he was doing before he stopped to help a stranger with some dogs.

The ladies from the college left to go buy some food for the dogs. I hung around for a bit until some people emerged from a nearby office building and wanted to know what was going on with the dogs. Among them were two ladies who were friends with each other and also lived nearby. One of them, Maha, said she might have seen those dogs before since there was a guy who would walk his pair of German Shepherds past her house every so often. The other lady had two dogs and was experienced with rescues, so we were in good hands. She sent one of the guys from the office to go get some proper leashes from her house. In the meanwhile, I explained the story so far to them and they said that they could take care of the dogs until Ka Lim arrived. I gave Maha his number. She called him and she was told that the traffic was too heavy and he wasn't coming. So now we had to figure out where the dogs were going to stay while their owner was being located.

The ladies from college got back with two cans of dog food. One of them cut her finger when she was popping open the can. Someone from the office took her in to take care of the wound. Meanwhile the leash guy showed up, and the dogs were happy with their newer, more high-end restraints. After a few cautionary whiffs, the dogs ate their meals and were satisfied. After a while the lady from college who hadn't cut her finger went off to look for the lady from college who had, and the lady from the office who wasn't Maha called a friend with five dogs and a big house to see if her house was big enough for seven dogs.

The lady with the cut finger emerged and told us that she had fainted, but fortunately there was a guy from the office with her. The lady who wasn't Maha told us that her friend had plenty of space and was coming over now to pick up the dogs, but wouldn't be here for a while due to traffic. She then asked someone (probably the leash guy) to go up to the office and get a camera so they could make some posters to put up around the area. After that the lady without the cut finger came back and was reunited with her slightly woozy friend.

The one on the right cut her finger and passed out and the one on the left got lost looking for her. They haven't even been teaching for two years but they're already well on their way to becoming quirky professors.

The camera was brought down and some nice pictures were taken. Maha went to the office to print out some posters.

Time passed. Small talk was made. The male dog took another large dump, this time right in front of a parked car.

Maha emerged with a stack of posters. The college ladies agreed to put some of them up around the area when they came in for work the next day. They then went off to find a clinic that wasn't closed for a tetanus jab in case the can was rusty or something.

The lady with five dogs arrived with a large SUV capable of carrying dogs. We got the dogs in the back, and then I went to the front to take one last picture of the dogs with my phone. I remembered taking it, but it wasn't on my phone when I was uploading the images to the internet, which is both spooky and unfortunate because now I do not have a picture to end this story with.

So tomorrow there will be posters up all over the place and eventually the owner (or one of his friends) is bound to see it. He'll call the number for one of the office ladies who will direct him to the lady with a big house and five dogs, and there will be a happy reunion.

It's almost an hour past midnight now so there are a lot of things I've omitted and I might have messed up the sequence of events, so if anything seems odd or inaccurate just mention it and I'll try to clarify tomorrow after I pass my final exam. Also there was a strange guy who wanted to take one of the dogs for his own despite the fact that they got very distressed when they were separated and he only had a motorcycle for transport. Remind me to tell you guys about that, too."

Anyway after the doggies were safe, I went to McDonald's to have dinner. The guy at the counter charged me non-discount prices for my meal even though it was discount time, but I wasn't too upset because they accidentally gave me a McChicken that I hadn't ordered. I gave it to Jan when I got home.

After that I spent a long time writing about the dogs online, and then I went to sleep late and I woke up only three hours later.

I had thought I was going to write the dog story all over again in a different way for my blog since my blog is for a different audience, but it looks like I'm too lazy for that. Also I spotted some errors there but I'm not going to fix them until someone complains, which I don't think is going to happen.

Oh yeah also I might be attending one of Carmeni's lectures on Wednesday, just for kicks.

Anyway I'd better end this now so I can get some sleep. I've got an aptitude test tomorrow.

Short, Boring, Good

Today I didn't leave the house. I just stayed indoors, printed my résumé, ate some pancakes, started studying for my Bahasa Kebangsaan, and read stuff online. I'm writing this post early because I don't think anything interesting will happen in the evening, so I might as well get today's blog entry out of the way so that I'll have one less thing to do before my early bedtime (sometime between ten and twelve, hopefully).

I woke up at eleven so I got around nine hours of sleep. I wanted nine hours because yesterday I got eight hours and I still had to take a nap. I thought the extra hour would mean I wouldn't want to nap, but I still have the napping urge so I slept in for nothing, and now I'll have to figure out some way to kill the urge to nap or else I won't be tired enough for an early bedtime. I need to sleep early because I plan on waking up early so I can show up at 1 Tech Park for a walk-in interview and typing test and such.

Anyway, after I post this I'm going to do my exercises, and then I might re-install C&C Generals: Zero Hour or watch a movie or even play RuneScape if the internet connection holds out (it's been quite good today). That should keep me from falling asleep prematurely.

So yeah, nothing much to write about today, and it's actually quite nice.

Productive Day

So. Monday.

I woke up at ten-ish, got ready for the day, did a hundred sit-ups because I had forgotten to do them last night (I had remembered the push-ups, though, so I didn't have to do those). Took a shower, put on some nice clothes, went out with Hannah for McDonald's breakfast.

I parked in almost the shittiest way that it was possible to park while still allowing for traffic to continue flowing past. Hannah sprinted out to get to the counter before 11am rolled around and the lunch menu began. I didn't repark the car. This was a mistake.

