Graduations

Well it's graduation season again on campus, both for foundation and degree on Thursday and Friday respectively. A lot of happenings before the Open Day on Saturday, so the campus was hyped and happening.

My habit of taking the picture of a person taking a picture

Foundation lecturers who knew what to do when a camera is aimed at them

What's a Sarawak campus without traditional ngajat eh?

Time flies around Tiang...

Proud parents of a graduated Auggie.

Secret Recipe Gathering

Our senpais returned from Perth to attend their graduation ceremony here in Miri campus. So prior before the ceremony we had a gathering with most of the gang at secret recipe to do what we do best; go nuts.

Banana split RM9.90 (including tax RM11.40). I thought this was nice until...

KY got his monstrous chocolate sundae for the same price. Damn! Now that's a sin! (Yup the menu described the sundae as a sin haha)

Well it doesn't look so intimidating after 2-3-4 people helped scoop it bits by bits 5 minutes ago

Future DotA / L4D players cum working white-collared dudes

Yup, confirm still nuts. Wait till Michelle sees the Photoshopped pic Auggi...

New Curtin School of Business

The new S.o.B in Phase 2 is now open for business. Finally we S.o.B.s can have something to be proud of wohoo. Now if only we can find a way to dominate the new parking lot to be a S.o.B-exclusive parking only. Really wondering why the engineers would want to park near the new Lance Toomey's building (that's what LT stood for for the new Phase 2) and then walk all the way to ME and the GP buildings.

It's pretty big on the inside, I had to go around in circles 2-4 times before I can finally find the lecturer I wanted to meet. Hope they put up their names on the door and some more shades to let them have some privacy soon. Seriously, it's like an aquarium in there (as mentioned by the lecturers as well).

Week 6: Killer Week

Week 6 was damaged me by 67.1%. I lost a lot of screws and triangles to sate all Week 6's academic and non-academic requirements, oh and the upcoming Curtin's 10th Anniversary Open Day, which is going to be big. So technically everyone who is in a commitment is stretched out and it's hard to find them when you need them nowadays. As for me I was mostly camped in campus to finalize one of my biggest solo assignment for the semester at day, and after sunset I went around meetings regarding more group projects. But luckily we got technology so slowly I limited my availability to e-mails and SMSes to keep my sanity intact, while at the same time make myself available to anyone who needed me (although I see that most peeps are so busy to the point it takes them 1-2 hours to give a feedback SMS or 1/12 day to open an e-mail and 2 days to reply them). The slow and sometimes dead Broadband line is a hindrance to students who needed to get online to finish up their assignments, and this added with the wait for team response means theres a LOT of free time to kill.

Blackjack and Bluff entertained the top floor occupants of h3666, no gambling alllowed though. This is what top-students who really wanted to do their assignements do when they have no access to the Internet. I hope the Senadin YB sees this and erect a wireless tower soon so future students living in the pathethicaly wifi-covered Senadin (not campus) don't have to resort to playing strip bluff.

30 minutes later it gets hot and topless...

And we were soon joined by the h3666 occupants from down below...

Hah the simple life of boys with no Internet access...

Then come morning it's back to camping at campus to get deConnexion which is way faster than the wifi at h3666. That's reason #7 to go campus so far, and no for those who says that I should've just go campus and go home when assisngments are done. Four sentences: Library. Closed. After. 7.pm. And not to mention the librarians who aranges the chair near 6.30pm as a closing time sign put a lot of pressure on an assignment-ridden student who cherish the >56KBps deConnexion line (After 5pm not much users so we technically owned the line). So after 6.45pm we just chowed and got out of the library looking like Korean tourists who just came back from a penguin tour in Phillips Island, Vic. Then the same cycle goes on again at nite where nothing much can be done. So hope this explains why I lost a few screws and triangles of late. Beni-ha-ha XD

Earth Hour: 60 Minutes in Senadin, Miri, Sarawak

Despite the heavy effort of several NGOs and even from my campus, not much people give a damn about Earth Hour. Anywho h3666 gave much support for the cause to show our concern for our dear Mother Earth.

H3666 has the brightest compound along the block

They said lights out, but not other electrical appliances

0% light is no hindrance for a roomie to watch illegally downloaded dramas

Broken Promises

I'm just asking for a few simple things...

