so, now i am in the mood to write :) here comes the list of upadates...
last week was quite a fulfilling week, Alhamdulillah. met with the family of this (msian) ustaz that me and every other malaysian in our year was close with. my housemates and i (in our 2nd year) used to babysit his kids. really sweet, cute kids. was great meeting them again and sitting down listening to their daughter complain about how different it is like to go to school here. for someone who has been through only a couple of years in normal msian primary school, i can relate with the horrors of it still. altho i was lucky enough to have been placed in relatively ok schools, but still i never liked the education system of malaysia.or the way the teacher discplined their students. i never wore my scarf when i was in primary school and in my last primary school where i took my UPSR exams, every Muslim girl wore a scarf. except me. i was told by my fellow students if i didnt wear it i'd be punished, i was looked at funny by the teachers. the thing is it wasnt a written rule that we must wear the scarf. i didnt even wear the pinafore dress, i chose the malay traditional baju kurung instead. so that was already modest enough for me. and i was only like 12, i wasnt even in puberty yet! i got extremely annoyed by such a preposterous "social" ruling. and i blive if i had stayed on under such circumstances i'd probably just wear the scarf to school and be without it elsewhere making me a hypocrite. if u want to that go ahead it is ur life but id rather not be doing as such. it isnt that i haf a problem with the scarf at that time i just didnt want it forced upon me. and i guess i can rub it in their faces coz now i willingly don one, but i wont of course.
sure enough this little girl who just entered standard 5 (grade 5) experienced a major culture shock. from teachers hitting their students, which is completely unheard of in england, to the most ridiculous subject of pendidikan sivik (civic studies?) which i think is quite redundant coz theres pendidikan Islam and pendidikan moral for non-Muslims so whats the purpose of this weirded out new subject? i remembered her coming to our house back in england with only one sheet of paper to do her homework on. guess what her homework was? writing a story! and here in malaysia she comes back with tonnnes of homework and sleeps at like 11p.m trying to finish them! she showed me and siti her story about how much she hates the school here and my heart went out to her. the only advice we could give her was to study hard and that one day she'll get to go back there and be in uni. we also told her to write emails to her friends in england coz at least staying in touch is good. but seriously my entire heart went out to her, she used to be such a happy child, she looks stressed now! her brother funnily enough has well adapted. from a kid who didnt speak a word of malay i was quite impressed hehehe but i think coz he's younger and a boy, boys tend to adapt easily and they all speak this universal language of play and mischief anyways ;)
my volunteering at masjid negara was really good too. had a great day meeting really nice people. impressed some japanese girls with my limited knowledge of japanese LoL and then met 2 brit-asian girls and hit it off immediately. needless to say my so called "phoney" (according to my brother) accent came out hahaha
later in the week i forgot which day, my coursemates from warwick stopped by in KL for their gap year around thailand-malaysia-singapore-australia-new zealand-hongkong tour. on the same day i also banged my aunts car into a pillar at the KLCC parking lot. i blame it on coldplay hahaha i was singing to their song the whole way and i kinda assumed i could pass through without needing to adjust the position of the car. but i guessed wrong. the front of the car on the left side is pretty dented but Alhamdulillah the lights are alright. but i do haf a phobia of parking cars next to pillars right now, and i havent driven since, doubt any1 is willing to let me drive anyways. i wanted to cry too coz i felt really bad seeing that it isnt my property and that someone entrusted their property onto me and i go and destroy it. granted it was an accident but it couldve been prevented had i not been singing and carried away. any suggestions for a good mechanic is welcomed rite now!
