Ipoh White Coffee & The British Trip

There's no connection between those 2 by the way. It's just that this post is about the both of them.

I finally have the courage to send my laptop for servicing. The main reason why I didn't do it long ago weas because I couldn't imagine 5 days without a lappie. I've actually experienced those days before when I bought my desktop and found out that the graphic card was not working well with the motherboard and so have to return and order a new card. Actually it wasn't that hard at all and it's actually a good way to trin my self not to be too dependent on computer these days.

Well, though I've solved most of my problems from the series of unfortunate events that happened to me last month, one thing that still remain is the Emo problem. Exactly one year ago from today Kelsen and I were on the bus from London to Cardiff. We had a night in cardiff and visited some of cardiff's beautiful scenary, which includes the Welsh chics during the night. They were so different from the Dinosaur German chics. The cardiff chics have great body figure and most importantly they were wearing really sexy & seductive outfits. Man, I gotta tell you despite the super cold temperature thery were wearing so little cloth, while Kelsen and I were wearing about 3 layers of clothings and yet still felt cold. You gotta love British chics. Cardiff was just one of the stops in our great UK trip. Before that we visited leeds and Manchester. Though it was my second time going to Old Trafford, but it's so different going wif my best bro. about 2 days from now one year ago we left CK's apartment to Bakerstreet station to meet up with Soo Fan and her friend June. Then we walked around London, covering alot of places. Though I don't remember exactly the whole agenda, but I remember we visited Hyde Park, Westminister, Tower Bridge, Tower of London, British Museum, St. Paul's Cathedral, Harrods and many more.

Though I was sick during the last days in London and despite some bad incident that happen to the hosts, overall the trip was fantastic. Second best after the Genting/Singapore trip.

Back to present. I always mentioned about the whole jiwang feeling about being so close yet so far. Today my friend Adrian gave me the whole pack of 3 in 1 Ipoh Old Town Coffee. Honestly it smells like soya sauce and doesn't taste as good as any oft he coffee here, but it reminds me of home. It taste exactly like those coffee we had in coffee shops in Malyasia. Then these few days when I login to facebook to check out the SJ4P group, suddenly I saw 70 new wall posts! Normally at most 2 or 3 per day or sometimes none, and only regular active members will spam it. Those spamming sessions made me felt more desperate to go home and have gatherings with them. The last time I had a grand gathering with them was in Lucas's house 4 years ago. The second grand was 3 years ago during nD's bday in Thai Sabye Sabye @ OUG. It's been too long and I really missed them.

I had a general question for you guys. Of course most of you have your own life now, but do you guys ever missed your primary/high school or college life? OR it's just me being such an emo bozo having flashbacks too often????

living the nomad spirit

Wooo, I'm MIA for quite some time in blogosphere. Yeah, been busy really these few days and I'm no more having my own room/internet. I'm living a life of a nomad now, and the owner of this room will come back on Friday from his lovely holiday back home in Malaysia. I will stay with him for couple of days to see if it's ok, coz his room is relatively small. Although I still manage to squeeze a matress in, but I am afraid it might cause inconvinience to him, so I'll look for alternatives. This owner guy reminds me of my holiday 2 weeks ago. He went genting with his friends and posted heeps of pictures in Facebook, and he also got a gf, which reminds me how I spent my holiday 2 years ago.

I'm feeling less emo these days, until today in the train back from Bochum (another town) after a small outing with Tharsis, Poong, and a new Msian kid. I took out my watch and that blink of a second i remember this watch was given to me exactly 2 years ago from today. Time really flies like crazy. Man, I'm still in the state of "so close yet so far" as I'm almost there but not there yet. But yeah, things are quite ok for me these days. There're 1 new Malaysian who came here for the whole bachelor course, and 6 others from UKM transfer. All doing Mechanical Eng. I've never met any of the other UKMers yet, but hav hang out wif that new msian guy (named Quan Wei) a few times already. He was just like me when i first came, without a room and lots of problem, but the lucky thing about him compare to me is that he have us, and he had more support these days as the Uni made alot of effort to give more support. But yeah, I don't complain anymore as these are all part of my experience gained which i felt more valuable than any other things in my life. We brought him to the chinese buffet thingy which we ate many times already and that guy was like tapao the whole place. See, people learn how to appreciate chinese food more when they're outside although the restaurant also made some changes to suit the European taste.

