Ahhhh, the National Museum.

Two years ago, when I was doing SAM, Esther, Paige, Catherine and I decided on a whim to go to KL after class (actually, no wait, I think we skipped LAN class lol), and somehow ended up in the National Museum.

It felt a little weird, that it was exactly the same as when I used to visit it so often as a kid. Ten years, and it hadn’t changed a bit.

The same blue tiles, same two staircases, even the same exhibitions. That wayang kulit show, the different cultural wedding chamber displays, the preserved crocodile, that mini rumah melayu model. Same, same, same, same.

Actually, not exactly the same lah. The difference was that it was more run-down loh. I remember someone pointing out water marks on the ceiling.

SIGH, so sad. And then someone also mentioned that instead of charging us only RM2, they could charge us a little higher, and use the money to update-update a bit lah.

All I wanna say now is –

Esther! Paige! Catherine! You guys must visit the museum again!

Seriously!

I went there again yesterday, and it is a huge, huge, huge, HUGE improvement from two years ago!

Now it actually looks REALLY GOOD.

Back then, when you walked up the stairs, it feels like you’re in a normal government building. You know what I mean lah. Like you’re walking in a basement stairs like that. Now, it’s proper, prim and proud. Big improvement.

They even changed pretty much all the exhibits. Now they have an interesting system. You walk through 4 different galleries, and it’s like a walk through time. Natural history of our land. Ancient Malay empires. Colonial Malaya. Independent Malaysia.

Plus the galleries look damn nice. I think there’s a good dose of irony in the fact that the natural history gallery has dimly lit downlights, is completely black from ceiling to floor, very nicely air-conditioned, and has expensive-looking glass casings all over. In other words, it looks CRAZILY sci-fi, like it could be the inside of a spaceship. But natural history gallery wor!

Zaman Paleolitik, Neolitik dan Gangsa Besi artifacts, all displayed in casings and chambers from Zaman Futuristik. Or Zaman Spes-syip.

Now there aren’t anymore wayang kulits and wedding chambers and various songkets on display. (Or maybe they moved them to a new building that we didn’t see.)

I’m so going to miss those man! I used to visit the museum so often as a kid, that those mannequins (museum dolls?) in their traditional clothing, precariously perched on their chairs in their respective chambers, have, in my mind, become the things that represent Muzium Negara.

Oh, but it’s still RM2 per person, so no worries there XD

It does look damn good now, but frankly I am not too happy with the gallery on Malaysian Independence. It gives a somewhat biased account of Malaysian history. It doesn’t cover events like the May 13 race riots, and that leaves a gaping hole there, like something’s missing. And plus they paint such a rosy picture of the Now-Malaysia, with all that three-races-united stuff, it feels ridiculously cheesy.

We were studying race in sociology class, and during a discussion I described how institutionalized racism is in Malaysia. My friends were surprised. Like, actually surprised.

Some how, it feels as though these Americans are a step ahead of us when it comes to social ideas and theories. While we patriotic Malaysians believe in the idea that all races are equal, that there is no one superior race, my sociology mates are a step ahead. They believe that “race” is NOT biological. It is, in fact, merely social and geographical.

Long story short, people who live around the same geographical location would have similar physical characteristics (Darwin’s theory, bla bla bla), and racial categories like “Indian” and “Chinese” were created to label groups of people who look similar. It’s not like we are born with “Indian genes” or “Chinese DNA”. In many cases, what a person’s race is, is defined by the laws of the country the person is in. Which means, a person can actually change races from one country to another leh!

In other words, race is not real lah.

When we began our very first classes, it felt as though all my classmates already had that understanding. But I’d never heard of it before, it was COMPLETELY new to me, and it was such a shock. It opened my eyes so much, I couldn’t see the world the same anymore. I tell you, sociology is amazing, it gives you ideas and makes you understand the world in a way that it seriously changes the way you live your life. If nothing else, it makes you see the world as it really is, and makes you damn semangated in wanting to change it.

Oh anyway, as I was saying. I told them about how racism is institutionalized by the government, and because in class we had already established that race is not real (when I use the word “race” in my papers, I had to put it in quotation marks somemore), suddenly you feel so embarrassed, like your country is doing something very stupid. Bad analogy: It’s like your old man going out into sea everyday to try to catch a mermaid, and you feel silly telling people because everyone knows mermaids are not real.

