The Hindi bits I don’t know

Bhavya: झा फाड़ अपनी बहन दा फुद्दा
राजन, तुम बहुत ही बुधु हो
me: kamu memang berotak udang
Bhavya: हिंदी भी नहीं समझ आती क्या?
me: betul ini. kegilaan kamu agak menghairankan
me: menghairankan… hehehehe
Bhavya: तुम अपनी मलाय्सियन ज्यादा मत झाडो
me: kalau kuda naik bas, ayam naik motosikal, ikan naik kereta, manusia naik apa?
Bhavya: नहीं समझ आती मुझे तुम्हारी अजीब सी भाषा
me: tak lah
me: kuda naik bas. ayam naik motosikal.
me: jadi, manusia naik apa?
me: tak tahu? manusia naik hairanlah

One more month in India, then it is a food crawl, baby. A food crawl. Animal protein-rich food crawl.

I know this is unhealthy on so many levels, but ignore me (or better yet, enable me – make eating plans with me now!)

18 July 2008
6am: Should (cross fingers) land in Singapore
Breakfast: Rochor tau huay (tau fu far or beancurd) with tau sar pancake, and considering I probably won’t eat for days before hand, maybe nasi lemak with ikan kering. Oh, I’m drooling badly.
Lunch: Bak chor mee mai ter kuah (mince meat noodles without liver) in Sim Lim Square food court.
Dinner: Something introduced, viciously and cruelly, by Joe and Manora before I left Singapore: Crystal Jade’s la mian with spring onion oil. Enabler: Cheong En-Min.
Alternative: Aroy-Dee at Bencoolen Kopitiam (tranny kopitiam)
11pm: Flight to Subang

19 July 2009
12am: Arrive in Subang (cross fingers)
Supper: Ramly burger – double daging cheese from the SS14 stand in front of Mamak bistro, washed down with a nice Milo ais. I’m fond of this stand because the guy 1) knows my name, 2) knows where I study (something my parents took longer to remember), 3) knows what I study and 4) always fails to remember that I’m viciously bonded to work in Singapore for the rest of my life (or three years).
Breakfast: Chee cheong fun (from no one particularly spectacular – I’d like to go to Petaling St but I figure I’d be too exhausted, so the one that SS14 Subang Jaya should do) and peanut apam.
Lunch: Post-church, up to the parents — but if they even suggest anything Indian (mamak doesn’t count), I would start sobbing and shouting, “You hate me, don’t you?”
Dinner: I’m insisting on a seafood dinner, preferably in Pulau Ketam/Carey Island/somewhere around Port Klang. I would throw an hysteric fit similar to lunch time of my family don’t accede.

20 July 2009
Breakfast: Unlikely
Lunch: Chicken and char siew rice, again from the SS14 shop – but this ain’t out of laziness, folks. Other than the chicken rice/roast meats at Holland Drive Market, this is my favourite.
Dinner: KL-style Hokkien mee from Paramount Garden.
Supper: Mamak session. Any enablers? Come on…

21 July 2009
Breakfast: Unlikely, but if I succeed, nostalgic trip to Petaling Street shall commence with chee cheong fun.
Lunch: Meng Kee char siew near Jalan Alor/whateverthatroadiscallednow OR beef ball mee from this coffee shop whose name I don’t know on a road I never bothered to learn (but it’s good okay)
Dinner: I’m at this point ready for something homemade… Rakesh, how about a small family barbeque?

22 July 2009
Early, early morning breakfast: Roti kaya with Neslo Ais
7pm: Flight from Subang to Singapore
And then the rest the week would be spent at the SMU Hostel residential senior retreat in Sentosa, where the food is undoubtably better than what I usually eat here, but sadly, blergh.

24 July 2009
Tentatively, should land in Penang… hee hee hee. Come on Fern Yit, Leann (and whoever else is interested). It would be fun/waistline-expanding!