We're going to have a big gathering on this weekend to bring all the Malaysians together. With the amount of Malaysian who come to Germany to study, we actually learn how to appreciate each other more. Although we only meet once in a while, but I always put Malaysian as my first priority here, especially when it comes to help. Maybe it's bcoz i've beeen thru all these and i felt there's a need for me to help them.

Back to me. After 2 weeks I returned the room, I still felt abit nostalgic about the room. I've been there 3 years. Many sweet memories there. I've hosted a couple of VIP in that room before, including Oli and Pailing (December 2006), my parents (May - June 2007), Kelsen (February 2008), Nikki and Eriko (May 2008). It gave me a warm comfortable room to stay in. I miss my 6Mbit/s internet connection, my lovely double matress bed with my "coffee,tea or me" comforter, my blardy movable table, my ugly shelf and wadrobe and so many others. Here're some photos of the room after cleaning and painting.





Well, my thesis is not going so well at this stage as it comes to the hardware level but I'm confident it can be solved. New semester starting soon and today itself I spotted damn freaking many chics in the canteen, mainly from Business Faculty. Yeah Godfathar, you're right. Engineering is probably the worse gayish course in history. I should have developed my business mind from young, so i can be in the same classroom with the chics :) Lolx, sounds like I'm really desperate.

What else?? I've been learning how to cook 梅菜扣肉 these days as my friend taught me how to do it. He made super delicious, and he added some dried chilli which makes it even tastier. Yeah, though I'm not talented in cooking, but I'm interested. Maybe my future wife would be impressed of my cooking skill lolx. I'm one step closer to sell my guitar now, and as much as it has great sentimental value, it's a lousy guitar i have to admit. No point paying extra to bring up the airplane as i can get a better one back home. I've promised myself if I'm staying back for long period, I will sign up for guitar course and learn more advance skills. Again I'm not talented in music, but I'm super interested in it. I'm no doubt a lazy person, but I'm a person who doesn't like to just use things without knowing how it works. I love listening to music, but I also want to know how to make music. I love food, which is why I want to learn how to make them. I love electronic gadgets, which is why I took up E&E engineering.

Ahh, another long post. I should update more often.

Moving out

Everytime i want to update my blog, i just can't. I can't find a time to do so. I'm really busy these weeks because I'm moving out of my room. I'll explain later in my post where I'll stay now, and how long will i take to come back. Well, just that I've been cleaning and painting the whole day, i finally get to have some rest time. 2moro, I have to clean the bathroom and the kitchen. Moving out is really shitty especially you have to keep things clean in order to get the deposit back. Well, 3 years living in this room, and although it's just a room and it's located in a shitty town, but it still have sentimental value to me. Now that I have to move out, I felt a bit emotional.

Sighz, Now that i have time to update blog, I felt sleepy. I guess I'll do it after I've settled down in another place. Oh btw, I'll not have my unlimited 6Mbits/s internet anymore. So, I'll seldom online these days. The good thing is I can finally learn how to be less dependent on this fast speed internet so when i come back malaysia i don't feel the pain. I might not even have internet connection unless I'm in the institute. Patience, it will be soon over!

Improvements

Man, it was really a hectic two weeks for me. Not even including my thesis work yet. Surprisingly my thesis looks easy, but I've not really done the main part of it, so i can't tell for now. So far, it has been easy. Programming part was not that hard, hardware was already built. Maybe the Analysis and Optimization would be hard. But anywayz, I'm slowly clearing the problems, so i can focus on my thesis soon enough.

