Another incident

It was an afternoon when my housemate wondered what's happening to our newly bought washing machine. The water clogged inside the wash tub instead of draining out. The clothes were still soaked after procedures of washing, rinsing and spinning. He was soon able to check out something bizarre - which you won't expect to happen.

There was a blockage in the end of the drain hose.

Imagine how you would feel knowing someone had the intention to spoil your washing machine. They are peels, egg shells and candy wrappers which are classified as rubbish.

This is the compartment which has been occupied as the "secret base", or the workshop of some resident kids aged ranging from 8 to 12 years old. They are creative to modify their bikes to a scooter-like vehicle and have fun at the inclined road in front of my college. That's why I have to tolerate the hammer tapping sounds almost everyday. You might be wondering why they are residents in my college, well, it will be a long story which I'm not going to share at this instant.

They did it mostly because of the intruding discharged water. We had informed them about that, and they have spacious compartment regardless of that corner we need, so I have no idea about why it led to the revengeful and ignorant act.

So they thought we would never notice the blockage? Hah, they are kids.

For KTTians : Pak Cik Parang definitely didn't tell them about that.

My beloved father

This post is dedicated to my father, and everyone who loves his or her mighty father.

It has almost been four months staying far apart from my hometown. I could only return there occasionally to meet my family.

I didn't know I would actually miss them so much - my siblings whom I always exchanged hot words with, my parents whom I still owe them a big hug and "I Love You!", my grandmother whom I put aside her conservative advice, or even took it as jokes. Not to forget my grandfather who had passed away on April Fool eight years ago, whom I had missed the golden time to fulfill filial piety.

I thought it wasn't a big deal to be here since I would have gotten used of the hectic lifestyle here but thing doesn't appear to be easy, especially when it was the day my father stepped into a new age, without his eldest son beside him during the celebration.

As you can see that's how powerful time has been leaving irreversible traces between the 15-year-interval.

Here is a short description about my father:

My father, Mr. Lui had been working as a teacher for decades before playing an significant role as the well honoured headmaster of one of the most prestigious local primary school. He had endured and at the same time surmounted the intense hardship all along the way. Having said that he is experienced in the educational career, he always had a lot of interesting, disheartening, and the stories which could tug at my heart strings. For instance, he shared the incident of how he persevered to travel more than two hours per day to a school located in rural area when he was a fresh teacher, and how his first salary was scammed by a senior teacher. I'm sure if he is to publish his memoirs, a great number of readers will be attracted, however he doesn't seem interested. He never failed to be the responsible head of household. He indoctrinated the importance to have a close-knit family, and to bear in mind that nothing stands more valuable than family. I have inherited almost all of his good traits - drawing, Chinese calligraphy, the rational way to think, and to be noble. It will always be a great time whenever he is beside us.

Here comes some photos of the celebration.

For those who can read Chinese, do kindly click on it to view the reflection by my father.

So, I'm here to wish my father a happy birthday, stay happy and healthy!

I love you papa! :)

Standing on the cross road

When I was in standard one of primary school, my teacher gave us a task – to figure out what possible jobs we would like to strive for, and fill in a form by arranging them in sequence according to our preference. Besides writing essay titled “My Ambition”, it has always been a trend among the teachers conducting such a survey to their students, for the reasons you know why. As expected, doctor topped the list as every one of us was looking for the most prestigious title. Yes, we were proud of ourselves to have our own preliminary ambition.

During secondary study, we had to face the fact that finding a job in response merely to our own interest would not eventually pay off. Who don’t wish to get himself into something that he really likes? But there are just too much factors we hadn’t considered. I would like to point out the main considerations taken care while people are looking for a job again, other than just the affinity towards the job – social status and respect, monetary stability, job satisfaction, or more simply to be simple and secure and so on.