The menus had been spun over even though it was technically 10:58am and thus still breakfast time. Anyway, we couldn't see what we were ordering so we screwed up our order. I paid for everything and Hannah took two ringgits off of me. She said that she had given me RM10 and wanted change, but I told her she hadn't. She kept arguing and insisting that I was lying until I finally convinced her to check her wallet and sure enough, there was the RM10 she hadn't given me for her meal. She's a weird kid.

Our food took a while to prepare. There were only two hash browns because we had fucked up the order. Ian and Jan showed up a while later. Jan ate from the lunch menu and Ian had two half-cups of hot milo and two sausage McMuffins with egg. Ideally we would have had a different order, but it's late and you don't care what we would have ordered so I'm not going to bother explaining it so I can go to bed sooner.

After breakfast we went back to our cars. The one Hannah and I were using had a summons on it for RM100 for parking illegally. None of the other cars parked around had one. I was pissed off.

When we arrived home, I called my dad and told him about the summons. He told me not to worry about it since it was from DBKL so he could get it settled for just RM10. He told me to be downstairs in ten minutes.

Hannah was kind enough to let me use her laptop to take my CC turns. She said I was so lame and nerdy but it was worth it; I've almost won one of them. Victory feels good. Anyway, I was in the lift right when my dad wanted me to be downstairs, but some guys were moving stuff down a floor and so I got a bit held up.

I met my dad downstairs and we drove to pick up lunch for him, then we went to 1 Tech Park for my walk-in interview. I gave Elo a call to ask which floor I was supposed to go to. She told me that it was the third, so I went to the third. A little later she texted me and told me that it was the second, but I had found someone on the third who could help anyway, so that was nice. Unfortunately I arrived right when everyone was having lunch. The lady I met (Shamini?) told me about the job and that I should come back on Wednesday with a proper résumé for the interview. She also told me that there would be a typing test and an English test, but I got HDs for both English subjects and I just scored 66 WPM (They want at least 25) on this test I found earlier, so I think I'll be fine.

After the interview we went to the Citibank near-ish to Ikea so my dad could pick up some cash, then we drove into the city to find the traffic police headquarters to pay for my first summons. It was non-negotiable, but I could pay with my ATM card, so that was convenient. After I paid, my dad reimbursed me for most of the fine, which I didn't think was fair but it is impolite to refuse a gift, so I accepted.

When we got home I had Hannah take some pictures of me so I could use one in my résumé, then I lazed about the house for a while, and then we left again so my dad could go to a meeting at four o'clock. I got Hannah to come along for company by promising her some chicken tenders from Burger King. While waiting for the lift I asked her if she had her wallet or her phone, and she said that she didn't because her phone wasn't charged. I told her to just run over and plug it in quickly for a few seconds so there would be enough juice for the short trip, but she didn't want to. Silly girl.

After we dropped my dad off for his meeting, I let Hannah buy the chicken tenders. I gave her RM10 and told her to get as much of the stuff as she could with the cash she had. I drove a few rounds without seeing her. She should have brought her phone, that way I could have called her and known where she was and known that she knew where Burger King was. Anyway, she got the tenders and gave me the change, which was only two ringgits. I couldn't believe that Burger King would charge so much for just six pieces of chicken, so I sent Hannah out to get the receipt. It really was RM7. You can get a meal for RM9. I asked Hannah why she didn't and she said she wasn't sure. She should have brought her phone, then she could've asked and we would have had fries and a drink, too. Silly girl.

After eating, we waited around for my dad and played the Platypus game. Hannah was being quite unimaginative so she got me to ask all the questions, but everything I could come up with was awkward and inappropriate. Anyway, I told her that I wouldn't reveal anything she said to anyone else or else she could slap me anywhere, any time, so I won't say anything here. It's not like I found out anything interesting anyway.

When we got back home, I hung out in Hannah's room for a while. She had promised to upload the pictures she had taken to Facebook at nine so I could get my résumé ready while my dad was still awake to help me, but she only got the pictures up at ten and the internet died shortly after that, so my dad said I could make the résumé tomorrow. I wanted to set aside tomorrow as the day when I started studying for my Bahasa Kebangsaan final, which is on Saturday, but now I guess I'll have to do that and my résumé. Oh well.

We had tasty fluffy pancakes for dinner, so that was nice. I had five of them or something, and each one was delicious. I also did my exercises quite early which means I can head straight for the shower after I'm done with this. Yay!

Huh, the connection died right when I tried to post this and all my tags were lost. Bad things seem to be happening to me with perfect timing lately. Oh well, at least I still had delicious pancakes.

Saturday Was Shit for Jan, Sunday Was Worse for Me

Yesterday was Awards Day. It reminded me why I quit BB. I'm still glad I did, and I still wish I would have left earlier. There is no point to it if I have no friends. I was the only regularly attending person in my age group for, like, three years. There still aren't any 18-year-olds in 10th KL.

Anyway, we (my mum, Hannah, and me) started off by having breakfast in McDonald's, which was nice. After that we picked up El-Hanan and Joel, then we drove over to FGA. Along the way my mother revealed that she was a racist (or at the very least, a bit of a bigot. I thought the Dutch were supposed to be tolerant) and that she thought Obama was a Muslim. Her proof was that she had friends who knew people in America with "inside sources" in the White House. Mmhmm. She also says that he was raised in Indonesia, which is a Muslim country, therefore he's Muslim. Isn't Malaysia a Muslim country? Does that make me a Muslim? Whatever, she's my mum and thus I love and respect her despite her ignorance.

Awards Day itself was pretty boring. I slept through the Junior Section awards. The performances were lousy to mediocre, except for the dancing which was quite good but they weren't on the stage so only the people in the front row could see what was going on in full. Ian got promoted to an officer, and Jan got nothing. Now he knows how I felt. At least nobody less worthy than him got promoted, though. I watched Victor get promoted to corporal over me last year. I encouraged Jan to quit, but he's probably going to stay as long as Cherie's still in 10th KL.

