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Never have I been so happy in my life that the word negative was uttered to me.

I won’t be updating a lot these two weeks, and even when I do update – maybe just short, concise things I needed to pen down – don’t expect pictures galore. My finals began today with Financial Markets as the opening 2-hour paper in the morning, and I can’t say I did terribly well. To be honest, it was below par of my usual performance, and I have to put a minor blame on what a fellow forumer on Lowyat.net told me: the electromagnetic fields (EMF) effect, that can cause nausea, headache, fatigue, etc.

If you didn’t catch my Plurk yesterday, I wrote that I had a headache after talking on the phone for about 10-20 minutes with Chris while my handphone was still being charged – which also felt warm/hot while I was using it. This was my 2nd time experiencing this actually, so I suppose I’ve learned from my mistake and will probably switch to speaker the next time the same situation arises (or a bluetooth headset, which I found cumbersome to use, plus it depletes the handphone’s battery a lot, no?). I had this weird feeling in my head and felt a little nauseous the entire night, and only when I slept did this weird ache in my head, that I’m going to term it generally as a ‘headache’, fade away.

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Caught Max Payne last Friday with Andy at GSC Summit – it’s definitely not as good as the actual game’s dark brooding noir feel (I loved the perpetual snow), but I didn’t think it was as bad as most reviewers who lambasted it seemed to have thought, although the ending was a little let down-ish. My ratings would be 3/5.

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Last Saturday, after Andy invited me to go along with him to Shawn’s college in the afternoon, I accepted it to escape this whole mental diarrhoea that I was subjecting myself to. The very few pics I took would explain it all:

Amie, Shawn’s friend (sorry forgot his name), and Shawn in their TCPJ’s kitchen-cum-classroom. Shawn was merely pretending to be at work actually wtf.

So many things I want to say, but they’re all fairly disjointed, which this entry shall be.

1. I just finished watching Brødre (Brothers), a Danish film, earlier – after repeatedly pausing and resuming the movie over a span of several days as I only watch it while I’m eating lunch or dinner, seriously got no time! – and it’s a fairly good, thought-provoking watch. I’m not going to censor any spoilers for the movie here since I doubt most of you will watch it, but it presents a situation that made me think, “What would I do if I were in his shoes?”

Basically the elder brother, who’s a major in the army, was sent to Afghanistan but he was captured by the Taliban. Where he was imprisoned in a dark, cold hut, he met with his fellow soldier (who was really a radar technician) who had gone missing, and the technician was a stuttering wreck. The major comforted him, saying that they’d survive the war, but long story short, later on the Taliban pulled the both of them out and pointed a gun towards the major, asking him to kill Mr. Radar Technician.

The major was clearly anguished, and refused at first, but after being pressured repeatedly with death threats and probably thoughts of not being able to see his wife and two young daughters, he took the metal rod that was handed to him and bashed his fellow soldier, who was cowering and crying in fear, to death.

The question here begs, what would you do if you were in his shoes? Will you kill another innocent man to survive?

I gave it some thought, and sadly, as selfish as this sounds, my answer is yes. It is survival that brings out the ugliness in humans.

2. My long-awaited good news arrived today in the form of a credit card statement. The stupid gem that my fellow Bangkok travelling partners and I bought has been reimbursed partially! For more background info, refer here, but the rough gist of it can be condensed as: we were scammed by a very well-known elaborate Bangkok gem scam by SNP Jewellery, whose ‘players’ comprise of tuk-tuk drivers, guards, and foreign tourists, in order to make the scam more believable.

Oddly enough – not that I’m complaining – on the receipt, it’s stated that we can actually claim a 70% refund wtf. So when Ting, and I shall not tire of saying this, whom I met in Laos while we were cycling around (and probably one of the best things that ever happen in my previous backpacking trip :D), were down at KL for a few nights in August, I took the chance to meet her and her friend! As she was heading to Bangkok as well, she was willing to help us out to get our refund.. and in short, the experience was awful for her methinks. =(

From what I can recall, long story short, when she was at the gem store to get a refund for us (posing as my girlfriend HAHHAHAHA), she was brought upstairs to a dark room and was surrounded by the Thai employees wtf. And because she was so scared, she started crying really severely and said between sobbing that I fell sick and need the money for my operation or something LOL. They were at first skeptical, and demanded proof that she was indeed my girlfriend WTF, and THANK GOD we actually took very silly pics together at Luna Bar (where we went to when she was in KL) making silly faces (the pics were all in Ting’s camera) that they finally believed that we were a couple. Oh and they also demanded to see the pics ‘cause she didn’t have a photostated copy of my passport and wanted proof. :/

Then she handed allll the documentations plus the accursed gem to them, and instead of giving her the refund in the form of cash, they said they’d reverse the credit card charges partially, and asked her to wait for 2 weeks.