And as my group mates discussed further about racism in government laws, racism that happens when people pretend there is no racism (of which Malaysia is also guilty, I realized then), I could feel one thing – that my group mates were glad they aren’t Malaysians, that even though they have many criticisms about the US government, they are glad that racism is not as bad there as it is in Chooi Yen’s country.

I then felt the need to say good things about my country to make up for that SIGH.

*Okay back to present*

After our museum visit, we went to Central Market so that I could buy “Malaysian stuff” for my host parents and my college friends.

And the thing is this – even though the Malaysian government will always recognize race, even though there will always be laws and citizen rights that differ for different races, the Malaysian people, for the most part, do not see race as an issue.

There were such a good mix of races in Central Market, all selling exciting culturally-influenced trinkets, that for a moment there, when you see something that is essentially Malay or Indian or Chinese in nature, you just go, “WAH, so Malaysian!”

And I love that. In college, in the beginning I was the ONLY person who ISN’T from South Asia who could understand the Indians very well when they speak in their Indian accents, and who knew what briyani and naan are. I was so proud okay! Then eventually people got used to their accents (or they got used to speaking in less-accented English?), and I wasn’t special anymore =(

Anyway, I got a damn nice wayang kulit puppet for my host parents, and some other trinkets for my friends. Now I feel so much more lega, ’cause I was always worrying about what to buy back to college, and time was running out, I have to go back to college in two weeks.

Fwuah. The topic of this post is all over the place!

Okay I shall go now bye bye!

After many, MANY hours staring at CSS codes in TextWrangler, saving my documents every 5 minutes after every small change I make to them, I think I am allowed to say this –

The whole world should use Fire-freaking-Fox!

Seriously!

At the very least, people who are using IE 6 should update to IE 7 lah!

People who are using IE 7 should just go ahead and download the best browser in the world, Firefox.

People who are using IE 5, IE 4 and all that crap, WEI YOU SERIOUS OR NOT??

Did you know that, other than for obvious reasons like better security, a newer browser version means showing web pages the proper way!

I dunno why every time you read about a CSS code and you think it’s useful for your page layout, you always find a paragraph that goes “This does not work on Internet Explorer, you need to carry out a hack blablabla…”

I find it a pain in the ass to switch from Firefox to Safari on my Mac, then again to Internet Explorer on the desktop. Just to see if a certain code works.

How I know that there are people still using very old versions of browsers leh?

Because my visitor stats thingie tell me so.

(There’s also a single Opera user, which I find sort of adorable. I don’t know anyone else who browses the net with Opera LOL. Eh shout-out a bit in my chatbox, can ah?)

Okay yea, go update your browser okay?

(I’m not kidding, there are a lot of things that IE 6 would read incorrectly. And web designers don’t have to go, “Now, what can I do to make IE 6 show this correctly?”)

Better yet, go download Firefox okay?

If nothing else, at least the gazillion add-ons take you a huge leap closer to internet-browsing heaven.

HAIH.

Lately I’ve been ridiculously tempted to pay for web hosting service. I hate being so tempted to spend money unnecessarily.

Yahoo! GeoCities have sent us an email saying that they are terminating their free hosting service.

… after October 26, your GeoCities files will be deleted from our servers, and will not be recoverable.

What do I do with my old website now?

My nine-year-old baby leh!

I am damn sad lah, I have pages created in 2001, now they’re just going to delete them. Wanna download them onto my computer means losing the “2001″ date stamp, that one is what’s valuable wor! Shows that I made my first site when I was 12 wor!

Haih.

I miss having a website. A real internet home, you know?

Not just a blog, but a site with an index page and internal links leading to many odd corners and various crannies within my site. Like an actual 3-dimensional world, as opposed to the very flat, 1-dimensional blog that I have now.

There are SO many possibilities to an online home, you don’t have to be limited to your daily rants typed into that tiny text area under Blogger’s “Edit Posts” tab.

I think I kind of want that again.

SIGH I miss the times when there was no Plurk or Twitter and tagboards were still very obscure, and the only way for visitors to leave comments were through the guestbook.

HAIH I used to always remind people to sign my guestbook.

I am super tempted to create my little home again.

But at the cost of at least RM150/year? PLUS the cost of my own domain name?

I dunno man.

RM150 per year can be used to buy a lot of stuff.

Paid hosting or not?