anyways we visited the skybridge at KLCC and that was the first time i went up. i was quite impressed at the view and was taken aback for a moment thinking "wow, i live here! i live in this city!". i never really appreciate KL until i talk to ppl who come visiting the city. and as i took my friends around KL i was amazed at my knowledge of the city and the roads. and i also realized that it's all quite inter-connected if you walk around the city. of course no one ever walks. we also went to the Islamic Arts Museum, then masjid negara, then to pavillion, walking along bukit bintang at night. was great to see them out of the warwick setting, was great to just chill out and catch up. and i felt like i really did help, i felt like i did promote towards a better understanding of my culture, my country and my religion. it's a good feeling. so if anyone else needs a tourguide in KL let me know, i'm more than willing :D
one of my friends went as far as to suggest that i should just be a fulltime tour-guide this gap year of mine. and actually ever since the masjid negara thing, i find that i do like to talk to new people, i do like to impart what little knowledge i have of Malaysia and Islam. i am a bit clearer on what i intend to do once ive gotten my masters, so i guess my gap year of sorting myself out is working slowly. the funniest thing ever though, i never imagined myself as being one that could strike up the courage to speak to random strangers least of all about subjects that i am not so well versed in. im glad my journey to self discovery is not so bleak after all ;)
speaking of masters...i have gotten the unconditional offer to MSc in Anthropology and Development. my first choice. Alhamdulillah. but, yes there's always a but. in light of recent events i have decided to add a second choice to my masters application. i have applied for MPA in International Development. i am extremely keen on development studies which is why i stuck to the development bit. im still waiting to see if i get accepted for the MPA. it'll be loads more challenging considering nearly 95% of the module focuses on economics. and they have a module which actually kinda gets us working with some sort of company. so yea, very different from my first choice. all i can do is wait and see. if i do get accepted, there is a high chance i'll take it. but we'll see.
i have also applied for my accomodation in London. oh my god, the headache it caused. i'm officially going to be broke all the time i can assure u that. no need to envisage myself at harrods enjoying a slice of their famous cheesecake, or shopping for lulu guinness handbags at harvey nichols. oh no! i think i should wipe off knightsbridge entirely from my future London-ista lifestlye. rent is probably going to cause me around 160-200++ pounds, per week. yup per week! and that is considered cheap, coz im in central London and it's inclusive of bills etc. i hope i get the accomodation near uni because i dont want to commute that much, but then again i still would have to commute to go and get my essentials like groceries and such. so i cant even cut cost on commuting. oh god. why did i choose London again? owh yes, prestige. for someone who slaved her arse off at warwick, i shouldve known prestige aint worth it when ur head's done in.
i once told my sister to tell my younger brother when he was choosing a uni to not apply for an ivy league or a top whatever university. unless of course u want to go mad halfway through or have suicidal thoughts. sometimes it isnt worth it. dont get me wrong. i LOVED the years i had in warwick, warwick was probably the best years of my life to date, but the workload and the stress the academics caused sometimes wasnt all worth it. granted my degree wasnt filled with exams or whatnots and we were quite relaxed most of the year (we had four subjects the whole year and a total of 8hrs a week), i had my share of stress. for example, even though we can pick and choose what topic we wanna do in our exams for most of our subjects, we still had to do the weekly seminar readings and sometimes it weant up to hundreds of pages for each subject. and i dont neccessarily understand or like any of the readings i had to do. we also had to do presentations and observations and whatever else have u which we weren't even officially graded for! another example at the end of each term we have to write like 4essays (of 2000 words) for all our subjects and again we dont even get graded for it! so why do we bother? i have no idea. as someone who did sociology i too wonder why we comply with this ridiculous system. yea we can recycle our work or use it as a guideline for our assessed work but still. and dont even get me started on the stupid dissertation they force upon us. 10,000 words btw is a masters level thesis thank you very much. yet warwick being its "elite" wannabe self, force this upon their students. we were told a 2:1 from warwick is like a 1st from any other university. i truly believe that, but at the end of the day not many employees even know how to pronounce the bloody place! well i guess they did something right after all, even after graduating i still hate the academics there LoL
so here i am, going to another "elite" university. huh. and what's even scarier is that if i get the MPA i prolly would be even more stress what with all the economics. i want the MPA coz it can give me a chance to go to Columbia Uni in NY city. another "elite" university. i swear i dont know why i put myself through it all *sigh* im obsessed prestige...
anyways that's all the updates i have on my life right now. somehow when u start typing it up u realize that u dont really have that much to say. in my mind i had loads to write but now i realize i dont. oooh and in a matter of hours i shall be MRAZ-merized ;)