I knew I had the feeling I was causing uneasiness to people around me. My habit of killing off weaklings and free loaders is notorious as I demand productivity and blind zeal from my group members in any projects, and in return I will promise them great glory beyond their usual standards. It’s just one of my scary genes that despise anyone or anything that appears weak and pathetic because they will only slow down progress (must be some kind of natural selection thingy hardwired into me). So the siened, pissed and WTFBBQed people are not my concerns as I got the song “One and Only – Timbaland feat. Fall Out Boys” for that. But despite the trail of destruction I left behind for the past 3 years, I just had that feeling, that certain feeling, that something was really amiss. Something new. Then it happened.

“Hisham, are you unhappy with me?”

Finally the person spoke up to me. Despite my cold-siened default expression and my counter-read fortitude (a dark art of marketing that renders one to be able to read other’s expression but at the same time disallow others to read one’s actual expression), the person saw it right through me. The person detected my sienness and rejection. And the person is not even in marketing.

That was how bad I was sienned at the person deep down in the core of my heart. I did not realize it myself until the day the question was asked.

Yes I demanded productivity and blind zeal from my colleagues, but apparently something the person did forced me to amend my stipulations. Now besides productivity and blind zeal, I demand my colleagues to keep their promises. I’ve been living in this world for 21 years and did my part to earn some good karma to forget the evil things men do, but the only thing I won’t tolerate is broken promises. I’ve had enough of people breaking promises, big or small, that I will automatically give them a -50 each time they do it, and the value may vary according to the extent of the thing promised. And the value stacks. Doesn’t matter if they are strangers, close friends, loved ones or brothers-in-arms, I will get so pissed even for the littlest thing they promised but didn’t do. I value each individual’s word to the highest regards even over money and other Earthly materialism. Hence once unfulfilled I’ll always remember it and bring all my resentment caused by all the broken promises with me to fuel the fires of Hell. That is how valuable promises are to me. And this person even assured me with promises from the person’s heart. And the person blew it and forgot about the promise. That’s one big resentment and an automatic damnation from me for the whole semester until the person brought it up.

If you are reading this and have not yet consciously or unconsciously broken any promises with Ham (you’ll know it if you can detect it like the person above), then keep it up. A word not kept will be satisfied with another word not kept and bonus damnation from Hell.

Fortunately everything ended well. The person is my good comrade, and I learn to forgive after the person apologized for forgetting the promise. It was just that simple. Although I did not get what I was promised a semester ago, realizing about the pledge’s negligence and apologizing for it was enough to sooth my soul. I may still invest some hope in humanity and the world where words and honor endure.

Jeans: Droop It Like It's Hot!

I’m not a jeans person. But the three-month semester break changed that habit when I was required to do a lot of traveling with little to no time to wash my laundry at all. The jeans’ ability to be reused over and over again for 2-4 days has made me to be fonder of it. Hence this semester you can see me wearing what was once a part of the World War I American army denim outfit a lot during study week.

So strong was my image affiliation with khakis and slacks that my buddy was skeptic about the jeans he was saving was actually mine when I called him from campus and asked him to bring in my laundry when it rained. But fear not, I will still wear slacks from time to time to keep up with my “give freedom to the children” principles. Just expect more jeans this semester than usual since it’s reduced my laundry capacity down to 45% due to their recyclable nature, something pleasant during this economic downturn period.

However after wearing the jeans more often, I realized something. This;

Yes, the jean is always drooping on one side of the leg. And I hate it, because that way I’m sweeping up the floor from home to campus and back home again, leaving a nice kamah marks at the end of the denim piece that renders the jean to be less pleasant to be used the next day. So from time to time you’ll see me pulling up my jeans to make them even again.

I know it’s a low-rider, meaning it hangs lower than the waistline to allow more air intake and reduce the ‘chokehold’ or ‘camel toe’ effect, but that does not explain why it tend to droop only at one certain leg. Logically if the jeans were to slide off down it should droop to both sides randomly due to our movement, according to chaos theory. But that theory does not apply here. At first I thought my right leg is shorter than my left, but that turned out to be a false hypothesis (stood in front of the mirror to confirm both my legs were even).

So I started asking other low-rider wearers about it, and I was surprised to find out that I was not the only one facing this enigma. Two dudes I asked said that their jeans will droop to only one leg at all times, not the other. For example my jeans droop down my right leg, while Yogi’s droop to the left and I forgot which leg Lau HS’s jeans droop. Then further observation on other jean wearers (excluding the boys who wear jeans up high above their belly/belt wearers/jeans that don’t exceed ankles/nerds) shows the same results; low-riders sag down on one leg.