HAIH SO TEMPTED.

So in the papers today, there was a report on the first locally transmitted A(H1N1) death. And they quoted an official telling us that we “must” go to a hospital if we exhibit flu-like symptoms and if tested positive for A(H1N1), we hafta take some sort of medicine, I dunno lost interest by then.

Like damn big thing right, must go hospital if you have the flu.

Well, a couple of days ago I had the flu. High fever, severe, throbbing headache, horribly scratchy, ridiculously sore throat. Standing made my head throb like crazy, so basically I slept the entire day because that was the only state in which I wasn’t crazy uncomfortable.

I went to a clinic, ’cause I didn’t know so big deal must go to a hospital la.

My mom was with me, and when she asked if I needed to test for The Flu, the doc asked if I had been in direct contact with anyone who’d had the A(H1N1) flu, or been quarantined, or if I’d visited a severely infected country.

I said no. He said then no need test loh.

But I’ve been to very public places for the past 3 days wor, I said.

It’s okay, I’ll give you medicine for your fever and sore throat, don’t worry, he said.

And so I took my meds, went home, slept and slept some more.

Now I’m a lot better la, just a bit of sore throat left. I miss my sexy sultry voice when I had a full-blown sore throat maaaan.

This post actually has no point.

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

Lalalalaaaaaaa.

I haven’t been blogging much, and now people have started visiting this garlicky site less and less.

Did you realize it has gotten so bad, that I only had one post in the month of June? One post!

This thing’s like a step-daughter – neglected;
like an attic – no one really goes there;
like the corners of a ceiling – all cob-webby and hardly cleaned;
like the seat belts in the backseat of a Malaysian car before the seat belt ruling was enforced – totally unused and forgotten about;
like the skin of a halved lime after having the lime juice squeezed into your laksa bowl – put aside and left there by its lonesome self.

My blogging mood/inspiration left me for a bit, I just need to wait for it to return.

But in its absence, I will leave you with a very uninspired, unoriginal, this-is-my-day-here-is-what-happened post!

* * * * *

Okay today my sister and I went to get our hair done.

The girl who was washing my hair saw my nose piercing and my sister’s tattoo, and went, “Wah, your mom must be very liberal! How come your high school let wan?”

Shot number 1! I am a rising college sophomore! How can I look like a high school kid when I graduated from high school THREE years ago!

So after that she began talking about silly high school rules, rules on things like earrings and socks and hairbands. And the compulsory attendance of school events like Sports Days.

Then she went, “You must be an athlete in high school hor. I see your legs so strong and ber-muscle. You run very fast right?”

WAH shot number 2!

I have thunder thighs and fat calves. I know they are not muscles because while they are big-sized, they are as flabby as the next person who eats and doesn’t bother to workout!

I shouldn’t have worn shorts. Even then, no need to comment on my big legs mahhhh. I mean, if you see a woman with a larger-than-average belly, do you just go and say, “Wah, so how many months already ah?” What if the woman just has an unusually bloated tummy?

Then she also kept commenting on what a thick head of hair I have, and made it sound like it’s a an unfortunate predicament to be in. Sigh, I went to have my hair fixed, and ended up having to pretend to laugh at the numerous, numerous unfunny jokes about my heavy hair.

I always get that when I go for haircuts. The “Wah so much hair ah!” ‘s and the “You really got a lot of hair hor?” ‘s. But frankly, I think having thick hair is much better than having thin hair loh. The obvious con of thick hair is having to put up with chatty hairdressers who tell you that you have thick hair. As if you don’t already know.

Anyway, I got my hair straightened again. And now it looks super flat.

I really hope it grows out of the flat stage before I go back to college loh. ‘Cause otherwise they’d realize it’s not natural, which is bad ’cause I have managed to dupe everyone there into thinking that I have naturally straight, silky thick hair. (And managed to get a few highly undeserved compliments along the way!) I have no intentions of letting everyone know they are as fake as the ridiculous “Indian thosai” that the college sometimes serve on international foods night.

I suspect this must be how celebrities feel when they refuse to admit to having had plastic surgery.

Alrighty. Next time you see me I will most likely look very odd with my flat hair. Just be nice and don’t comment on it, thank you.