On swine flu, the Causeway, and Penang

Love, love, love Penang. If I ever move back to Malaysia, Penang would be a top consideration. There is a certain vibe, a feel, a certain je ne sais quoi.

I had a lot of fun at MTT’s Akademi Merdeka; will write about it later.

But I didn’t buy a return Penang-Singapore ticket, which is pretty stupid on my part considering Sunday’s the end of a long weekend. However, a big shoutout and eternal gratefulness for Wan Fadzrul Wan Jan, Adam Ismail, and Noor Amin bin Ahmad for sending me to Pudu, KL from Penang.

My hatred for the new Johore CIQ building on the Malaysian end of the Causeway has been superceded by new found hatred of the Woodlands side. Honestly. Swine flu checks? Is that necessary? Is it worth delaying everyone by an hour?

Speaking of swine flu, this was found in my mailbox:

SMU’s Crisis Management Group (CMG) has activated SMU Visitor Screening with effect from Monday, 4 May 2009.

All visitors are required to fill up visitor travel declaration forms and have their temperature taken before allowing entry into the Schools and Administration Building. The visitors are required to display the coloured sticker upon clearing the temperature screening. Each building will have a single Visitor Screening entry point for the visitors.

Worse, worse:

As such, SMU requires strigent temperature screening process to be implemented immediately, hostel is no exception.

Therefore, for the sake of your own health as well as that of your friends’,

From tommorrow, i.e. May 3rd Sunday onwards (inclusive), each and every of the resident has to take temperature at the security office and record it, once a day.

All you have to do is to go to the security office when you go out or come back, take your temperature (theorometer is in place) and record it (record forms have been printed out for everyone, with a template attached to this mail). Worry not, the entire process will take no more than 1 minute to complete.

Why? Because of two confirm case, one each in South Korea and Hong Kong. Sigh.

Hello Penang

So I’m in DAP’s bastion, using Penang Free Wifi at KOMTAR. Some points of note:

Penang’s awfully small. On the map, Sungai Nibong, the bridge, and Georgetown seems like hours apart, not minutes apart

Penang’s bus service seems far more efficient/frequent than KL’s – at least on a public holiday (which reminds me, Happy Labour Day!)

Penang uses double yellow lines on road boundaries – like Johore. I’m not sure if Penang is like Singapore – where double yellow means no parking ever (not like drivers here adhere to that) and single yellow means parking only allowed between 7pm and 7am.

Had breakfast at Campbell Street Mall. Nice. Food not too shabby (oh, who am I kidding… but I remind you, I came from Singapore, so even pieces of turd taste good).

Speaking of which, Hokkien mee here doesn’t refer to oh-so-heavenly black KL Hokkien mee or weird Singapore Hokkien mee (a cross between hor fun and Hokkien mee) – it seems to refer to prawn mee.

Penang Hokkien sounds funny, btw.

I’m heading after lunch to the Akademi Merdeka 2009. Hope my Malay doesn’t fail me, I won’t snore too loud or these people find out I’m a fake, statist-at-heart libertarian.

Happy Easter

Be nice to the bunny.

Some random points

First off, Yasmin Ahmad’s latest video:

Good, but I thought it dragged on too long. The “I’m not going to blah blah blah” isn’t needed, neither is Jo Kukatas’ lecture to her children about imperfections and all that shit. It could easily be a one minute ad, and the impact would have been even more forceful.

The second video is particularly more depressing and significantly more true:

Except maybe stealing calculators, I don’t see how this is not the reflection of the truth.

Moving on, for all those people who keep mentioning how they saw me in The Star advertising for SMU, firstly, please don’t guilt me. It wasn’t an advertisement. It was shoddy journalism. Secondly, I know, I know, I’m probably contributing to a bunch of other Malaysians making their minds to come to SMU. I don’t think I can live with such guilt.

