..::*+ Small Talk +*::..
Weee… it has been a while since I last post an entry. It’s almost 3 weeks, in fact. Well, basically the first week I went for Biro TataNegara (BTN) and the 2nd week I went to UiTM Jengka, Pahang for KARiSMA 2007. Yea, so, now it’s time to update everything. Yea, it will be very long. A super long post! The time zone is, as usual, GMT +8.00.
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BTNWhat’s a BTN, you might ask. I’ll tell you. It’s basically a brain-washing program where all the JPA scholars must attend before flying out to their respective countries. It trains you to be patriotic and on the whole it is very time-wasting and boring program. At least that’s what those who went for it will say.
So the bus came at around 3pm and we waited as the person in-charge took attendance. I remembered I ran back to my room because of my body wash – I nearly forgot to bring it, and the consequence would be real bad, because my entire gang depend on my body wash. So, if I forget to bring, then… haha.
Then after long waiting, finally we departed. I forgot how long it took to reach Kem Bumi Jati. I don’t know how much anger I stored within myself. Unsatisfaction. My tears nearly fell out from my eyeballs. Thank you for lying to me. Well, it does not matter now, does it?
We registered ourselves and were introduced to the facilitators there. At night the Penghulu and Assistant Penghulu and other posts were selected through democracy. We were then formed into groups. I was in Group 4. My members consisted of me, Kai Boon, Sharon, Jia Hui, Kazeem the Penghulu, Hadi the ALG president, Azam, Shahir, Afif, Hilmi, Raj, Nurul Nadia a.k.a. May, and Najwa. I was so unlucky to sit at the 2nd place when we were sitting in rows and thus earned myself a title – Ketua Kumpulan (group leader), since the 1st seat was for the Penghulu. After the selection then we went for supper, which was provided by the management. The first night there were like horrible, where mosquitoes everywhere and the bed were uncomfortable to me. I hardly slept as time ticked and I was sure I finally dozed off around 4am. How sad.
The next day we woke up around 5.30am by 5.45am we were already in the main hall for moral talk, while the Muslims went for their Subuh Prayer. The talk was sort of boring, although it was quite informative. Haha. Then at 7am we were chased to the car park for our morning marching. It was a army-like style and Pak Nordin, the Ketua Jurulatih, was very strict. But luckily no one was punished. Speaking about the punishment, he said one of the punishments, especially for the Muslims who did not go for Solat Subuh, was to dip your head into a fish pond nearby. =.=¿ Sweat right?
We had our break and went for breakfast at 8.00am and later had our morning shower. At 8.30am sharp we were again chased to the main hall for talk. The talk consisted of 4 parts – “Tanah Air”, “Rakyat”, “Kerajaan”, and “Kedaulatan & Rumusan”, which each of these lasted for 2 hours. The talk was quite good and I guess the reason that I did not fall asleep is because I was sitting in front. Anyway, I gained some information about my own country throughout these four sessions. I was taught about the importance of democracy, unity and all the big events that happened in years back then. In the afternoon, around 5.30pm, we had our physical test, which was quite tiring. According to the table, I am now around 30++ years old. Laugh out loud.
For the 3rd and 4th day, we were separated from other groups. Each of the groups went to different rooms for “latihan dalam kumpulan”, or in short, LDK. The facilitators were Mr. Mohd. Noor bin Mohd. Yaakub and Mr. Sulam bin Anuar. We had 8 modules in this LDK:
Jatidiri
Krisis Identiti
Saintis Jadian
Pertimbangan Moral
Kira-kira
Globalisasi
Patriotik
The last module was for discussion. Each of the LDK sessions was 2 hours. I’m not sure about other groups, but to me, being in my group was fun. I gained new friends and we knew each other better. But the most important part that I cherished the most was the spirit of cooperation given by everyone to success the whole program. I tried to be a best leader and I was glad that I was recognized by every member of this team. Thank you! I knew that I was not good enough in solving some cases but thank you everyone for your guidance.
On the last day, we had, as usual, our morning moral talk, then breakfast, then test. The test was quite confusing as the answers were all quite close to each other. Yes, it was an objective questions paper. But I dare say it as hard and if you do not pay attention in the talk in main hall, or LDK, you are guaranteed to fail. Sounds scary right? But to me, reasoning and logic thinking and analyze the questions carefully will grant us a “pass” for the exam.
According to the timetable, we were supposed to have a trekking, or Kembara. But it was cancelled due to the fact that the management does not want us to have accident which, worst come to worst, held us from flying to overseas. The BTN ended around 12.30pm. We packed our things and laid our butt on the seat in the bus and off we went back to beloved Cemara Hostel.
