Chap Goh Meh

It's just passed 12am. Today's my last day at home, till year end.. Flights at night (ChapGohMeh night!) and ohmygoodnessme I've yet to pack my bag hehhe.. As a result of them sending me to the airport tomorrow, my parents'll be missing the church dinner. Might be surprising for some, but as a chinese church, being a Christian does not necessarily mean ignoring our chinese culture/heritage. Not mutually exclusive la, as some may presume..

Just sent off an email to some management personnel at MAS, about my very unpleasant experience there last Wed. Don't feel like blogging about what happened as it upsets me so. Really, distinctly had the feeling of being bullied by the nasty man there. Imagine, to the extent that someone at the office took pity on me, and generously provided some email addresses for me to provide some feedback after that. I'm 100% sure they would've been more pleasant if a parent/elder sibling was present. Sigh..sometimes independence ain't such a good thing. I'm expected to settle everything myself and at times like this, some dependence would've come in useful. Don't really expect any reply from MAS though, but at least I wrote in. I told my sis "如果我不写， 我真不是人!" She said he's probably a person bitter with the idea of others furthering their studies abroad. Might be true, but what people like them don't realise is that our parents work hard to put us thru uni, and money doesn't just fall from the sky, nor do we receive handouts or grants..

I keep telling myself - patience patience patience. And thats the reason why I left when I did. Certainly better than resorting to other behaviour..

PJ lately - BLAZING HOT. I feel as if I'm melting in the heat sometimes. Whats with the current heat wave??? The mid mornings and afternoons are unbearable, esp if you happen to be in a car which startlingly resembles a pressure cooker. I think Melb during the day will be as warm, but the nights are rather chilly, hovering around 15 degrees..

oh well, i gtg now, have to pack ;) i'm as last minute as usual..

6 hours.

Thats the grand total of time I spent early this morning at the Natl Registration Dept in New Town, PJ - all for exchanging one piece of plastic (IC la, for the so-tong*) for another (though I won't actually be getting it for a coupla more months).

6am plus : I dragged myself out of bed. The last thing I wanted to do was get up, considering my uber busy past few days.

6.20am: "Oh, this time its better" By this terse sentence, I refer to the queue. Snaking around all the way from the 1st floor of the building out to the stairs on the ground flr, this time it was only a lil' better than my previous (note- failed) visit here. I ended up becoming food for the armies of mosquitoes right outside the building. In 10 minutes, the line stretched to the gate and the lone guard was forced to divert the rest of the queue to the car park.

7am: Continue waiting. In the meantime, the two ladies queuing behind me have settled comfortably into their lil' picnic chairs. Really reminds me of scenes where prospective house buyers queued overnight to obtain their choice lots / concertgoers queuing for topchoice tickets. Turns out they're here for the third time. Aduh..

8am plus: Finally, the line starts to move. They're starting to give out the numbers, curiously beginning with 100. I got 268. Meaning there were some 168 ppl who were even earlier than me! In less than half an hour, they've given out the day's allocation of numbers. "Hah!" I sniggered at those people who couldn't obtain the oh-so-important pieces of paper. They've got to learn something from those rajin people up front. Get up at 4.30am, make sure you go bug the guard to let you in by 5am. I'm sure your chance will come..

9am: I'm off to breakfast. Government offices aren't so well known for their efficiency I'm sure you know i know everyone knows except the govt.

12.30pm plus: Finally. I've gotten through the whole process. I hope the lady remembered to put the "K" in my new IC. When I first applied for one as a kid, they totally forgot about it..

And that was a whole morning just to get that done. Sigh..

I wish - our Prime Minister pops by for an impromptu visit, preferably at 6.30am (1st visit) - to witness the fairly large crowd already waiting there, and at 11am (2nd visit) - to witness "what happened to the majority of employees there???" as this morning, a simple count showed that including 1 information counter , 3 counters for processing and 2 counters for taking the photos, the department only had a GRAND total of SIX counters functioning, with an amazing/incredulous/(add your own bombastic adjective) TWELVE other counters not manned. wah-liao-eh. only a third of counters up and running. Its no wonder they can only handle a mediocre amount of applications each day..

On other things.. I'll be leaving next week. Part of me wants to stay and the other part wants to go back. For me the grass isn't necessarily greener on the other side, imo KL and Melb are distinct, each with characteristics I love. Doesn't mean one is better than the other.

Tomorrow I shall have to waste more time fulfilling something so incredibly nonsensical. Instead of increasing my baggage allocation for my flight there and then (before they issued the ticket) in the PJ MAS office, I have to make my way to Bangunan MAS in Jln Sultan Ismail.

Early this month, if you happened to be in the PJ State area near the MAS office, you'd have witnessed a frustrated 22 year old waving an ECOE (that's Electronic Confirmation of Enrolment - evidence of my full time studies Down Under) and a VALID student ID card, futilely trying to get the personnel there to approve my student baggage allocation. I'm not even asking for student fares (though even if I'd gotten the RM150 discount, it doesn't matter much when the fare comes up to almost RM3000). Still, Mr Kelvin at the office noted - "you have to go to the KL office. No. You have to go to the KL office to get it done." I felt like asking him "What if I stayed in Sekinchan?" I'm sure he'd have gone - you have to go to the KL office to get it done.

