It has been a super uber terrific month this February!

Besides having had an extraordinary Chinese New Year, meeting many relatives, and receiving a huge fortune in Ang Paus, PLUS a wonderful make-up Valentine’s Day… I have another FOUR major accomplishments!

#1 – Winning a Toastmasters speech competition.

Having joined Toastmasters for quite some time, this is my very first time taking part in a speech competition!

The club level competition was held on the February 3rd, and by the end of it I was given the great honour to represent my university’s club in an area-level speech competition, which will be held on the 24th of March at the Toastmasters in SHELL IT International Sdn. Bhd., the IT arm of Shell in Malaysia.

The type of speech is called table-topics speech, which basically is an impromptu speech. You are given a topic on-the-spot while you are on the stage, and you start speaking right away.

Being a first-timer, I doubt I’d have any chance of winning in the area-level competition. With so many professionally-trained speakers coming from different Toastmasters clubs in the area, I guess I count myself lucky just to be able to attend and watch and learn!

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#2 – Receiving my very first Dean’s List Award!

Remember my very daring aim to get a four flat GPA in the last semester?

I managed to get it! Woohoo! 

Now OK, I know that there are countless four-flatters out there and this is SERIOUSLY not at all a big deal. And some super nerds/geeks – I mean hardworking good students – probably get it every semester!

So what? This is my first and I shall shamelessly blow the trumpets and sound the heralds! Hmph!

And due to the achievement, the Faculty has awarded me with…

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*cue sound of horns and holy light shining from the heavens*

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Behold! My very first own Dean’s List!

Kakaka… I’ve wanted one of those since my foundation/pre-U years!

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#3 – Being offered an industrial training position in AMD, Penang!

Finally, the labour of applying for internship is over! I received a call from AMD the week before Chinese New Year, went through a phone interview, and a week later was told that I have been accepted!

I was afraid that they would ask me to go to Penang for an interview but luckily they didn’t!

Well, Let’s see… I had my primary and secondary education in Ipoh, foundation studies in Malacca, undergrad studies in Selangor, and now industrial training in Penang! Yay! Where’s next? Sarawak?

Apart from the monthly allowance, AMD also gives us a ‘food allowance’ of RM2 per day, which sounds like nothing initially, but a friend of mine whose sister is working in AMD told me that the food in these giant companies are kinda heavily subsidized, so apparently you really could have a meal with just RM2-3.

Amazing huh?

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#4 – Getting a free HP Notebook!

… From the most unlikely giver – the Malaysian government!

Apparently this is a government initiated collaboration with TM to offer free HP notebooks to university students subscribing to a certain broadband plan. Freebies! Who’s gonna let it slip?

Received my notebook about a week ago, and it is great!

The specs of the notebook ain’t that great, as it is an HP mini. But who cares? It’s free!

My housemates Alvin and the rest are all applying for the plan. In due time, I think all of us will be having one! Thank you Najib!

Is this a good enough reason for us to vote for Barisan Nasional in the next election? Hmm…

OMG look ~ BUBBLE BOBBLE TEA!

That’s the business than my group of 15 friends and I are doing for the university subject ‘Cyberpreneurship’!

FYI, Cyberpreneurship is one of the most retarded subjects in the universe as it requires us to form groups of 15 ‘business partners’, think of a business, write up a business plan, do the business preparations, and finally run the business (with profit) … in six weeks!

That’s a running, profitable business in 42 days!

Donald Trump, Bill Gates, and a whole lot of entrepreneurs should totally kneel and learn from whoever succeeds in this quest!

AND THAT ‘WHOEVER’ IS – US!!

Yes! We planned and prepared everything and after just 3 days of running the business, we’ve managed to break-even, sold out all our stock, and even made a modest profit!

And not to mention we had a direct competitor (selling EXACTLY the same product) in front of us! Their stall was like… just THREE METERS in front of us!)

But somehow… There was always hoards of customers around our stall and the sales just kept going!

Maybe that’s because our competition had nothing more than an ordinary long table as their stall, or maybe it’s just because we have 11 *ahem* super leng luis sucking in customers from all directions.

Anyway, our three-day-business was filled with incredible experiences, such as two wire extensions bursting into grey smoke, a guy fainting in the room right behind our stall, and a badly-scalded hand (injured by hot water)!

A little behind-the-scenes:

Sam and Sina, our logistics department guys, cleaning our stall before the business:

Pushing it all the way to our business venue:

Some of us at our ingredients supplier’s shop:

Grace testing if our supplier’s products are up to standards:

Buying other ingredients in Carrefour:

Found the best one!

OMG just realized that Sam is showing his middle finger!  Bad Sam!

I wish we could have taken more photos but I guess everyone was just very busy with the business. It was really a great success and everyone was so cooperative!

And a huge thanks to our great Bubble Bobble customers too!

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Alright now give me my ‘A’ for this subject please!

Barely more than two weeks ago, I was still studying feverishly for my final exams.

In less than 48 hours, however, I will already be going back to class again!

What is this??

Semester (or what we call, ‘trimester’) breaks in Multimedia University are shorter than a certain erected organ of a guy who is suffering severe erectile dysfunction.

