Thursday, February 21, 2008

The beauty of the past.

1:22pm, 21-Feb 08, Home, Kuala Lumpur.

Shouldn't at this time I should be working, while everyone is busy with their daily job? Why am I writing this blog at such time?

Esther Hicks (Abraham) mentioned in The Secret movie that we, human is always in a self-defense mode, in the sense, let's say, physical injury you have, your body sends an immediate signal to your brain, to leave away from the detrimental condition. For instance, your hand landed on a hot kettle, in split second, you withdraw your hand hastily due to signal of pain sent to your brain in order to reduce further damage to your hand, thus a physical defense!

What about mental injury? As we, human are formation of a body (physical) and a soul (mental), how do your brain tells you that you are experiencing mental injury? According to Esther Hicks, while your are undergoing depression, unhappiness, anger, frustration or whatever negative emotions you can think of, all in all, a thousand of signals signaling that you are experiencing a mental challenge. If you don't amend it, by switching form negative emotions to positive, that's where the psychology problem grows silently within. Run amok, you might. Atrocity of massacre, you might and that's where the borne of terrorism and massacre in Darfur right now. Funnily, our mental defense is not automatically by itself ignites on which switching from negative to positive compared to physical defense i.e. your hand withdraw by itself when it senses a danger. I don't know why and don't ask me why, perhaps you might seek consultation from Esther. The worst is that you have to do the switching manually!!

Knowing the fact of myself being in the state of negative emotions now, it's better to publish something feels good (the switching - mental defense) and that's was during my first day of Orientation Week in Nottingham University 5 years ago. Lucky I am, I did save this public diary and thus, today publication. I wish to be back in past, where the only pressure is exam, no such problem as no money, no job and sad relationship mental challenges. However, we still have to move forward, striding gallantly towards our ultimate goals.

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Hello everyone,

Finally, I had arrived to Manchester airport on Tuesday early in the morning after stayed motionless for 13 hours inside the air plane. Then, we had to wait for almost another 4 hours for someone from Nottingham to fetch us. The week when we embarked was actually a Welcome Week for us. The Welcome Week brought fun and the opposite. When we firstly arrived at Nottingham, we were told to register at the reception – this was the first queue, then we had to pick up our own luggage back to our temporary hall named Hugh Stewart. Everyone could easily moved their luggage to their respective hall except for me because not even single of my luggage has wheel! After that, dinner was served, we all Teong Senn, Aries, me and the others were really pleased with the foods served. They served soup, chicken breast with cheesy sauce, fries and cakes. The decorations of the cakes were magnificent but perception changed significantly when we consumed a scope of the cake. The cakes were extremely sweet as it liked condensing a kg of sugar into a sector of a cake! First layer of the cake was something like granular sugar, second layer was cream and third layer was like brown sugar. The sugar level is >> the flour available! After drinking the soup, I found out that the soup was actually a cheese soup, yikes!

Next morning even worse, I had to finish a lot of stuff – accommodation, banking, insurance, smart card, registration, listen to speech and many more. Every thing can be done in one day but you couldn’t as you have to queue up all the while and I ended up everything on next Wednesday. Queue and queue! But it’s ok as the Nottingham’s staffs are friendly. There was one incidence, where I had to pay my first installment somewhere 587.21 pounds. I paid the lady 600 pounds but she decided to give back 10 pounds and the extra balance was carried forward for the next installment as they did not have sufficient change for every student. She gave me the receipt and my passport back and I just buzzed off like that and went for Students Union talk. After a few minutes talk given by one of the Nottingham’s staff, I suddenly freaked out as I forgotten to take my 10 pounds change! I quickly rushed out the door of the lecturer hall as if the speaker was transparent and requested the 10 pounds politely and you know what, they really gave me back the 10 pounds after a few checks with the computer and I don’t know what she was checking for and moreover, the lady that returned the money to me was not the lady that supposed to return my 10 pounds!!! Phew, I might be losing RM60!

Now it’s about the toilet in my temporary hall. I called it “Toilet Story – Episode One: Mismatch Menace”.

I think the toilet cistern is a new one and it doesn’t suit the bowl in any angle. Ya know, the cistern width is longer than usual, so, the bowl lid is impossible to be flipped more than 90 degree or even 90 degree. Guess what, whenever I wanted to pee, one hand has to be blocking the lid from falling back to its original place and the other you know what to do lah! It was so inconvenient. Even worst, when I tried to excrete some biological waste, of course, the foremost procedure you need to do is sit. While I was sitting on the bowl, the lid kept leaning against my back. You feel like something is compressing from the back. Imagine when you try to wipe your anus, before you reach your anus, either one of your arm has to nudge the lid and then you are able to reach your destination. The next morning, I brought up this matter to my temporary room mates and he burst into tears. He just placed the toilet rolls in between the fulcrum of the lids in order to avoid the lid from falling! Stupid me!

During the Welcome Week, the students from the Student Association kept selling different tickets for different occasions. Since everyone in my group went for those events, I just followed the herd and ended up wasting money for nothing (No offend please). There were four tickets altogether but I bought 2 only after realizing they weren’t worth for money. The first was the Barn Dance where everyone danced but not all of them dance. Just dancing and I had to pay 5 pounds and no free drinks, you want free drinks, go for the tap water located inside the toilet, and it’s free! The second ticket was meant for Buffet. It was a fraud! It was not a buffet but a set lunch. You can’t go for second or third round but just one round. Foods were fixed and you can’t take more than that! I wanted to take the vegetarians’ foods as well but not allowed! No combination allowed! I complained, no one bothered me. Am I practicing cognitive dissonance?

After staying in the hall for almost 4 nights, everyone had to shift to their actual hostel or hall. Lucky for Teong Senn because he stays at the same hall but different block. Meanwhile, I had to shift to my actual hostel in Broadgate Park which is situated 20 minutes away from the main campus. Fortunately, there was a van that took every single of my luggage to my new hostel if not, I will be like dead ducks!

Now it’s about the van I took:

The van is quite big. Only 3 passengers are allowed to sit in the front including the driver. So, to be a gentleman I gave the seats to the ladies and decided to walk to my hostel instead. Very quaintly, the driver insisted me and my room mates to follow him, saying that he needed us to guard the bags when arrived to the destination. Aren’t the ladies capable of doing that? Without any hesitation, I quickly hopped on to the van thinking of ‘Wow need not to be a gentleman and need not to walk, just guard the bag, why not? “He he”, I laughed sinisterly. I shouted, “Let’s go!” delightedly. “All right!” replied the driver. Oh darn! The driver actually stopped at another hall, the Cripps Hall where thousand people awaiting there to load their luggage in to the van. Then I realized why he insisted us to follow him, I had to become not a cheap labourer but a payless labourer! Loading an average of 30kg bags into the van, I got really weak and still had to guard the bags in the end!! Surprisingly, my room mate loaded all the bags happily and still smile at me while I was extremely tired. I wanted to slap him, indeed! After reaching my hostel, it took me about another 3 hours of queue just to get my room key.

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That’s all folks!


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