I am still jet-lagged. Unacceptable because classes start today!

Last night, I was so tired after dinner. They had an outdoor concert at the field, and it sounded like a lot of fun, and it is a well-known fact that I love concerts, but when my friend called at 8 PM asking me if I wanted to go, I was like, “Nahhh… I think I’m going to bed.”

So I tried going to bed at 8 PM. Never before in my life.

But then I could hear the concert through my windows, and people in my dorm were freaking loud, I don’t know why they have to talk so loudly all the time, it’s like their voices have no “soft” or “normal” mode, only “loud” and “louder”.

So I ended up putting in my earphones and going to bed listening to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack on repeat to drown out the noise. Just like I did the night before. (I swear, if I have to do this every night of the semester, I’m going to go crazy.)

But then I ended up not hearing all the calls on my phone. Missed two appointments with people.

And! I still haven’t unpack yet. I still dig through my suitcase for clothes, and my boxes are still all over the room.

I was up at 5:30 AM today. Tried to start unpacking a little.

This is going to be a bad week if I don’t get over my jet-lag soon!

Oh man it was a horrible 27-hour journey. Plus the 45 minutes to KLIA, the 2-hour wait to board the plane, and the 1-hour drive back to school, all in all the journey from my house in Selangor to my dorm room in Iowa took a whopping 31 hours.

Then I came on Facebook, searched for any guy (and it had to be a guy) who was online and hence must not be too busy, said hi and asked the seemingly innocent question of “So how was your summer?”

Found out he just got back on campus last night, drank a lot in the summer, and is hoping to spend a semester in South Africa. And then, just when the conversation was at a slight lag, I said I was sorry to bother him, but was he busy?

Straight away he went, “You need help with moving your boxes? From the storage room?”

Ahhh. Sometimes we can be incredibly transparent, even when we think we’re being smart and cunning. Now you know why it had to be a guy.

We ended up moving a shit ton of stuff, until by the end, we couldn’t even move the boxes for the last two meters to my room because we were TOO TIRED.

I must add that during all this, I still have not showered / brushed my teeth. After a 31-hour journey from Petaling Jaya.

Don’t worry la, I got rinse my mouth many times and all. I figured that I will sweat like a pig after moving my stuff, so there was no use in showering first.

Anyway.

Now all my boxes are in my room, I’ve showered / brushed my teeth / pooped (hahahah yes 32 hours didn’t poop leh!), and I had lunch at Subway with a friend.

Now I just have to unpack everything, and vacuum or sweep my room because it’s so dusty.

I have a single room this year! At a very, very crazy dorm.

If you want to party, this is your dorm. If you want to do weed, this is your dorm. If you want to play beer pong on a Wednesday night, this is SO your dorm.

Obviously not at all a conducive environment for studying. I didn’t choose this dorm, it was a long story involving me, my plan to study abroad next semester, and the guy with whom I’m swapping rooms with. Long story over, I ended up here.

Anyway!

I am dead tired, but my room is very dusty and I don’t know which of the boxes are my bed sheets in. I do not plan on unpacking tonight, so this means? Sleep over at my friend’s place! Yay!

Okay she’s here, bye bye!!

I dunno why I have the jitters! I’ve done this twice in the past two years already!

I’m not anxious about going to college, I’m actually quite excited. I’ve been reading these discussion boards in which the new students ask questions like “What should I pack?” and “Is XYZ a good dorm?” And they remind me of when I first left for college.

This year is going to be pretty interesting, so in a way I can’t wait to go back to school. But it’s the leaving home that makes me feel a little melancholic.

This probably has a lot to do with the fact that I’m annoyingly sentimental and constantly attach emotions to everything.

You know, it’s kind of interesting how, before going away for college, I didn’t really have a clear idea of what “Home” was to me. I understood it only to the extent of how the dictionary defined the word. “Home” was my place of residence, my house, where my family takes shelter.

Since I started college, “Home” has taken on another level of meaning for me.

The word itself evokes ridiculously strong feelings in me. Happiness, excitement, warmth, and when I’m away, a bit of melancholy and a whole lot of longing.

Home is not just this double-story house in Petaling Jaya, not just the other 4 people in the Lim family, not just the endearingly loud high school friends. Not just the unique yet comfortably familiar concoction of english mixed with malay mixed with mandarin mixed with cantonese.

Not the lemak-laden food either. Not the “lah”s that take the place of full-stops, not the very very pretty baju kebaya, not the Star-spangled Banner rip-off with the yellow crescent and stars.

When someone mentions “Home”, I don’t think of any one of the above in particular.

Instead, “Home” reminds me of me.