They are so short (they = our sem breaks) that we don’t even realize its existence!

After one hectic study week and two dizzying exam weeks that follow it, we laid down our lecture notes and text books, took a deep, relaxed sigh, had a few nights of much-needed, lengthy sleeps to cover the sleep debt accumulated over the past two weeks; went out for a few days of most-deserving after-exam celebrations, of course, everybody does that after they finished something big and stressful; went back to our hometowns for a few days to be with our family members who had missed us so much – just like what we do during some normal weekends…

… and then the day after tomorrow… we’re having class again!

So, semester break? Har? When? Where got?

Look, a ‘semester break’ of a pathetic length of fourteen days is not a semester break. It should be called an ‘exam papers marking period’.

I think the only reason we were having this ‘break’ of two weeks is because, of course, we cannot start our new semester without the results of our previous semester’s exams!

Come on, can’t ya’ll see it? If they could finish grading our exam papers in three days, then our ‘semester breaks’ would be three-days-long!

Why? Because we used to have 3-week semester breaks, but this semester, our dear University probably thought that we would rot and die in our homes waiting… longing… for the long, pointless 3-week holidays to pass, so they decided that they would do us a favor and shorten this semester break to two weeks!

Because three weeks is like – wow – soooooooo ‘long’, you know…

Whatever happened to the college life where students could go for full-time summer jobs, hitch-travelling around the country, take up seasonal singing, dancing or whatever competitions, or maybe just taking a month-long retreat to some relaxing beachside or countryside summerhouse?

No! We can’t do shit! We cannot even survive a part time job until the monthly salary is being issued!

Sigh… anyway, before the two weeks end, let’s try to recap what I did in the last two weeks of my exam papers marking period.

May 28 – May 30: Finished exams! Watched movies, had some fine dinners, spent time accompanying my dear. She was still having her LL.B. exams until June 2.

May 31 –June 1: Visited Sebastian, Jon and Heng who had just moved from SK to their ‘new’ house in PJ. The word ‘new’ tells you that the house is ‘new’ to them, but the house ITSELF – is by no means new.

Rented at RM1,000, although slightly more expensive than double-storeys in SK, this house is definitely a bargain, considering it being in PJ and within walking distance to the Kelana Jaya LRT station.

There were some really ‘classical’ things that we would never find in slightly newer houses, such as this really antique staircase light bulb socket:

… and this:

There was also an ‘extra’ bathroom on the first floor, in a small corner outside the kitchen and beside the backyard, that was so disgustingly dirty and smelly that they had decided to quarantine it for as long as they stay there!

They swore they would never open the door of the bathroom, use the two other bathrooms instead, and treat as if it had never existed.

They were very firm about that!

Also revisited Blitzone with Sebastian a couple of times to play DotA. It’s been so long, like more than two years, since I last set foot in that cyber cafe!

June 2 – June 5: Celebrated my dear’s and my ‘finish-exam’. Started the long works for the new James-Chow.com template scheduled to complete on June 21 – the day my domain turns three-year-old.

Also went to TM Tower for the first time to settle the billing dispute.

June 6 – June 8: Went back to Ipoh to visit my family.

For the first time I took the interstate KTM train service, which was fairly good, compared to the incredibly scary rides on KTM Komuter trains in KL which are infamous for their great reputation of ‘sardine-ing’ during rush hours – packing huge (and I mean MONSTROUSLY huge) numbers of people in a single train compartment, feet stepping on feet, body rubbing on body (yeah, it’s disgusting), and marinating them in an inescapable, juicy blend of sweat, body odour, bad breath, cheap imitation fragrance, armpit smell, and if you’re extremely unlucky, fart.

The interstate KTM service that I took, however, was better. At least there were seats and the number of passengers were limited to the number of seats.

Although there were a few people eating nasi lemak in the air-conditioned compartment when I first went in, making the trapped air stink heavily of rendang chicken, the train service was, however, generally good.

They even had people walking down the aisle with a trolley selling food and drinks every now and then, just like those flight attendants selling duty free items on international flights.

Only instead of wine and cigarettes, these trolleys were selling Jack n’ Jill potato chips, Milo, Nasi Lemak and other local foodstuffs.

It was also the very first time that I boarded a train from Ipoh!

It was the first time I used the train station in Ipoh, which was a really magnificent building that, unlike the ultra sophisticated and modern design of KL Sentral, had a really grand, ‘olden-days’ architecture, having built in the nineteen thirties by the British.

June 9 – June 13: Came back from Ipoh. Watched some movies and continued on the development of my new website design. Yesterday, I went to a FOREX Expo at Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre.

Also spent the night playing Mahjong with Jon and the rest. The last time I played Mahjong was in Kukup where I played the whole night, without sleep, and only won one round – lost all the rest!

Luckily yesterday, with Jon’s girlfriend Agnes as my ‘advisor’ I managed to breakeven by the end of the game – no net gain or loss!

Two days ago, my results came out! I passed everything! YAY!

Two days later, however, my new trimester will start. Gotta go class again… SIGH…