Thoughts...

Just now when I was standing on the balcony and looking towards the horizon, I had a strange urge to just drive across the Penang Bridge and perhaps wander around Butterworth even though it's midnight. But then, I haven't even gotten my car license yet. *drops head*

This is making me feel like playing "Neon Lights" (a Kraftwerk song) on Windows Media Player. Feels strange.

Dropping a Subject

I know I can be long-winded here, but please bear with me a bit, will ya? :P

I've been taking three optional subjects and during the past two weeks, I've attened classes for five Form 6 subjects, not including MUET. And I've come down to the conclusion to just drop Malay Language. The subject is pretty neat itself, and the lessons can be useful when the teacher rambles off and turns it into a "brainwashing session", but I don't think I'm that capable of taking five subjects at once. Better to just drop one for now and lessen the burden, four is just fine enough.

And to be honest, I'm sort of thinking twice and thrice about this decision. Though I'll have 2 free periods 4 days a week, it's sort of a pity not to listen to the teacher's ramblings. It can be boring when she teaches, but she's easily prone to teaching 15 minutes and then spending the rest of the hour talking off-topic into stuff regarding general life or university life or even teenage relationships. In short, once she rambles it's gonna be an interesting and witty one, so most of the students in the small class keep their ears peeled. :P

Another guy dropped the subject already, and it looks like it's gonna be me and Edmund's turn. Tak boleh tahan (cannot stand) anymore...

Though over the rest of the year I think the number will still be thinning from its current 16, but the number will probably rise when students find Accountings to be too hard and then switch subjects to Malay Language. From the frying pan and into the fire, if you ask me.


Technorati tags: Form 6

Toxic-Smelling Laundry!

YUCK! YUCK! YUCK!!!

Never in my entire life have I smelt anything such disgusting, noxious, foul-smelling, and even stomach-churning stench before! I was helping doing the laundry for my dad's work clothes, and as I dumped the bucket of soaked clothes out, I was blasted with a smell that will haunt me for eternity. I cringed, and I almost gagged, this is the worst smell that I have ever encounted. Ever.

Sweaty shirt, sweaty pants, sweaty underwear and especially sweaty socks, soaked inside a tub of water for an entire day, it's the perfect ingredient to make a stinkbomb that'll dissipate even the worst unruly crowds. I think it needs an entire bottle of softener to get rid of that rubbish dump and rotted cuttlefish smell.

Now that I just mentioned this to mom too, she's apparently laughing her head off.

I think I just caught a whift of the stench, now please excuse me as I get back to my room and shove a piece of air-freshener up my nose.

Mike Oldfield on BBC Radio 2

I just read a bit of news from the Tubular.net forums that Mike Oldfield is going to appear on BBC's Radio 2 on next Sunday, May 28, 2006 at around between 7 to 9am British time. If you're a rabid fan like me, you know you're gonna try to stick around that time to listen to the live broadcast. :P

The show is Good Morning Sunday, hosted by Aled Jones. I'm gonna guess that in the interview, they're gonna talk a bit about Mike's past so that they won't confuse new listeners. As usual, the mere mention of Light and Shade will be excluded, and they'll be talking about the Platinum Collection, which has been released a few months ago. Hopefully we'll get to know more about his new autobiography and the studio album that he's currently working on. :)

From left to right: Tubular Bells (1973), Hergest Ridge (1974), Ommadawn (1975), Incantations (1978), and Amarok (1990).
Mike's previous interviews were also held in February and March, both also on BBC Radio 2. During the interviews, Mike talked about his previous albums and career, a bit about the book, and some juicy info about the album-in-progress. Last we heard from him in the interview is that he is making a 3-track album as opposed to 2-track album like Tubular Bells, Hergest Ridge and Ommadawn, a single-track album like the masterpiece Amarok, and a 4-track album like the minimalist and instrumental Incantations. Mike's prolly going back to his roots, and a 3-track album will be another splended feather in his cap I hope!