I drove Hannah back home. I still had my sunglasses. They were gone the next day.

I watched a movie on my computer. Maybe not. Whatever, I was either napping or watching TV or on the computer until six, then we went for McDonald's. I spent the last of my money (except for RM10 so I could afford my RM5 tithes for the next two Sundays) on my meal. Hannah said she would pay for half of my meal, but she changed her mind and only gave me RM3. It was good enough for a lime sundae.

When we got home Hannah said she'd watch one of my movies if I watched Peacock, so I did, but she didn't. Peacock had Ellen Page and Cillian Murphy and I don't even know why I'm still listing names. It's a habit I'll break by watching a movie without any Inception actors next. Hope that works.

Anyway I got annoyed with her and decided to bug her, but she grabbed a knife from the kitchen and threatened to stab me, so I dropped the subject and took a nap. When I woke up, it was 2am. I watched the first episode of The Office (UK). It's great. Martin Freeman's in it. He's Watson in Sherlock. That's great, too.

I went to bed at 4:45.

Aunty Rosie tried to wake us up the next morning, but we weren't going to church since we had to pick up the Tans so we told her we didn't need to wake up. She turned off the air conditioning anyway.

At 10am Hannah came in and told us we had one hour to get ready before we had to go pick up the Tans. I told her that I didn't want to drive so Ian would have to take them. I told Ian that he had to wake up but he didn't listen, so I got out of bed and got ready to drive. Ian and Jan took their showers while I was reading the Bible, and Ian was still in the shower when I was done, so I went on the computer for a bit.

When Ian was done with the bathroom, I took my shower and put in my contacts and shaved and deodorized and such, and soon I was done and ready to go. I told Hannah and Jan, but they were taking their time in the living room or something, so I transferred some songs from my computer onto my phone. Hannah started panicking because she thought we were going to be late, so I finished up and went downstairs with them. It was 11:30 and the Tans were supposed to land at 12:30.

When we were in the lift I realized that I didn't have my sunglasses, so I went up to look for them but they weren't on their usual place on my desk. Hannah gave me a call while I was looking around for them. She was insisting that we didn't have time and we were in a rush and stuff, so I decided not to look for them any more and went downstairs. I was hoping to find them in the car, but they weren't there.

Along the way to the LCCT, I asked Jan and Hannah why they came along if they were just going to listen to music and ignore me anyway. I told them they should've just stayed at home so there would be more space for Uncle Elisha and stuff. They said that Ruben and Stefanie were their friends so of course they wanted to come. I told them that if that they should have just driven and left me at home. Hannah and Jan said they couldn't drive, and I said that I couldn't either since my driving license had expired at midnight, twelve hours ago. I told them that I'd probably encounter a police roadblock or something and get fined since I've never been pulled over before and I was bound to get pulled over the one day that I was using an expired license since life is shit like that. Hannah didn't hear anything I said because she was too busy listening to her music, but Jan heard me.

Anyway, I told Hannah and Jan that I'd take the fast lane there since Hannah was insisting that we were in such a rush. I told Jan that his job was to check behind us to make sure that nobody wanted to overtake us. I got a random text from Audrey for no reason and I asked Jan to read it. It just said "Hi". Then Jan started telling us about a dream he had where I took a turn too fast and killed everyone in the car. While he was recalling this dream to us, we were approaching a speed trap, but I didn't notice the cop with a radar gun until it was too late to slow down. I saw a flash which meant that a picture was taken and now my dad was going to get a summons for his car and I was going to have to pay it. I blamed Hannah for rushing me and Jan for distracting me with his dream.

I kept asking Hannah to call Stefanie to check if they had landed yet, but she wasn't getting any reply. When we were getting close to the LCCT there were a whole bunch of traffic lights that were all red, so any time we saved speeding was wasted at the lights, so we could have not sped and arrived at the exact same time and not received a summons. Stupid.

The traffic light right in front of the LCCT had a broken green light, so I was waiting at the junction for a long while before I figured out that I could go forward when all the lights were off. It was the opposite problem that the traffic lights outside Bangsar Shopping centre had, where the red light was broken and so you had to stay put when all the lights were off. The first time I encountered that I assumed off meant go and my motorcycle and me were almost destroyed by oncoming traffic with that mistake.

Anyway, we pulled up in front of the arrivals area, but there was no sign of the Tans. I called my dad and told him about the speed trap and he said that I could split the fine with Hannah. We waited for half an hour before we got a call from them. I got more and more annoyed for every minute that passed because it made my prior speeding more and more pointless and the summons more and more aggravating. Anyway, when they finally called it took them ages to figure out where we were even though they were right in front of us and I was sounding the horn to try and get them to look in our direction.

When Stefanie and Ruben got in the car we found out that Uncle Elisha wasn't even coming since he had a friend who was going to pick him up, so the whole drive over was pointless because they could have just gone with Uncle Elisha's friend back to Puchong and have us pick them up from there later. That way we could have saved petrol, slept in, and avoided the bloody summons.

On the way back we had Ikea hot dogs. This time there were onions, at least, so that was nice.

When we were coming back home from lunch, there was a police checkpoint near the golf and country club where I had never seen a police checkpoint. Of course Ruben and Stefanie weren't wearing their seatbelts. Nobody ever does. I don't understand it. It's such a simple bloody thing to do and it saves lives and prevents fines and it just takes five seconds but nobody in this bloody country bloody bothers. Anyway it didn't matter because I was being pulled over for speeding.