The 2 weeks turned to a month, and still there were no such reversals. :( We thought we were duped again for the 2nd frigging time sigh, but JUST NOW my mum excitedly told me that she has received the latest credit card statement and the charges have indeed be reversed – by around RM1.4k! Which means the three of us merely lost about RM200 each rather than the initial RM700. -___- So at least the bloody scamming company has some heart.

O happy day! We’ve been waiting for this good news for way too long. And lesson was definitely learned – will now google for popular scams of whatever place I’m heading to from now on. :/

Thanks again Ting. =)))

3. My academic semester – in terms of studies – officially ended last week and I’m currently on my study break. Yes I’ve been procrastinating a lot and have barely studied sigh! Days seem to pass by so quickly, so many distractions especially after I’ve befriended bloody Mikel a few days ago and have been chatting with him a whole lot since. -___-

In order to curb my failed resistance towards using my laptop, I shall head over to my college library later and do some actual studies on a self-imposed exile wtf.

4. I don’t think I can handle disappointment and anger and resentment very well. While some can smile and laugh their way through a slew of negative emotions that may assault them, I really can’t, much as I try and make the effort not to display my utter dissatisfaction through my facial expressions or my body language. Is it even wrong to do that?

I’m only human, I’m not Mother Theresa or someone saintly who wouldn’t be the slightest bit angry even if the world is on the brink of collapse from humans’ own vices. Plus after sleeping and waking up the next day, my emotional slate would’ve been wiped anew.

In recent months, it just dawned upon me that life is an incomprehensible, gigantic roll of threads that criss-cross with one another. You unravel a string that would eventually be entangled with the other, and often it would take a while before you manage to detach the mangled string.

I glance back towards the years of yore, and I realise back then in my younger days, things were much easier, simpler, and less in-depth, back when 1 + 1 = 2, when things are exactly as they seem to be on the surface. But as I grow up, I realise that that isn’t so – a high school Add Maths teacher told a bunch of very confused students that 1 plus 1 really equals to 3 by using highly advanced mathematics beyond us (or so she said), friendships and relationships in general aren’t as honestly laidback and simple as before, and every little thing seems magnified in the world at large, complex.

I dislike how things are – however I always had, at the back of my mind, this realisation that I was trying to keep at bay, pretending that such complexity doesn’t exist just to keep things simple. Health is merely restricted to fever, cough and flu, finances are confined to allowances given by parents, friendships do not disintegrate that easily, sexuality is when someone likes the opposite sex. But they’re all untrue, isn’t it.

I have been forced time and time again to re-evaluate my misgivings and naive presumptions, that eventually I have to accept the fact that things aren’t what they seem. Much as youth seems to be immortal, we can actually die or be hurt badly from violent illnesses, we have to work to get money, friendships are dotted with fine print and drama in between, and sexuality isn’t that simple.

Learning from mistakes, able to recognise my flaws, submerging myself in new experiences – that’s how I’m learning to grow up. I have stopped questioning the meaning of life, because I learned essentially that there is no meaning – we mark our places in Earth in this life the best we could, do good to our fellow humans, and enjoy this life of ours while we’re still here.

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Someone from the HS forum did a tarot card reading on me, and by golly, was it amazingly accurate! We do not know one another, so to have a description of myself to be written so accurately was something that baffled me.. until Suet told me that it was more of an astrological reading rather than any actual prediction wtf. In fact, on re-reading it closely, I realised that it wasn’t really a prediction, but really an advice.. but I trust that my tarot card reader really did her tarot card thing.

