Strangers’ call

Thursday was akin to being a strange stranger’s day. Had just finished our class very early at 9.30am (our Microeconomics lecturer let us off an hour earlier), went to Asia Cafe and hung around there for a while waiting for the Taylor’s students (Sarah, Geok Leng, Jean Hwei, etc) to be there for their break. After checking out the University Bookshop where Andy bought the hyper-expensive original Human Communications textbook for RM81 (no photocopying, our lecturer warned), we walked to the bus stop (Andy wasn’t driving as his sis was on holiday and had to use the car) when my cellphone beeped the eerie music of The Promised Land from the Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children soundtrack.

The music was the ringtone for any SMSes received, and it read, verbatim:

I miss you darling!.. Thank you, you messaged me when you were on holiday – you never did! I hope your mom she is well and so do julia! Little things from you bring smile to me!...xxxxx

Quite the sesat right. Since the message never revealed its sender’s name but some 012 number I wasn’t familiar with, it was obvious she got the wrong person. (For some reason I kept thinking it was a girl despite the message not revealing the sender’s gender.. I wonder why?)

Normally when sending SMS I typ like dis since I refuse to use the dictionary mode and I’m pretty adept at sending SMS without looking at the screen when I want to. ;) Watching and hearing about a wrong call leading to friendships and further relationships made me develop the same idea - who knows I might snag myself some hot date you know?

So I replied:

Hey I think you have just messaged the wrong number.. Sweet message though. :)

And she replied:

Yeah hehehe i am so sorry

And I replied:

Thought it’s someone I know since you mentioned the name Julia.. Hehe no prob hope your message gets through this time

And she replied:

Yeah it did! Thank you

And I replied.. nothing whatsoever. Didn’t really see where it’s heading to. But it was rather amusing I thought. <_<

And.. at 6.30pm sharp later on I arrived at Taipan’s Starbucks waiting for this online dude I PMed on LYN about a DVD he was going to burn for me of the most beautiful 3D MMORPG ever-released, Granado Espada, but it’s in Japanese (and Korean) at the moment. Both Jon and I had troubles installing patches for the game, so thought it would be a good idea to get the game client from someone who plays it with no problems at all.

Some screenshots (of the Korean client where new hairstyles were released):

So fantastically jaw-dropping hor. Wait till you see its required hard disk space: 3GB plus. It’s also graphics-intensive, so a good graphics card and a good amount of RAM would be good to run this game. (I managed to play the game finally on Roxanne, but because it was entirely in Japanese, that kinda mars the experience since I don’t know what to do and had to refer to obscure guides on the Internet. It was fun though.)

I suggested to Sora (the online dude) that I’ll just bring my laptop over to his house to copy the files over since he lives in USJ 4 Subang, but understandably he’s reluctant to do so since we barely knew each other (more like I only knew him for 24 hours in several private messages to one another). Meeting at a public location seems like a good idea.

So after notifying each other of how we would roughly look like and what we were wearing, I met him, made some small chat, obtained the DVD-R from him which he wouldn’t accept any payment for his trouble and the DVD, and we left.

I’ve been meeting up with total strangers I know online via forums throughout the years, so I don’t suppose I have any qualms about meeting another. For all we know the other party could be some goat rapist, anti-Bush serial murderer on the loose.. but I just trust people (and humanity as a whole) just too easily. After all, what are the chances of that turning out to be true anyway? <_<

At about 8.30pm to Shawn’s house where I drove and fetched Andy there; Heng was there as well. We watched the Czech vs Italy match till the end of it, then went to the USJ 14’s 7-Eleven to grab some food and drinks.. ended up eating Maggi mee-in-a-cup again while I took the more pleasant alternative - Twisties BBQ flavour.

Went to the cybercafe and played an hour of rather reasonably good CS, and off we went to Andy’s house at about 2am.. on the pretext of getting more mee-in-a-cups.

This is how our Lecture Theatre 3 look like. Wanted to post it in my previous entries but guess I’ll just put it up here.

Shawn eating Andy’s cup mee.

Ended up talking in his very quaint dining room about everything under the sun: gossiping about friends and school/college-mates, our new college/school life, people stripping in locker rooms, financial stuffs, etc, and.. somehow that’s exactly my idea of fun.

Shawn took this pic himself and called it muka cibai. The fact that we were slightly mentally intoxicated by the drowsiness of being sleepy at 2.38am when the pic was taken might just explain it.

Shawn and Andy looking tired.

Shawn reading off names from Andy’s cellphone’s phonebook. At 4.22am you are probably getting less saner.

Went back at about 4.30am plus, and reached home just in time to hear my maid wake up at nearly 4.45.

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Today (Friday) there weren’t any classes conducted, but received a phone call from Ms Evelyn of Metropolitan at about 3pm and my chest stiffened and my heartrate increased. This is it, my fate for the next 12 months would be sealed in this very phone call.

You see, both Andy and I discovered on Thursday morning that we were placed at different classes (AC2 and AC3 respectively), and made an appeal to our UFP head, Ms Evelyn, where after rattling off our conditions and made us sound as pathetically desperate as possible (mostly about me needing Andy’s transport, and other sub-reasons such as how my class’ schedule which lasted till about 3pm almost daily while Andy’s would end at about 1pm almost daily wasn’t mentioned), I was left in a mood of disarray and uneasiness. I hate anticipating things.

So Ms Evelyn phoned and said that after talking to my lecturer who said there shouldn’t be any problem transferring me to AC2, she would make an exception in my case since she wouldn’t normally “entertain such requests”. She added that someone from AC2 wanted to transfer to AC3 as well, so the timing was just perfect. She further mentioned not to reveal this transfer to my coursemates so there won’t be a chaotic exodus occuring very soon.

I was sooo unbelievably fucking happy after that. This emoticon sums it all up: ^_____________________^

I drove Andy, Heng and Ding to SLC once again, but it was already raining when we were on the way there. We made use of the gym for a while - didn’t use the treadmills since I didn’t bring any extra attire - while Andy rested in the sauna for 15 minutes.

Something about swimming relaxes me completely. Every awkward stroke of my totally dying frog style propels me forward underwater and it felt sooo unbelievably good, despite my feeling slightly tired from the fairly mediocre workout I had in the gym. The chlorinated water that surrounded me had this astounding, relaxing properties that worked just like Chinese herbs: all I had to do was to swim, albeit awkwardly and in a manner that might appear to some people like I was drowning, and all my worries simply fade away together with the chlorine.

Something about water just untangle the creases on your forehead, spins the troubles around and let you breathe a little better.

And the jacuzzi with the warm water felt so stunningly satisfying and refreshing.. almost as if some cheap masseur was kneading away on your poor, tired backs.

And with the several hours spent at this place for only RM5, I find the money’s worth paying for.

After finished showering and changing at 10.10pm (there were so many people in the locker-room for the first time), we went to Tanjung to eat, and met up with Esther, Sarah and Jess who came by Ryui Bynn’s car, and Kai Tzin who came by himself and was back for the weekends.. we went back at 12am plus.

The piece of great news about my appeal’s success, and swimming today made me so complacently happy and at ease. I suppose I’m one of them people who would be easily pleased with anything and everything.. a little laugh makes the world go round.