Of Scholarship and Sell Out! for the 3rd Time

Project 365 #92: Sunday, 17th May 2009

Right in the midst of my exams, I’m smacked with a HSK exam (汉语水平考试, Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi) that I had to attend – it’s an international Chinese exam organised by the government of China and I was to sit for the Basic exam. Despite the name, Basic isn’t as easy as the JLPT 4 was, and I didn’t want to go initially as I had an IME paper to sit for on Tuesday and have yet to finish studying for it – but having paid RM100 for this paper, I couldn’t just let it go to waste.

So at around 12.30pm-ish, my parents fetched me to Kajang where the test centre is located (it was actually in the New Era College).

Part of the New Era College’s buildings.

The composition of the HSK candidates are Koreans (loads of them), Filipinos, Thais, Malays, Chinese, and one Caucasian girl who was sitting for Basic as well. Picture depicts said Koreans.

The corridor of our the class which originally was where our exam was to be held, but they shifted us to another part of the building instead. I also had to chuckle when one of the staffs told us that we had to go to the 考场 (kaochang, examination hall) but one of the students interjected with “草场？？ That would hot wouldn’t it?” (caochang, grassland) LOL. I actually misheard it as well and imagined ourselves doing our test paper, sweating profusely in the open air wtf.

What’s most amusing was that there was no electricity at all – we were told that there was some construction or something going on and that they’d restore the electricity supply at 2pm.. which they did, ‘cause I certainly can’t imagine sweating it out while doing the exam.

The HSK Basic was alright – nothing too difficult for a 2 hour 15 minutes (I think) paper.

I went back home for about 10 minutes, then went out again at about 5.30pm to meet Rebecca, Yen Yee, and Jonathan Lee in Taipan’s Secret Recipe to do some revision. At about 8pm+ we went to the nearby Chinese coffeeshop near the luk-luk stall, as Reb and Yen Yee wanted to eat some luk-luk – Jon and I ate at the coffeeshop instead.

Project 365 #93: Monday, 18th May 2009

Nerd day out. Reached college at 10am, and I think I spent a major part of the day inside Discussion Room 4 revising IME non-stop.

Ate lunch at The Zoo Cafe, newly opened near the row of cybercafes at SS15. Insanely cheap if you ask me – RM3.30 for a bowl of this noodles and a glass of sirap-like drink.

As per my previous entry, I stayed till about 8.45pm. Had dinner with my collegemates at Foh Foh, but I was the only one who returned back to college (after Reb’s boyfriend sent me there) – chatted a little with the Chinese librarian.

Snapped a pic of this kitten near the entrance of my college’s concourse when we were about to head for dinner.

Project 365 #94: Tuesday, 19th May 2009

D-day. Lack of sleep – less than 4 hours – caused my head to pulse dully at regular intervals and I felt like I couldn’t force any more information into my head. I had to wake up early at 6am, reached college at 7.30am and sat next to Andy in the cafeteria, then at nearly 8 I went to the concourse to meet up with Reb and Mun Wah. At this point in time, I couldn’t really study at the last minute anymore – then at the appointed time, we went in.

2 hours of writing non-stop with pretty graphs to boot.

Went back home at 10.30am-ish, then went out again with Heng at about 4.20pm – picked him up, went to the post office at SS15 for a bit, parked my car at Carrefour, and we were off to KL Sentral via KTM.

..I regretted it almost immediately as we were standing in the extremely cramped spaces of the train – it was only cramped because of the immense number of people in it, despite the fact that they had revamped the layout of the train’s interiors a little, but I think it does nothing to help how everyone was standing too close for comfort, and there were certainly odours of various kinds mingling in the relatively thin air..

At KL Sentral, Heng and I went to the loo, then bought a Fillet-o-Fish ala-carte each, and them jumped on an LRT train to Ampang Park – where we walked for a bit to a specified bus stop to wait for Chris.

The buildings right behind the bus stop.

While waiting for Heng.

Me.

We didn’t wait for long before Chris arrived – a short distance to Jalan U Thant took us like 20 minutes no thanks to the crazy KL rush hour. And when we did arrive at the building near the Palestinian Embassy (something I didn’t know actually exist in Malaysia) with its large lawn, it reminded me of a quaint kampung area.