Right now your achievements are flowing speedily and fairly smoothly. There are caring people around you. Despite this, you sometimes feel confused and lacking in control. You’re a bit too quiet and introspective. If you keep studying and working too hard, it will make you feel like more of an outsider. You’re sympathetic and a good friend, but you need to be more open to start with in order to draw in new friends. If others see you as too aloof you won’t be able to meet new people and find love. Don’t be afraid of change and don’t be afraid to express your passion and enthusiasm for things important to you. This will definitely draw new love interests to you.

Then me, Suet, and Ding were on an MSN convo from like 2.20am to 4am discussing astrological signs WTF. Of which nearly 90% of them were right on target, ranging from our personalities, characteristics to negative traits. Yes from what I read, I do sound like a typical male Aquarian. It was also written in many sites that Aquarians are generally introverts and are eccentric wtf.

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Last Saturday, on the 4th October, I watched Eagle Eye with Andy, Ding, and Wai Hong at Summit. It was fast-paced, explosive, although I certainly didn’t expect the twist – which really has been done quite a lot times already. Entertaining watch for me – 7/10.

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I participated in a Live Club competition last year, won 2 Vista Ultimates, and thanks to my American online friend who had the prizes sent to him then forwarded to me via Fed-Ex (for USD$100+ wtf! I didn’t expect it to come to that), I am now in possession of 2 sealed GENUINE Windows Vista Ultimate SP1.

I’m currently selling it for RM699 (negotiable) each (retailing at RM1200 outside), and if by any off chance that you’re interested, leave me a message.

Mamma Mia! I got lost for an hour wtf. (Sorry, lame exclamation was done to link it to the main point of this entry.)

After ringing up Axcess’ hotline for about 5 times, I gave up – ‘cause for nearly every call I made to that hotline, I was actually greeted by a busy tone WTF! How is it possible that a hotline be busy? I thought at the most I would reach a feminine pre-recorded voice who’d tell me, “I’m sorry, all of our agents are currently engaged” instead of an outright denial to my call in the form of a busy tone.

Then I went online.. and found out that I can actually buy the tickets online. =_____= Good lord why am I so dumb didn’t check that out in the first place!

So I discussed with my mum about our Mamma Mia purchase.. and since my parents haven’t been going for holidays or something slightly out of the ordinary to treat themselves with, we’ve decided to get 4 tickets in total, for me, Brandon, and my parents. The costs would be split between me and my mum.

And so after some deliberating, I decided to actually go to Axcess’ main office in PJ and get my tickets there straight instead – plus I figured I could select my seats and stuff, whereelse you probably can’t do that via the telephone or the Internet (no I didn’t find out..).

I drove all the way to PJ’s Jalan Semangat – alone, which I have to emphasise ‘cause I have never driven into unfamiliar territory without at least one person accompanying me – and I had a feeling that this wasn’t going to be an easy search. I have no idea what to do to begin with once I actually reached that road, so smart ol’ me drove into this Jaya 33 mall and parked there, as I thought it would be far easier to search for an office on foot (PJ is a hectic place and you can hardly find a parking space without double parking or parking illegally).

After walking up and down the streets (there are TWO Jalan Semangats, both directly opposite the other) and drenched my clothes completely with sweat, I finally had to call a few people and reached Yen who helped me out by providing its exact address (yes I dunno what came over me to NOT take down its exact address and took things for granted) and a few of their telephone numbers. I then asked several people who seemed to not have heard of Axcess before, nor the Lot that it was in.. and was about to give up when I re-read Yen’s SMS and noticed that she did gave me two telephone numbers other than the Hotline (which was nearly always engaged). >_>

So I rang one of them up, and a sweet girl’s voice in perfect English entertained me while I was still sweating profusely and asked her for directions to her office. She gave me precise directions, and after considering walking there wtf, I decided against it, went back into the damn mall, paid the RM2 parking, and drove all the way down the 1-2 kilometre stretch of Jalan Semangat till I reached Axcess’ office. -____- Freaking kilometre-long Jalan Semangat.

I expected to see the physical manifestation to that sweet voice in the form of a receptionist or something, but nothing of that sort happened, because I walked in right into an office where a Malay lady was manning the ticket counter. I waited for about 5-10 minutes for my turn as the Chinese auntie in front of me was taking up a lot of time by deliberating her seat choices – and while waiting for my turn, I took a whiff of myself.. and I stunk wtf. From all the sweating for nearly an hour plus.