The officer asked for my license and pointed out to me that it had expired last night. He asked me how fast I was going and I told him I didn't know since I didn't know where they had measured my speed and if I had been keeping my eye on the speedometer I wouldn't be in that mess in the first place. The only reason my eye wasn't on the speedometer was because Stefanie was going on about Vampires Suck and I was getting upset that people were actually watching that bloody idiotic piece of cinematic excrement. It's a shit excuse for speeding, though, so when the officer asked if I was going to pay I told him that I was. I asked him how much it was and he said RM300. I asked him where I could pay and he said that they have offices all over the place. I asked him what the deadline was and he said I had one month. I asked him how fast I was going and where they had caught me and he said that I was going 108km/h in either a 60km/h or 80km/h zone, and also they had their speed trap under the overpass from the Golf and Country Club. All throughout my conversation he kept asking me if I was going to pay for the summons or not. I think he was implying that I had a choice (bribery), but I didn't bribe him because I don't want to contribute to this country's corruption problem, and more importantly because I didn't have enough money on my person for a decent bribe.

When I got back in the car, Jan asked me why I didn't just drive off when they asked me to pull over, which really goes to show what kind of a person Jan is (a rather stupid, morally bankrupt one).

I stopped by Lucky Gardens to drop off my license at the driving centre so I could get it renewed. It was closed, so I gave the lady who ran it a call, and she said that I should drop by with RM160 and an appropriate photograph so that I could get my full license and I wouldn't have to renew it for another five years.

I went back home and complained to my dad about everything that happened. Ian came in and told me that everything was my fault, which was true, but it wasn't helpful. My dad took me for a drive to try to calm me down. He asked me to imagine the worst-case scenario, which was that Hannah wouldn't want to split the first summons, so I'd have to pay RM300 for that on top of the RM300 for the second license, and also that my dad wouldn't pay for the license renewal so I'd be out RM760, which was RM10 more than I had in my bank account. My dad said that he would pay for the license, so at the very least I'd still have RM150 left in my bank. He also told me that my mum got in an accident a while back that cost him RM2000, which put things in perspective for me and that got me to calm down a bit. He also told me that Hannah was even worse off than me financially and that his suggestion that we split the fine was just that, a suggestion, so I couldn't count on it happening.

He dropped me off at home and went to go play some golf. I told Hannah that she wouldn't have to pay for her half of the fine as long as she finally did the things she had said she was going to do anyway, which was basically to watch Cloverfield and a bunch of other movies and also to use up a box of wax strips that we had lying around. The reasons why she had agreed to do that in the first place didn't really matter to me, it was more the fact that she had said to me that she would do those things but never did, even though I did everything she asked me to do and stuff. So she's supposed to watch Cloverfield after she goes swimming, but I think she'll find some excuse not to and she'll still get away with not paying for the fine. If she doesn't do that, then I'll be pleasantly surprised. If she does, then I won't do anything for her any more, especially things that involve driving. My license is expired anyway.

Tomorrow I'm going to HELP to get my transcripts, then I'm going upstairs to Pusat Bandar Damansara to get some correctly-sized photographs for my license, then I'm going to the driving centre to drop off my license, the photos, and my dad's money, then when we get back from Redang I'm going to collect my license, then I'm going to the JPJ to settle the two summonses, then a week after that I'm going to call about my new IC, then when that's ready I'm going to go collect it, integrate my driver's license and ATM card into it, and finally I'm going to activate its Touch 'n Go and get some credit in it.

This post in a nutshell: Last year I didn't get promoted because I probably didn't deserve it even though someone who deserved it less got promoted over me, so I quit; this year Jan didn't get promoted because of some bullshit because he deserved it but at least he knows how I felt, but he's not quitting because his girlfriend is still in; also I got two summonses today because it didn't occur to Ruben and Stefanie that they could've carpooled with their dad and so I'm going to be RM600 poorer; also I've got to face a lot of bureaucracy in the next two weeks.

Driving, Reading, Driving, Reading, Driving, Watching Movies

Yesterday was mostly spent driving my dad around because he had bought a whole bunch of stuff for me on Sunday and I felt guilty for being responsible for the loss of so much cash, so I wanted to help him work. Also I didn't want to get bored at home, even though I had plenty of books to read.

I drove him to his first meeting, and he said that I could go get some hot dogs from Ikea while I was waiting for it to finish. I had actually been to Ikea last week with Hannah and Ebony after taking them to 1 Utama, so I was craving another hot dog, which is why I had mentioned Ikea hot dogs as a possible option for lunch on Sunday, which is why my dad was telling me to buy them for lunch on Tuesday. Anyway, at Ikea I called our house and asked what everyone wanted on their hot dogs. Hannah said she would have two curry puffs instead. I ended up ordering nine hot dogs, two curry puffs, and a drink. It was only when I was about to pay that I realized I had left the money in the car, so I apologized to the guy at the counter and ran off for a while to get the cash. When I got back, the hot dogs were ready, so I added way too much onions to my two (Structurally, not gastronomically. The hot dog could have been tastier, but the bun could not support the amount of onions I had loaded it with and so it was literally falling apart.) and ate them. After that I put ketchup on Jan's, everything on my dad's, and everything but chili sauce on Ian's. There was one hot dog left over, so I left that one plain.

I called my dad and asked him whether I should go pick him up or go home with the food. He told me to go home, so I did. The hot dogs were distributed. They looked quite sloppy, so I explained that hot dog garnishing is a subtle art, and I am neither an artist nor very subtle. Everyone seemed to enjoy the food anyway.