Technorati tags: Music, albums, Mike Oldfield, BBC Radio 2

Slowly Making Me Go Bankrupt...

Yes I'm aware that I can be a cheapskate sometimes, I just can't help but notice how expensive the books are for Form 6. When you're in Form 6, there's no government-assisted textbook lending scheme. That means all books have to be bought, and from what I know it's gonna get even expensive for university books.

I've already paid RM60 for General Studies and Mathematics and gotten both books more or less at the spot. And tomorrow I need another RM70 for Business Studies and MUET (Malaysian University English Test) books. When you add up to the RM150 I've already paid for school fees and MUET fees last week, and even though mom's helping me out a bit with the fees, I'm still gonna be left with little cash to spare. :(

From top to bottom: Mathematics 1, General Studies, Microeconomics, and Macroeconomics.
Every one of them thick, heavy and intimidating, with enough to make your head explode from reading it.

There's still more books to come tomorrow and the day after. The good part is that they're usable for the next year and a half, the bad part is that they're easily worn out and some books smell like they've been dipped in a chlorine solution. x.X

About the books, I'm pretty glad that they're using English for Mathematics, and that the Science stream students are also taking Science and Mathematics lessons fully in English, though some students would find it hard to cope with. And also, if I'm seriously gonna take Malay Language I need to get an additional four more books.

Even though Form 6's much more affordable than college, education still doesn't come cheap indeed.


Technorati tags: Form 6, books

Last.fm

Now this is pretty nifty! Last.fm is a website that lets you track your music and your musical tastes through a plugin in WMP, Winamp or any other music players. Been seeing it around some forums for quite a while, and it was only till recently did I sign up for it.

Apart from forum signatures, I originally wanted this to be placed in my blog's sidebar, but apparently all of the designs are too wide. Not sure placing anywhere else would look nice either, so I'll just paste it in my blog here. :)



Nothing fancy, but this one looks neat. And as you can see, it's no surprise whose music I listen to frequently. :P


Technorati tag: Last.fm

First Week of Form 6

As expected, the first schooling day of Form 6 started with a bang rather than a whimper. :P First day and I was already late when I reached there, and to make things worse I couldn't find the place where the students were supposed to gather. Luckily a bit later a prefect told me to head to the music room (yesh the supposedly same creepy music room). Headcount at the end of the day was roughly 90 students for the science stream students and 70 for the humanities stream students.

I won't ramble that much about the week, but just wanted to say a bit about it. :P Well, the first day everyone was at the music room, it was only on the second day did we shift to the second lecture hall. The science students had the first lecture hall to themselves there. The bad side for the science students is that they're right next to the teacher's room. If they make a too much of a din every teacher will know, but as for us being at the second floor behind the hall's balcony is a good thing I suppose. We make noise all we want and it gets little attention! xD

So, back to normal school life, back to normal canteen food and living a slightly better life than other students in my school I suppose. The only thing out is that we all students are being watched carefully, by Big Brother. The school just installed CCTVs at just around every corridor, stairwell and corner of the school! Tempted to wave at them as we walk by though. o.O

As for the lecture hall, it was originally a small chapel I think. Behind the mini-stage and white board were statues of the Virgin Mary and Jesus on the cross, all behind a glass partition. The place's air conditioned whenever there's lessons, that's a pretty good incentive to be there every time there's class. :P

Unlucky me for me to be seated at the first seat of the first row. The screen for the projector is just three feet away from my table, and it glares badly towards the eyes when turned on. And it makes things worse when you're sleepy and trying to stay awake. But then lucky me to have Edmund seated next to me though! Thanks man! xD

So for the venue, it's just temporary the headmaster and his assistant said. The rest of the school are busy with their exams, and we using the lecture hall, it's just for the moment. We'll most likely be shifted to another classroom at the start of June. Teachers seem to be pretty good at the moment, though I've heard horrible things about the science stream teachers. Not much work to do for the time being apart from reading a bit, lucky for us too.

So, the first week has ended, and the second week is just beginning. Then the two-week holiday arrives! Hope homework won't be too much of a burden there...


