JYSim for jobless-yokel Sim

I had the idea of this post for a few days but I never really structure it out, till now. And as I’m writing this the contents I chewed on for so long is gradually evaporating. So if this post turns out to be in the usual ‘miscellaneous’ category it’s not 100% my fault.
Well, what I’m trying to express is that you could never underestimate the power of the question ‘how had you been?’ It is, to me, a very potent and heart-warming question, whether the person you’re seeing had been gone for a long long time or just for 10 minutes (but logic tells us if he was just away for less than 1 day we’d instead ask ‘how are you?’). Of all the questions I was asked when I was back home I find ‘how had you been?’ both most difficult to talk on as well as easiest to elaborate. I was ok. I was good. It wasn’t a good semester. I don’t care much anyway, since I’m already back home.
Almost once every week a phone call will ring abruptly at around 10 to 11pm. And I’ll see ‘+60164099000′ in the caller ID column. I pick up the phone and the first question would always be ‘how had you been?’ It would always be ‘I’m ok, very good these few days.’ And in fact I had been in good condition all these while. I had deliberately taught myself not to think too much these days and I had been contented for the past month. I have friends, and I’m brave enough to tear myself from our O. Chem textbook to play badminton or read an Amy Tan novel. I found solace in choir, and indeed our Bach song was getting better and better. I’d really like to listen to the recorded version soon.
I’m fine, I sleep like a log of wood every day (except occasional days when my roommate decided it’s better to play guitar at 2am. But generally he won’t go into that so often I felt like killing him). I ate and overspend on food. I listen to Josh Groban and Jacky Cheung and Ronan Keating. I went out to parks with my friend(s). I had idle afternoons doing nothing except reading, surfing the net and sleep. I played badminton, and whacked the girls real hard, but was whacked back by the boys after that. I study a little, not exceeding 2 hours every day, and I’m going places in the next few weeks. I’m great, in general.
Of course, there are things that sucked sometimes, like every Monday morning when you see the teacher writing HTML codes so easily and his pictures and words moved like magic but yours just stood there paralysed or Mars language appeared when you click your button, you thought - how will program writing be useful in a doctor’s career in the future? I might as well hire a program writer to do this for me instead of scratching all my hair off doing this.
Similarly, every Thursday morning is challenging to me and a girl from Taipei. We’re both physics dummies. Give us F=ma and we might end up with ’shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ And after 2 hours of lessons we will have to invest a further few hours (not exceeding 5 per week) to dissect what the teacher was teaching. I’m not gifted in physics, as I wasn’t in HTML as well as Trigonometry. I guess I’ll just let the current sweep me to whatever marks I’m fated to (the teacher never failed anyone before).
I watched ‘Babel’ and ‘American Beauty’ lately and found them both to be two of the best movies in recent years. I especially liked Babel, though when I watched it the subtitles didn’t come out (cos I forgot to download an extension program attached to the player), and I spent 5/6 of the 2.5 hours during the movie deducing what was happening based on the actors’ and actresses’ facial expressions, and my almost-buried Japanese and kindergarten-level Spanish. It was a normal plot but an amazing movie, not until you watched it yourself.
So, my days had been somewhat great in a sense. And how about yours? How had you been?

In a class of 52, it’s easy to neglect a few of those who are usually more reserved, less outspoken or just less fortunate. The key in reducing these incidents lies in making announcements publicly and ensuring everyone got the message but not only those small portion of people around you.
I had been the victim of ‘the negligence game’ twice for the past 2 weeks. I do not know whether it’s partly my fault or the organizer just simply detests me, I was not informed, officially, about (the first incident) a class trip, and the second, collection of lunch boxes. I think most people knew I have a choir competition looming ahead and that I’m usually fairly busy during the weekends, but to assume that you gotta go for choir practise and hence definitely not coming to the class trip is just downright rude, at least to the victim himself. I am not a man of procedures but I would at least like to be respected. How long would an MSN message asking ‘we’re going to YiLan this weekend as our class trip, you’d like to come along?’ chew up your time? And I’m never those people who leave their MSN open (and the status showing ‘online’) when I’m out and the room’s barely empty.
It’s difficult to describe but I’ve been anger-free for a long time now. The last time I experienced anger (and an extreme one) was when all routes leading to applying for a mobile phone failed, and nobody’s willing to help, not even those closest to me. So, you could imagine my surprise and shock (no anger elements here) when A asks B and C ’so, you guys decided on participating in the class trip this weekend?’ and I was staring blindly ‘isn’t the class trip canceled?’
I knew and we all knew I possibly wouldn’t come along, but haven’t I promised I’ll try to the next time there’s one (I actually missed the first class trip with no solid reason)? And just by asking me whether I’d like to (ditch choir practise and) join you people you’d make me a happier person, even though I cannot come along. This is fundamental courtesy.
(To Taiwanese students, and I think I represent a lot of foreign students here) We do think that sometimes your way of organizing an activity is a far cry from our ways, and occasionally we do laugh at your stupid ways of handling things. And that’s why you do really observe some distances between local and foreign students here. Nevertheless, we still pay the necessary respect to you guys whenever your stuff are exhibited or your activities are ongoing, and we would always do that, as long as we’re here.
At the end of the day, going or not does not matter anymore, as the sincerity you exhibited had shown whether or not you’re worthy enough for us to participate along. And I rest my case speaking on behalf of all the neglected.