The hall where our discussion was to be held. The moment the both of us stepped inside, I felt a tad bit awkward as we were the only students around, and the rest were corporate employees, complete with the regular long-sleeved shirts. Not to mention that Heng with his recently-dyed hair must’ve looked like a regular Chinese foul-mouthed gangster LOL.

Corporate workers deep in discussion, while the two students gobble up their Fillet-o-Fish and some currypuffs and other assorted tidbits from the kitchen at the back.

As written on its Facebook event’s page, this informal discussion on Malaysia’s economy outlook was supposed to start at 7.30pm, but it really was supposed to begin at 8pm because of the infamous punctuality of most Malaysians. Dr. Mahani appeared a little after 8pm herself. Plus it’s finally that 83 people confirmed their attendance on Facebook but only about 20-30 people turned up, and apparently for previous events, to estimate how many would be coming, they just took 1/3 of those who RSVP’d lol.

This event is also known as The CEO Series 12 : Dr. Mahani, Director-General of ISIS Malaysia – this pic depicts Dr. Mahani herself.

Overall – very interesting discussion on Malaysia’s economy by a Ph.D holder in development economics. We were told fact after fact with supporting data to boot on a Powerpoint slideshow – interesting facts such as how a few decades ago, Malaysia’s income per capita is similar to that of Korea and Singapore, but right now, both countries have surpassed Malaysia tremendously. The Q&A session was just as enlightening, as she was able to answer questions dished out by the audience convincingly and fluently – the few things that I remembered was how she was against minimum wage as she believed that wages should only be raised according to the workers’ qualifications; to a question about Malaysia’s pursuit for a knowledge-basd economy, she said the Government had in the past consistently asked students to pursue biotechnology but in the end, graduates were not able to find jobs as there were no industry to provide jobs for these students, so this problem should not repeat itself; and to Heng’s question about Malaysia’s public universities, we were told how the lecturers were actually civil servants, fall under the control of the Ministry of Higher Education, thus there were many restrictions to what they can or cannot do. :/

Very, very enlightening. It was certainly very well worth the effort of enduring the awful KTM train during the rush hour and heading all the way to KL to attend this talk.

After the discussion, Chris dropped Sebastian (one of the attendees, who initially thought I was the photographer of the event wtf) at the Ampang Park LRT station, then both Heng and I at KL Sentral, leaving Chris together with Chen Chow from JobStreet.

Heng and I ended back at Subang at 10.30pm – I picked up my car from Carrefour, then went to Tanjung where Shawn dropped by a little while after we came. We chatted and stayed till nearly 2am.

Project 365 #95: Wednesday, 20th May 2009

Merely went to an optometry shop at SS14 in the afternoon for like 2 hours to purchase a new pair of glasses – service was exceptionally good and detailed by Maria (a Filipino), and I also later found out that my power had increased by a bit for both eyes. :/

Project 365 #96: Thursday, 21st May 2009

My scholarship interview left me incredibly nervous a few hours before it was due to begin – strange, when I was a picture of calm and confidence just the night before.

I arrived at my college in my formal wear at nearly 12pm, and saw that Kenneth and Ho Sheng were already there, the other two shortlisted candidates for the Pro-Vice Chancellor Scholarship. We were then told to go to Room 3.7, and as it was Kenneth’s turn first, he went inside while Ho Sheng and I waited at the RMIT office instead.

We were supposed to be given only 15 minutes each, and when Kenneth’s turn was done, he came out and told me what they sort of questions they had asked – maybe because I looked a little nervous, but I wasn’t a bundle of nerves. Nevertheless I was quite grateful for it, even more so when he lent me his coat and it fit me well (both Kenneth and Ho Sheng brought their coats along, and I don’t have a coat :/).