My dad called and said that he was going to Plaza Damas to continue the meeting, so I should be there by two o'clock. Hannah let me use her laptop to check where it was using Google Maps. She kept switching tabs to Tumblr, so it took a while, but she did help me out and for that I am grateful. Anyway after that I set my alarm and I plopped into a chair to read some more of Sphere by Michael Crichton. I had found it on our shelves recently and remembered reading the Wikipedia synopsis. Since I had enjoyed all of the other Michael Crichton books I had read, I thought I would be a good thing to bring along to keep myself occupied while waiting for meetings to finish. I was correct. It was really interesting and exciting, even though I vaguely knew what would happen next, I still couldn't remember how it would end, so there was still some suspense left.

After a few chapters, my alarm rang. I went to the car and drove to Plaza Damas. Along the way I passed the Backyard Pub where Carmeni's birthday was celebrated. The grassy bit outside seemed a lot larger when I was passed out on it. Anyway, I got to the mall at Plaza Damas and gave my dad a call. I could see him, but the way into the mall was blocked by taxis. I waited behind one for a while, but it wasn't moving. Finally I gave my dad a call and asked him if he'd just run over. He told me to go forward a bit and come to him. Apparently there was another lane into the mall in front of the taxi that I couldn't see. My dad got a little annoyed with me for not seeing that.

Anyway, I drove him to his next meeting, then I found a spot to park and read a few more chapters of Sphere. His meeting ended very early, though, because the guy he was meeting with had another emergency meeting come up so he had to leave. I picked my dad up and we went to fill up the car.

Once the car was filled up, my dad didn't have any more meetings to go to, so he decided to see about renewing my driver's license at the JPN, which was very nearby. There wasn't any line or much waiting to be had. I was told that I couldn't renew my license since it was a P, even though it was only four days from expiring. I would have to come back later with my full license to get it integrated into my MyKad. After that I went to have my picture taken for my new MyKad because I was getting it updated or something. The lady said that it would be ready in two weeks and I should call to confirm and then drop by to pick it up.

On the way to the car my dad said I could get my full driver's license from the driving centre, which seemed like a good idea. I'll hand my P in a few days from now, and then when my new MyKad is ready I'll integrate my full license into that, for convenience.

Our next stop was HELP, because I had found out recently that I couldn't access my results on MyPride because my resource fee still wasn't settled. I had thought that was sorted out, but apparently it wasn't, so I was going with my dad to see if things could be resolved. The lady at the counter was very helpful and she said she would get it done, and my dad was pleased. I was, too. In the end my dad didn't even have to do anything. At his request, though, I filled in a form to request for a pair of transcripts so I could start applying at other universities. It should be ready by next Monday.

After that we were headed to Bangsar Village so my dad could go pick up a new microwave to replace the old one that had died mysteriously a few nights ago after heating up my carbonara. Along the way I noticed my dad reading Sphere. I said to him that it was a really good book, and he agreed. I told him I was going to finish it that day. He said I wasn't, and I told him that I had read larger books before in one day. He clarified that I wasn't going to finish reading Sphere that day because he was going to finish reading Sphere that day. My father, ladies and gentlemen.

Anyway, I had the chance to read the book while waiting for him to get the microwave, so I did. After a while my dad left the mall with a component for our breadmaker, but no microwave. I wasn't even aware our breadmaker was broken. Oh well.

When that was all done we went home. My dad read Sphere, and I probably watched a movie or something. In the evening my dad told me that he suddenly had a meeting at KL Sentral and I was driving him there. I didn't mind because it meant I could continue reading Sphere while I waited.

We went to the station, my dad went to his meeting, and I read the book. I was about halfway through when my dad said it was over. I picked him up and he handed me some Burger King as a reward for driving him around all day.

When we got home my Burger King meal became a lot less of a great reward because I saw that Aunty Rosie had made chicken and chips for dinner. My fries were redundant, but at least the chicken tenders were still tasty. I gave one to Hannah, and I let Ian have my coke because somebody drank his. I shouldn't've given my BK coke away because the bottle I had in the fridge was flat. Oh well. Dinner was nice anyway.

After that I watched The Illusionist. I wanted to watch The Prestige, but I figured I might as well watch the lousier of the period magician movies from 2006 first. Save the best for last, y'know? Anyway it was an okay movie and I probably would have enjoyed it more if I wasn't so tired, but the truth is there's so many more good movies on my hard drive that I could have watched, so it felt a bit like a waste of time. But yeah, I went to bed late after a shower and exercise and stuff.

The next day I let my 8:45 alarm ring and ring and ring. After ringing for a minute, the phone will snooze for the next nine. I ended up only waking up at nine fifty-five. Perhaps "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" isn't annoying enough to be an effective alarm, but I just can't resist the Inception reference. It does unfortunately mean that every time I wake up I have to mutter either "Asshole! How could you screw up the carpet?" or "No, it's too soon", but I enjoy it so what the hell, eh?

I was supposed to go see Inception with Elo after she finished shopping with her friend, but her friend never decided whether they were going to Mid Valley or Times Square, so I ended up arranging to meet Elo before she leaves at KL Sentral on Thursday night with a bunch of the others. I didn't have anything to do after that, but my dad was finished with Sphere so I picked up where I left off.

While I was reading, my dad told me that he had another meeting at KL Sentral, so I drove him there again. A guard chased me away from the drop-off point, but I found a better spot anyway. I finished the book (It was really good. I want to lend it to my Psychology lecturer.) and then I took a nap. I woke up to a call from my dad at six. During the drive back I realized how easy the drive to and from Sentral had become ever since they finished building the flyover and changed the flow of traffic in Brickfields (or is it near Brickfields? Whatever).