Reading Kee Wai’s blog as well as flipping through The Star Online reminds me another year has elapsed since we were the merry group of schoolchildren queuing up to be handed the KDU file containing our flimsy SPM result slip. Things didn’t change at all, I suppose, except that maybe more and more people are getting more and more Aces across the years.
It is as if the value of Aces had deflated these past 10 years. Remember there was this one boy whose Mum and Dad were hawkers and he got 13A1s? That was the huge story back then, maybe less than half a decade ago. Then there was this smarty-looking girl from a private Chinese high school who got 16. Henceforth the amount of subjects taken by ambitious scholars mounted up year after year, as if 16 were not enough, people go for 17 and recently 19. Sometimes you wonder if they can really cope because you almost died studying just one Physics before the exam.
I had approximately an hour to spend after lunch today, so I hopped onto the library’s computer to see how Chung Ling performed this year. Surprisingly (or should I say, as expected) Chung Ling was not on the front page, again. Penang top-scorers were dominated by those from Jit Sin, Free School, St. Xavier’s, and PCGHS. As if the mockery was not enough, The Star showed two CLHS twins holding their results slip, with 9 big words beneath them ‘we did not study really hard for the exams’.
Thinking back, it’s been a while since CLHS hit the front page, whether it be good news or bad. We do not deny that our academic performances are not very consistent over the years. And it’s the male’s nature to not be so concerned over their studies, but I personally think that CLHS is a school with much more to offer than just the latest ‘in-thing’ - ‘rAce for As much Aces As possible’.
Our overall performances are never worse than those schools that produce top-scorers, our percentage of passes is still 100%, and yet why do we never ever have a top scorer who qualifies to go to Putrajaya for the auspicious ceremony?
The answer, I realised just a few hours ago, lies in the way CLHS boys set their priorities and also give themselves sufficient chances to expand their talents into other fields. Take our year for example, we have uncredited top scorers who are good leaders, good speakers, good coordinators, and we have also those not-so-good scorers who excel at many other fields. In short, we have scholars who do not just see their results as their ticket to a better life in future anymore. We produce universal scholars, universal survivors.
This time next year our 2003/2005 graduates would be the one shouting and cheering at the school compound waving their result slips to gazillions of reporters nationwide. While we do not (and might never perhaps) anticipate to hit the front page, let’s just remember that exams are just a negligible fragment in our much more rewarding life and that this carbon-copied slip can never take over the life God destined (of course do not ever take this as an excuse to laze around). Let the CLHS spirit live on - we do not study really hard, we study smart, and we play hard.

