Ok, so I'm back in KL for a cruelly short term break. Its so unfair! The FIS July batch only gets a week off after 3 months of slave labour. This is what you get when you join the 'express' batch. Great.

My uncle's persandingan was last Friday and even at my advanced age, I was one of the flowergirls. Which is ok by me since I've been anticipating the day my uncke would get married. However, I did think I was way too old to be sitting on the steps of the pelamin, legs daintily crossed under such that you'll completely lose sensation in one buttock after a while, and smile sweetly as people watched. Been there, done that. I'm a veteran. Its time to let the young 'uns do the hard work. Anyway, the whole affair was tiring but enjoyable too. Best wishes to my beloved uncle and new aunt, may they have all the happiness in the world together. :)

Now, the best thing about being back is the food. Food is a Godsend. As expected from a multiracial cafeteria, there is no pork and no beef at the university. Since I'm a born and bred meat-eater, is it any wonder that the first thing I ate when I arrived in KL at about 11pm is steak? On top of that, the following Saturday, we went to a not officially opened steak shop. My father had been raving about this place since the first time I came back to KL, but the place is all the way in Subang. But lucky me, the chef, who once worked in the Buckingham Palace (yes, the one and only) is opening a branch right in my neighbourhood! So this guy is a master butcher and an expert at preparing the best meat around. So the concept is that you select the fresh meat (like at a butcher shop) and they will prepare it for you. You don't pay for the cooking, just the meat. Its very simple fare but the meat in itself is so good, you really don't have to bother with other accompaniments.

We had Wagyu beef, ribs, lamb shanks and the best of it all, Chateu Brion (I hope that's the correct spelling) which is tenderloin beef. It was superb! I ate so much that towards the end of the 4 courses, everybody said my face was red! (At times like these, don't be stupid enough to check your blood pressure) But seriously, it was so good, I could say that it will compensate for the next few months when I get back to uni. I mean, such feasts once in a while is acceptable, but once in a while must be stressed. And in my case, it really isn't that often. I can get away with it. Hehe.

So that pretty much sums up the weekend so far. I really am taking advantage of the fact that I don't need to study (yet), hence have the time to ramble a bit here. Its true that I barely have the time to do work, study and have some downtime (online shopping included!) while I'm there, yet alone post an update on my blog. Somehow, blogging, for me at least, takes a while. Furthermore, I mistakenly left my diary there so yeah, I am in need of medium to vent. So this is it.

*tapping nails on keyboard*

Oh never mind.

Its been crazy long since I last updated my blog! Geez... If ever I take out my laptop, its to surf for some assignment (like just now I had to finish yet another titration lab report for chemistry - 3 titration experiments?! Don't you think we all already know how to do the damn thing by now?!) And doggone it, I miss online shopping. Just scrolling down the blog updates is enough to know how MUCH I missed.

But I guess I must make do since my exam is NEXT WEEK. I can hardly believe that its nearly 3 months and my first term will be over b next Friday. We had our last lectures and tutorials today. So far we only know that we'll be changing Chemistry lecturers and Physics will stay. I'll miss my Maths lecturer the most; Khor The Legend!!! He's the most adorable old man and so funny. And we all now have the 11th Commandment drilled into our heads: "Thou shalt not divide by zero." Haha. At least it didn't get too boring in the lecture hall when he made his jokes.

But in a more serious tone, I must say that its the pressure here is terrible. I might just be exaggerating, but looking around, its really pressuring to see everybody studying like crazy and you're there constantly thinking you're aeons behind. Everybody seems to have their work always done early, have studied everything and on top of every subject. To be honest, I think I do reasonably enough at the pace I'm comfortable with, but you just keep thinking, "Is this enough compared to everybody else?" There's so many smart people here that the competition is insane. How do 700 people compete for just 200 Medic seats? Sometimes I look around and wonder who would I be able to continue seeing next year during the degree intake and who would have to agonisingly repeat the year. Unsurprisingly, I heard that most of the students who get into Medic are the repeaters, STPM and A-level leavers and even a handful of Medic students who dropped their course overseas to do it here. If so, how does the SPM leaver compete with these students who have done it all before? I'll tell you how. Study 24/7. (Like someone I know........)

Having said all this, I know that in the end, I don't want to look back to my university years and not remember anything else except the studying. I do intend to collect experiences and memories so that I could say, "Yeah I had fun too." It would suck to just remember how stressed up you were and the endless work. So no. I won't sink that low. Instead, I'll grab any opportunity to do something meaningful and worth remembering. Like last weekend, the university became the hosts for the Asian Youth Kabaddi Tournament so for at least a week, we had different faces here. The furor started when the Japanese and Iranian team arrived. All the girls got excited I tell you. Personally, the Iranian guys were, naturally, smoking hot. The Japanese dudes were cute and better, friendly too.

It was fun actually watching the kabaddi matches. I never heard about the game before up until a friend told me that the objective of the game was for one person to touch an opponent and escape safely to his side of the court before they jump on top of him. Literally. Once you touch, the opponents can tackle you to make sure you don't anywhere near to your safe zone. It was wild to see how they tackled each other. Imagine a bunch of dudes all going after this one person, prepared to pull legs, grab and pin you down. Seriously, it was exhilarating to be in the huge crowd that showed up to watch the final games. It was like watching a football match. The noise! Some of us were sad when the competition ended, especially the ones who managed to make friends with the players. There was a lot of pictures taken and souvenirs exchanged. Luckily I didn't have a penchant for any particular player or not I would be angau for days. *wink wink!*

Then that following Monday night we had a lantern festival. There were some booths selling stuff, the popular I think was the Sticker Monster booth, selling stickers and rhinestones. Later, there was a lantern procession to the sports centre to send off the huge lanterns up to the sky. It was really nice to see the different colours of small lanterns that people (including me!) bought and lit up. Watching lantern launching was awesome. Some made it, some didn't. One made it up to the moon but then made its way down before extinguishing.

Then, most recently, we girls made our own steamboat! Last Friday was our English Oral exam but after that we were free so we went to CS and did shopping!!! I finally found the wedges I wanted and they are DAMN GORGEOUS. I shopped and shopped... so yeah, definitely no online shopping for now, no matter how tempting it is, Scout's honour. We bought the stuff for the steamboat (Aliya suddenly had an inspiration to buy a steamboat and bring it here after Raya) and since we had no way of making a proper stock, we just bought tomyam soup to use as the base. And not forgetting, PINK sparkling grape juice! And it was pretty good. We bought lots of stuff to throw in. Opening the juice bottle was the funniest. We screamed the cork popped, hahaha.

So yes. Where there's time to be serious, there's also time to let go and have fun. I'm so glad that my life isn't that boring. I would die.

Our modest attempt at hostel-made steamboat

Aha, no liquour here folks! Just innocent, pink sparkling grape juice...