The first two weeks of May are the final exam weeks, which I have absolutely no intention of writing about.

So I’ll just fast forward until AFTER the exams! =D

On the very last day of our final exams, and after many exhausting, sleepless nights, nobody was going to care anymore what the Nyquist’s Frequency was or if they knew about the Shannon’s Sampling Theorem or whatever.

It was very difficult indeed to get this group of people (my classmates) out for any kind of outing. Eternally not free and eternally armed with excuses!

But when we were finally free from the satanic grasp of final exams, we had a day when everybody was present and undoubtedly free!

So we went for dinner and movie!

It was also Tee’s birthday this month! Poor Tee! It was very evil of us to celebrate with him only after the final exams! Kekeke…

Tee’s birthday very unfortunately fell on the Friday of our study week. We had actually made plans to celebrate it nonetheless, but in the end due to… Ah… Anyway IT’S ALL MMU’S FAULT!!

But we got him a very HUGE birthday card to compensate!

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As I’ve mentioned, I’ll be going to Penang next month to do my industrial training, so this month my Dear and I went to Penang for a pre-work holiday!

Another purpose of this trip is also to hunt for a place to stay during my four months in Penang.

I think our accommodation objective was completed in like the first 3 hours of our 3-day stay. And so the remaining of the 2-and-a-half day was all ours to enjoy!

To me, Penang has always been a holiday destination. The beach, the food, the breeze… everything! I simply cannot imagine anybody would have the mood the work on this island!

Take Batu Ferringhi for example. The beautiful blue sea, the long stretch of golden beach, the large number of ang-mohs, everything reminds me of the destinations my previous club – MMU Tourism Club – used to go every year!

And I happened to be wearing the Tourism Club T-shirt that day! Such memories!

Is it just my naivety or are there no other tourist beaches in Penang besides Batu Ferringhi? Whenever people talk about beaches in Penang they think of Batu Ferringhi… And whenever tourists come to Penang they’ll go straight there…

So concentrated!

If a tsunami hits Batu Ferringhi directly we’ll have a warehouse of corpses to feed the poor fishies and sharks which having suffered so long the invasion of the tourists in the area.

After the beach we had dinner at The Ship. And I thought that The Ship in Jln. Sultan Ismail or PJ was cool, look at this one in Batu Ferringhi!

The Ship is a friggin’ real ship!

Maybe it was a merchant ship that got washed onto the shore a long time ago and the sailors abandoned it for exotic pretty island girls…

Or maybe it was a ghost ship carrying deceased spirits to the underworld but got wrecked…

Or maybe it was a US navy ship mysteriously teleported here through the Philadelphia Experiment, with all its crew members brutally burned to death and their body infused into the ship’s hull by the unstable magnetic force field…

… And then some rich Malaysian Chinese entrepreneur came along and said to his pal: “Eh Ah Seng, see that? Let’s open restaurant on it! Can save restaurant construction cost somemore!”

And thus The Ship was created.

But who cares if it’s haunted? The steak was really nice and the waiters and waitresses were very polite!

And following a little tradition of ours, we always have a bottle of red wine whenever we go on a holiday by a beach together!

Steak + wine + ocean breeze + gal = loud sigh of satisfaction.

Apart from the beaches, this island is also home to the Penang Char Koay Teow. The most evil food in the world that is guilty of causing obesity to uncountable Malaysians due to its devilishly good taste!

I have been in some kind of Char Koay Teow craze for the past few months. I’d always go all the way from Cyberjaya to SS2 just to eat Char Koay Teow. But NOW – Haha… Nobody and nowhere can ever beat Penang on this:

LOL just look at the imba SIZE of the prawn enough said.

Also check out the Fried Oyster:

How much will I weigh when I come back from Penang four months later?

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This month, May, played host to one of the larger events of MMU Toastmasters that I had the opportunity to be in-charge of – the first ever Ice-Breaking Speech Marathon.

As the Organizing Chair, the preparation works for this event consumed much of my time in April, which was also the month leading up to my final exams early this month!

Fortunately, I was able to juggle my time, albeit precariously, to make sure that both events received sufficient attention.

The event turned out to be a blast!

The Ice-Breaking Speech Marathon is an event where our club encourages six selected new members and special guests to take their glorious first step into the public speaking world of Toastmasters.

The participants had been given a month to prepare their speeches, which were basically stories that revolve around their respective own lives and experiences (hence the name ‘ice-breaking speech’).

To make this experience worthy of life-long memory for the first-time speakers, we managed to invite a very impressive panel of external speech evaluators:

From left to right: Francis Ng, DTM, District Lieutenant Governor of Marketing; Robert Ram, ACS, CL, President of IEM Toastmasters; JON TAN, ATM-G, Creative communicator and advertising consultant; Geoff Andrew, DTM, President of MIM Toastmasters; Sharifah Raudhah, CC, Founder and Managing Director of Face2Face Tech.; S.K. Walia, DTM, HRDC Certified International Corporate Trainer; Hoo Sze Ling, CC, Senior Student Exchange Advisor at Taylor’s University College.

These very experienced Toastmasters and professional speakers were really kind and encouraging to the first-timers!

How I wish my first speech was given in an occasion like this!

As a supremely biased organizer and shamelessly egoistic boyfriend, I shall now do a special mention of only one of the six participants of the marathon.

Participant #2 was none other than Teh Shu-Yi with her speech title “I’m not a girl, not yet a woman”. =D

Haha… It was her very first time giving a speech in Toastmasters. Although she kept telling me how terrified she was days before the event, but she turned out doing fantastic!

I daresay I totally understood her fears because after my first ever speech in public three years ago, I wrote this.