You know what else? I don’t know what about this term, but whenever I get slightly sick, I imagine/hopeeversodearly it escalates into me being hospitalized, in hopes that I get some sort of deserved break from this nightmare. This nightmare that is set to end on Wednesday, 7pm! WOOOHHHHHH! To future employers, I don’t generally do this and in fact, except for a period of secondary school where I was exceedingly bored of school, I don’t like being sick. But if the work you give me involves VBA programming or long, group papers with people who can’t write, get suspicious when I take a medical leave.

BTW, my sheer hatred for SMU, which I’m sure is toxic and is probably contributing to the worst stomach ache ever, seems to be my driving force lately. Whatever I do, I do it to spite SMU. Wow. My school motivating me. I would have never…

And lastly, Pratima Singh (and Natalie Tran) got me on to the whole “your mom” joke phase, one I thought that died in the early 90’s. Your mom died in the ealy 90’s.

OMG, I DECIDED NEVER TO BUY SAAB!

May that Swedish carmaker FAIL FAIL FAIL! SO EVERY FUCKING CUNT WORKING IN THEIR PR DEPARTMENT WOULD BE JOBLESS AND HAVE TO CLEAN TOILETS IN SINGAPORE!

(I was trying to watch a video on DailyMotion and some Saab ad kept just playing itself, AGAIN AND AGAIN! Motor revving, person screaming – NO VOICE OFF, ON A VIDEO fucking SITE! WHICH CUNT DESIGNED THAT? WHICH IDIOTIC DEPARTMENT APPROVED THAT?)

Also, despair is up too

So yesterday I was going through the Tuition Grant Bond (which essentially make a S$30,000++ p.a. tuition fee into little over $8000), where I have to work in Singapore for three years. Apparently, other than working through it, if I can’t find a job (a situation not too unlikely given the economic situation):

a) I have to let these people know after 3 months of joblessness (contrary to the rumour that 3 months of rejections is sufficient to get the bond cancelled)
b) and after one year, if you are sans job, the bond gets cancelled.

Yes, you have to wait for one year. In Singapore. And just to be sure:

c) part time work qualifies for work under the bond – every 8 hours is counted as one working day.

So why am I worried? Locals (and PRs) for the next couple of years would be effectively subsidized by the government. So its cheaper for companies to hire them. I don’t know what about me would compel any employer to pay over 20% more for me (note to employers: I’m fun! Former president of debating society! How many locals have that?).

If I knew how unconscionable this contract is, I would have never signed it.

Hatred for SMU up, as with pessimism and depression

So this term is supposed to be my last term in SMU (I want to do my last proper one on exchange). This term I so happen to take a full course load, and one of those subjects is just killing me (with my health down, that’s quite literal). Its so time consuming, it’s so much more time consuming than anything else I’ve ever done in SMU before. But above and beyond that, I just have no inkling how to finish the project (or any assurance that I can finish the project). I never felt this way, so doomed, certain for failure.

And the worse part of it? 1) the subject is compulsory, 2) the subject have ABSOLUTELY NO RELEVANCE to my courses of study, 3) and the bits about the course that actually value-add? I’ve already known it before the class. If I had to code VBA to force Excel (seemingly so vital for an econs + pol sci student) into a database software for my day job after graduation, and that’s the only job available to me, where even taxi companies and Starbucks rejects me, mark my words: I would kill myself.

Moving on

So yesterday was my last day as the SMU Debating Society president. It was kinda, weirdly, sad – inasmuch as I looked forward, very dearly, to that day, it is an end of an era, a life stage if you must. And I must admit I was a bit, well, jarring to find the SMU Debating Society’s email account missing on Entourage. It’s now Pranav Bajoria’s job to mindlessly follow such emails.

And if you’re wondering what’s provoking all these emotions – while I didn’t like the bureaucratic aspects of the job, this (as well as a few other bits) are the only parts of SMU I actually like. After this AUDC, I don’t think I would be spending much time debating. And then again, if all things go to plan, this would be my last term in SMU anyway (I don’t think I would bother with debating on exchange). And this is why I think I debate – I may not be particularly good at it, but it sure was fun while it lasted.