Back at home I watched the Dark Knight. Cillian Murphy was in it. I'm seeing Inception everywhere. Extradition between France and the United States was in Catch Me if You Can, as was DiCaprio, obviously. Ellen Page, also rather obviously, was in Juno. Jennifer Garner was in both, but she wasn't in Inception. Cillian Murphy and Ellen Page are in Peacock, which Hannah should be giving to me soon. I forgot what the point of this paragraph was. Whatever.

Anyway that's the story of what's happened in my life recently. Later on in my life I'll be going to Redang with my family so Jan and Hannah can learn how to scuba dive. Even later on than that I'll be going to continue my studies, but I have to pass my Bahasa Kebangsaan first. I used to think I was going to do Civil Engineering, but my dad doesn't want that for me. He said something about always working underneath other people. He'd rather I become a programmer, but that really doesn't sound appealing to me. He's cool with me being a structural engineer, though, so I'm going to meet one of his structural engineer friends sometime.

Unrelated to that, I was reading my old blog posts a few nights ago. You know how you usually read stuff that you wrote in the past and you can't believe that you would say something like that and you notice how much you've changed and stuff? Yeah, it was the exact opposite of that. I thought the posts were great and they helped me vividly recall the days I was writing about. They were also funny and well-written except for being too long.

I guess this means I'm not a modest person, but who needs modesty when you're this awesome?

Sorry (Not Really)

I was going to write a post today about the past week since today's finally been a day when I've had no work to do or anything, but nah. I don't want to. It's late and I'd rather do other stuff like watch one of the many, many movies I've downloaded recently or perhaps load more songs into my new phone or something like that. I'll probably write a post tomorrow, since I can't do one on Tuesday since I'll be spending the whole day with my dad driving him to and from meetings.

I don't have any more projects or assignments or any other homework-type things, so I'll be pretty free. Yay.

So Now That's Over

I finished my final batch of finals on Wednesday. Finite Mathematics was simple and I think I might have scored full marks on that paper. It did start out a bit rough when I forgot how to multiply matrices, but I moved on and did the other sections first before coming back when I remembered.

Psychology was a bit tougher, but I'll pass. Physics was very tough. I'm not sure if I scored enough to get my 50% or not. Also, when I was studying for it the night before, one of the presentations about atomic physics had a virus on it and that killed my computer by throwing it into a login/logout loop, so that sucked. Later on that day I went with Hannah to visit Amanda and her new dog, and I found out that I needed to score 16/40 on the final to pass the subject. I hope that I made it.

I took my computer to get repaired and I also got an eclair later on with Hannah and my dad. When I got back I watched the new Lost and the new Glee and a bunch of episodes of South Park and Whose Line is it Anyway that Ian had downloaded.

I found out RuneScape had been updated with a new skill which was also for free players, which made it the first new F2P skill since Runecrafting in 2004. I got Jan to try it out but I had to promise not to complain about Avenged Sevenfold for a week, which sucks. At least he has headphones now, so I won't have to hear his music. Ian also tried it this morning, so that was cool, too.

Today I went to watch Kick-Ass with Ian and Jan. It was pretty dang awesome. The censorship was mind-bogglingly idiotic, as usual, but it didn't detract too much since they only censored the black people, Hit-Girl, and anyone who swore at Hit-Girl. Also they apparently did not recognize cunts as a swear word, but whatever. After the movie I picked up my computer from the repair place, and that is why I have it now to type this post with. I've spent the better part of this evening getting my bookmarks together and reassembling my iTunes playlist.

I'm hoping to lounge around for five more days before I start looking for Universities or a job.

Man, I hope I didn't fail Physics II.

Last Class (Hopefully)

Today I ate at KFC twice. Once for lunch after class, and again later on at night because my siblings were eating there too and I wanted a chance to get fresh popcorn chicken (the one I got at lunch was stale). The popcorn chicken was indeed fresh, so that was nice. On the downside, I spent pretty much my entire week's allowance, so that's a bummer. I'd been waiting for the better half of last week to use that money, and now it's gone.

After my last post I found a weird comment in Chinese at the bottom of my blog. I don't know how it got there, but it was all links to spam sites, so I just deleted it.

Also, yesterday I picked up Hannah, Yii Huei, and Rebekah from Sunway Lagoon. It was my last favour for Hannah before she finally let me read the tenth Princess Diaries book, so I was happy to help out. On the way back I tried to take a corner, but I was going too fast so I had to slow down really suddenly. A motorcyclist was going behind me and he mustn't've seen me indicated or whatever, and he ended up falling off his motorcycle when he had to hit the brakes really hard. I stopped for a while to see if he was okay, and he was. I stayed stop to see if he wanted to discuss the matter with me, but he didn't, so we both drove off. That was a bit scary, but fortunately nobody was hurt and nothing was really damaged, so it worked out in the end. I'm definitely going to be going slowly around corners next time.

My progress on Arrested Development has come to a halt. Season 3 is not completely downloaded. Episodes 13, 4, and 5 are all only partially downloaded at 99.8%, 99.7%, and 99.5% respectively. I managed to watch episode 4 because it's an AVI file and those can be played even when they aren't complete, but episode 5 is an MP4, which requires the full file to play. So I have to stop. I'm three hours away from finishing the series. Bah.

Luckily I have Lost, Flashforward, How I Met Your Mother, and The Big Bang Theory to tide me over in the meanwhile. Lost is awesome. I have been following it for six years (One third of my life!) and now there are only six episodes left. I will be sad when it's over.