So this simply means I've to take time off and go all the way down town to change something minor on my ticket. The mighty ECOE, recognised by the High Commission plus numerous other financial institutions - is totally ignored as irrelevant by MAS. My student ID which has a validity date is also plain ignored. I haven't even gone into what happened BEFORE they issued my ticket (Thats worth another rant entirely). Things like this gets on my nerves. I for one cannot take the "everyone also like that, so you also have to follow and not complain la.." that so so so many people spout. That kind of attitude is plain apathetic.

Nothing will ever change if people don't bother to change. A little change each day leads to changed lives, and to changed generations. But do people bother? Sadly - i think no.

Its been a hectic few days, and things'll only get busier. People to meet up with, shopping to be done, bags to pack (the packing is the quick part!), goodbyes to be uttered..By today, I'd already lost track of numerous calls I'd made, and dates to be kept. I've resorted to keeping a tattered piece of paper to help me keep track of all that. Stuffed in my pants pocket, its a little reminder that time is precious.

My friend (YKWYA)
thankyou for your time
thankyou for your regard
thankyou for your heart

Chinese New Year..

Last Sunday was the date for our (mamak buddies) chinese dinner at Greenview Restaurant in PJ. Been looking forward to that as SiowPing was finally back for the hols, and kinda sayang LiKai couldn't make it as he had to balik kampung. Almost everyone made it, if not for dinner, for our 2nd or 3rd rounds of yamcha..

Dinner - not as extravagant as last year, but very nice! HauWei's got a picture of our yee-sang this year on his blog. =) After dinner we adjourned to TGI Friday's at The Curve to spring a surprise (or was it shock??) for HauWei. His birthday is weeks away but we decided to have a pre-birthday celebration for him cos everyone was back in town..and what a stunt the Friday's people pulled on him! In addition to the usual Friday's tradition of making him give a short speech, they made him do a little jig before giving him the cake - the whole process was (un)fortunately recorded on video..

Afterwards we moved on to A&W for awhile..most of us were tired, well I certainly was.. Quite a fun night it was. A pity that as we get older, schedules start coming into consideration and times to gather like these become less.

Tomorrow's CNY and I'm still stuck in KL. The customary dayONE of CNY will be - a morning in church, a lazy afternoon (traditionally spent sketching thou idonnowhyialwaysendupdoingthis), and the night...? There isn't much CNY atmosphere around as all my relatives aren't in the peninsula and everyone else is busy with their families/relatives..but at least the roads should be less clogged with traffic. A scant consolation, but one nonetheless..

Oops

I just messed up my template. Now the entire sidebar's MIA (actually its hugging the bottom of the blog). Really I didn't do anything to it, 'cept changed my existing template to some "not-so-boring" colour. Aiseh.. must be the template-designer's fault (blame everyone else for everything!)

Its not that late now, only 1.40am, at least not late by Melbourne standards. I think my parents'd indeed freak out if I live according to my hours there. However, I'm still in KL therefore I'm still leading a "normal" life with pretty normal hours. The reason - mosquitoes.

?? I dislike mosquitoes. But they love me. They really do. Swarms of 'em love bugging me, especially when we're out on trips. I remember vividly a long evening in Pangkor where the mozzies seemed to be only attracted to me. Teri was going "Mosquitoes? What mosquitoes?" cos there were none buzzing around her. Aduh

Anyways, there are no mosquitoes in Melb. Maybe I haven't been there long enough, cos I haven't seen any, also no lizards there. The crazy Melb weather is probably a contributing factor.. As for flies, thats worth another rambling post (Swarms of 'em, abundant esp in summer, slow as tortoises, usually end up as stains on the stairs as their reactions are exceptionally slow, as they are trampled upon - unknowingly of course)

oops i got distracted again. The reason why my waking hours are normal these days are due to the irritating presence of mosquitoes - everywhere. I really can't imagine how most of my neighbours manage without mosquitoe netting. They leave the main door and windows widely opened. My house which widely resembles a rectangular box with nary an opening, seems to attract more than its fair share of mozzies. They're buzzing around incessantly, leaving bite marks here n there. How can I watch my soppy dramas or go online in peace?? THEY are the ones making me hibernate during the hols.

Sigh I feel so kesian for my dog. Yes we memang sayang him. But one night I was aghast to see him surrounded by bloated fat n full mosquitoes. In a coupla minutes I disposed of more than 20 of 'em with the back of an old slipper going "Die mosquitoe die!!" From that night on, you'd see members of my family spraying Ridsect all around the compound.. neighbours must think we're kooky..(oyah, I know all life has purpose but so far I don't know mosquitoes' purposes..do you?)

Another lil' thing in my characteristically common life. Visited PetalingStreet.org and was rewarded amply. I've discovered the whereabouts of a long lost friend - Tsewei! She's my primary school mate and its really been ages since I've had any news of her. Previously when we had our primary school reunion, she missed out. Its been a long time since we talked. Hmm donno whether she remembers me anot cos I left the school earlier.. Shall send a greeting soon..turns out she's a fellow blogger..