BTN was quite a fun to me. It was an opportunity for me to prove my leadership and I thank God because by His grace I was able to success it without causing a lot of troubles. As I said before, I gained more friends, including those from Kolej Bandaraya Utama (KBU), who were also under JPA scholarship. All of them were warm-hearted towards me and I felt glad as this sensation warmed my freezing cold heart. I talked quite a lot during my 1st LDK session. I personally don’t know why, but since break-up I found out that I managed to express myself better. I learnt to think before I speak, although it was a pain in the ass when talking to her, which again, I caused problems again, in BTN.
And I was given warning not to disturb her.
Zzz… yeah right.
Anyway, it was not as boring as everyone thinks. Maybe it is because of the mindset of how you want to treat the whole program. Before I went for BTN I set some targets that I wanted to achieve in BTN, and I’m glad because I managed to reach these aims. I regretted that I was not social-active in the previous two years. I would now have lots of friends if I did not focus JUST on her last time. But thank God my life is now much better and colorful than before. =D This 5 days 4 nights were surely a sweet~
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Karnival Sukan Mahasiswa UiTM SeMalaysia 2007 (KARiSMA ’07)
Yeah and the story continues. While we were waiting for the bus to come at Kem Bumi Jati, INTEC badminton squad was facing a big problem – they do not have enough players to play for the competition. They called to ask for anyone to represent INTEC. My brain was squeezing hard that time. Should I play? Or should I not? These two questions kept running in my mind to the extend that I left my bottle and short at there. And for nearly an hour I was being undecided. But in the end, I followed my heart desire – to play!
I was suppose to go for medical check-up on Tuesday. But I decided to cancel it, since the Michelle Kwa of KBU told me that it can be done in private hospital; it is not a must to do it in General Hospital. So after I reached my beloved Cemara, I went straight to unload and reload my bag pack. I dunked all my smelly clothes into my pail and got few sets of clothes from my cupboard and compressed them into my tiny bluey bag that I got during Orientation Time at MMU Melaka last time. The INTEC bus supposed to arrive at the bus stop around 3.00pm so since I had a little bit of time, I went to Mydin and Giant to shop for socks (I’m running out of them!), a bottle of mineral water, and my body wash that I left at BTN. Sweat.
I hopped into the bus and found myself a seat. All the people inside were fresh and new to me; except Adi and Carolyn, who I went for the BTN together with. The rest of the badminton players went to Jengka already. They took the earlier bus. Anyway, I slept along the way to Jengka due to my tiredness and the only time that I opened my eyes was during the time where we rested at a resting spot. Then I slept again until UiTM Jengka, Pahang were seen.
Still feeling dizzy and tired, I came out from the bus and called Chang Ve. He came to me after a while and led me to our room, where I met Nadesh, Tee Tat, Zerg (the “Christian name” that we gave him) Teoh. All of us are badminton players. Anyway, to my surprise, Amy was here too! So as Angeline and Heng. I then got my shirt and cap from Mr. Majid, our badminton team manager/ coach. We then went for dinner, as I was so hungry. My appetite grew since BTN. I don’t want to get fat! T,T Anyway, the food were considerably cheap, though the tastes were nothing much different from that in Shah Alam. But if we talk about the water, it’s a whole different story. The Air Kosong was not kosong after all; it has faint milky color, which looks exactly like Barley Ice, just that it is not so concentrated. Laugh out loud. Anyway, we gathered around on a table and talked/ gossiped around until 12.00am before we decided to sleep, since we had badminton match the day after.
Everyone set alarm and they all rang one after one. We got up around 6.30am and got ourselves prepared. We went for some early breakfast and after that, off we went to the badminton hall.
We were drawn into Group A, where it consisted of INTEC, Shah Alam and Johor. We faced Shah Alam (a.k.a. INDUK a.k.a. Main campus) at 8.00am. It was not fun at all. We were being trashed 0-5. We were simply unmatched to them. Their skills and standards were far higher than ours. In the afternoon, we faced UiTM Johor. I won my single match against their singles and so angeline won too. But overall we lost by 2-3. How sad, which means, we were knocked out from the quarter-final stage. So after that we took the whole time at Jengka as if it was our vacation. We did not go back because we still had our individual competition at the 2nd last day of KARiSMA.