Technorati tag: Form 6

Happy Mother's Day!

Well, today is Mother's Day!

My mom, she's been around with the family and taking care of for a very long while, and most of the time she there to be the sensible voice for the family. It's no surprise that she's been appreciated. My sister who's in Butterworth, through my dad she sent mom a small bouquet of flowers and a very large chocolate cake from Secret Recipe, a local chain of cake shops. I still remember last year's cake, it was chocolate and coffee. :P

It's been quite a long while since we've tasted a cake like this. *drools*

Luckily I found out a bit earlier that I could finally use my handphone to snap some pics now. So, why not taking a pic of the creamy chocolate cake before eating it? On a related note, check out my LifeLogger profile, I'm gonna be more active there!

So, mom had the honour for the first slice, then dad had a slice, and I had one too...


Fancy a slice? =9

Turns out the whole cake is made out of dark chocolate and covered with dark chocolate. The chocolate taste was overpowering and the cake was certainly very sweet. I haven't even finished this slice of cake yet actually. Though the cake's very nice, Secret Recipe's cakes have always been always been a delight to try, though it wouldn't hurt them to try out a little variety on an all-chocolate cake.

Earlier in the day, sis phoned and told my mom that she was sending the cake and two currypuffs. She also couldn't make it as she was living in Butterworth and busy with plenty of stuff there. So later on when dad handed me the cake and currypuffs did I notice that the currypuffs were in two boxes. Judging by the looks of the box I mentioned to my mom tbat she probably heard wrong as I assumed she meant two boxes rather than two pieces.

So I open the box and this is what I was greeted with...


This is most possibly the world's largest chicken currypuff. 'Tis sort of scary if you ask me.

Dad had tried it already but I haven't yet, and what I could see inside was chicken stuffing, carrots and some other veggies inside. I haven't tried it yet though and am keeping it for tomorrow. My mom won't try it as she's switched to a semi-vegetarian diet in order to improve her health. The cake she's eating though. And by the looks of even if all of us three eat the cake everyday, it'll only be finished after around two weeks of eating. @.@

wittysquirrel at eBay?

If you ever happen to be browsng at eBay and see the username "wittysquirrel" selling or buying something there, please be aware that the person using that account isn't me at all. I have no idea why did this person just switch his name like that, and his previous nickname "witty3501" yielded no Google results. Was this person's intent on using the same nickname as mine merely an innocent one, or was he jumping on my bandwagon uninvited?

Here's the link to his profile and here's to his account history. If it was really me at eBay, you'd be seeing the username "andylkl" rather than "wittysquirrel" and here's my real profile to back it up. Though I browse eBay most of the time, I'm also mostly inactive when it comes to buying/selling stuff, hence the 0 comments there. If I had a credit card and had full access to a PayPal account, I might not be that idle there. :P

Though it might really be nothing much of an issue here, but I thought it would be best if I could at least blog a bit about this, in case someone could really mistaken this guy for me.

Trigger-Happy TM Net!

The people working at TM Net are really seemingly trigger-happy and efficient when it comes to suspending people's accounts, but when it comes to reactivating the accounts, they just take their own sweet time to do so. The last time it happened, I had to make three to four calls to their hotline, and this time round I had to call them TWICE and waited more than two hours here!

Today the first time it was a guy who took my call. Oh come on, although it's the third month already, this month's bill wasn't even overdue yet, and I received no red-coloured notices in my postbox. I told that to the guy but was replied to check my e-mail inbox, as they'd be sending notices to the e-mail accounts now rather than snail mail. When everything was done I was told it'd take up to two hours for me to get back online, but two hours passed and the situation remained unchanged. It only took a second phone call to TM Net before it was finally back to normal.

I remembered the guy mentioning about the e-mail notices and took a look in my inbox, and I found this piece of mail. Look at the underlined part.