I think of Malaysia, of course, but more like myself when I was/am in Malaysia. The childhood memories, the teenage experiences, the interactions with fellow Malaysians that make up who I’ve become.

I think of me speaking in broken cantonese to my family and recounting tales from college. I think of my mom asking me what kind of alcohol I drink, and what time I shower on a week night. I think of the entire family in the car at night, and my dad asking where we would like to go for dinner, and all everyone can come up with is “Anywhere”. I think of the insults that my high school friends throw around but that never offends anybody, and of the comfort and camaraderie that we share. I think of the malls around PJ and what I could get for what kind of price. I think of the food stall I would order from at Ming Tien food court. I think of being able to drive!!!!! A luxury I do not enjoy in college

Haihh if my life in Malaysia was black, then my life at college is WHITE like you cannot imagine!

The two worlds are so different that it’s hard to adjust the first few days.

The first time I talked to my college friend on Skype (while I was in Malaysia), she went, “Why are you speaking so differently?”

I told her it’s my Malaysian accent. It’s how Malaysians (proudly!) talk. My friend was actually very excited to hear it, because I’ve been telling people that Malaysians have a special way of talking, but no one has heard me speak Manglish before.

And then an hour into the conversation, she was like, “Your Malaysian accent is gone!!”

Which was completely true. I lose my Malaysian sing-song way of talking once I get back to school. I cannot help it la, I don’t do it on purpose, it changes on its own. I think when I hear people around me speak regular english, my way of speaking naturally changes to suit them.

Hahah I remember one time, I was telling Zihui about a very close friend of mine called “Fatemeh”. She’s from Iran, so I guess it’s their version of the Malaysian “Fatimah”. So we were both talking about this girl, and I would go “Fatemeh bla bla bla”, pronouncing it FAHT-uh-mah, the gwailoh way, the way everyone in college says it. And then Zihui would go, “Oh really, Fatemeh bla bla bla”, and pronouncing it the typical Malaysian way… fat-ee-MAH. (“fat” very low tone, “ee” a little higher, then “MAH” super loud and high-toned.)

LOL stress on different syllable. I dunno if that made sense to you though, but it was funny when we were talking.

Anyway. The point of this post, at least when I first started writing this, was to say that I’m feeling like I’m going to college for the first time — anxious about leaving home.

But of course this shall pass once I get to campus and see people again.

Anyhow. I have to go poop now.

Speaking of which, you know what is the irrational fear that I have when it comes to long flights?

I fear I will suddenly have the urge to poop. I haaaaaaaate airplane toilets. I hate peeing in them, and I FEAR I will one day be forced to poop in them.

Anyhow have to go bye!

In this case, it’s transportation. From airport to campus.

My flight arrives at Des Moines airport at 8 A.M.

I can either:

1. Pay $50 and wait till 1 P.M. for the school shuttle (another 5-hour wait at the airport!! After a 27-hour journey across the globe!!!!!!!!)

or

2. Pay $85 for the cab to pick me up. RM270 for a 45-minute cab ride!!!!!!

* * * * *

I am not happy with either choice.

But if a person sees a crowd of birds perched on the branches of a tree, and he decides to choose that same tree to sit under while he sings Lady Gaga songs very loudly and very horribly, then if one bird represents the others to shit on him, you would say that he was damn well asking for it, right?

The worst thing that can happen to a blog owner has happened to me. I lost ALL the published posts and the saved drafts I’ve written in the last year.

But I am like the second kena shit person. I kind of asked for it =(

I wanted to change to a cheaper web-host, so I emailed the old host at 1:35 AM the night before my expiry date, telling them to terminate my account and not to charge me for another year.

Then I started backing up my site, downloading everything onto my computer.

Then they emailed, at around 1:45 AM, telling me, okay we shall close your account, hope you will choose our service again in the future.

They replied me 10 minutes after I sent out the email. I did not expect that to happen!! Not at 1 in the morning!! I was STILL in the middle of backing up my blog! If they close my account at that instant, I will lose the rest I haven’t backed up!

So then I panicked, hoping the download goes super fast and is over before they do anything to my account.

And in my haste, I forgot to do one very, very important thing. I forgot to backup the database of my blog.

End of story is, I lost everything I wrote since August 4, 2009.

That is why the post below is from 2009.

I don’t care about the published posts la, those are not important, but the unpublished ones that I keep as drafts are very very important one lor. For one thing, they are super a lot longer than the average published post, and are definitely not a what-I-did-today sort of post.

I am really upset about losing them haih.

But whatever lah. Even if life’s a bed of roses, there are still those darned thorns right?

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!

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.

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.

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.