I can only say that the interview went well. I rambled on a little when I was asked “tell me about yourself” and they had to cut me short with another question lol, but I’m also really glad that I could answer the questions they shot at me, ranging from “What do you think was the cause of the current global economic crisis?” (“it begins with the 9/11 tragedy” – it’s true) to “Discuss the current economic or political headlines”. I totally nailed the part about the current economic issue thanks to the economic discussion that I attended two days ago – suffice to say, I borrowed several points that were raised during that discussion to be used in the interview, and for one of the questions, I even borrowed an idea/line from Sell Out!. In fact, even if I didn’t get the scholarship, I’m just glad that I did my best, and my competitor and friend was probably even better than I am. :)

Kenneth and I went first to the library to see how Rebecca’s doing, along with Yen Yee and co – they were going to have their Business Finance exam, their last paper, that afternoon itself, and were all stressing over it lol. When Kenneth and I went downstairs at the RMIT office, Fatima seemed to be in a good mood and commented something about how the three of us were such buddies to be waiting for Ho Sheng hahaha.

At like 5 minutes before 4pm, I rang up Suet’s house phone, her mum picked up, and was like, “Wah so fast you know she come back already ah??”. According to Suet, they had only reached home from the airport just 5 minutes before my phone call wtf. Talk about perfect timing.

Except for Andy, I don’t think anyone else knew that Suet would be coming along for a charity screening of Sell Out! – I picked up Suet (when she came into my car, she asked, “Do you want to hug me?” and we both paused for two seconds, then she said “Uhh awkward moment” then we hugged hahahahha wtf), Jess, then Heng, and we were off to Taylor’s Main Campus at SS15. Parked inside the campus (knew about this when Colin Shafer, the organiser of this event and also the Social Science lecturer, answered my parking question on Facebook very quickly yesterday night) initially near Joon Han’s car (the director of Sell Out!), but the guard asked me – twice – to move to a different parking lot. :/ But I thought that the paper that was given to me for double parking (with the appropriate spaces to insert my telephone number) was kinda cool – my college should’ve done that. :/

There, I also met up with Aizyl, Alvin’s “bro” hahaha wtf, and a girl-friend of his. We donated the minimum token of RM5 when we entered – it was for the refugee school for the Somalian refugee kids stuck in our country without any education.

Watched Sell Out! for the third time. You’d think that I’d be sick of it by now but frankly, I wasn’t. I still found myself laughing at some of the funniest jokes in the movie – and hearing the audience, especially my friends, laughing out loud was rather cool too. :) The movie was screened via a projector inside Lecture Theatre 2, and boy, was the lecture hall incredibly cool and modern – waaay better than the ones in my college.

This amazingly pretty chic girl – ‘pretty’ was what Suet used to describe her – was the one handling the Somalian refugee school, and she thanked us for our donations and updated us a little about what the money would be used for.

Colin Shafer. Who, incidentally, was bashed with two bottles by the bouncers of Bar Celona Pyramid, where her female colleague was also assaulted. Gives you a good reason to avoid the place like the plague.

From left to right: Eric, the Director of Photography, Jerrica Lai, Yeo Joon Han, Peter Davis. This was the Q&A session where many people shot various questions – sometimes very technical questions too about filmmaking.

The actress, the director, the actor.

Joon Han.

Peter Davis, who was supposedly tone deaf, so much so that the vocal coach said that he was the first person who managed to hit all the wrong notes or something hahaha.

Haha I like this shot for some reason.

Looking towards my camera.

I was also asking Jerrica about her coughing and crying scenes which were really realistic, and asked whether both were difficult for her. She replied that the coughing was definitely easier than the crying scenes – she mentioned about the first crying scene where she was already nervous and channelled all that nervousness into crying, while for the other crying scene at the restaurant, there were 9 takes as the director and the assistant couldn’t see the tear dropping from her eye from the monitor, and in the end they took the shot from take 4.

When the Q&A session ended, I went up to Joon Han and got his autograph, and we were both like, “We finally get to meet each other” hahaha and he apologised again for last week, which was no biggie.

Went straight to Asia Cafe with Suet, Jess, Heng, Alvin, and Aizyl, where we had our dinner. It was fantastic to see the rest again – with laughs abound – and I had an excellent time. Even better when Jess saw a group of people sitting behind us and she asked, “Wasn’t the girl in black the girl that was always in your blog?” and I was like, “I don’t think so..” but on looking closely, it was indeed Khai Shin!

It was funny, because she said she kept hearing her name being mentioned repeatedly hahaha – she also wished me all the best and really hoped I get the scholarship. Aww so sweet of her. =)

I reached home at almost 10pm. I foresee an exciting month ahead.