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Today, I had my final public speaking speech for the trimester. ARGH! FINALLY!

In addition to my usual subjects, I’m taking Public Speaking as an extra subject for this trimester. This trimester has been a roller coaster ride of pure anxiety! Days leading up to the presentation days are days that you hope you could simply grab your stomach out from your throat and put in somewhere else until after the presentation day!

With my existing sleeping problems, topped with the anxiety of having a speech presentation the next day, I had to get sleeping pills from the doctor or else I would be awake all night!

Don’t tell me you’re not afraid of public speaking, everyone is! Or at least, was! I don’t think anyone could deliver a speech on the stage for the first time without having his shit scared out. No no no.

I still remember how it felt during the first, formal, individual speech in my Public Speaking class this trimester. It was supposed to be an informative speech.

I was the 10th person to give a speech, and I had to wait in total agony while the first 9 people gave their speeches. It was tormenting to sit there and see people who are older than you, and speak better than you, performing while you wait for your turn to, possibly ridicule yourself, in front of them and the lecturer, whose strict teaching style could only worsen your anxiety.

The reason I say the other students are older than me is that this subject is supposed to be taken in our final year, and I’m only in my first year. And most of them are already speaking very well before they attended the course! =(

Let me try to be as graphic as possible. The feeling that I had at then was like I swallowed a snake and it was wiggling wildly in my stomach trying to get out from my butt but couldn’t find the way. My toes had a mind of their own and were moving by themselves, and it felt like my hands could instantly freeze anything that I touched, just like the cartoon superhero characters.

When my turn finally came, I wobbled out to the stage and started speaking. At that time, my chilling powers left me and I started to feel hot! (The hall was air-conditioned and was actually freakin’ cold) I was sweating in my coat! I knew that my feet and hands were shaking slightly, even my voice was! I knew they were!

But when I finished the speech, my friends told me that no one noticed that my hands, or voice was shaking. In fact, the lecturer said it was pretty good! Apparently I am an excellent actor!

Instantly after the speech, the rat in my stomach was gone, I resumed command of my toes, and my hands were no longer freezing. The relieve was so dramatic that you thought all the anxiety just came out of you in a looooonngg fart… Ahhhhhhh… =)

That was, my first formal speech in public.

I think I improved a lot, the final speech experience that I had this morning, was 90% less scary. And it’s over, no more speeches for this subject, I’ve improved myself. Yay!

Everyone knows about the famous Kim Gary restaurants.

I just went for dinner at a branch in The Curve today. While the prices are a little expensive, you’ll always find Kim Gary Restaurants totally full; Apart from its nice and unique dishes, I think it’s also thanks to the uprising ‘yum cha‘ culture among youths in Malaysia.

I think there are 2 main types of ‘yum cha‘ places. The normal kopitiams – Where you sit by the road and drink teh tarik; and the ‘high class’ franchise restaurants – Brands like Kim Gary, Old Town Kopitiam, Wong Kok Char Chan Teng (Wong Kok Hong Kong Restaurant) etc.

Wierdly enough, apparently many of the second type restaurant owners are (or are pretending to be) from Hong Kong!

Just go around the city, and you’ll find ‘Hong Kong styled’ restaurants popping up everywhere! I don’t see a lot of ‘Singapore-styled restaurants’ or ‘Indonesia-styled restaurants’, why Hong Kong?

I also noticed that the so-called ‘high-class’ kopitiams are all adopting the same method for ordering food. Typically, you choose from the menu, mark your order on a piece of paper listed with the names of all the dishes, and a waiter comes to confirm everything and process your order.

I really wonder where are they copying it from! From my experience, they don’t do that in Hong Kong! Hmm…

Anyway, Kim Gary’s menu confirms that ARE Kim Gary branches in Hong Kong, so the boss is obviously not some fat local Ah Beng, whew! Here’s a photo of the menu page:

According to the information in the menu, A few Kim Gary restaurant branches in Hong Kong are called ‘Gary Cafe’, ‘Gary Restaurant’, and ‘Kam Gary Restaurant’. There is also a cute branch name called ‘Apple Restaurant‘, I wonder why…?