Her best friend Felicia from Ipoh was also present to support her, hand in hand!

After the participants made their speeches, the evaluation session kicked in and the evaluators did their job. One-by-one, the evaluators commented encouragingly on the participants speeches, focusing on excellent parts and those that can be improved.

In the end, participants were given a certificate for completing their first ever speech in a Toastmasters environment!

Here’s our President Megat Zahid presenting the certificate to one of the participants. =P Yup, a random one.

As per Toastmasters’ tradition, ballots slips were passed to the evaluators and audience after the speeches to vote for the winners of the Best Speaker of the Day and Best Evaluator of the Day awards.

Participant #2 Shobana won the Best Speaker of the Day Award!

And Robert Ram, ACS, CL won the Best Evaluator of the Day Award.

This is my final event in the 2009/2010 EXCO term. After this an election will be held during the next AGM and we will all have very different roles by then!

Cheers to MMU Toastmasters!

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Since April is the month leading to my final (and most critical) exams is May, I spent a large chunk of the month doing the most hateful thing on earth – studying.

Perhaps it’s the stress, but in the same month, I actually played FOUR games in a go!

First – RESIDENT EVIL 5:

I LOLed very hard when I first heard from my friend a few months ago what the game was about.

In the previous Resident Evil games (Resident Evil 1, 2, 3…), most of which I have played, we fought ZOMBIES, like human zombies that were real slow, gruesome, and always moaning stupidly.

But in Resident Evil 5, these human zombies are extremely sophisticated. Not only had they learned how to carry axes and throw petrol bombs,

… and how to ride motorcycles to chase you,

and even chase after you waving a chainsaw!

And you know what the most unbelievable part of this whole game is?

They made all the zombies black. Like African black. So racist! Even the plot is of the very typical type where a poor, rural village in Africa is being infected by some zombie virus and it is up to the strong, militaristic Americans to go and massacre them and save the world.

LOL!

Regardless, after finishing the entire game, I still feel that it is the best among the four games listed here.

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Another game that I played was DEVIL MAY CRY 4:

This superb fantasy-ego-feeding game with a super leng cai protagonist, ultra yeng attack moves and combo, and an incomparably cool attitude (smirking and taunting enemies even when they are 100x larger than you and spouting deadly flames…) that you can share with the main character when you are controlling him.

It really does make your balls feel monstrously larger while playing the game, I can quite guarantee that.

I think this is the kind of game that guys would want to play with girls around (or at least let them know that they’re playing).

Just imagine the scene when that most attractive girl of the gang comes over to your laptop/PC and peeks over your shoulder, “Hey, what game are you playing, James?” and you ‘happen’ to have just finished an ultra-difficult-to-do, super cool perfect SSS (smokin’ sick style) combo in front of her wide, amazed eyes…

Then you look up casually, and say:

“Uh what? Oh, Amanda… No, this is nothing… Just some easy game that I’m starting to get bored with.”

LOL!

I know girls don’t care and don’t find a 20-second SSS combo even remotely cool but unfortunately us guys don’t realize that. =) So yeah, this game is still uber cool.

If you’re still wondering what exactly the ‘combos’ that I’m talking about are, check out this video on Youtube:

If, after watching the video, you have no idea what just happened, or thought you saw nothing more than some flurry moving colours… then perhaps we can just forget it and move on to my third game.

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The third game is none other than the legendary LEFT 4 DEAD 2:

An excellent game to let of steam indeed, L4D2 is! After a long and hard day’s work/study, to go into a world where groups – no, I mean HORDES – of mindless zombies charging frenziedly towards you all trying to rip you apart!

That would have been nothing cool except that now, you have a good ol’ pump shotgun / heavy assault rifle with a hell lot of ammo. Merely by holding down the left mouse button and swaying your wrist left and right is sufficient to generate some kind of indescribable ‘high’.

This is in sharp contrast to Resident Evil 5 where bullets are a rarity and every shot must be calculated and accurate.

In L4D2, we shoot zombies Rambo style.

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The final (and longest) game that I played in April was…

-

POKEMON DIAMOND!

What? Don’t laugh la…

As I have written in my previous, long Pokemon article, I have been a great Pokemon fan since my pre-teen days. And until today I still find the entire Pokemon franchise bursting with sweet childhood memories, especially the original 151 Pokemon!

Now with Pokemon Diamond, it is absolutely bliss to return to my room every night and have a wonderful, carefree time playing the game before sleeping. Catching wild Pokemon, raising their levels, battling trainers, solving puzzles, winning gym badges… It’s just like last time! When I would cling to my Gameboy Color stubbornly, and sit on the sofa for hours until I was being forced to stop by my mom.

It’s kinda magical, The last Pokemon version that I played during my schooldays was Gold/Silver. And I had thought that I would never have the chance to play any other versions again (since I grew up)…

But then 2007 came and I (again the few weeks before final exams) suddenly started playing Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire version with one of my old friends! It was an absolutely amazing period when tons of sweet, long-forgotten memories from my childhood came flooding back to me just by looking at the screen.

It was also that period when I actually started re-watching the Pokemon series and movies, and actually found my Pokemon trading card game deck and played with it!

And now, I’ve FINALLY played Pokemon Diamond, the latest version. After more than ten years, I’ve actually caught up!

Haha but I’ve temporarily stopped after battling the 8th gym. I’ve still got the Victory Road and Elite Four in front of me but, so far, my Pokemon stand at these levels:

So… There you have it! Four games in a row in the very month before my final exams!

Haha somebody come try and break my record! Farmville, Mafia Wars, Cafe World and other Facebook games DON’T count! =D

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