Oh yeah, today was my last day of classes. I need at least 37% or more on my final to get a High Distinction for Finite Mathematics. I'll need to work even harder just to get a Distinction for Psychology, since I screwed up on our group report and ended up getting us just a little more than half marks for that. It'll be a struggle to even pass Physics, so I don't even wanna think about that. I hope I don't have to retake that subject.

Today wasn't really filled with class parties and photos and goodbyes and stuff. I think I'll save the goodbyes for after my finals. There was one picture, for Finite Maths, which kinda surprised me because I didn't think Mr Chen would be up to that.

Jan wants to come along with me to KK so we can climb Kinabalu together. I've got to check with Carmeni and see if that's okay.

The final Princess Diaries book was really good. I thought Hannah had spoiled the ending by telling me who the protagonist ends up with, and I was kinda upset because I was hoping she'd get with someone else (and also that my sister would spoil the book for me), but it turned out she was lying, so the ending caught me off guard and I was very pleasantly surprised. Thanks, Hannah!

I still haven't done any extra work for my baptism class, and I haven't studied, either. I guess that's what I'll do in the next three days. Yay.

Also, Rebecca from Holland has managed to place in the final ten out of a hundred and so for an essay writing contest by the BBC. I would've included a link to vote for her, but that happened a while back and apparently internet voting has now been closed. The results will be released on the tenth. She's up against some pretty impressive competition, but she did a really good job with her essay. I should know, I helped her with it a bit when it was being written.

I think that's about it for now.

I hope I don't fail Physics.

Frustrating Day

Today I woke up early because I had to drive Jan to some BB meeting or something. When I got home I played through the USA campaign of Zero Hour. I got stuck on one mission that was terribly frustrating. Also, my new headphones barely give me any room to move my head, so that was irritating, too.

At four I went to pick Jan up, but first I had to fill up the Kancil since the tank was empty. When I got to where Jan was, his meeting wasn't finished. I ended up waiting for half an hour before he was done. On our way back we stopped to check our bank accounts to see if our dad had given us our birthday money, but he had not.

Back at home, Hannah asked me to take her somewhere tomorrow so she could get premiere tickets to Valentine's Day. I'll have to take her right after I get back from college. Bah.

Anyway, right when I was about to take a nap, Ian told me that there was an opportunity to play a 4 vs 4 L4D2 game, so of course I went with him. When we got there we waited an hour for the eighth person, who never arrived, so we played 3 vs 3 instead. For some reason I played pretty terribly and we lost, so that sucked.

Back at home my dad told me he had deposited my birthday money already, but I couldn't log into my Maybank2u account to check.

Also I realized that my birthday is gonna be pretty lame. I'm basically going to have dinner and then get drunk and that will be it, since I've only got one friend who's confirmed they'll be free on the day and if there's only going to be one person then I might as well not bother.

I'll write the outline for my dream analysis thing so it'll be easier to do it last-minute on Wednesday.

I Should Remember What Is and Isn't Worth Eating

Today I woke up and took my time getting ready for Christian Fellowship. There was going to be a welcome to CF party later on. I was on the computer until twelve thirty, which was when it was supposed to start. Since I was bound to be late I decided to help Hannah drop off Yii Huei instead.

Yii Huei had to drop off some stuff at home before going to her friend's house so they could go watch a movie together, so I went with Hannah to drive her to those places. When we arrived at her friend's house we said goodbye because it would be the last time we saw her unless she came visited us after coming back from Penang.

Hannah and I went to eat at Popeyes because I had a craving for it. It was pretty tough to find a place to park, so I was grateful when we found an empty lot. It was near a parking machine that I couldn't figure out how to work, so we didn't pay.

We had to find an ATM before we could eat. While we were looking for one, Hannah convinced me to pay for her meal. She was the one who spotted the Maybank ATMs, though, so I guess she earned it.

Popeyes was okay. It was really filling, so even though I only had a biscuit, some mashed potatoes, and two pieces of chicken, I still couldn't finish everything I ordered. Hannah couldn't finish what I had got for her either. We only had a little bit leftover, though, so that was nice, at least. Anyway I don't think I'll be eating at Popeyes again unless I want more biscuits or mashed potatoes. Actually, I'm not sure why I came to that conclusion. The chicken skin is crispier than most places, and the meat's a lot more succulent. It's also priced around the same as KFC. Hm. Maybe I will eat in Popeyes again. I'll make sure I'm really hungry before I do, though, so I don't waste any food.

When we got home, I took a nap. When I woke up I watched a In The Loop on Ian's computer. It was good. After that I claimed the massage that Hannah said she'd give me if I paid for her meal. I then remembered that I hadn't walked the stairs even though it was Friday, so I went and did that. When that was over I was pretty tired, so I took another nap. When I woke up from that one I turned on the TV and did some exercise while watching a drama on the new Astro channel. It was called Half Broken Things and it was pretty good, too.

Anyway tomorrow I've got replacement classes at college. Also I'm apparently supposed to keep a dream journal for Psychology. Should be fun.

My birthday seems to be really really close. I wonder what I should ask for. I wonder where I want to eat dinner. I wonder if I should have a tiny party.

Early Classes and Unexpected Buffets

My Tuesdays start at eight, so I had to be up pretty early in order to make it to class on time. Before leaving I had a big bowl of chocolate cereal, which was nice.

I was a wee bit late, but that didn't really matter because the lecture started a wee bit late. I fell asleep a few times in class, but that didn't really matter, either.

