Shitty Timetable and Cafes

Having no other options, I have to kiss goodbye to my ever relaxing life....Seriously I am a lil dishearten by the time table this semester. Imagine that everyday you gotta leave ur warm and comfortable mattress early 7 in the cold morning and force that reluctant lids to open just a few cms...then barely grab a few bites of biscuits before going to class - late. (yea maybe I m not used to since last sem my class were all late...mostly 10am) But, there are little breaks in between my hectic, "lab-ful" classes before I could call it a day in 5pm. Problems often complement well with other problems. It had since become even troublesome and undesirable because the only available cafe is in Pocket D, far beyond reach from my academic block, and also far beyond my pathetic budget as a student. NO breads, NO biscuit nor simple economical take-away snacks is available, means you have no option but to queue up A DECADE to make an order. Would we have time for that? Even worse, the food prizes are getting more expensive, and still increasing!
Lets have a look at the very basic meals:

-1 toast bread
-1 scrammbled egg
-1 ramli chicken burger meat
TOTAL = RM4

-2 omelet eggs (rm0.64)
-2 small hotdog (rm0.60?)
-2 toasted normal white bread (rm0.30?)
TOTAL = RM5

-1 beef/chicken burger meat
-1 mixed vege (tesco beans n carrots n corn)
-rice
TOTAL = approx RM4.50


(PS: with those prices we could obtain a big chicken and a few vege and drinks in a normal cafe, and maybe 15 AA eggs!!!)


Other menu you don't even need to know since they are meant only for the rich international students and lecturers! RM10 fried chicken, rm12 beefs, rm30 burger? Locals (even with rm500/month scholarships) would find it financially burdened!For heaven's sake its our DAILY meals and in a long run, our wallet would bleed! How about those private students who need to pay RM138 per credit hours (excluding hostel and book expenses)? Perhaps they need to acquire the art of hibernation so that they no longer eating. Why would UTP make the Chancellor Complex such a "high-class" location? Yea, student may bring their own lunch box during academic period, but the issue is, we should be given other options instead of a single, "high class" cafe. Even with my own lunch box, gosh I would not wanna eat bread every single day! What else could I prepare other than bread? Pizza, Lamb-chops, Teppankaki, CharKuehTeow?

There is even a time where MINERAL WATER is NOT available in the cafe...therefore making the entire Chancellor Complex a mini-Sahara Dessert. I do bring my own water, but it would finished off by noon. Then I have to learn from a cactus to survive till 5pm. In fact I had to drink pipe waters sometimes. Maybe I should bring more water, 2 heavy bottles, or a big pail. Then I shall ask the camels how to carry them. Maybe UTP have to consider installing water dispensers. Having hundreds of lightings and running the IRC aircond 24-hours would be a pride, but what for having something which is nice to eat but not healthy? Nice to look but hard to use? How about the money and electricity which vanished into thin air? Students shall deserve better cafe and facilities because we paid for it (and our sponsors). Or maybe UTP really meant for those who are willing to pay.

"Badan Cergas, Hotak Cerdas"

Fantasie-Impromtu by Frederic Chopin

Music Sheet: Fantasie-Impromptu

Perhaps one of the most well known piece of Frederic Chopin is Fantasie-Impromptu in C-sharp minor, Op 66. I first heard this music played by one of my friend, and later on reminded me of an old classical "Tom and Jerry" film which used the middle part of this piece as background music. I real like its ending part, where it ends slowly with the left had playing a few notes of the main melody. I tried to play this with my piano but its way beyond my standard. First challenge came when I realized it has a unique tempo of 8:6, where each bars, right hand plays 16 notes while left hand plays a 12 notes. This means when your right hand hits 4 notes, ur left hand hits 3 notes. In addition, I am real sux in side reading since I had never attended any piano lessons, luckily I found a useful video in Youtube to help me recognize a couple of numbers of notes. Anyhow I could manage to play a few part quite smoothly with the right tempo. Hopefully I would seek some guidance from my friends. They are some of the most talented musical people I would said.

Anyway, lets appreciate what these great composers in the medieval time had done for us.