(Name and e-mail address has been censored to protect the innocent. Well... Okay okay, it's for privacy actually. :P)

So, in addition to TM Net technicians who suspend accounts that gleefully, the connection has also been really bad in the past few nights. And now, we have to pay an extra RM10 for unreliable reactivation? You must be kidding me!


Technorati tags: TM Net, Streamyx

Heng Ee High School and Spooky Rumours

I was doing some Google searches about my high school when I found two threads from the Ragnarok Online forums. And though it does unnerve me a little, like any other places Heng Ee High School does emit its own creepyness sometimes. Going back to the school for a sixth and soon seventh year really is making me revisit the "rumours" of spooks and any other supernatural occurance in my school. What can I say? It's a favourite topic of mine! :P

If you're sorta squirmish or sensitive regarding this topic, it's advisable to stop reading at once and turn away from this post!

Snippet from this thread:

"haihz.. at penang "heng ee" skoll... case happen when the maingate(three of them) the last gate count from left to right,open sure got accident 1.. and once it happen on my friends boyfren.. i was sad enough coz i noe the guy.. my friend cry till faint when my friend go seehes bf face.. she said she saw hes bf smiling at him.. then gone ady... hes bf body was separated into 2 parts..

once the heng ee open STUPID GATE!~ got 1 boy let skol buss roll over hes head.. and the brains pop out falls on the drink seller uncle stall.. many ppl say the boy self fall down when hes the 1st person run out using dat gate.. hes juz form 1.. the boy was rakan sebaya member..in science garden many ppl say they saw the kid there playing water!! the headmaster wif all teacher pray him ask him don disturb the students.. until muz call hes mother come say sorry coz on dat day hes mother saw hes son ran out b4 got crush hes mom scold him bad word..he run around the skkol corridor everymorning and play piano in hall.. haiz.. all hes mother fault la.. the kid beh siok revenge!!"

Just for the fact fiders searching for any grains of truth in this rumour. Well, this incident happened in 2000, a year before my batch, and the kid was indeed Form 1 when that unfortunate incident occured. He was run over by a school bus right outside the school gate (third gate or not I don't know).

A bit of info about the third gate here. If you're standing from the outside and facing towards the school, the third gate is on the most right-hand side. Personally I've never seen the gate being open before, but now students park their bikes at the gate now. Really interesting to know that there's a rumour like this revolving around the gate. o.O

And whether or not his spirit really roams throughout the school I also don't know about that. But what I can verify is that teachers and the headmaster have set aside a day where they'll light up joss sticks and burn some "gold paper" in the school garden which is right outside the teacher's office. I've seen it with my own eyes here. Whether or not you choose to associate this with the boy's spirit, it's for you to decide.

Snippet from this thread:

"But got 1 more 4got tell.. Theirmusical room also very geli.. If morning skoll ppl,Some bad luk will saw red colour thing moving around de.. The red thing dissapear when ppl go in the room de.."

There's two music rooms in the school, one on the second floor and one on the third floor, both on the newer block. The one of the second floor keeps all of the musical instruments for the brass band and also the school's Chinese orchestra. When anyone plays in the room it creates a loud din, but when there's no one the rooms are eeriely silent. And not to mention the stairway leading directly to the two rooms is dark and gloomy too. For me I haven't seen anything there at all.

There's also this post and the post underneath it. However I knew neither of the things that this guy wrote there. However the post underneath it indeed mentions a running rumour within the school, a rumour that someone from the school will die every year. That's just plain poppycock in reality though. Though there still were cases of people from the school (including a teacher) passing away in 2003 and 2004, there were none in 2005 as far as I know of, and I definitely hope everyone's safe this year round.

And on a personal note here, my Form 2 Chinese teacher (Mrs. Low) once mentioned in class that she once had a new student who was transferred from another school. Apparently this guy had a "third eye" and could see spirits, and he mentioned to my teacher that he saw "things" everywhere in the school, in the hallways and in the toilets those sorts of places. A month later he was transferred from my school into another one.