Long story short, I found out that nearly all of the good seats have already been snapped up, the weekday tickets (only on two Wednesdays) were almost full, leaving a few miserable ones – I managed to get middle seats for Tier 1 (cheapest tix) though for the weekend tix, which is located.. on the 2nd floor of Istana Budaya WTF. No I haven’t been to a play nor the Istana Budaya, so I have no clue how it’s going to be like.

Then jengjengjeng it was raining like mad when I stepped out from the office. Fantastic. I was actually quite late for my class by then, so I hurried myself back to college, and arrived an hour late for class (it wasn’t my actual tutorial, but as my QA classes have been cancelled as the syllabus have been completed wtf, I have the liberty to make my final week’s schedule more convenient). “Clement, you’re early!” my Business Finance lecturer sarcastically said as I walked in a hurry, although she wasn’t being unhappy about it – matter of fact, most of the lecturers couldn’t care less lol.

The things I do for the West End musical.

My tickets for Christmas Day, 8.30pm. =)))

It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I’m not about to miss it.

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I’ve taken the liberty to upload some videos to Youtube today, actually on Suet’s request (sorry it took so long) – here’s the infamous Quiz of the Day video from the good ol’ u8 days in 3 parts! If you understand Cantonese, this will make you laugh to no end.

Part 1!

Find out who the mystery caller is in this 2nd instalment wtf.

And the final wrap up – ching kei mou cor gor!

Caution: Excessive amount of emoticons were murdered in this entry.

I slept a lot this afternoon – I went to Klinik Ooi to get my sore throat, flu and an impending fever sorted out, and when I was asked whether I prefer to have pills or a liquid medicine for my sore throat, I asked, what’s the difference? Which is more effective?

“Well, the cough syrup’s more effective, but if you don’t mind it causing drowsiness..”

Bring it on!, I said. Or something to that effect.

And I fell into a very deep slumber in the afternoon for about 4 hours right up till about 7pm. And felt utterly great when I woke up.

I also asked the good doctor – a passing question since I was there, is it normal to have diarrhoea the next morning after a night of drinking alcohol? She took to answer it very carefully, “Well, by definition ‘normal’ is something that everyone has or done, and since not everybody has diarrhoea after drinking alcohol, no, that’s not normal.” And she began explaining how I might be allergic to some of the contents of certain alcoholic drinks, and advised me to change brands to see if it’s still causing me the symptoms, and mentioned the Asahi beer wtf.

When I added that I have rash and felt itchy during drinking, she immediately leapt on it and said, “You’re definitely allergic to alcohol” and then mentioned ‘histamine’ (whatever that is) and there was a danger of it spreading to my lungs, and I would choke to death WTF….....

“If I were you, I will stop drinking. Alcohol isn’t important to life anyway.”

I was in a state of utter shock – first it’s dairy products, now a leisurely indulgence in my only vice (okay, that is debatable) could be out too? T__________T I have given up chocolates, cakes, ice-creams, milk, butter, some bread, cheese, among other dairy products, and to think I now might have to give up alcohol too!

WHAT HAVE I DONE IN MY PAST LIFE TO DESERVE THIS T______T_T______T______________T

But this is all too strange! Last year was probably when I started drinking way too much when I was backpacking in Cambodia and Vietnam with Gopi and Siew, and the only worst things that happened to me were puking and a hangover and that’s it. No diarrhoea whatsoever the next day.

It only happened fairly recently since a few months ago – if I were to hazard a guess, I would say that I’m probably allergic or too sensitive to contents of some alcoholic drinks like the doctor said. =/ God knows what it is – I can now cross off either whiskey or cognac or both (from what happened on my recent PD trip) from my drinking list because I had diarrhoea when I consumed both.

However! A quick google search returned no life-threatening news associated with alcohol, histamine, and choking wtf – the only thing I managed to gleam off the wise, sometimes fraudulent, Internet is this: that excessive drinking does cause diarrhoea, and some people are more sensitive over the effects of alcohol than others. I suspect I fall into that category. =(

I don’t think beer – which is my favourite alcoholic indulgence – would be in my possible banned drinking list, from what I remember when I drank two bottles of Leo’s every night when I was in Bangkok. But then again, drinking moderately is key, so no more drinking like a fish I guess. :/

I am aggrieved. I weighed heavily the possibilities of choking to death from drinking, and another quick googling revealed that happens only when I have.. asthma. Which I don’t have!