Other pieces which I liked is:
-Etude Revolutionary
-Moonlight Sonata
-Original Flight of the Bumblebee
-Rachmaninoff Prelude
-Hungarian Rhapsody

This is the video which helped me a lot for being a bad side reader. In case you have no idea what the software is, I let you know, its called Synthesia, kinda O2Jam interface which reads and translate MIDI files into graphical visualization.

Yundi Li playing Fantasie-Impromptu. Sit back relax and enjoy!

New Template!!!

Lets start off with a random picture -
Its my new hard drive! 320 GB SeaGate worth RM230 of warranty 5 years.
Wanna thank so much to my dad!

New Attire
Well, it is pretty obvious that my blog have a new appearance. Since there are some extra time in hand (holidaying of coz) and I'd been freaking bored with the old appearance of my blog, finally I decided to do some "renovation".

So I browse through Google and found a piece of nice template.
Blue. Plain. Simple. Vast.
So did I downloaded them...and Whoala.

I always prefer Blue or green simply because they are rejuvenating.
Though in the past I favored dark-coloured background, now I've my taste twisted a lil.
Nice isn't it the new look?


Frenz 4eva!!!
It had been nearly a year since my last meet with Conilia and SinChean during CNY and unexpectedly we meet again this very end of year. Thanks to Joey for the call up! And its been 2 years I've not seen her.

This time we go to Wings Cafe. Quite a cool place. There is a professional performer there that plays the guitar and sings. And the beverages, of course cost us quite a fortune.
Therefore I only had a drink. hehe. Then we had a great conversation, mostly of some past memories that we spent together, esp about the trip to Japan. Really miss those times.

Classical: Its Conilia, Joey, SinChean and me @ Wings Cafe.
Dug out some memory in Japan.

Though there's a big gap of time seperation since we parted from our beloved alma mater St.Francis, I never expected today we're still talking and laughing excactly like we used to. Moreover no one had really changed in appearance, except me. Slimmer. hehe.

By the way its great to meet up each other after a long time of separation - each living own's life barely contacting each other. I suddenly remember what Conilia once said to me, that she was quite sad to leave SFI. In fact everyone does. All of us used to be close friends and we share lots of great memory. But time doesn't allow and we have to depart for each's journey of life.

Don't let time to tarnish the friendship between us. Friendz Forever!!!

Every rings of friendship that we belongs to throughout our life would end someday, and a new rings always form. Hence we should appreciate all our friends. Often, we don't realize how much our friend could mean to us, until the time that we need to depart draws near. Only by then we feel reluctant and start to appreciate his or her presence.

-signing off-
.....

Bye Bye Form 6

When the counting of months became weeks, I finally made up my mind to put a full stop in my form 6 life. I will soon leaving this very home town to start off a new life as a university student far to the north in UTP, Perak. Hence, my time at home is getting more precious as it goes shorter, so I had decided to spend more time at home. Ya, for some may doubt over my sudden disappearance in class, leaving MHS in silence without a word. So here I explain to you why is it so. In fact I set the date 20th of June (Friday) as my last day in school, and would be bitting farewell to my class. However I didn't make it to Friday since i fell ill for the last 2 day, therefore absent and off I went.

These are the few conclusions that I'd jump into about MHS form 6:
It deserves a thumb-up for the teachers and classmates. The teachers are hardworking, experienced and really talented in teachings while the classmates are among the cream of the state (I am not boasting). Everyone are so smart that really pissed me off, make me feel inferior and intimidated especially people like Tang Xing Yi, Ang Wen Jean, Low Jia Wei and Nicky Thong. Others may be, too, but I don't know them long enough. For sure, I'll always be at the last position if i were to stay there. Somehow the classes have a superb atmosphere strong enough to urge me studying. For your information, MHS is among the top in ranking in the whole country for its STPM achievement for the pass few years. Oh, forgot to mention about the toilet...it really sucks! So filthy and smelly that it'll probably awaken those who on a drug effect. The toilet had it's doors pulled off, and the mirror was shattered into pieces. Yea, the wall is full of graffiti. I wonder it makes it look prettier.