In conclusion, keep an open mind and take everything that you've read (including this blog post here) with a grain of salt. I'm a skeptic of most paranormal-related stuff, and even though I enjoy reading about it, it doesn't make me a believer. It's best not to tempt fate, and even I'm gonna touch wood several times for writing this blog post, just to be on the safe side. :P

Monday Form 6 Briefing

Last Monday, on the 8th, I didn't expect to see so many former Form 5 students sitting in my school's lecture hall to listen to the briefing. Heck, even those who didn't plan to head onwards to Form 6 just attended for fun and listen to the briefing.

During the whole two hours there starting from 8:30am (I was only late a few minutes), the whole lecture hall was filled to the brim until extra chairs had to be brought in and folks had not choice but sit on the steps. Even then people were still coming in. Man, who would've thought it would attract such a big crowd here?

So, during the whole course of the briefing, there were two teachers, the assistant headmaster and headmaster himself giving talks in the hall. Stuff like subjects offered by the school, exam papers, MUET, and frequently asked questions about Form 6 were all well covered.

It's confirmed that the Form 6 boys need not have crew cuts, the headmaster received cheers and a round of applause for announcing that. But this got a bad response from the girls, and the boys later retorted that it's the girls who should have crew cuts! Hehe!

So, the subjects offered for the science stream students were:
1. General Studies
2. Mathematics S+T
3. Chemistry
4. Biology or Physics

For the last option there, they couldn't choose both as Biology and Physics students were seperated in two classes.

For humanities students like me, the school only offers:
1. General Studies
2. Economics
3. Mathematics S or Chinese Language
4. Business Studies
5. Accountings or Malay Language

General Studies and Economics were mandatory subjects, but the last five subjects were all optional. The only reason it was grouped like that was because the timetable for choices #3 and #5 would overlap, so they couldn't take two subjects if the schedule conflicts. Overall, my school's not that flexible if you ask me.

Well, there was no History and no Literature in English, so the subjects that I went with were General Studies, Economics, Mathematics S, Business Studies and Malay language as the optional fifth subject. o.o I'm not on good relations with the Malay Language teacher ever since she teached me in Form 3, but I'm willing to see what happens next. No harm done if I drop out of that subject later on. :P

So, the briefing eventually took an extra half-hour and only ended at 10:30am. Met some old buddies, and couldn't even recognise some. Some looked totally fit from their National Service stint, some looked even cooler than before, but a friend of mine really stood out there. If Noodle from the band Gorillaz ever had an elder brother, I'd imagine him to be very similar to my friend here. o.o

An interesting note about that Monday was that it was only six minutes before the briefing start and yet I had to scoop a pair of kittens from the road and place them safely on the sidewalk. Darn lady didn't dare to pick up the kitten underneath her parked car so I had to do the dirty work. Didn't see the kittens on my way back though.

And also, I was wrong about the headmaster transferred to another school. Very wrong. My sincere apologies in case anyone leapt in joy from my original announcement there.



Technorati tags: Form 6

Mystery of the Blinking Lights Solved!

Nope, it has nothing to do with too much power being used, it has nothing to do with my computer, it's not the generators supplying not enough power, it's not our neighbours stealing our electricity, and it's definitely not anything spooky that led to the electricity problems in my house.

You know what was the culprit? Two faulty parts, one part was inside the electric meter and the other part was inside the fuse box. The part in the meter which was directly connected to the in-cable was already burnt black when the house owner and his cousin (an electrician) checked it on Saturday. The other part I'm not sure how do describe it, as I don't know much about electrical components anyways. Both the parts were changed, it took the two of them two hours to fix it, and thankfully the problem's all solved now.

About the burnt part, no wonder the electric meter went fast and made my computer restart here. Really hope my CPU wasn't damaged too bad from that 2-3 weeks of random restarts. =\ I should really get a small power supply unit for the computer some time soon.

Form 6 Preparations

So, it's official.

Form 6 classes starts on May 15th, and on there's a briefing for all of the heading-to-Form 6 students in my school on next Monday. Bring along your SPM results slip, IC and birth certificate (the letter said so, but maybe it's only for students applying for my school but heck, I'll bring 'em anyways).