Anywayz, it was a dramatic and hectic week for me. I shall talk about the Visa problem first. A brief introduction, to study in Germany, normally they will give you a 3 months visa from the German Embassy to settle down in Germany. Within that 3 months, one has to register with the town's local Foreigner Office as a resident. Then after that, an appointment would be made for the Visa extension and the documents required differ from town to town. In my town, things are more strict than others for a reason only God knows. I had visa problem when i did my first extension and throughout the years, things get better but this time again some trouble. They want me to present some of the documents which are really hard to get in 1 week time. I had to run up and down to different offices located at different places just to obtain the documents. One of it was a Formal Obligation by my parents and that my parents have to go all the way to the German Embassy to obtain it and then send it to me by DHL. Good thing is that DHL is very efficient(German company bah) though it was not cheap at all. Within 1 working day it arrive. Then there's this BIATCH from this International Office in the University who lost my document and even blame me for not submitting it. She was fucking rude to me and I will file a complain about her as soon as i get my degree. I had to argue with her with my broken German for almost half hour before she agree to help me, and yet she couldn't even assure me of a solution. All she said was that she'll see what she can do, just like those typical Malaysian offices. Luckily she was sick today(probably because of me) and they direct me to another person who's nice to me. Yeah many of us had an impression that European countries, Germany in particular, had a very efficient and good system. It's true, but there're always minority cases like this, which is the majority case in Msia.

But the good thing is that, finally it had be settled. All the documents have been handed up and now i have less one thing to worry. You know when you're at the last stage of your studies and you are having such a high hope to finish and go home, you'll get more worries. Probably it's because I'm not giving myself any room to make mistakes. Nah, not that i don't give myself room, it's more like i can't afford to make mistakes.

PROBLEMS in SEPTEMBER
1.) Visa Problem(solved)
2.) English exemption(solved)
3.) Project results (solved)
4.) Credit points accumulation to graduate (solved)
5.) Laptop LCD failure (not solved, not planning to solve it for the moment since I have an external TFT screen and i need the laptop for my daily routine)
6.) Speaker cable failure (not solved, easy solution but lazy to solve it. Don't need the speakers anyway)
7.) Moving house (in progess, moving stuff batch by batch every weekend. Should be done by next week and start painting the place)
8.) Emotional problem (not solved, can never be solved )

You know, I've been repeating this, but this is the only proudest thing I can tell u from my point of view of studying in Germany. It's not just about the study environment and lecturers quality, nor the travelling, but it's the life experience that i've gained by solving problems throughout the studies. I can say I've grown up much faster in this 4 years than in my whole 23 years of life.

WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH, THE TOUGH GETS GOING!

13 Sept and Mid-Autumn Festival

Again another emotional and memorable day for me. Rewind back 4 years ago, just before I came to Germany, I had mooncake festival with my fellow ex-college mates. Maybe we were a lil too old for lantern, but it was a fun night for me. Now it is obvious why I love them so much, because we were so united and I can never find any boring days when I'm with them. But I'm not sure if time changes anything as all of us are not in 1 place anymore. We still keep a forum where we can leave messages there and we had a great plan in the future for a Grand Gathering. Lets see if it will work.



2005's Mid-Autumn celebration was slightly simpler but I still get to spend time with my 2 best bros. We went down to Singapore for holidays and it was around MA festival. My uncle brought us for a nice and expensive meal and a for a walk down Chinatown where they had decorations.





I didn't go anywhere special to celebrate during 2006. No lanterns, no dinners, just some normal hawker stall dinner outing but it was special because after the "normal" dinner I spent the evening wif my ex at her place, enjoying the full moon. It's always special if you're spending your time with someone special.



Honestly I can't remember what I've done for MA last year. All I remember was that I was as emotional as now. Partially because at that time I'm having some money crisis and I was applying for an internship but still no reply from any company. I was shy to ask my parents to give me more money at that time because I was not doing anything besides sleeping at home.

This year it was about the same. Initially I was given free tickets to Amsterdam. I didn't wanted to go because I don't have the mood. Then there was also some plans to have some small dinner but it was cancelled. But it doesn't matter because I really don't have the mood to do anything at all. With all those troubles and the Emotional problems, I'll rather just stay at home facing the full moon alone and start having thoughts about life. Nah, I'm not trying to show the world how pathetic I am now, but just trying to express my pathetic feeling during this time around. The month have been half way thru and nothing really good happen to me but those bad things came in volley. The only good thing was that I had a 2 hours chat with Wenni today via skype which I didn't do for long long time already. It does make me a lil less emotional. At least now I know for sure that I can totally remove the label "sweet september" from my personal brain storage and replace it with "schlecht september"(schlecht means lousy in German).