Well, there are a few things that I gonna miss:
Definitely I felt reluctant to stop my school life, for it had been the daily routine that I'd been so used to for the past 11 years. I totally agreed with Jia Wei's point that school life is something that money can't buy with once it'd passed. Don't tell me that you are gonna put on your school uniform when your are in the age of 50. Hell, that's totally freak! School life is fun, especially the time I spent with my fellow friends. By leaving Form 6, I'll gonna miss all my friends, especially those from SFI like Han Way. There are also a few from IJC whom I know since form 2, like Tang Xing Yi and Wen Jean, likewise, would be missing them too. I would also miss the school uniform....lol, rather looks like a waiter or salesman's attire. So be it!

Whatever it is, life is always dynamic. We keep facing changes in our life. So hopefully I had made the right choice and UTP won't let me down. Despite of the non-Chinese dominance and strangers there, I'm quite adaptive environment wise and would be used to it as proven in NS. I can always be connected with my fellow friends through blogging and MSN.

Petronas Annual Report

Promptly after the announcement on the reduced petrol subsidies, the public broke out in rage and dissatisfaction, protesting to the fullest and some demanded Petronas to make its annual report more transparent and holistic. I think everyone deserve to have a look on the report. Take your time to glance through shortly before giving any remarks that hopefully would be rational.
-Click here- to view the annual report of Petronas in year 2007.


My concern
Since that I'm gonna be part of the Petronas community very soon, (starting from 12th of July* upon admission into its Universiti Teknology Petronas as a sponsorship holder) certainly I show some concern on this company's future. The recent petrol price hike did make me worry and completely unnerve as petroleum is one of the Petronas fundamental affiliations. Likewise, the arising public attention and doubts towards Petronas financial management may affect its financial planing in future, in turn, would give an impact to me as one of its future work force. The salary schemes may need to be reconstructed to lower the cost of oil productions. However after having a short glance through its annual report, I'm much relieved in the sense that Petronas would never go bankrupt due to its stability in its finance. Nevertheless, Petronas is very much in the shortage of professionals such as experienced engineers, who can boosts up the efficiency of oil production thus cutting cost and lower price of crude (an increase in rate of production would bring it meet the market demand).

On the other hand, lets review on its background. Petronas is a multinational corporate which had and yet to invest in as many as 36 countries worldwide venturing mostly into the very profitable petroleum production businesses, and I think that it still remains numerous decades to come before all the petroleum reservoirs on earth reach depletion. Also, Petronas reached the reputation of the Fortune Global 500 ranking. With the assets value of 294.6billion Ringgit and a net profit of 46.4billion Ringgit in 2007, Petronas proved to have a very strong reserve in economy that make it stands firmly. I hope that the recent political conflicts would not affect Petronas, do take note that Petronas is a business entity, and is apart form our government's policy. If its fate is similar to Proton, I got nothing to say...

*July - so sicked of this word! tend to type as June for so MANY times!!!! IShhhh!

Don't Buy Petronas???

Recently I received some circulating e-mails in the internet which ask us to boycott Petronas retail outlets. I concluded this as irrational as Petronas got nothing to do with the recent price hike. It is apart from our government policy and the petrol price is up to the decision of our government. The e-mail contents are shown as below:

It's different and successful approach….' Don't' buy PETRONAS'
Just DO it!!!!

LET'S JUST DO IT ! ! !THIS IS NOT THE 'DON'T BUY' PETROL FOR ONE DAY, BUT IT WILL SHOW YOU HOW WE CAN GET PETROL BACK DOWN TO RM1.92 PER Litre....
This was originally sent by Phillip Hollsworth, a retired Coca Cola executive.



If you are tired of the gas prices going up AND they will continue to rise this winter, take time to read this, PLEASE.

Phillip offered this good idea.

This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the 'don't buy petrol on a certain day' campaign that was going around last April or May!

It is worth your consideration. Join the resistance!!!!

We are going to hit RM 2.70 a litre and it might go higher!! Want petrol prices to come down?

We need to take some intelligent, united action. The oil companies just laughed at last year's action because they knew we would not continue to 'hurt' ourselves by refusing to buy petrol. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them. BUT whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can really work.
Please read on and join with us!

By now, you're probably thinking petrol priced at about $1.50 is cheap.
It is currently RM2.70 for regular unleaded.

Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a liter of gas is CHEAP at $1.50, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace...not sellers.

With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we consumers need to take action.