• Note: the following story is fictional. (In Case Kim Gary sues me! =)

Maybe the evolution went like this: At first the boss, named Gary, opened his own ‘Gary cafe’. Later, he thought that the word ‘cafe’ was not attractive enough, so he changed the name to ‘Gary Restaurant’.

A couple of years later, he found out that there were too many guys named ‘Gary’ in Hong Kong, so he added his surname into the restaurant’s name, and it became ‘Kam Gary Restaurant’. The Cantonese translation of “金” is “Kam”, after all.

Then, business was booming and Kam Gary Restaurant was expanding globally! Some investors told the boss that perhaps they should change it to ‘Kim Gary Restaurant’ since it would sound more like an international brand… And so ‘Kim Gary Restaurant’ it became.

— end of fictional story —

If the story was true, what do you think the next evolution would be?

I had no idea until I went back to Ipoh last month and saw this banner when I was driving:

I really thought that Kim Gary has finally opened a branch in Ipoh but something was wrong!

No! It’s SIM Gary!

I couldn’t believe it so I drove around looking for it, and I found the shop in a nearby area:

OMG… It seems that they even imitated the Chinese word design of Kim Gary… Copycats!

In Multimedia University (MMU) where I’m studying, there’s a control system for students’ attendances called - the ‘barring system’.

According to the system, any student who attended less than 75% of the lecture/tutorial sessions for any single subject, will be barred from taking the final exam paper for that particular subject!

Ask any MMU student, and he/she’ll probably tell you that the word ‘BAR’ is one of the scariest words to be uttered in campus.

Sounds scary? Ain’t it?

I did not think it was scary at all when I first came to this campus. I thought that this system is totally out of my concern because I wouldn’t be skipping classes without reasons anyway. So I happily ignored any warnings or advices by our seniors on what trouble I’d be in if I was barred.

But it turned out, I WAS DAMN WRONG!!!

I realized that, while getting 75% of university attendance was quite easy, getting 75% attendance for each single subject is not a small deal!

On the internet, we can monitor our attendances so far. Here’s a cropped-out image of my attendance as of today: (The upper table for lecture sessions, and the lower for tutorial sessions.)

• Don’t bother the second last one. There’s a mistake in the record because I attended another tutorial group… I’ll have it rectified soon. Hehe…

As you can see, I have a couple of subjects that are in serious danger of being barred (75% and 77.78%), while the rest are relatively safe. There are certain factors that cause those subject to be more oftenly skipped compared to the others, primarily the time, subject content, and lecturer factor. I’ll elaborate later.

And then there’s the ‘lecture/tutorial counted seperately’ policy, which means that even if I had a full attendance for a particular subject’s lectures, but less than 75% for its tutorials, the whole subject is doomed, as in my case of Engineering Mathematics II is close to be!

Due to this, some students are more concerned in scoring attendances in classes rather than learning! Which later leads to common practices like asking friends to sign for their attendance; and leaving the lecture hall (from the backdoor, pretending to go to the toilet), once the attendance sheet has passed them.

But before you start thinking bad about those students, let me do them justice by pointing out the possible factors of causing an absence.

There are 3 types of factors:

The acceptable type (the boring ones)

1. You got ill.
2. It’s raining too heavily.
3. It’s a Friday and you had to catch a bus back to your hometown.
4. You had a club/society activity and you were needed to be there.
5. The class clashed with an extra/replacement class.

The unacceptable type (the typical ones)

1. The lecturer sucks.
2. You woke up late that morning.
3. Day for presentation that you didn’t prepare.
4. Need to study for an exam which is on that day.
5. Too stressed out/tired that day.

The annoying type (but always happens!) =(

1. That particular class was at freakin’ 8 o’ clock in the morning!
2. You asked someone to sign for your attendance but he/she forgot.
3. The lecturer forgot to bring the attendance sheet, asked you to sign in the next class, which you then missed!
4. The lecturer never updates the attendance report on the internet, you thought your attendance was fine, and you skipped class.
5. Your friend signed for you but the lecturer was too clever and noticed.

So I think you now understand how difficult it is to have a full attendance, don’t you? =)

You might ask, why does the university care about your attendance in lectures if you could pass your exams anyway?

The answer is simple: If you were barred from taking the final exam for a subject, you’d certainly fail the subject, which would cause you to retake the subject in the future, and pay for that same subject 2 times to the university! =(