So as I was lying there on that queen-sized bed, sandwiched between two friends (one of whom I’d been close to since Form-freaking-One), full from her birthday dinner, hearing their rhythmic breathing, knowing I really have to fall asleep soon because the next day is going to be a busy one, and being excited at the thought of spending the next night with my closest friends in a rented suite, I was content enough to not want anything else other than …

… for experiences to be tangible, just so I could bottle these moments up and save them for when I would be too far away to enjoy such pleasures.

It feels weird to think, this is it. This is the sort of experience I’d been pining for when I was back in Grinnell, when I’d been so caught up with college and dealing with the freezing weather that I’d forgotten how it felt like to be in my hot and humid home, hanging out with friends who’d practically grown up with me.

I’ve had a blast since coming back so far. I still feel a bit pathetic la, almost all of my friends are interning somewhere (one person is working in an African country! How cool is that?), but I’m secretly glad I’m not working at all. Because then all those times that I’ve gone out with my sister, hung out with friends and gone on holiday with my family, those wouldn’t have taken place, kan?

Eeeeeeerrrrhh I just want to savor these moments, because I know that when I’m back in crazy-weather Grinnell, up at 3 a.m. working on a paper, missing meals and generally being SUPER anxious about not being able to finish my work in time, I’d be craving for a bit of comfort from home. It doesn’t help that there’s no place to get Milo, and the nearest place from where I can get my fix of Indomie/Maggi mee is 45 minutes away, plus they sell it at 3 times the Malaysian price somemore =(

Speaking of instant noodles, I have a story to share! One time, an American friend asked me over to her place (she stays in a language house with a fully-equipped kitchen) to have ramen. I was like, damn, American can cook ramen, pretty cool loh! So I went, and when I got into the kitchen I found that she was cooking….. instant noodles. I was a bit disappointed lah. Apparently in America, “ramen” is synonymous with “instant noodles”. I don’t even know how that came about. The ironic thing is, she wasn’t even cooking japanese instant noodles yeah.

Anyway while I waited for her to cook her noodles (on stove, which at least is more canggih than in microwave oven, I give her that much LOL), I figured I’d run back to my room and get a packet of my Indomie to share. And guess what? She said it’s the best instant noodles she’s ever tasted.

Another time, I was watching Grey’s Anatomy on my laptop when halfway through I noticed this really strong, but really familiar smell in the room. It smelled really good, really… Malaysian. I was like, Oh my gosh I KNOW this smell! I turned to my roommate, who was there, on her bed, eating noodles.

Then it hit me, I was like, “Is that Indomie???” She said yes, she said she bought it near her home in San Fransisco, and she said it was the best instant noodles evarrrrr. I was going, “YEAH yeah yeahhh!! It is the best!”

Oh my gosh I was so happy lah that time! LOL I was just really sensitive to anything that reminded me of home, which happens when nothing really reminds you of home.

Now I understand why when I was little that time, eating Maggi or Indomie gave me as much joy as a French cuisine connoisseur would get from eating, I dunno, top quality foie gras in truffle sauce, or whatever weird expensive food like that.

‘Cause Indomie makes the best instant noodles in the entire world. And you know that claim is valid when someone who lives at the opposite side of the earth, and eats very different foods from you, agrees whole-heartedly.

By the way!

Let me teach you a way of cooking Indomie/Maggi that I discovered while in college! I think most people usually either cook in a pot on the stove, or put it in a bowl and chuck it in the microwave oven, right? But unless you cook Maggi very VERY often (don’t la, later hair fall off how) but unless you cook it really often, getting the PERFECT texture of noodles, perfectly al dante noodles is pretty much a fluke loh. How to know exactly when to take off from the stove woh? Always leave it to chance loh.

But I have found the perfect way!

All you do is put the noodles in a bowl, pour in hot water, and cover the bowl to keep the steam/heat in. Leave for around 5 minutes (I think shorter maybe, I don’t remember la), and when you drain off the water you get super perfect noodles! Springy, nicely cooked, not at all limp (“limp”? Dunno).

The best thing is you can always take off the cover and check on it to see if it’s reached the perfect “doneness”, which you couldn’t really do properly when it’s on the stove, in boiling, bubbly water.

I only discovered this because the microwave oven in my room is damn cacat, and I couldn’t be bothered to go to the kitchen.

But still. Damn wonderful, kan?

