Whose life is it anyway?

Place a cucumber in a marination jar and in weeks you shall obtain a pickle.

Place memories of events in CJL’s brain for weeks and soon the unbalanced acid alcaline brain chemistry of yours truly would distort everything remembered into a pack of lies…

And now ladies and gentlemen, I present you, whatever it is that is capable of permeating out my fingers into the decipherable information we humans fuel our eyes with… blablabla my brain isn’t exactly top notch at the moment, so bite me, I’m sleepy, I’ll probably bite you back too.. wahaha

Let’s see where I left.. ah yes, the hospital trip. On the 2nd day of the hospital trip, I recall a little too much faith in good timing LRTs and a lack of common sense which ultimately landed me jogging from the Chow Kit monorail station to the KL general hospital… as if that were not enough, by a stroke of rapid-stupid neuron connection I decided to get myself lost in the labyrinth of the KL hospital’s beautiful tar roads… urgh… I hate getting lost. I have this uncanny habit of crapping with friends when I really should be synchronizing with my internal GPS and at least finding out where am I and how I would get back to the same place in the future.. oh well, the chance to do that was on the first day.. no bonus point awarded for being regretful.. I was already late, darn.. hey look, a security guard

me: good morning sir, do you know the way to the academic hall?

guard: say atak tause babsa yaba rudisi ni

me: what?

Thinking the guard had an important life saving message to convey, I attentively invested 5 minutes of my time to decipher his unique message. And so, after several repetitive series of:

me: good morning sir, do you know the way to the academic hall?

guard: say atak tause babsa yaba rudisi ni

me: what?

I finally realized what the guard was trying to say and why he was getting nervous and waving his magic wand baton about like a fairy godmother.

guard: SAY ATAK TAUSE BABSA YABA RUDISI NI (saya tak tau sebab saya baru di sini)

me: FREAKIN BLOODY HELL

Nah I didn’t really say that… not wanting to get into trouble I decided to translate my statement into:

me: Oh. (vanishes)

I hate to be late, in all the fury of sweat and adrenalin.. I actually devolve into stupid.. swt.

Fortunately I eventually made it to my destination before the program started. Thank God!

The day started with the emergency ward… like what David said, jabatan kecemasan looked more like jabatan keamanan… lolz… pretty boring… but well, this section of the hospital is always on the ready for a worst case scenario.. the facilitator in charge of us had a voice like a 5 year old ballerina… MIND YOU HE’S A 40+ OLD MAN… so soft his voice (and he’s short too).. easily drowned in the pitter patter of our footsteps and lame jokes… lolz. Unfortunately, our lame jokes apparently caught the attention of the kecemasan department head who gave us a grilling for ‘inappropriate smiles’ and well yea.. ‘lame jokes’.. perasan control freak guy..

Suddenly, the air became charged! A wave of excitement surged through my half asleep group.

Apparently there were 5 new cases at the forensic pathology department. That means there are 5 dead bodies lining up to have post mortem performed on them! My group was exceptionally excited because yesterday when we visited the morque and the forensic pathology department, nobody died… today however…. someone was brutally killed, another fell from a building, still several others had some stuff on a building fall on them! WE SO WANTED TO LEAVE THE FREAKIN JABATAN KEAMANAN AND MARCH TO THE RUMAH MAYAT!!! so… when the facilitator in charge of us wasn’t looking, we gagged him and threw him into the biohazard waste tank… WAHAHAHA

lol

that would’ve been so much easier… but I guess it just shouts unethical future doctors.. and we wouldn’t want JPA to know that do we? lolz.. so some girls from our group requested for permission to go look for the hospital director for permission so that the group can get permission to visit the forensic pathology department during break time.. O_O

yay, pitter patter pitter patter… knock knock.. and we arrived at the house of the dead… literally.. Hmm.. faces of distraught relatives greeted us at the waiting hall.. excited as we were, we felt it was the right thing to figuratively wipe that enthusiastic grin off our face.. I mean, poor grandmother… she must be so distraught…. meanwhile near the department counter a tankful of fishes swims around in circles to bring good luck.. or good business… good business to the rumah mayat? ugh.. the grandiose ominousity..

