New Year's Resolution 2014

I've been doing this resolution thing for so long it's not right if I don't keep up with this tradition. To recap; I don't really remember much about this year. It's like it just whooshed past me and I'm 21 it's supposed to be exciting I should be clubbing and doing exciting things but here I am, wasting another year. I didn't get a key pendant for my birthday. Literally nothing exciting happened. I didn't get smashed. I didn't get a cake (I think? I forgot). Well... Let's see how many things I can cross off my list.

• get a gpa of 3.7 and above for all my semesters
Yes. My first semester was really impressive but come second semester, it went downhill. I can predict my future semesters will be worse. It's not that I didn't study, but when you have stingy ass lecturers that give you shitty marks for assignment, no amount of Our Fathers and Hail Mary's can save your burnt ass. So I guess I can cross this off my list.

• exercise
If you challenge me to a 100m sprint right now, I'll die on the 10m mark. I bought a school gym membership back in March and I actually exercised 3 times a week (to my disbelief) but not anymore. I tried walking home a few weeks ago and while I made it home, my body was ready to die. I even tried squats for a nice firm booty but it didn't happen.

• get another piercing
Nope. No new piercings, despite how much I really want one.

• learn to forgive and forget
Ah this. I'm more forgiving now, but don't trust me not to talk shit about you. Sometimes I try to forget but my brain refuses to delete any unwanted files. However when I really want to remember something, my brain decides to forget. But I realised something - we can never remember what we have forgotten.

• spend more time with my grandparents
Apart from school keeping me busy, when I was back I did spend time with them. I drove them to Ipoh and that remained to be my biggest achievement of 2014. My grandparents are the only people willing to entrust their life to me to drive them anywhere. Wow. Even my own mother doesn't give me that kinda trust level. And my manual driving skills have definitely improved a lot. I think I can drive by myself on the road now but I should probably come with a warning.

Goodbye 2014. You were really forgettable.

Where Did All My Time Go?

I can't believe it's the 1st of Halloween already. I still remember keying in my July entry in the discomfort of my dorm room and here I am again, in a completely different room doing the same thing. I wanted to update my blog during my two long months at home but I did not because the two months weren't so long after all. I didn't get a job, and all I did was hibernate the whole time. I wish I had gone back to the hotel I worked at a year ago but I did not because thinking about the work stress completely turned me off. I cannot handle another phone call asking me if this is Vivo Hotel right after I said "good morning, Vivo Hotel". I cannot handle being chewed out for checking in a family of 8 into a 10ft×8ft standard room made for 2 when the person checking in lied to me. I cannot handle the manager yelling at me for people not checking out after 12pm. BECAUSE I DONT GET PAID ENOUGH TO DO THIS SHIT. Well yeh it's a pretty shitty job but at least some of the guests are nice enough to remember my name, and one even tipped me.

So, what exactly did I do for 2 months? I did things so insignificant I don't even  remember anymore. But it was great spending time at home just relaxing and sometimes walking to the mall to get McD.

Over here, life has been really good since I moved out of college. I no longer have to deal with obnoxious housemates that sabotaged me (this is a story saved for some other time) and no longer have to feel so depressed and lonely all the time. Back in college I barely spoke more than 50 words in the first semester with my roommate, and I mean it. I am so glad I took a single room because I cannot deal with living with strangers. We had absolutely no common grounds and putting me and her together is like putting ducks and chicken together in a coop. But one good thing about her is she minds her own business. That's my favorite type of people.

Now, I'm just waiting for the day when my housemates finally fall out. I'm putting my money on the weird girl that washes her clothes every fucking day with the washing machine subsequently wasting so much water a month on clothes that she could have just easily hand washed. Or maybe it won't be her. Maybe it would be the other health freak girl that gives me a look of disgust every time I eat a pack of instant noodles. Or maybe it would be the guy with an over protective girlfriend that doesn't even let him be in an assignment group full of girls without flipping her shit? Why the fuck is she so crazy? Weird people are everywhere.

The Final Goodbye

          There have been too many lives lost this year, be it from both plane incidents, the Palestine-Israel conflict, or death of loved ones. Another one that bites the dust is a girl I knew from Georgia, Taylor. I knew her through Kiel, where they were family friends. I still remember the first time I met everyone from both sides of the family. It was Easter Sunday, and he took me to her house which was just two neighbourhoods away from my house. When she first saw me, she was surprised. She said something along the lines of "I didn't expect you to be Asian cos Chantelle was a black name". It was pretty awkward but she was cool, being a typical teenager. She has twin siblings, a girl and a boy, named Gabrielle and Gabriel. Her mother was Tina, and she was a really nice lady, always inviting me along to their family outings. Although we did not really talk much, my fondest memory of her was me braiding her short hair. 

          From what I saw on Facebook, she passed away on June 11th in a fatal car accident where a drunk driver hit the car she was in and knocked her out on the street, but I only heard about her death today. I do not dare to imagine how her family is coping with her loss. How are her siblings now? This must be a big blow to Kiel because he treated her like his own sister, and in addition to this death he lost his mother in February to lung cancer.

          Death is imminent to everyone, but it came too soon for her. Taylor died because of someone else's fault and although drunk driving is really common in the States, it seems like people never learn from their mistakes. She was only 18, going on to 19 in September. She's only lived a small fraction of life compared with those who will be lucky enough to live to see the day humans conquer Mars. She's of my sister's age and her future was robbed from her by something that could have easily been prevented has the driver decided not to drive under the influence of alcohol.

Rest in peace, Taylor.