Whatever it is, I’m drinking moderately from now on. I know I sounded like I was trying to convince myself – but sigh, it’s a fairly important social tool for me, especially when drinking with friends and strangers alike. It probably was one of the factors behind the most fun aspects of my backpacking journey in Cambodia and Vietnam, when I was drinking with total strangers – the chummy, budding closeness and hilarity that ensued when one is losing control with part of his mind.

Not quite a happy-sounding title, but my short trip to PD was anything but – I’ll come to it later as this entry goes on.

I initially thought I couldn’t make it when Shawn suggested the idea to me, Ding, and Andy when we were doing Japanese homework in Shawn’s room on Sunday, as I had a house-warming party organised by my uncle that I had to go after promising him that last week or so. A lengthy story cut short, it was then decided that I would go at night with Kai Tzin whereelse the rest would go in the morning.

At 7.45pm sharp on Wednesday’s first day of Hari Raya night, I was about to leave with my brother when my mum’s female cousin arrived and then I had to dispense with the usual customary greetings and small talk (OH and that cousin of my mum has an ex-colleague who is now the head of my RMIT office WTF so small world! And the PKR Information Chief Tian Chua is her brother.. who supposedly attended the party too but I must’ve missed him – could’ve asked whether the government takeover plan is really real or not wtf). By then some 5-10 minutes have passed, and I firmly made my leave, hopped into the car, and activated the GPS software Mapking in my phone.

It didn’t work. After moving the car for a mere 200 metres an error flashed across the screen “RT error. Storage out” and I had to stop by the roadside while I pondered what the fuck was the matter, because earlier at my uncle’s house, I had gone through the route I was supposed to use to go back home using the GPS and it was working fine back then.

I was getting jittery and pissed because I knew I was running late, and I was unfamiliar with the roads (as usual) around Bandar Mahkota Cheras. Eventually even after having my dad come over and he couldn’t figure out what was wrong too, I traded places with my bro so he would drive while I fiddled around with my GPS, and then talked to my dad on the phone for an entire 8 minutes while he told us in minute detail where to go to when we missed the turning that we were supposed to make and found ourselves hurtling straight to KL. Maxis’ Family Plus 30 plan came in handy here – all calls and SMSes I make to my dad are completely free!

It was also the first time that I used my 3G to connect to the Internet – in my desperation, I thought of googling for solutions to my problem right there and then (it was expensive, 1sen/kb) and didn’t find anything useful. Blabla another long story short, I traded SMS with Jess, we picked up Kai Tzin, went back to my house to do further googling on my laptop, picked up my camera bag, changed my Dockers into a more casual 3-quarter pants, and left at about 9.20pm-ish.

I was about an hour behind schedule. >_> So much for leaving at 8.30pm.

Another reason why I was jittery and pissed was because then in my car, you have two people who know nothing about the roads leading to Port Dickson via Sepang’s Elite Highway, and I wasn’t too keen of a 2006 New Year’s repeat of how Jess, Sarah, and I got lost from The Curve all the way to KL. The circumstances were all too similar – the other car had people who knew their roads very well, while my car had none.

Multiple phone calls had to be traded between Kai Tzin’s phone and Esther’s phone, in which Daniel told us some directions.. and both of us were momentarily confused when Ding told us to “turn right at the T-junction” when what we really encountered was a crossroad wtf. But yeah it turns out that it wasn’t really that difficult to go to PD, except that the dark unlit roads at night, coupled with some specific windy, curvy roads, were really scary to drive in.

When we finally reached what looked like a town, we heaved a sigh of relief. There were only about 25 kilometres or so (from what we saw on the signboard) from where we were, and then I tested my GPS again (after uninstalling Mapking, and used Garmin instead) and it.. worked! The GPS indicated that we were on the wrong road wtf when we were going to the actual PD town instead of “Pantai-pantai Peranginan” or something like that, and that we were only 2km away from Ding’s Sunshine Bay Resort. :D

The GPS is a joy to use (even though it’s a little slow in pinpointing our exact location), especially for people who are prone to get lost like me.