Anyway, that night we washed our KARiSMA shirt since the day after would be the opening ceremony. The next day we woke up quite late, mainly due to tiredness. We had our lunch and prepared ourselves for the opening ceremony. The event was exactly like how we did in secondary schools last time: We marched across the main stage and waved to the VIPs. Then we stood under the damn-freaking-hot sun while listening to the talks by the VIPs. My sweat kept rolling down alongside me. My hands were very hot and sweaty. Luckily we had a cap. If not, I guarantee that everyone would sun-burn. Anyway, after that we went for 2 cups of free Milo and they snapped photos of me doing stupid actions. Haha! Just because of the 2 cups of Milo, we were separated from our troop and in the end we did not get our free food. LoL. It was not nice, anyway, just 2 pieces of stuffed bread and a drink. We went back to refresh ourselves and had rest and waited for dinner to call. We went for dinner then and watched Transformers until quite late, before, with yawns and sleepiness, we went for sleep.
On the 27th we had nothing to do so we enjoyed ourselves and walked around to checkout the campus and time-wasting. We had a very relaxing day. The next day came our tough game – individual match. I was drawn to play against a UiTM Perlis player. Nadesh told me that my opponent was not the best of theirs, since he himself will play with the strongest of Perlis, which means the situation should be advantaging me. But however, I lost my game. Amy told me that I was not controlling the game; being controlled instead. At first I doubted it. But later when I think back about the match, yea, I was indeed being controlled. I did lots of mistakes. I did not know why, but I assume the opponent was an experienced player. He is, to be frank, very good. As for double, I partnered Zerg (I feel like laughing~) Teoh. We played well but we lost our match. Zerg is still an amateur but the standard of play of his that day was good and I’m satisfied of it. We lost because of team chemistry and the noisiness of the supporters of opponents. Sometimes I felt insulted by their words. But what can I do? They insulted us INTEC saying that we’re just bookworms and other insults. I felt like hitting the shuttle to their shit-ass faces at the last point. But I did not do so, as I felt it’ll just make me look uglier.
Speaking of ugly, I hate Amy. She kept on saying me ugly ugly ugly ugly and ugly. She could relate anything ugly to me. Hmmph. Haha! No la. She did not mean it. And I do not hate her. How nice I am? =P
Back to the competition. Anyway, Heng and Nadesh lost too. Angeline won her match and proceed to afternoon game. In the afternoon, Angeline won again and brought INTEC to quarter-final stage. Tee Tat and Chang Ve, our double pair who bye-ed in morning lost to a UiTM Sabah pair. Yea, again, Amy said one of the Sabah pair ugly. Sweat.
At night, Angeline lost her game, finally. LoL. She lost to a
guy (whooppps! =P) girl. She was very good and could trash Angeline 21-0 if she wanted to do so. Sweat. But still, I think she does not have sport
manwomanship. She flattened Angeline by 21-1, 21-2. I mean, you don’t need to humiliate people with this kind of score, do you? Sweat.
The next day we woke up around 7.00am and packed our things and went down. We hopped into the bus and the bus departed at 9.00am, heading towards Teluk Cempedak. Haha. We went to beach for fun. We enjoyed ourselves there: jumping across tiny shallow river, playing with waves, sand… Fun fun!
We had our lunch at McDonald™ and at 1.30pm we went back to Jengka again for the closing ceremony. When we reached we realized that we could skip the closing ceremony. So we went back to Shah Alam. This time along the way I did not sleep. We talked, chatted, played UNO™, watched Ratatouille and still, tak habis-habis, ejek Nadesh and Angeline. Haha! We reached a rest spot and Chang Ve went to McDonald with his large empty McDonald cup to refill. Me and Amy bought Apple Pies. We had our dinner at the food court beside McDonald. At night time we reached back here in Shah Alam, around 9.30pm.
This was the last time that I’ll ever play for KARiSMA again. Though it was kind of sad, but I enjoyed the times I had in Jengka. It was fun to watch the top-seeded players to show their skills and techniques. I felt inspired by them. It made me had the thrust to improve my badminton skills. I want to be better! So it’s minus one regret! I was regretting that I cannot join KARiSMA this year. But now I’m happy that I played for it. It was really a great experience for me. I met lots of great people there. Oh ya, I saw the guy from Fakulti Undang-undang (FUU), who I beat during SAF 2007. Haha! Bet he don’t remember me.
After that night, it was the last time that I’ll see most of them. I won’t be seeing Tee Tat, Nadesh, Heng, Angeline, Carolyn and many others anymore. I’ll be flying soon and I can’t wait for that day to come. But at the same time, there are a lot of memories here that I wish not to forget, like friendship that I’m having with people around me. I’ll really miss everyone very much :’(
vincent
