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!

How’s Seth?

The name “Seth” is my second-choice (I wanted Zackary/Zachary/Zachariah/et al for the longest time, but then I met Zak Lim, so that would make it awkward), but I think it’s a pretty nifty name. It means “placed/appointed” and he’s the third son of Adam and Eve – I’m the third son too. Another top contender is “Zedekiah” (the Lord my justice), simply because I would have the coolest nick ever – Zed. Compared to nicks ranging to Raj to janjan.

What do you guys think?

P.S. If I tagged you in Facebook, it means that your opinion is most valued. Otherwise, you may still comment, and I shall take it into consideration.

P.P.S. When my best friends can’t pronounce “Rajan”–which is pretty incredulous to me–I sort of have to give in to the whole Christian name bit.

P.P.P.S. Would using Zachariah when I know someone with a similar name be entirely wrong? I mean, it’s my top choice. It means “God has remembered” – though while it was pretty apt some five years ago, its not as much these days.

P.P.P.P.S This is sort of inspired by the fact that I would be living in some place completely different for prolong periods of time for the first time in three years, making the name transition bit easier. So I kinda want to make my mind up now. Plus, I don’t want people to confuse me for Indian and therefore draw me into awkward Hindi or Kannada conversations.

To do list

Stop checking repeatedly to see if internship offer in Bangalore, India was a cruel, cruel prank.

Start packing. (Start finding a place to move all these assorted pieces of clutter to. *hints* friends *hints*)

Start finding a place to stay in a city I couldn’t even locate on a map a few days ago (I always thought Karnataka was on the Bay of Bengal. Stop laughing).

Call Matthew to get him to suspend his/mine phone line.

Find out what visa to get and how to get it.

Stop assuming the visa process was as painless as the Singapore one (which didn’t involve any visit to any High Commission/embassy).

Check again if I got the offer and this isn’t a cruel, cruel prank.

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.

Bah, ez-link and NETS

So ez-link decided to upgrade their cards this year. The new ez-link cards would not only be used for public transport, but also for car park charges (depending on the car park!) and the toll or ERP (upgrade your IU!).

The old ez-links, completely incompatible with the new ones, will work till end-September on busses and trains. But the old ez-link card is still the only card compatible with a lot of other ez-link uses, including (in my school) printing and photocopying.

And I lost my ez-link card. I could also use a NETS CashCard, the original card for cark parks and ERP. Just that NETS decided to make only CashCards with FlashPay, which is incompatible but interferes with the ez-link card. But this being exams season, and I personally aim to use my school’s printers to clear some rainforest, I don’t have a choice but to buy a CashCard (not owning a car, the CashCard is otherwise useless to me) because the school printers haven’t upgraded to the new ez-link.

Pause – you’re confused no?

Well, essentially, the new ez-link and the new CashCard is supposed to help customers. Like me. By frustrating them out of their wits, apparently, during the transition period.

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.

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.

What a day

1. Three meetings suddenly converged on one time. I was out of my mind stressed out.
2. Battling university bureaucrats. Always a hobby.
3. I wished I had a camera. I saw the biggest, clearest rainbow east of SMU. It had a strong calming effect. Thank you God.