For instance, my college has always been nurturing the doctor-to-be and dentist-to-be. I did ask the scholars around me concerning the reason they decide their career prospect to work as a dentist in their future. So far the answers I got are what you could always have expected. I’m able to bring it to a small conclusion, as it is two-fold. They prefer to traverse into a health care related field but they don’t seem to have considerable interest in this. A simple question will do – do you like watching into people’s mouth? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to expect an answer “yes”, I’m just wondering about what people tend to grow an interest in. Honestly I haven’t come across with anyone who can give me the powerful evidence that there would be no other job more suitable for him than a dentist. They have no idea about what else they should be. In fact, too many choices are available, which would trap them in the mist of puzzlement.

I used to be in the same circumstance. But we did have adequate time to make the right choice, didn’t we?

Consequence of exam-orientated culture.

I'm currently tackling Cambridge International A-Level program. So far the syllabus of text books doesn't really pose much trouble to me but I had soon found out what I have to surmount - laboratory sessions. I'm utterly clueless in handling the apparatus in appropriate way. I'm puzzled to select the suitable one before proceeding to the next procedure if the list of apparatus required isn't provided. Well, I attribute it as a part of consequence of practising an exam-orientated culture in my previous school life.

Honestly I've forgotten how many experiments I had conducted during my high-school period, but I can tell you experiment wasn't something significant to us at that time, just because there wouldn't be any practical test in SPM. We could memorise everything written in black and white in order to tackle the question concerning experiment planning, without having the urge to grasp more. Every class of my secondary school comprised of more than 45 students which in turns results in an insufficient capacity of science laboratory. We had been going through almost every experiment by our imagination, or sometime we were lucky enough to observe the demonstration by our teachers in front of us only.

I have to accept the fact that regurgitating the particular reference books would in turn ensure us to score well in papers but it seemingly doesn't benefit us in the same way whenever it is the time to put it into practice. To traverse into medical field, we should have acquired the proficiency in this part. So I come to here, my new college, equipped with merely the scarce experience in this part, hoping that I would be able to polish my practical skill other than struggling for an improvement in linguistic skill during the short period I'm going to stay here :)

Buddhism, my religion.

Having mixed with peers who are mostly comprised of Buddhist along the period I was raised in my hometown, I was surprised by the fact that majority of the Chinese in my college, especially those eastern friends embrace Christian values. Well, I'm a Buddhist, but not the devoted one. Religion is something profoundly abstract to me. I didn't visit temple as regularly as Muslim to mosque, or Christian to church. The incident that motivated me to touch something religious at this time is that there is now a freshly formed association namely Buddhist Society in my college. Although I don't own a great depth of knowledge regarding Buddhism, it doesn't simply mean I'm not interested to explore more about it.

For now I advocate the saying “多个香炉多个鬼，没有香炉没有鬼” which means "to have more censers will result in attracting more ghosts" in direct translation. (Sorry for the not-very-precise-translation as it could be done better) I would like to stress on how sceptic I'm towards some aspects of the religion despite of the actual underlying message of the proverb. Normally Buddhist worships Buddha statues to attain spiritual comfort, hoping he will get rid of disasters or ailments. Some of the believers would make wishes to bring themselves about wealth, and this is the group of people that is prone to superstition.

I'm now going to review several religious acts here, whether it is significant or not. Is burning joss sticks, paper money and incense significant? In my humble opinion it creates pollution rather than achieving what the believers intended. It consumes multitude amount of one of the most essential elements on our planet - paper and it would end up turning into greenhouse gases as well as other harmful byproducts. I'm not going to comment more about the disadvantage of "open burning", yet I often found it ridiculous to see the people burning some high-tech oblations to their ancestors. If they are to burn a paper handphone, I would recommend them to burn an extra Digi simcard too, since it provides the widest coverage :)

I'm not sure if ancestor worship is related to Buddhism since religion would have undergone diverse variation before spreading to every corner of the world. Buddhism I've been following may not share the same aspects with that from the place it originates. It could only come into contact with me when it was festive season such as Wesak Day or it came the traditional funeral. So I might have digressed in some points I've raised here to the extent where it sounds ignorant for me to be a Buddhist.