* * * * *

Aaaaanyway, speaking of the western world (when I was talking about Americans loving Indomie, before I gave you my Indomie wonder-cooking-instructions that I know will not be very appreciated wan la anyway)…

So speaking of Americans…

You guys need to watch this video!

It is so damn funny! An angmoh who lives in Singapore and speaks Singlish.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYsz85Z9Ho4&hl=en&fs=1&]

Without a doubt one of the most incongruous things I have ever seen so far. Hearing really Ah-pek English (a.k.a Singlish/Manglish) coming out of a Caucasian’s mouth, damn weird loh. Then 90 minutes into the video the dude starts speaking in American English and I’m like, WAH suddenly the guy seems so much more attractive liao!

LOL kidding kidding.

Manglish still the best lah seriously. It just feels like Home.

It’s probably like, the only English “dialect” (or whatever it’s supposed to be called lah) in the world that you can speak and no one, NO ONE, can judge your English proficiency. ‘Cause when it comes to Manglish, the more broken and tak “flow” your sentences, the more advanced/canggih your Manglish is.

But then sometimes it really does confuse you when you’re speaking with a non-Malaysian. Like in college, before I got my own cell phone, if my friends wanted to find me they had to either call my room phone and hope I was in my room, or make a guess and go to where they think I would most likely be.

One time, I was at the Grill when I was told that
another friend was in my room “just now”, waiting for me (my room is never locked). So I was like, okay whatever.

I didn’t return to my room until much much later, and it turned out that I was supposed to actually go back to my room to meet her waaaay earlier, because for non-Malaysians, “just now” does NOT mean “moments ago” like it does in Manglish, rather it actually is, quite literally, just NOW.

As in right now.

As in, she is in your room right now, go meet with her right now! I thought they meant she was there earlier in the day.

Okay my Malaysian ladies and gentlemen, now you know that the meaning that we have assigned to the phrase “just now”, remains exactly that – a meaning we sendiri suka-suka assign to it. The rest of the world does not agree with us!

* * * * *

Wah today like, share a lot of cultural misunderstandings.

Okay lah signing off bye!

After 8 years of friendship, after many, MANY telephone calls, mall trips, overnight trips, conversations on MSN, class periods ponteng-ed to hang out, hours spent eating together and a single sleepover (for me la at least, my first sleepover!), I have come to this realization.

Realization:
We have gotten to this stage, where the composition of every single conversation we have can be broken down to this:
40% blatant insults
40% thinly-veiled insults / backhanded insults
10% compliments with slight peppering of insults to keep you grounded
7% daily, mundane things like, “Eh Friday wanna go out?”
3% real, proper conversations about life, love and death

How did it get to this?

Okay I exaggerated a bit la (blatant insults I give too little percentage HAHA), but seriously, when I reflect on our recent conversations and online chat histories, I realize that in the process of organizing outings, discussing dreams and futures and relating problems, we have an insuppressable need/longing/DESIRE to throw in insults by the fistful.

Good or bad thing? I dunno leh.

I have friends who always, always tell me how stingy I am by bringing up that SINGLE episode that happened 5 years ago in which all that happened was I couldn’t decide which RM1 packet drink to buy.

They tell me how when we first met (8 years ago!!) they hated me, ’cause I have a very hak yan zhang face. One of them somemore said that whenever I sat behind her during assemblies, she see my face and became very bad mood and got no mood to talk. What is that!

See hor, even though these things happened almost a billion years ago, they selalu bring it up wan loh. PROOF: I saw them just two days ago. They told BOTH stories again.

Every time I say I duwan eat so expensive, they will tell the packet drink story.

LOL I also have a friend who likes to remind me how useless I was in standard 6. In cards and conversations. Especially in those paper things we let each other write before high school graduation, 3 quarters of what she wrote is focused on how pathetic I was waaay back in Standard 6!

But you know what? Who needs enemies when you have friends like these?

Can you believe it’s been 8 years?

We were looking through Fui’s photo albums of past times when it hit me, gawd it’s been a long time.

Eight years is not really that long, but when you look at those old photos that mercilessly showed our bad hair and horrible fashion sense in all their glory, you feel like it’s a million years ago.

Big, pouffy mushroom/umbrella/tomato hair. Messy, ungroomed eyebrows. Shiny braces (them la, not me). Spectacles (also them la LOL). Unflattering T-shirts. The shared, immature desire to rebel and not be part of the conformed society (as documented by our mogok-styled refusal to be school prefects and open disdain for teachers like Pn. Ng LOL).