Anyway.....

HAPPY MID-AUTUMN FESTIVAL
or
HAPPY MOONCAKE FESTIVAL
or
HAPPY TANGLUNG FESTIVAL

Sept 11

It's a memorable day for many people from all around the world, and for different reasons. So do I. I have to start clearing things in my room because I have to move out at the end of this month. I have some clothes that I didn't wear for a long time already and I decided to donate it and so I walked out to the nearest donation box. At the same time I need to clear my mind a lil as I was again emotional when I face the four walls in my room. So I decided to take a short walk around the neighbourhood. Well, it does help a lil although I'm still pretty much emotional.

Anyway, I've been moving alot this whole week, visiting so many offices to settle some stuff. On Tuesday I went to the Immigration department to notify them that I've not receive a letter. Right after that I went back to Institute and my boss wanted to see me about my Project grades. I didn't get a good grade though, but it doesn't really matter to me now. The project was really hard and limited support because my supervisor also don't know much about the things. The main thing is that I gain alot of experience in it and it will be a good point to write in my CV. Then finally my Thesis contract is ready although I've started 3 weeks ago unofficially. It's just some paper work and the Germans are really crazy bout those. Then on wednesday I have to go to the examination office and the student secretary's office to get some paper for the fees exemption thingy but it was a quick process. Today again I have to visit the examination office to hand up my project grades to them and get the form for my Thesis registration. Sometimes when you're in a country so organize with all these Paper work thingy, you kinda miss the slackness that we have in Malaysia. Cincai cincai. Btw, for the next 2-3 weeks I'll be moving up and down again coz i have to collect document for the visa extension, then have to move things out of this room, painting, thesis....So much for the sweet september!!!

Back to the Sept 11 thing. The meaning of this day to me is pretty much related to my ex of course. Hey it's been 1 year and I know I should have been over with this. Yeah my friends told me, I'm only 23. I will have a long journey ahead and when I have the money(or career to be more polite), this girl issue would be the least problem of all. I mean, I do believe in fate. I believe that I will meet with the one I'm fated to no matter what it takes. But you gotta know this, my ex, which is the first and only so far went too deep down. We both were really commited to this relationship at that time. I don't know how she felt but I am different. I am inexperience and I hate it when I had a good memory when it comes to all these special dates. But don't worry, I am walking on the right path. I am recovering, slow but recovering.

The emotional month continues......

the streak continues

Some people say, when you keep thinking of the bad things, then the bad things will come. But all the bad stuff that happen to me so far are unavoidable. It happens because it was meant to be. Although most of the problems aren't settled, but I'm working my way through. I used to be the person that run away from problem. But i guess, I don't have any where else to run. The good thing is that I have a very great parents that support me all the way. I express the problem to them and they did their part to help me although it's abit troublesome to them. Though it didn't help much, but they gave me the strength and motivation to face the problems.

My parents and my brother are going to Taiwan on the raya holiday. I am not jealous that they're going, I'm just sad that I can't join them. Since 5 years ago, my family had never celebrate any festival with all the members present. The only time where four of us were together in a trip was in Ireland 3 years ago. I remember the first time seeing my mom in Ireland after 1 year didn't meet up with her, I nearly cried. I can see that her hair is getting white. I remember I actually cancelled 2 exams just to meet my parents in Ireland, but it was all worth it. After that we never had a full family gathering before. The worse period was that me and my bro were both in Europe and left only my parents. I remember my mom told me that she only cook rice for 1 portion and my parents share them because they don't eat that much lately. They even told me that they don't have a proper rice cooker anymore. Not that they can't afford, just that they don't see a point to buy one. I've missed 4 birthday celebrations with them, 4 CNY celebrations, mooncake festival, dumpling festival, Hari Raya, Christmas and so many others. I'm not gonna make it for my dad's birthday this year either, althought i thought i can make it. Now i'm not even sure about christmas.

When I was in high school, I hate it that every year I have to celebrate all these with my family because they are really boring. In college, I finally have my freedom. Besides CNY, I spent the other festivals with my friends, especially during birthday. Everything changed. I really want to have those celebrations with them.

This month is just gonna be emotional for me.