During the break I went straight to the DSA to nap. I woke up an hour before my next class, and then went back to sleep for the next half hour. After that I went over to help Amanda with her statistics homework. Elo and Arun were playing the penis game from (500) Days of Summer a couple benches over. That was ballsy of them.

When I arrived at the lab, it was empty. I was about to call one of my classmates to check if there was actually a class being held, but then Mr Naj arrived. Anyway class was okay; we did some experiments with springs. It was kinda fun.

Once we had all the data and sorted out our graph, I left class and went back to the main block. I mentioned to my friends how hungry I was and how unfortunate it was that I couldn't go to McDonald's because of how little time there was left before class, and then someone pointed out that the marketing students were selling food, so I went over to them. They were indeed selling food. Because they were closing shop soon, they had a special offer of RM5 for an unlimited amount of food. I paid and ate a lot of nuggets and sausages. I also got a free cup of Pepsi. When I was done with the mini-buffet I bought some corn-in-a-cup from the table over and went to class.

Psychology was nice. We learned about perception and optical illusions and such. The class ended half an hour early, so that was nice, too.

Back at home I took a long nap. Later on I realized I did not have any more pages of Psychology to read, so that was nice. I did a hundred sit-ups and a hundred push-ups. Apparently sit-ups are bad for the spine, so I'm going to switch to bicycle crunches once I figure out how those are done.

I had pineapples and chocolate ice cream for dessert, but not together. A long time ago when my age was still a single digit, I ate a lot of pineapple. When I was done I couldn't taste anything for a long while because all the sourness had killed my sense of taste. Ever since then my mouth gets all warm whenever I see or think of pineapples. It's odd.

I'm going to drive Hannah around a lot tomorrow because she and her friends are doing stuff.

In a completely separate topic, it seems that every time I come home and get comfortable by taking out my contact lenses and changing into shorts, someone wants me to drive them somewhere. This seems to happen especially often if I hesitate before taking out my contacts because I'm not sure whether I will be going out later or not. Anyway after I find out that I've got to go drive about I have to put in my lenses and change again or else go out looking like an idiot. A comfortable idiot, but still.

Bleh. I hope dinner is tasty tomorrow.

Cookies and Naps that I Wish I Had Taken

I dropped my phone when I was leaving today. Fortunately it's an older Sony Ericsson model, so it wasn't damaged. I had to restart it because the SIM connection was a bit fiddly, but other than that it was fine. I realized I got a text from Joanna saying that she wouldn't be in college today because of a family emergency and I should pass that information on to Ms Selena. Anyway, I think I'll replace my phone sometime. It's very hardy, but the camera is broken and the screen is glitchy and I don't have a transfer cable and for some ridiculous reason it can only store around 100 text messages, whereas other phones don't even seem to have a limit.

I arrived almost fifteen minutes late for Psychology, which is the latest I've arrived for a class except for that one time last semester when I was an hour late for Advanced English because I was listening to Juria's birthday story, I think. Anyway I was lucky because Ms Selena was just starting the class when I arrived, so I told her that Joanna had a family emergency and wouldn't be coming today and then the lesson began. We learned about the eye and other sensory organs. We were told that people can taste stuff with the inside of our cheeks. I tried it out with a Nano Nano. It's true, we can.

After Psychology I had a nice long break, so I went with Amanda to McDonald's. It was still too early in the day for the lunch discounts, so I just ordered some twister fries and we shared those. When lunch was over we went back to Amanda's place because she was kinda sick of college and our next class wasn't until two o'clock anyway. In Amanda's house I had some really yummy butter cookies. They were the same kind as I had on Christmas, and they had maintained their level of deliciousness in the weeks that had passed. Amanda and I sat around talking about guys and their intentions, her family, and movies that, oh my goodness, I had to watch (Amanda's words, not mine). She actually wrote me a list of movies that she loved and I needed to watch. I haven't even heard of most of them: A Walk to Remember, The Notebook, The Sweetest Thing, Stepmom, Simon Birch, and Sleepers. Anyway I took a quick nap on the beanbags in her living room and then we went back to college. At college I realized I wasn't hungry for McDonald's any more which meant that Amanda's cookies had saved me RM12, which was nice. I did buy some nuggets from the marketing students because I like eating meat and helping marketing students. I spent the rest of the break talking and napping and eating tiramisu that someone had bought. The tiramisu kinda tasted like bananas.

Physics was okay. We learned about springs and waves, and the concepts were pretty easy to grasp.

Back home, Faith was lounging on the couch in a ridiculously cute manner. I woke Hannah up from her name to come over and see him, but he had moved. Anyway because I woke Hannah up, she had me take her to drop off her phone for repairs. She also wanted to go pick up her iPod, but I got her a slurpee instead. Of the RM50 that I withdrew on Saturday, I have RM10 left.

When I got back home again I took a nice long nap. After that I went on my computer for a bit, then I read the last few pages of my Psychology textbook, and then I exercised for a bit. I'm a bit surprised at how quickly I managed to finish reading my Psychology textbook. Also the sit-ups and push-ups are becoming easier to do. I did seventy-five push-ups today. I think I'll do a hundred tomorrow and maintain that. I might up the amount of sit-ups. I think I can feel an improvement.

My arms have been trembling slightly the whole time I've been writing this. I'm going to shrug that off as the after-effects of the push-ups.

When I wake up I'm going to wash my face so I don't fall back to sleep again, and then I'm going to have some cereal.

If I end up going to Amanda's house some other Monday, then I'm going to be sure to eat more cookies and spend more time on her beanbags. Her family has a very comfortable living room; I want to spend more time napping in it.