For now I have no official answer to conclude as to why this phenomenon happens. I’m conducting further research and observation on it and hopefully will get to the bottom of it (pun intended). Boys, especially low-rider jeans wearers, do notify me if you face this one-leg-sag phenomenon and we’ll stand up and have a cup of tea to discuss about it while looking at each other’s one-sided-drooping jeans. And ladies, not to be a sexist or anything but I doubt any girls wear low-riders because that will go against the Public Crack Display Act 2009 (MYY).

CV! Beach Cleaning Sem 1 2009

We had a beach cleaning on Saturday, with CV!s and other schools joining in the fray. The location; Lutong beach, Lutong, Miri. The funniest thing is that the beach is somewhat clean to be cleaned, considering it's technically owned by Shell (must keep a tip-top image of their property). But anywho we managed to dig up a few guni sacks buried under the sand, as well as occasional bottles and dead starfish. However getting up as early as 6am is not something a dogged M&M student look forward to on Saturdays. But the fresh sea air and the good karma feeling for doing something good sure helped me to right-click+refresh my clogged mind after a hectic Week 4. Owh most people got tanned too, so expect a +7% tanned Ham walking around campus soon.

The Lutong Beach, 5-10minutes away from Senadin (depending on traffic)

Even the PVC and Deputy PVC joined in the fray

Our ever friendly Suhas digging up gold as others tolong tengok

A beautiful beach, a leng lui, and three boys weeping after finding out the treasure chest they buried on the same spot last semester was gone

The beach is cleaned to the max, too bad there are certain things we can't clean...

Viva la Vida la Libido

Think only girls have mood swings? Most guys do, except theirs are inconsistent. Some may have their swings once in two months, once a year or maybe daily. But their mood swings don’t start with the need to purchase Kotex. Rather, they only change in terms of moods and things they do. In my case mine is once a month, with testosterone raging thru mid-month that allows me to do crazy shit; like giving a talk about cancer to a crowd of 1,000, or making a bold statement about the relationship between vegetarians and global warming, or simply go all out blaring at a typical 20% group presentation. So from what I’ve experienced so far I can conclude that this mood swing is the actual thing people keep referring to as ‘balls’ e.g. “You chickened out in front of the girl? Oh damn you got no balls!” or “Wow Siaw Kang, you talked! You got lenggengs!”

Like I mentioned different dudes have different testo-rage period. Mine looks like the graph below. The green line is quite often what happened to me after the rage period, with me hyping up stuff and then return back to normal the next few days. And rarely, I got the red line where I got all fired up only to have a nasty downed pike where I get all -____- and stuff, mostly because I’ve used up all the fuel.

After 3 months of observations, below are notable symptoms of a testosterone-fueled boy;

1. Impervious to pain
2. Inconsistent Hunger (One minute you’re extremely hungry, the next you’re not. Related to the pain-immunity attribute of #1 Hunger is pain so the hormone rage cancels it out)
3. Tendency to do extreme things (like sprawling on a Kancil’s hood while it goes around a roundabout at 12Kmph)
4. Random pulses (1-2 pulses each time) that occur at random parts of the body
5. Indifferent emotion/No mood expression (Related to #1 Since can’t feel anything can’t express it. Also leads to #3 and occasional ‘Muka tidak malu’ or thick-faced attitude)
6. Increased attention
7. Muffled hearing
8. Increased multitasking capabilities (Related to #3 and #6)
9. Contrast vision (increased focus rate, everything seems sharpened and clear)
10. Thickening of tongue’s taste buds to the point it nullifies the sense of taste
11. Vertigo
12. ‘Butterflies in belly’ sensation that irregularly crawls up and down between the belly and head (Related to #11)
13. Constant sweaty palms (especially left palm)
14. Deeper and heavier pounding of the heart, and also slightly increased heartbeat rate (the feeling of it pumping loads of blood at one go)
15. Sitting up straight/forward with shaking legs (related to #3 and #8)
16. Musking
17. Dehydration with dry lips (Related to #13)
18. Finger tip/fingernail biting (Related to #1)
19. Teasing headache
20. Increased libido

It doesn’t have to be all the 20 above. Sometimes it’s just 1-2, or maybe sometimes 45 symptoms. But bottom line is dudes who suddenly have that urge to go all “THIS IS SPARTA”, please use them testosterone-boost bonus periods to do things you won’t regret later. Know it, observe it, and master it. Then you can beat all those toastmasters anytime or even run for Prime Minister. Cheerios~

Happy Birthday Spongebob!

Spongebob is now 10 years old! Happy 1st decade you porous yellow sponge! Hope the next new episodes will be as hilarious as the first few new ones XD

(Yea, I'm a Spongebob fan)