*This post did occupy a long time of mine, thanks for reading it and it is always welcoming for you to share your two cents about this :)

The day I had forgotten

"Hi Jin Xiang, are you free now?" she phoned me, "Can I have a chat with you?"

"Hi, sure, no problem." I was rather shocked about what brought her to make this sudden call.

"Do you know what day is today?" she asked, smiling. I knew that from her intonation.

"Err..." What a typical question, but it took me about ten seconds before I could only barely break the silence.

"Oh no! Please don't tell me you have forgotten it!" she uttered in dismay.

"Sorry, give me more time to think about that," I replied.

"Okay, now you try to recall, what had you done on the same day of today in last year?"

"Wait a minute, SPM trial examination?"

"No."

"We met each other in the tuition centre?"

"No! I'm kind of disappointed eh, I don't expect you to forget this important day. But obviously you do." She reiterated, "That day eh, you called me in the canteen after school. Then?"

I know she would be glad if I could complete the part she left for me. However I had a short-term memory loss. I kept contemplating.

"You gave me something..."

"Oh!" I cried, "Happy birthday!"

"Yup... how can you forget it?"

*The conversation above ended up with apologies and wishes*

Actually I did consider about her birthday since she asked the first question. But I thought it would be silly if it was not. Honestly, I'm very sensitive to numbers, however it is contradicting to say - I don't surprise to have myself forgetting about that, considering the fact that I don't always give every friend of mine a sincere wish whenever it is the moment they have grown older, not even to my closest friends.

Perhaps I should start writing them down.

When I was not at home

My homesickness ceased after staying for a week "in the middle of nowhere" (that's how people locate my college) but not when it came to a couple of days before departure to home. Thanks to my first examination week that has been postponed to a week after this holiday, I would have to reschedule my activities during this holiday. However I have squandered half of it before realizing I have only 5 more days to deal with the books (more than 15 kg) I brought back, but not now. I'm going to use this moment to share something I haven't updated right at here :)

This is how my college looks like.

As you can see the smart-looking guys are my housemates. The first person starting from left is Alee from Sabah, the diligent Malay. The guy in white is John from Sarawak. His greatest interest is Internet business, the field where most of us are not familiar with. The guy standing on my left hand side is called Maegyvear, a Kadazan hailed from Sabah also. Being active in Christian Fellowship and crowned to be "The Prince" during the orientation week, he is undoubtedly the most renowned person in the college.

Thanks to the seniors from the same secondary school of mine :)

I bought a new table for comfort after getting frustrated by the books jumbled up on my small desk, yet the books still jumble up easily. You guys know why.

"Learning is like sailing against the current, you would lag behind if stop moving."

These words are creative indeed.

This is one of the myriad types of bugs I have to confront every night. Somehow the mosquito here appears to be more furious. There was a spider hiding in my sport shoe too, luckily it escaped by the time I grabbed the shoe.

Time to get home :)

My little sister collected these while I was not at home!

First Blood

The title above flashed spontaneously in my mind when I'm going to share my fresh experience in my college. I had my very first blood donation two hours ago.

Before being able to summon my courage to allow my precious blood to be isolated and the needle to penetrate my tender skin *exaggerating* , I didn't know which type my blood belongs to.

It is type O ( I don't know if it is RhD-positive ). How good would it be if donating blood would return monetary reward to us since type O is the "bestseller" :p

I was pretty worried actually, considering the fact that I saw some of the donors turned pale after donating blood. Moreover my Biology lecturer shared his first blood donation to everyone of us - he suffered hyper ventilation and collapsed after that for not taking breakfast.

It was fast - it took only 5 minutes to fill up the packet (450ml) and the needle didn't really induce much pain. I have made a promise to join the second donation.

Try to involve yourselves if there is any blood donation campaign near your area, help the people in need :)