When we finally got into our unit on the 12th floor at nearly 11pm, there were everyone else including Yen.. Esther and I went out to get some cigs from the nearby petrol station (not for me of course wtf), then went to the 3rd floor where Shawn’s family was.. and we ate steamboat of which the ingredients they had excess.

Then we went back up to our own unit. (Most of the pics can be clicked to enlarge.)

Watching two poignant movies in a row in two days (Saturday and yesterday) instilled in me this sense of extreme calmness, wherein it was impossible for me to harbour hatred or jealousy or any negativities in me – it was a feeling I relished, loved, and if I have to paint what I felt with more precise imagery, I’d say it was like attaining that state of nirvana. I felt completely at peace with myself and the world – despite the fact that both movies could potentially move one to tears.

And all these put me in a contemplative mood. I was so. At. Peace. It’s hard to want to shake off this serenity that enveloped me – and I guess that’s why I love watching these potentially heartwarming, poignant movies that might even force you to think when the credits roll. I love the tranquility that seemed to reverberate off the screen I was watching from, and that’s probably why I was so drawn to these movies like a drug addict would to his stash.

The first movie I watched was on Sunday 2am (though I suppose it wouldn’t count as Saturday in a technical sense) on my laptop – this Australian movie that only saw limited screening, called Romulus, My Father. Based on the biographical book of the same name written by Romulus’ son, Raimond Gaita, it recounts the tale of how an Australian immigrant raised his son, and his relationship with his estranged wife. A typical family drama it is not, and all I can say is that the pace of the movie might not be for those who love action movies – the cinematography is breathtaking, and this true story is mesmerising to the end, supported by an amazing cast (starring Eric Bana and Kodi Smit-McPhee) who played their roles very well.

The second was Accuracy of Death, as it is known locally, or Sweet Rain or 死神の精度. I wanted to watch this Japanese movie so much that because of inconveniences in screening time (both Andy and WH couldn’t go at night), I went all the way to Cineleisure with Wai Hong and Andy to catch the 4.50pm show on Sunday. Starring Takeshi Kaneshiro as the dashing god of death, it offers a fresh original storyline concerning a probably overdone topic of shinigami (god of death) and despite the morbid subject on hand, it’s incredibly moving and thought-provoking – the sort of thing that makes me want to live and appreciate life to the fullest, as corny as it sounds.

After fetching Andy back as he was rushing to cut his hair at his friend’s place, WH and I ate at the chicken rice stall behind my house for dinner.

Then after the usual last minute changes at night, eventually Ding and I went to Shawn’s place to do our Japanese homework in his room – Shawn’s mum just came back from the UK along with his ‘cousin sister’ so it was pretty rowdy in the living room. Andy dropped by too, then after a while, we went off to Andy’s house – not before Ding and I went back to my house to pick up an Absolut Apeach and bought a few things at 7-Eleven to do some mixing, and lemang from the stall near the Petronas station behind my house that was actually open at 1am. O_O

We.. drank. And ate the lemang. And talked. It’s one of the social things that I like to do – a bunch of friends sitting around a table talking over alcohol in the comfortable, intimate setting of a house rather than over elongated tables at a noisy open-air mamak over limau ais where as a cohesive clique we seem to have sub-cliques of our own.

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You know, everytime I attend my Chinese or Japanese class, nearly each time I come out feeling incredibly pumped up and excited in that pursuit of knowledge. My teacher seems incredibly happy and cheerful and positive all the time and views life through rose-coloured glasses, and in that way, her nearly childish excitement of learning something new seems to be rubbing off onto me.

I guess that’s why I looked forward to her classes somewhat every week. Sometimes she even offered us life advices voluntarily, even though we probably must’ve heard them from other sources nearly all the time – like in today’s class, she advocated exercising to us young’un’s wtf.

Just earlier (on a somewhat unrelated note), I discovered that the 40-something auntie in my Chinese class is something of an incredible woman – I’ve always known that she’s the adventurous outdoor type, as she has been running in marathons, climbed the Himalayan mountains before wtf, and trekked through the thick rainforest of Sarawak. Today, she told us that she had driven on our F1 Sepang circuit for Team Porsche WTF and owned a “race car” (no I didn’t ask what exactly it was). ‘course it’s not for the big F1 races, but merely something of an entertaining (expensive) pastime from what I gathered.