The Fifth Month

Two days ago I received the news that my cousin's grandpa passed away. It's really sad, because he was blind in one eye and at the end of last year he was so clumsy with his movements he fell down a lot. His wife passed two years earlier, around CNY. My memories of her would be following my aunt to her house to make CNY cookies every year since i was 14 til 17, and her sitting in the living room watching tv. She was a nice pleasant old lady with limited mobility due to a mild stroke, and every time I was there she'd strike up small talks with me. For a young person, I do enjoy the companies of old people. I don't mind talking to old people. They're full of history and life stories. 

I want some people to live forever. Others, not so much. To me, people who reproduce late in life are selfish people. If you have a child at the age of 40, given that you'll live until 70, your child only have 30 years to spend with you. 30 years can pass by in the blink of an eye. I am already 21, and thinking about people close to me dying is a very terrifying anxiety-inducing thought. On one end of the spectrum I want to go out and explore the world but on the other hand, I feel the need to spend more time with the people closest to me before their time is up. I don't know.

Charge Me With Ignorance.

In a world as realistic as the one we're living in, it is so easy to fall into this huge abyss dug out by Ignorance. I'm pretty sure every single one of you are guilty of this crime, where anything that doesn't concern you doesn't matter. Milgram's Obedience studies were proven right over and over again, even by different people recreating his experiment. He was right. We bow down to authority figures. We are too subservient to people who hold power over us. If anything goes wrong, we play the blame game. "It's not my fault. He told me to do it." "Oh, I didn't know." "It's none of my concern." So many excuses. Neverending flow of excuses. 

In my case, I prioritized myself over this poor defenseless person. I wish I was as the moralistic asshole as I preach but things didn't go that way. My excuse? I don't have an excuse. I wish I'd have done the right thing. Everyone in this uni is so afraid of people of authority that the dare not even speak a word against what is wrong. There is so much that's going wrong with our students. How can I someday allow them to be controlling the country if they somehow happen to be ministers or whatnot, when they exhibit absolutely no empathy?

AFS Interview / AFS Interview Tips / AFS Interview Experience

Hello dear clueless readers, 

I dedicate this blog post to help those who have applied for the AFS exchange programs and are waiting to be selected for the interview. I am an alumna of AFS YES 2011, and I was hosted in GA, USA. It was such a great experience! Anyway, back to the interview. I still remember vividly when I sent out my application back in Form 5 and waited ever so patiently for my name to be shortlisted, and to my surprise I saw my name on the list. I was very excited and nervous too, undoubtedly because you will have to pass the interview before being further filtered into a smaller number in another interview (in my case). I have another blog post dedicated to my experience of being interviewed (a very poorly written piece) but you can check it out by following this link : http://laffingfrikk.blogspot.com/2010/06/afs-interview.html 

Based on what I have gone through, what I can tell you is that do not be afraid. Do mix around with other people and don't just sit in a corner and observe other people like a creep. Make friends. Interact with the volunteers, they're really nice. When it is your turn for the interview, relax. Tensing up provides you no benefit and you can only get more nervous. Do not be afraid of the interviewers, because their job there is not to intimidate you, but to evaluate you. I can't tell you precisely what kind of questions they will pose because my memory has failed me but I'm sure the questions they ask aren't too bad. 

 

If you're wondering if grades play a vital part in determining if you get to go on the program of your choice, do not worry. Let me tell you something. I am embarrassed to say this but I applied for YES with three failed subjects. I did not hold positions of  significant impacts in my school, and I was not an all-rounded holistic student. Academic-wise, I was probably one of the worst students there, and I wish I was joking. Just do your best in the interview and everything will work out for you.

Okay children, that is all the words of knowledge I have to pass on to you guys. I hope you find my post informative and let me reiterate myself; DON'T FREAK OUT. Good luck and good bye.

Sunken Friend Ship Recovered. It Can't Ever Be The Same Anymore.

          Continuing from where I left off, one day I found out that I was no longer in a group of 3 for an assignment with A. I was so furious and my head figuratively had steam coming off in all directions (I found this out through another member). This other person told me that I had been replaced with someone else because A told her that I quitted from her group and that I found another group. Truth is, that's not what happened. She kicked me out without even telling me and finding out this raw shit from someone else made my blood boil. I walked to my lecturer's office immediately to settle this but he wasn't in, and it was just my luck that I bumped into A.

          Did I confront her? Oh hell yeh you bet your ass I did. I started losing my shit right in the hallway where I stopped her, and I asked her "why did you kick me out of your group?". And then she kept saying "I thought you had your own group already". Oh really ? If I had another group won't  you think that I'd have the courtesy to tell you? And then I demanded an explanation as to why has she been avoiding me, and it was because of something I did not even realize i did. She said I was not a true friend because there was one time where another friend, B, was stuck in the lecturer's office until someone verified she did her part in the assignment, and B sought for our help and I was supposed to go help her but I didn't. A accused me of leaving B in the lecturer's room on purpose but truth is, I don't fucking remember I had to go save her. I walked straight back to my dorm until A messaged me asking me why I left B there alone. A defended that since I have to walk past the building before I could get to my room, my reason was a weak ass excuse. Excuse me ? How fucking often does anybody have to save anyone in the lecturer's room? According to this statistics I just made up, there is a 0.0% chance of such an incident occurring in a semester. 

   

          Anyway, we resolved the conflict. I guess we're friends again? but we will never be as close as we were previously. I wonder if we were even that close last time, or was I so in a complete delusional phase during our whole friendship that I made it all up? It's  not important anymore. This post will be a closure to everything, and I really wish I do not have to rant about her anymore. It's just not worth it.