The only way we are going to see the price of petrol come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their petrol! And, we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves.

How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can't just stop buying petrol.

But we CAN have an impact on petrol prices if we all act together to force a price war.

Here's the idea: For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY petrol from Petronas
the biggest price-up driver company.

If they are not selling any petrol, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit.

But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Petronas petrol buyers. It's SO simple!
Now, don't wimp out on me at this point...keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions and even BILLIONS of people!!

I am sending this note to 20 people.
If each of you sends it on to at least twenty more that's (20 x 20 = 400) ..
And those 400 send it to at least twenty more (400 x 20 = 8000 .... and so on,
by the time the message reaches the fifth group of people, we will have reached over SIXTY FOUR MILLION consumers!!!!!
20x20 = 400
400x20 = 8,000
8,000x20 = 160,000
160,000x20 = 3,200,000
3,200,000x20 = 64,000,000
64,000,000x20 = 12,800,000,000
That's 12.80 Billion people folks, who will have been contacted!!!!!

Unbelievable?? Do the math and see for yourself!
Again, all you have to do is send this to 20 people. That's all!
I'll bet you didn't think we had that much potential, did you!
Acting together we can make a difference..

If this message makes sense to you, then please pass it on.
THEY will LOWER THEIR PRICES TO BELOW THE RM1.92 RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN.
THIS CAN REALLY WORK.

It's simple – send the message along to others and choose to not buy petrol from Petronas.
TWENTY FIVE POINT SIX BILLION people:

Now THAT's people power.

LET'S
JUST DO IT ! ! !
More power to you friend.

The retail price of petrol in our country is actually fixed by our government through APM (Automatic pricing mechanism) where the retail price of petroleum products is determined by the price of crude, refinery cost, marketing costs, government taxes and commissions for petrol station owners. By varying the amount of taxes levied on the petroleum products its price becomes fixed at the retail level. As long the price of crude fluctuates within a certain reasonable range, the AMP works. But the price of crude oil continue to rise and escalate, therefore APM no longer holds. Our government not only had to totally forgo the taxes but to introduce subsidies to petroleum products to fix its outlet price.

-adopted from The Star

Therefore Petronas ought not be blamed. Is it fair to boycott Petronas alone but not other oil companies like Shell and Mobil since they sell their petrol at the same price with Petronas?

Blogging in My Definition

Well, it is a big big disgrace to announce that I only started to blog recently for the first time in my life! What a horrible statement huh? But everything do have a beginning.

Lets find out how I got associated with blog... Last time I do not even know what a blog is, sad to mention, but thanks to Low Jia Wei! Why? Because he is the one that always introduce me his blog so to read on his long articles, mostly about politics. Upon realizing that writing something informative is interesting, like him, I started my blog. Still, I thought that blogging need to be formal and factual...it was not until when I discovered more of my friends' blog, of all varieties, from funny and creative one like Jude's to political fanatics like Alex's. There is also some expert in English like Julian Tay and Philip Goh, whom, OMG I nearly gave up reading their blog! Maybe you may say that my English is BELOW SHIT LEVEL!

I also started to realize that blog itself is another tiny world, a world smaller than my formal school yet covers a wider community. This world, which I think, mostly comprises of only SFI and IJC bloggers. So, it is also good that I can match those faces with the names which I had already knew long ago! Huhu~! This is my previous situation - I always heard of Ester Lam, Sharon, Jun Mei (the same person in fact) Amanda, Stephanie, so on and so on...and when go to tuition or elsewhere, "hey, I noe her", "I hav seen her", " she is very smart, I noe tat." but "what's her name?" Haha, now the game is over! However I also get to know them in Form 6.

Anyway I am not hoping many will come and turn up reading my blog...(since I am a male, and females don't really know me here, and I am not part of the gang, China Town neither) So I just blog for fun since I got too much time in hand. I also blog for another purpose - to report my life history. So such blog I would post in a relatively formal way, such as the previous post about my PLKN thingy and expected the reader is none other than myself! Yes...since I have poor English, I hope I could at least learn something from other fellow bloggers who love bombastic words! Good luck to myself! May God bless me~

In future I'll post something informative, mostly unrelated to the bittersweet of my life.

From: Newbie