Anyway, after gingerly strapping on our face masks, we entered the ‘operating theatre for orang mati’.. Hmmm… the other group was already there, and Dr. Rohayu as it seems, has already snapped open the dead body’s rib cage and is extracting the organs.. without wearing a face mask! URGH, the smell of dead people is REALLY REALLY REALLY TERRIBLE. Or was it because I wore my mask wrongly? lolz… anyway most of my friends were intrigued by it.. I on the other hand, having witnessed multiple documentaries of human dissections… the real thing looked exactly like what I’ve seen on my computer screen so it didn’t have the same hoo ha effect on me. No one puked, we were all very strong… lolz. I guess everyone present felt the same way I do, sympathy for the fresh dead body on the iron table… an indonesian lady who was killed at a construction site accident, her husband critically wounded… broke his neck I heard… but anyway.. the stench was killing me, so I made a quick exit.

Later I believe it was the outpatient department…. long story short, interesting. A very helpful head nurse explained to us lots of stuff… nice to see the doctors in action talking with the patients and stuff like that… this is the part where my headache got worst.. I came home and succumbed to the illness of stress and inhalation of death fumes… terrible headache… but with the help of my garfield bed, some mental discipline, a pinch of self hypnosis and some music.. I managed to ‘heal’ myself…

(sing to the tunes of the 12 days of christmas)

On the 3rd day of KL general hospital my true love said to me..

DON’T GET LOST AGAIN!

(end singing to the tunes of the 12 days of chirstmas)

This time, I totally distrusted the bloody LRT, and gave myself enough time buffer in anticipation of a worst case scenario where Ultraman decides to turn into a bad guy and destroy all the railway tracks in KL with his freakish cross forehand death ray… kaboom kaboom

well actually I just left 10 minutes earlier than the day before.. >.<

anyway this time upon arrival at the titiwangsa station, I decided not to go to Chow Kit, but follow people who according to my 6th sense, are walking towards the KL general hospital… so I stalked these people, and they led me… through a bus station, through some shop lots, through an empty junk yard land, through a hotel, and finally voila!

Turns out they were actually on their way to chow kit = =.. so I stopped following them when I could see the entrance to the hospital.

ah…  the 3rd day, actually the most boring day, went to the surgery department but saw only a slide show and only remembered a snappy surgeon who was quite entertaining… met a doctor kevin who was an inspiration to us all because of his attitude towards his work, met another doctor who was obviously rude and presumptious, shooting our questions back at us with WHAT DO YOU THINK? WHAT DO YOU THINK? remarks

us: so doctor, hospital work must be kinda tough eh

stupid doc: WHAT DO YOU THINK?

us: er.. so do you enjoy your work?

stupid doc: what to do, family no need to eat ar?

us: ……

stupid doc: ANYMORE QUESTIONS? WHAT DO YOU THINK? WHAT DO YOU THINK?

us: ……. (too flabbergasted to respond, teleported back to our mothership in earth’s orbit to charge up weapons and blast some sense into this doctor’s head)

sadly the last sequence of events did not take place in our dimension. Anyway, we quietly sat down on some nearby sofas and discussed the vast difference between the 2 doctors… perhaps the rude doctor was once as enthusiastic about becoming a doctor like us as well, but sadly, his heart wasn’t really really into it… and it really affects his attitude and the people around him..

unconditional love… the prerequisites of a doctor… in my head it rings again…

After the surgery department, we went to the big pink building where babies are given birth… everything was kinda predictable… some meowing babies… awww how cute… then we were introduced to HYPER EXPENSIVE counter kemandulan equipments.. and we were made to realize how lucky we are to not have such procreation problems.. lolz

Next was the closing ceremony… and then, more food… seriously, even though I’m not even a doctor, just being in the hospital saps energy from me faster than I could imagine… its just very taxing physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually… the good doctor.. needs to be a very strong individual… and I left the place with redeemed motivation to lead my life in a more meaningful way…

well, I shall speed time up and come to my JPA interview day

NEGERI SEMBILAN

early in the morning, dad fetched me all the way to Nilai. Upon reaching the waiting room at the Malaysian Islam University College, I quickly made pals with the people around me… N9 people are generally nice and talented, nice to be around with… unfortunately, i forgot to take down All their contact! awww

First was the career aptitude test thingy…. don’t know if it really serves a good purpose… halfway through the test I sensed a burning smell in the air… apparently something like burnt rubber was permeating from the air vents… yuck

later during the interview, I had all the luck in the world to be surnamed CHONG, and thus, very naturally, was placed with a bunch of other CHONGs… unfortunately, the other CHONGs were not as enthusiastic as I expected… the interview went and was over quickly enough… I did my best… despite tripping over words, looking at the interviewers when I should be pretending they’re not there and discussing, introducing myself in English when the others introduced themselves in BM, and what not… I think I talked a lot… but I try my best not to be dominating… BM was shaky.. but English became better I think… haha.. I leave everything in God’s hands… life is a journey and not a destination… its not the end of the world if I don’t get a JPA scholarship, the journey of my life still continues… and I can still achieve my ambitions.. =)

yea from Nilai back to KL, CJL took the wheel! wooohooo… I love driving on highways… lolz