Now, straightened hair, contact lenses, removed braces, groomed brows and new clothes later, all we want is to fit in with society and responsibly carry out our roles in the work force.

In a few months, every single one of us will be found at very, very different geographic coordinates.

We have certainly come a long way from that little 1Z2 classroom.

And even though people say the friends you meet in college are the friends you’ll have for life, I know it is unlikely that I’ll ever find a bunch of people to whom I can so comfortably talk, and most importantly, at whom I can happily hurl insults and from whom I can sportingly receive insults.

Mostly because they are Master Insulters, very few people can contest them. Hor?

I told a friend of mine that my (ex-) room had become seriously messy. And she went, “Messy? You should see my room!”

No one believes you when you say your room is messy, ’cause everyone sees their own room as the messiest.

During the last month of college I’d become so swamped with work that I’d only spend 6 hours in my room per 24-hours – 5 for sleeping, 1 for showering. (Often also, 1 for showering and zero for sleeping.)

Obviously I couldn’t be bothered with things like cleaning lor hor.

Wasn’t until finals were over and I had to clear out my room for the summer that I realized, OMGwtf my room has become a total pig sty!

Just before I started cleaning up.

I didn’t throw in anything as photo props loh, I actually lived in that condition for at least a month.

The only “tidying up” of that mess that I do before going to bed, is move my laptop to the floor.

You don’t even see my dresser in this photo, which I must say is the single most messy thing on my side of the room. I had such a headache clearing all that stuff.

Oh did you see? Humongous Jalur Gemilang on my wall! Something I got while at Pyramid with Fui and ZiHui, mere hours before my flight to the US.

Laundry basket on the floor, full of clean laundry that I’d been “too busy” to fold and put away. (In actuality, whatever free time I have is spent catching up on sleep or surfing the net for a bit.)

On the floor, books from my french, philosophy and sociology classes. Heels from Spring Waltz I couldn’t be arsed to put away. Empty plastic drinking bottles. Unnecessarily huge cardboard box in which stuff I bought off eBay was shipped, stuff that took up only half of box space whattheheck.

At the foot of my bed and over the chair, dirty clothes I’d worn but have no place to put because the laundry basket is still full of clean laundry.

On the study desk, brown paper bags from Out-takes, the meal-to-go option for people who are too wrapped up in work to have proper lunch at the dining hall, to busy to care that they are paying freaking $11 (~RM40) for a sandwich, a drink, a bag of chips, an apple, two cookies and a very pathetically small, ridiculously disgusting packet of baby carrots.

I don’t even eat the apple, cookies and carrots (well duh, I am not crazy), and I often give the chips to people, so basically I have been paying RM40 for a sandwich and a bottle of water (occasionally, 2% milk). Too many times, I tell ya, too many times.

Also, notice the fairy lights! Damn cool, kan? My roommate bought those for me when she went back to California. She had the same thing on her side of the room, and when you turn off the ceiling light and plug both our fairy lights in, our room looked crazy cool! So bright you could see everything in the room very clearly.

Ignore the shitty choice of bed spread color. Wal-mart was running out of the ones with sizes that we needed, since every single freshman was there buying the same thing, so it was either sleep a week without sheets and wait till they replenish, or stop being so high-maintenance and just go with whatever shitty color they have.

Funny thing is though, when I went there they had only two colors left of this size (mine is the shittier one of the two). This other girl was also there at the aisle, and both of us were were eyeing the less-shitty color and “fighting” for it in our very, very subtle way. But then she had her mom with her (grrr), so victory went to her. I was unhappy lah of course, and immediately formed a terrible, terrible impression of her. Halfway through the semester however, she ended up being one of my closest friends, and that framed photo on top of my desk shelf is one of her and me under a beautiful autumn tree that she gave me for my birthday.

Weird how things play themselves out like that. I told her about our Wal-mart bed spread battle and she couldn’t stop laughing.

And do you see the rug? I am confident it’s the dirtiest rug on my floor, if not my entire dorm.

I tried vacuuming it once, but the vacuum cleaner sucked (LOL, it sucks, get it?), so I gave up and never bothered cleaning it ever again. It was the home of gazillion times billion sand particles, dust, fallen hair and goodness-knows-what that gets transferred from the Big Outside to our Filthy Rug by means of shoe-sole transportation.

