Leaving on a Jet Plane

I’m extremely fatigued right now – not too sure why even. Celebrated dad’s birthday a day early at a Japanese restaurant yesterday (my unagi and sashimi set was good), then studied at McD’s from around 10.30pm-ish till 3am, then Ding stayed overnight at my house, then Shawn came over for breakfast and off we went to SS15 to pick up Esther (not Tan Suet Mei) and off we went on our epic journey to UPM Serdang.

I’ll let the pictures do the talking – too tired to actually think of anything right now. (I don’t know why I’m blogging when I’m exhausted either, probably because this will be my last entry before I leave Malaysia.)

So we got lost about once before reaching UPM Serdang’s campus, which is amazingly large with golf ranges, multiple tennis complexes, and kilometres and kilometres of tarred road. Of course when we finally reached the building that we’re supposed to be at (Bangunan Sultan Salehuddin Abdul Aziz Shah, damn long name wtf), there was already a crowd of people comprised of mostly youths there, and shortly after, those who took JLPT 3 left the large exam hall.

That was when I got my first glimpse of how a Japanese examination is conducted, which looked nostalgically familiar – probably from reading one too many Doraemon comics and some other anime.

We had expected canteens and stalls selling drinks to be around but found nothing of that sort, so wandered to a nearby building where we found a vending machine and toilets. Rested there for a bit while we conducted a short session of last minute revision.

Our Excel drinks we purchased from this vending machine that actually accepts paper money, and not only coins.

Hard at work (or at least I’m pretending to with self-timer wtf).

Yep.. I wanted to complete a second set of past year paper but didn’t manage to do so (and was too lazy to).

We left this particular building and went to our assigned venue at 1.45pm as the ‘commencement’ was 2pm.. and we were made to wait till 2.20pm before the doors of the hall opened. Let’s just say waiting with other 956+ students outside the hall with zilch air-conditioning is just what we need to cover ourselves with sweat while basking in the natural aroma emanating from other 956+ people.

Shawn’s accurate depiction of how most of us felt (accidentally captured his priceless expression, he didn’t pose for this picture).

That was Esther on the right feeling the heat while muttering 暑いですね wtf. Also spotted a せいが高い外人 (tall foreigner) walking around, making us male (shorter) Asians feeling rather inadequate.

Ding was dressing very casually (with only short pants and slippers, not depicted in pic) while the lala in the middle was dressing up as if for prom.

Our JLPT Level 4 is divided into three separate papers: Paper 1 (vocab IIRC), Paper 2 (Listening </3), and Paper 3 (Grammar). Guess how long our entire exam took!

For an exam whose combined total amount of minutes equalled to 100, our exam was from 2pm (including the briefing from 2.20pm till 3pm wtf) till 6.30pm.

WTF.

Paper 1 was only 25 minutes, Paper 2 was 25 minutes as well, while Paper 3 was 50 minutes. The maddening thing is there was a long break in between the papers – it’s a short break for us really, as we had to return to the hall early again to listen to the same boring briefing from this uncle who has atrocious English who kept pronouncing ‘proctor’ (our so-called examiners) as ‘porter’ (I kept imagining the people who push around trolleys in airports) and mispronounced ‘ascending’ and a host of other words that it quite annoyed me.

Maybe I’m just finding reasons to dislike this Chinese apek.

During our first break, Shawn accidentally stepped on Ding’s slippers and it snapped. And instead of apologising Shawn burst into one of his hearty guffaws wtf. Ding had to walk a bit cacat for the entire period, but not before he found a way to put the strap together some time later.

Let’s just say I HATE HATE the Listening part of the test. While yes, the speed in which the authentic Japanese people are speaking (I’m emphasising on authenticity because I expected a Japanese head to be around and not some Chinese apek conducting the exam) is much slower compared to previous past years we had practised on before (which means not on rapping speed), the vocab they used wasn’t as easy and it was hard to catch wtf they were talking about before that familiar bell sound rung, which indicated end of dialogue and beginning of marking the answers down. =.= Which was screwy because that means I had to tembak like 90% of the questions and I was somewhat confident too with Listening normally. :(

おわります！！！ Snapped when the test was finally over, and to show you guys how big the hall was. (It was also bloody cold, and if you noticed that Chinese character of ‘east’ on the left side of the pic, that was me wearing my Blue Marlin’s Tokyo jacket which Barry bought from US previously when I asked him to. :D)

We then left the place, sesat around for about 20-30 minutes before reaching this particular restaurant in Serdang which Shawn brought us to, saying the food was nice. Esther was coerced by Shawn to treat us (damn bad wtf) which she did.

Group pic snapped by a waitress. Angle all damn out dunno how to take picture =.= Even though I look odd in this picture but can you see my braces-free teeth!! (No you can’t actually heh.) And the rest was laughing quite happily.. okay maybe not Ding.

Esther wouldn’t be continuing Japanese classes with us after this.. awww. She said she felt quite pressured with all the exams and whatnot because she has no time at all as a working mother, so yeah, I guess we’ll all remember her as a fascinating middle-aged woman who managed to mix with us youths so freely (while ejeking Shawn plenty of times too wtf).

Reached home at 9pm. It was a long day – just to sit for a 100-minutes test.

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That song I heard in Suet’s car a few months back before she left in the US, suddenly it played in my head yesterday and I was as captivated as before. “Leaving on a Jet Plane”. Managed to download the version by Peter Paul & Mary (the one I heard in Suet’s car), and yes, despite it being an old evergreen song, nevertheless I fell in love with its simplistic lyrics and tunes.

“I’m leaving on a jet plane
I don’t know when I’ll be back again.”

I’m feeling a little tangled right now, reasons of which I don’t know. All I know is I should be waiting in speedy anticipation when the long-awaited day is arriving, but I think I already have those aching pains of longing. Of missing the usual routines of playing my Wii, DotA-ing with friends, taking language classes..

Writing this and listening to said song above soothed the bizarre mental bruises. I think I’m going to be alright.

Here I come, Laos, Thailand. Do drop by my blog as usual (and comment please, I don’t normally request this but it’s probably one of the only few ways I can still keep in contact even though I’m only away for a month), I’ll definitely be blogging whenever I can find a cybercafe. :) And to my friends who probably wouldn’t miss me (except for my DS and Wii and whatnot wtf), I’ll honestly miss you guys.

I’m leaving on a jet plane, but I’ll definitely be back again…