Ok now I’ll jump to the Petronas educamp. the time now is already 1.37AM… and I started typing at about 2PM.. =.="

As some of you guys know, I was shortlisted to the Petronas educamp at UTP, Tronoh from the 15th to the 17th… initially I was extremely reluctant to go… and I accredit such sinful thoughts to my awesome prowess of lazinesss… wahaha

In the end, I did go… and wow, it was an eye opening experience…

Almost 90% of the participants there were Malays!!!.. I’ve never seen such a large congregation of malay high achievers before… and they SO OUTNUMBER the chinese and Indians! In fact.. throughout the camp… I only came to know a few chinese… but they were all very very good, excellent all rounders in their own right… but they’re so rare.. ( including me) that you can count them from A to Z with just your 10 fingers.. literally

It was eye opening in the sense that well, back at SMK Cheras, I didn’t really have much competition nor social relation with really smart people… they were extinct ever since like forever I think… and at the Petronas educamp.. meeting all sorts of people from all over the country with unique talents, individuality traits and a common string of excellent SPM results, were the norm! I must say I had a lot of fun making friends there… though initially it certainly felt weird…. guess I wasn’t accustomed to living with a room mate and sharing a toilet with 20 other guys. lolz

On the first day, there was some educational activity, which I really enjoy… and by the wierdest of coincidence… 3 people who beat me in interschool, and interstate competitions were there too! there was Yee Lin from St Mary who beat our school team in the English debate back in 2004, Shakireen who beat our school entry for the science and engineering innovation competition in 2004, and even Faris from Perak whose team outranked us back during the Toyota Eco Youth Competitions! LOL… but the fact that I’m here with them, shows that my spirit is not quite defeated yet.. nyek nyek nyek

I made quite an impression I guess, by being able to speak in public rather naturally… on the second day, I was beginning to feel a slight wane in my enthusiasm… this was what I was worried about, I fear that history might repeat itself like what happened at the KL hospital… that my spirit would be weakened by headache and diseases… I pray that it may not happen… and I think God answered my prayer.. for I managed to stay in a good form and suffer from no fatigue problems… generally on the 2nd day, there were interesting career talks and even more entertaining so called english proficiency and critical thinking tests… lolz

Finally on the 3rd day, the day of the interview.. I was really excited… I decided to just have fun, don’t care about the outcome of the interview, but focus on doing my best for the interview itself… so for the individual session, I presented a very comprehensive and revolutionary solution plan which ate up more than my alotted 10 minutes… my panel mates must’ve been wondering what’s happening that I’m taking so long… but the fact is that I had so much fun elaborating it just didn’t stop there… the fun became a catalyst for me to sensibly answer the interviewers questions that were meant to render my points shakey… later during the group discussion, it was kinda fun too! I talked a lot, and realized that my solution to the problem encompassed almost everyone’s idea! So when I explained my solution, it sort of ate up a lot of the other stuff my other panel mates have to say… dangeth, I try really hard not to be dominating… I hope I wasn’t in any way.. it was kinda funny occasionally though.. as I seemed to know the points of most of the people there even before they talked, and there was this girl sitting next to me who kept complaining that I was mentioning her point… hey! I didn’t know it belonged to u.. and besides.. u’re using my Pilot G-6 pen, maybe u’re the one who’s stealing my ideas!.. lolz jk.. but it was still kinda amusing.. i think the interviewers were quite entertained… so after shaking their hands, we made our way to freedom…

while waiting for my parents who just came back from a blissfull holiday at Pangkor island to pick me up, I had the opportunity to visit the UTP library.. it was totally awesome… apparently its design was somehow similar to a massachusett’s library.. something something… giant bookcases, giant glass walls, glass lifts, staircases and its just oh-so-awesomeish I don’t know how to describe it! For bookie wormies like me, its literally heaven… wahaha too bad I didn’t bring my camera along

I look forward to having a nice long sleep… I didn’t even realize that its Thursday already… gee its chin leng’s birthday today, while zik and kev’s fall on next week… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…….. time flies

On a side note, I added some awesome music at my profile page by the CORRS!.. it might take a while to load but it’s definitely worth listening at least once.. =)

FINALLY ITS FINISHED I’M SO FREAKIN GLAD… 2.06AM

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