Random info:
I spent the whole of Friday night cleaning my room, and did 5 loads of laundry. Can you freaking believe that? Put in washer, wait 25 minutes, take out laundry, put in dryer, wait 45 minutes, take laundry to room, fold. Took me the entire night, because every other person on campus was also cleaning their rooms and doing laundry so there wasn’t enough available machines to do all 5 loads simultaneously. Basically spent the entire night walking to and from the laundry room.

Then hor, I packed my clothes that I won’t be bringing home into a large trunk. Went to say goodbye to friends who were leaving, and when I came back, guess what happened?

I found my clothes covered in dirt and dust and little pieces of grass! My roommate had so intelligently decided to give the rug a long-overdue fling (or whatever is the correct verb), and right in the direction of my open trunk! Whatthehell when I go back I have to wash those clothes again!

ZiHui, see DumbKing on the left bottom corner? I hang it on my bed wan loh! And that bear with grossly oversized tummy is also buried somewhere in my bed. I have so many random things on my bed, but since I always crawl into bed at 3 AM, I couldn’t be arsed about clearing them and go to sleep surrounded by books and stray clothes and sweaters and various electronic chargers and stationary.

Anyway.

People who come into my room often comment on two things.

One, how much the Malaysian flag looks like the American flag.

Two, how much the Malaysian high school uniform (seen from my Wall of Many Photos) looks like the outfit worn by Belle from Beauty and the Beast.

Can you believe I still have this photo?

No kidding.

Something I never, ever realized until I heard it from “completely objective third party observer(s) with absolutely no personal interest in the matter” how much it reminded them of Belle. (Fav line from She’s the Man!)

I dunno if that’s a cool thing or not, but I figure it’s pretty awesome to be able to say you resemble Belle 5 days a week! (Made much more awesome by the fact that “belle” means beautiful in french!)

* * * * *

This post so syok-sendiri hor, write so much about my room as though it is so damn interesting to anyone other than myself.

But don’t judge me hor, don’t criticize me for being so messy to the point of being such an inconsiderate roommate. Trust me when I say my roommate is quite possibly THE messiest person I have ever seen and will ever see.

Worn underwear thrown all over around her bed (not into a Dirty Laundry pile okay, all over the floor!), unfinished food packets on dresser and desk, boxes of Stu
ff everywhere, grass bits on her bed (shocking!!!), basically just all-round first-rate Messy Person. Somemore that is not even during busy weeks okay, it had been like that since first week of college.

Most shocking – the weekend before finals, I came back to my room to find a drunk, blabbering guy in boxers lying on my roommate’s bed. My roommate apologized, said the dude is too drunk to go to his room, is it okay if he stayed the night here? I said yeah, no problem, he can sleep here. I dunno why she bothered asking for my permission, since this dude had slept in our room a billion times, before another guy came along and figuratively kicked him out of my roommate’s bed to make room for himself.

But but! The drunk dude had puked on the floor, and all my roommate did to clean the puke was wipe it up a bit, and cover the spot with a towel. Damn disgusting I tell you, the electric fan had to be turned on the next day because the room smelled of puke! Plus that is just the spot she bothered to (had enough towels to?) cover up, it would not surprise me to find out there were more areas of the floor the dude had decided to puke on.

I don’t think she ever did clean it up properly, so for the whole week (thankfully last week of college!) I walked around in socks and flip-flops because I am a Thinking Being who figured it is the best and only protection against accidentally touching any puke-infected spot.

* * * * *

I dunno what I was thinking when I wrote the last post. I guess I was still a bit disoriented from jetlag and reverse cultural shock (LOL excuses), and super frustrated about Malaysians’ ignorant comments on others’ sexual preferences, so forgive me if I sounded like such an ass.

I still wish we were more educated in things like gender and sexuality, but what I said was uncalled for.

Dui bu qi!

* * * * *

Okay this thing is getting too long, byebye!

Ayam bekkkkkk!

Yahhh I’m so back.

For months I’d been so excited at the prospect of going home, but when finals ended and the time came for me to clear my room and pack my stuff to go home, it was oddly bittersweet.

The cab was scheduled to come pick me up to go to the airport at 3 A.M., so two of my friends who hadn’t left Grinnell yet came over to my room and helped me with my last bit of packing and stayed with me till the cab arrived.