My half-year holidays are coming to an end, and classes are starting in two weeks. I just only got to knew from the headmaster that mixing and matching subjects is indeed possible in my school, contrary to what I heard from my friends. I'm currently in the Kemanusiaan (Humanities) stream and not the science stream. If I had taken the science stream earlier on, it would be as clear as daylight which subjects I'm gonna choose. So I'm in the other stream, and definitely still undecided yet for the subjects that I'm gonna choose here.

1. Pengajian Am (General Studies)
2. Ekonomi (Economics)
3. Pengajian Perniagaan (Business Studies)
?. Literature in English...?
?. Sejarah (History)...?
?. Mathematics S...?

The subject I'm currently avoiding like the plague is Perakaunan (Accountings). If the school gives me a breather and allows me to skip it, I'll gladly do so. If they force me to take it with Economics then I have no choice sadly. The subject itself is just okay, but I'd like to move on with other subjects now thank you very much.

Text books, reference books, a few long white pants and school shirts, and lastly a new pair of school shoes, these are some of the stuff that I need to get first. No choice but to join in the rush on Wesak Day this Friday. Btw, Mom also reminded me, bottles of milk, Bodhi tree (points for you if know what I mean :)).

So now, any thoughts about the subjects I'm considering here? Which ones should I take? Which ones I shouldn't take?


On a semi-related note, does anybody who read The Star remember reading this piece of article about new school headmasters? Well, although it wasn't mentioned in the article, but Heng Ee High School also has a new headmaster! Hip-hip hurray! :D


Technorati tags: Form 6

Malaysia's Thomas Cup (Mis)adventure

Malaysia's match against Denmark last night, broadcasted live on TV2. It was...

So exciting and thrilling!

So fast-paced and heart pounding!

So proud and happy to see the Malaysian supporters in Japan!

So glad to hear them cheer out loud for the team!


And yet...

So heartbroken when the team lost the tie 2-3.

So disappointed that we could've actually won and gotten into the finals.

So annoyed that the Badminton Association of Malaysia could've fielded a stronger team.


Malaysia's bad streak of its national team in tournaments continues, when and where it'll end no one knows. First the Malaysian men's hockey team failed to qualify for the Hockey World Cup even though they were the bronze medalists of the Melbourne Commonwealth Games. That was a tremendous disappointment seriously.

Then it was the recently concluded (for Malaysia) badminton Thomas Cup championships. Despite boasting one of the largest contingents which included an entire sparring team, physical trainers, a nutritionist, sports analysts, a psychologist and masseurs, which raised the eyebrows of the other teams, we still came back empty handed for the seventh time in a row!

Really am doubtful towards BAM's preparations towards the tournament, were they so confident of their singles lineup that they chose Kuan Beng Hong as the fourth singles shuttler? Including Kuan there was a gamble itself, and sadly it didn't pay off well. No offence intended though. And well, in the second singles Hafiz Hashim could've killed off Kenneth Jonassen after taking a one-set lead, and Malaysia would've likely ended up with a 3-1 scoreline and a ticket to the finals instead of a 2-3 loss. Too bad I missed watching the first singles and doubles matches though. Turned on the TV and it was the Hafiz-Jonassen match already there.

That's enough bashing about the players who lost. To be honest I think Lady Luck just wasn't with the team. Captain Wong Choong Hann's injury to his Achilles tendon was just plain bad luck, and even if the team managed to scrape through last night's match with all of their effort, I'm sort of doubtful if they have enough energy to face China's team.

Well overall, it was still a good effort from the team there. The doubles pairs did well against the odds to beat their Danish opponents, and the singles did their job throughout the tournament. The shuttlecocks were blazing fast and furious, definitely a very quick match in terms of playing.

Next time then Malaysia, and prepare well for 2008 edition! 8th time's the charm!


Technorati tags: Malaysia, badminton, Thomas Cup

18. Finally.

Just a very short blog post here.

On this very day, I turned 18! :D