It was the second week of school. It was the most tiring and yet most boring week of school. It was the most revolutionary week for my computer. It was the most slow-paced semester among my 7 years of medical education, or so the seniors say.
In university you can actually choose to become what you want to be. Instead of having been told to attend co-curricular activities in order to obtain marks for your finals, you can actually participate in nothing and stay in the dorm to rot. You can choose which ‘field’ you wanted to excel in - whether it be the computer games master, guru of downloaded cartoons or the CEO of countless societies. Basically, you have the freedom to do anything you like, except that you’ll need to ensure you maintained a certain sustainable level in your studies in order to get your bachelors.
This semester is our easiest and perhaps most enjoyable semester over the next 7 years (according to a lot of seniors). During gatherings they repeatedly tell you to live their spirits they never succeeded in living - go play! Enjoy yourself before the REAL torture comes! My choir senior actually offered to lend me her motorbike so that I can go visit places she never have chance visiting. Unfortunately, I do not have a motorcycle licence and would never risk my life just because so-and-so said where-and-where is more beautiful than the view on top Mt. Everest.
My adaptation process begins last Wednesday when my lessons abruptly ended at 2.30pm. I went to play badminton with my friends, for approximately 40 minutes or so before the tennis students invaded our courts (because it’s raining outdoors). We went wandering for a while before deciding to have an extremely-early dinner. I returned to my dorm at 4.
Realising I have nothing to do for the next 8 hours (till 12 midnight), I studied a little, and turned on the computer. Then the interesting parts began.
I youtubed for the world’s airline advertisements. And after my 5 hour-observation I decided to give my ‘JYSim Best Airline Ad Award of the Year’ to this one belonging to Continental Airlines: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjaFRiWCUMg
That night ended peacefully with me sleeping soundly (cos I was tired judging all the advertisements) and Continental celebrating (of course I didn’t know exactly did they celebrated).
Thursday - I have 8 consecutive lessons stretching over the mornings and afternoons, and by 3.30pm I’m already half-dead. The weather is partly to blame. My last lesson was ‘English Translation’. And I was rather looking forward to it. I expected the teacher to do really nice things like translating Shakespeare or newspaper articles. Who knows at 3.50 (he’s late) he hands out a whole list of short sentences comprising mainly of ‘我爸爸去了美國’. Worse, he translated ‘車禍是昨天發生的’ as ‘traffic accident was yesterday’. Nearing a coma, I skipped the lesson at 4.30.
Before I fell into slumber land yesterday night, this design sparked up in my mind for our class T-shirt. I am a photoshop dummy, and worse, my roommate somehow disabled my Microsoft Office, so my one and only source for design was cut off. After breakfast today, I came back to the dorm and my explosive art talent (blush) just cannot subside inside me. After seeking advice from a lot of friends, I decided to give it a try on ‘Paint’ the primitive software. I spent 3 hours redoing the same design (as I do not know how to delete the objects once they’re fixed). This is my final work, edited by Photoshop Intelligent Auto-Beautification whatnot (click to enlarge).

Of course if it ever got selected I’ll need an expert to professionally photoshop it. But till then I’ll parade this whenever and wherever I have the chance - this is my first computer drawing!
Judging by this week’s activities, I should really start flipping the book soon, or else I’ll fail and even though my design is adopted I’ll never see it on real fabric.

I remember a few years back I was among one of those opposing everything our government does - the unfairness of the quota system, funds distribution etc. Being born and bred in a single-race society means I have very little chance of interacting with other races of Malaysia, resulting in biased opinions as well as polarised words and actions being said and done in classrooms.
It took me four years to recover my mistake. My exchange in Italy opened a new window for me on how beautiful and unique each and every Malaysian is. Perhaps if you are majestic enough to discover the beauty of each and every nationality in the world, but as a Malaysian I had came to realise and later appreciate our people, our country and our culture altogether.
Yes, we do admit that our current system ran by our current government is not the best in the world and that not everyone obtained the largest piece of cake. We do also admit that some unfairness occasionally occur in our society and that we still have a lot of room for improvement in the future to achieve the Malaysian status without Malaysians looking at which ‘race’ you are. However, if we are to compare to other nations of similar structure, we would find that Malaysians live in one of the most harmonic and peaceful countries in the world.
I cannot attribute or dedicate this fact to all our local politicians, but some of them do really work towards national integration.
Sometimes it really feels proud to be Malaysian, especially when your foreign friends stare at you in amazement when you described the Indian Thaipusum or the Malay Hari Raya with such vibrant colours and vivid celebrations. They’ll admire you had so many national holidays every year, though usually you just spend them lazing at home or watching the good movies on tv. To describe Malaysia would cost hours after hours of storytelling and pictures - the current Malaysia is such a complex society you couldn’t just finish with ‘Italians are descendents of the people of the Greco-Roman Empire, period." Each and every race bears such an important identity and history each and every one cannot be neglected.
I speak now with hope and optimism, mainly because I was greeted with warmth and sincerity during my stay back home a few weeks ago. During the first day of Chinese New Year, the 7-11 guy (Malay) I went to buying RM10 DiGi credit said ‘Gong Xi Fa Cai’ to me. I would really like to teach him ‘Xin Nian Kuai Le’, because to me Gong Xi Fa Cai is a little too wealthy for me (I need not Fa Cai yet, not now) but instead I just smiled back.
Every year during various times of the year Petronas spent millions making advertisements we never forget, all with the main themes surrounding national integration and preserving our good core values - something the world is losing.
To all Malaysian readers - wherever you go, always carry along your national identity as they’re second to none globally. To be Malaysian is to be a national of one of the most tolerant and colourful countries in the world. Although our Malaysian passport is not as powerful as those of Great Britain or USA yet (theirs can actually come in handy during national crisis i.e. escaping Iran-Iraq, avoid troublesome checks exiting Afghanistan etc), to be bearing the name ‘Malaysia’ is to be bearing a country that believes in a universal God and that everything in nature comes orderly.