Just a funny observation – everytime I call Maxis Customer Service at 123 (which is actually a lot, I probably rang them up for about 6-7 times already this week), when I’m asked for my telephone number, began rattling the prefix 016, they’d stop me from continuing by saying, “Erm sir.. 016?”. And I’ll then have to give a brief explanation that I transferred via MNP, and I could almost see the proverbial lightbulb flickering above their heads with a lightly inflected “Oh!”.

That’s the thing about customer service – I have done briefly a telemarketing stint, and really put myself into a telemarketer’s shoes, to say the least, and understood what all telemarketers worldwide had to go through – and customer service is no different. Which is why I’m exceedingly polite to my fellow brethren who were, well, unfortunate enough to be in that line of work – I have to say though that out of say, 10 Maxis customer service personnels I talked to, only 1 seemed slightly rude due to his ineptitude in English.

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I don’t think I did particularly well in my recent Price Theory test on Tuesday from 10am to 10.50am. Half of the 10 objective questions I couldn’t answer, and I was a little uncertain with the 3 subjective questions (all 3 came out nearly exactly as the lecturer told us beforehand).. and let’s just hope I managed to scrape through – that’s what I get for not studying that much. :)

But anyway the point of this entry.. was instead of going down to meet Chris on Wednesday, impatient ol’ me decided to bring it a day forward to Tuesday, and so after the test, my mum dropped me off at the nearby Subang Jaya KTM station, and I hitched two different trains all the way down to the Raja Chulan Monorail station, where Wisma Genting is.

I have to say that the trip down to KL alone was a nice sidetrack amidst my somewhat busy life as a college student – hell, I haven’t even sat a train down to KL since ages ago, when my friends and I did this pretty often back when we still couldn’t drive yet. Listening to Across the Universe Soundtrack on my iPod was a great accompaniment – when the track Across the Universe played, it reminded me of a similar scene in the movie when this song was played, which was when Jude was in a train.

Ah, and at the KL Sentral Monorail station, being the good Malaysian that I am, I helped to tell an angmoh that his bag was unzipped, and told a rural Malaysian/Indonesian that to go to the Titiwangsa station, he was indeed at the right side of the station.

I waited for Chris at Wisma Genting’s entrance, and a DiGi employee rang me up, speaking completely in BM and basically did her little survey of why I switched out from DiGi – I told her plainly that I liked DiGi, but owing to the fact that nearly every one of my friends are in Maxis, it’s economically viable to switch.

Eventually Chris came out, and long story short, we walked to Pavillion but later discovered that the Maxis Centre there didn’t sell HTC Touch Pro, and directed us to KLCC’s Maxis Centre instead, which we went (and which I originally thought to go, since it’s the main headquarters after all). Took us probably a total of 15 minutes to walk from Chris’ workplace all the way to KLCC – and I was quite sweaty from the afternoon heat at this point – but I didn’t really notice the time, seeing that we talked a lot on the way there.

Waited for a bit at the expansively large Maxis Centre (compared to the one at Pyramid), then when it was our number, Chris changed his call plan to Value Plus 150, signed his 2-year contract wtf and I got myself a new phone for RM2299 =D (retailing at RM3099 officially), and tons of free gifts like a 4GB microSD memory card, an extended warranty for 1 more year, a bluetooth headset, a car charger, and a RM200 Parkson voucher that I can only obtain after mailing in my warranty.

As Chris was actually rushing back to work, we settled for Burger King (haven’t been there for a long time) to which I treated him.. and zomg my favourite Chicken Turkey Ham (or something like that) increased from RM10 (2-3 years ago) to RM14 WTF. I dont know if this is confined to KLCC’s BK alone or it’s the same in every branch, but that’s bloody expensive and unjustified. :/

Anyway, then we walked all the way back to Wisma Genting, I hitched the monorail back to KL Sentral, and right on time, the RapidKL bus that goes back to Subang arrived so I took it back home. It was incredibly fast too – public transportation is actually great during non-peak hours.. and I reached home at about 3.30pm.

I immediately took my new phone out of the box and started snapping photos. =] It was done quite hurriedly anyway, so don’t expect studio quality photos when I only have a single large white cardboard to work with.

My HTC Touch Pro box, it’s quite a quirky design – in a hexagon/partial pyramid, with my phone already slid out, displaying the mini-keyboard in its glory.