They were doing the whole countdown thing (“Two more hours!” “Another 30 minutes!”), and frankly my thoughts then were, “Oh no! I want to stay now!”
I couldn’t imagine leaving my Grinnellian life.

It’s probably because of that thing I learned in psychology class, that when a big event comes closer you get this weird aversion-ish feeling towards it or something. (Frankly I do not remember much from psych class.)

But I have a much better explanation for it.

Thing is, going to college in a small, rural town where the nearest city is an hour away, where there are absolutely NO other real Malaysian, is very very very different from studying in, say, Melbourne or London where you have enough Malaysians to have a Malaysian gathering. It’s even different from studying in a US college where there are at least a few people whose home is the same place you call home.

For one thing, Grinnell is completely, absolutely detached from anything and everything that I associate Malaysia with.

There are no Malaysians in my college to bridge the mental gap between Grinnell and Malaysia, no Malaysian restaurants or enough people who know about Malaysia to be that connection between small, cornfield-surrounded Grinnell and that tiny country in the south-east region of Asia.

Nothing in Grinnell reminds me of Malaysia, and nothing in Malaysia reminds me of Grinnell.

So going from one place to another is like turning my life 180 degrees around (somemore time difference also 13 hours okay!).

Plus the facts that Grinnell is so rural, and so small, and that we hardly leave the campus much since everything we ever need is on campus, I feel like I’ve been living in a little Grinnell bubble all this while.

And the thing is, Grinnell is not like the world. Grinnell is not even a good representation of America, which is something both my sociology and philosophy professors cared to remind us while discussing the typical American society.

The one thing I absolutely love love LOVE about Grinnell is that it is absolutely, without a shadow of doubt the MOST accepting 120-acres of land I’ve ever set foot on.

It is where you can be who you are, and for the most part, won’t be judged negatively or discriminated against for it.

It’s not yet perfect, and occasionally you get homophobic comments and racial slurs, but on the very rare occasion that it happens, the entire campus comes together in support of the community discriminated against.

Over there, there are drag shows and cross-dressing parties, there are little rainbow flags in the mail room in support of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community.

In Malaysia, the common line for expressing how lame something is is “That’s so gay!”, homosexuality is perceived as a mental disease for which you need counseling to be cured of, and I’ve seen how on one occasion someone described a girl as not-pretty and looking like a “tranny”.

Forget likening someone to a transsexual to convey her “not-pretty”-ness, the fact that you’re making such judgments shows a lot about what sort of person you are.

These very same comments, made on the Grinnell campus, would’ve caused an uproar.

But in Malaysia, it is common and completely acceptable it seems.

I love how chill it is in Grinnell. There are people who dress up, but there are many lazy days when people come to class in sweats and slippers. There are athletic, super-fit people, and there are chubby people. But no one makes comments on how fat someone else is, there are no highly annoying girls who tell people how fat they are when they are not actually fat. In one year of being in Grinnell, I’ve come across less appearance-based comments than I’ve experienced in a single month in Malaysia.

Somehow, being in Grinnell makes me super comfortable about myself. Here, I am a lot more self-conscious, just because looks play a big part in how a person is defined by others.
I never realized it until I left here and experienced something totally different from the Malaysian way.

Going to a liberal arts college had been the best decision in my life that I’ve ever made for myself. So even though no one outside the US knows about LACs (other than people going to LACs), even though I could tell a Malaysian employer that I graduated from Grinnell and for all they know it could be a chapalang community college, even though I will never inspire the same respect and awe as someone who says he’s studying in, say, University of Melbourne… I will never, never trade my Grinnell experience for anything in the world.

For nine months I hadn’t spoken to a real Malaysian face-to-face, hadn’t come across anything even remotely Malaysian.

It feels a little weird to drop that life to come back to this.

Not to mention the fact that I’d been ridiculously busy the past few months, and now suddenly I have absolutely nothing to do.

I cannot even imagine how coming home after graduation would feel like.

But but but. Malaysia is home, always will be.

It feels so good to be able to drive again!

Feels good to not have to wear layer after layer just to go out! (But then it feels like this Malaysian heat is slowly cooking me up.)

Feels good to be with people who are more or less stuck with me forever, for better or for worse.

Feels unbelievably good to be in my own bed, in my own room, sans roommate.

Feels good to just finally, finally be Home!