Week #13

Currently, I am still jobless. I am tired of looking for jobs now. Let me enjoy the rest of my university life.

3 more weeks to go and it is going to be the end of my university life. This week is another busy one.

May 1, Monday - 1st of May is Labor Day and it is a public holiday. For the first time, I went to Tesco this trimester. They are currently doing some extension renovation, meaning there are fewer car parks. I went there at around 10am in the morning with Pei Juan and my brother. The place was full of cars and there were traffic jams everywhere. It was terrible and the sale was disappointing. Shopping in Penang is still the best! After getting all the ingredients that we want for ABC soup and “tang yuan”, we headed to my house for cooking. Pei Juan taught me how to make “tang yuan” and it was nice when it was freshly served. Pei Juan’s ABC soup was a bit too sour because there were too many tomatoes. It was a nice day cooking together. My stomach was full of water.

May 2, Tuesday - After my class, Ai Chin, Hui Shan, Mei Shin and I headed to Malacca Sentral to fetch Wan Chiew before going to Mahkota Parade (MP). It had been a long time since all of us go out together. Finally, the girl’s gang was on the move! We had our lunch at Shibaraku’s Teppanyaki restaurant. The shop’s design is nice, but inconvenient. There are no toilets in the restaurant and customers need to walk over to the original shop next door for that. We ordered the set meals. The chef will prepare the ingredients and cook in front of us. The salmon set is the most worthy one, despite being a bit more expensive. I still prefer the original Shibaraku restaurant. We bought tickets to a movie called “Fragile” as there are no other interesting movies listed. It is a horror movie by Calista Flockhart, starring as Ally in the series “Ally McBeal”. I did not expect her to perform in such a serious movie. Hui Shan and I were so scared that we hold on to our bags tightly as we watched. The movie is better than I thought. I got a call from my mum later in the evening. She received a letter from the Japan Embassy, about an exam for the postgraduate scholarship this Sunday. I was a bit reluctant to go to KL for that as I have being going to KL quite frequently recently, for various reasons.

May 3, Wednesday - Pei Juan, Jian Rong, Boon Kiat and I departed to KL with the 8am bus. We were going there to collect our passports and visa from the Japan Embassy. It was my first visit there. As we reached, we took Putra from Pasar Seni to Ampang Park. Then, we headed there by foot. Due to some mistakes, we were walking in round before reaching the embassy, which is located just beside the road. Along the way, we came across the Singapore Embassy, Vietnam Embassy and Pakistan Embassy. Some other embassies that we came across were such as America Embassy and British Embassy. It is indeed a day’s tour of embassies. The weather was too good, 33 Celcius. We had been walking under the sun for a few kilometers and around 30 minutes before reaching Japan Embassy. After collecting our documents, we went to Pizza Hut at Ampang Park for lunch. The lunch in the air-con room was simply delicious (I think everything is nice when you are hungry and dehydrating). I ordered a set of Express Combo for RM9.10, including tax. It comes with a personal pan pizza, breadstick, soup-of-the-day and a glass of soft drinks. The soup was too watery but the other dishes were okay. After our lunch, we took a taxi to Low Yat and then to PWTC. There was an exhibition there for machineries. Pei Juan was very excited about it. Each of us got some paper bags, pamphlets and “metals” back as souvenirs.

May 4, Thursday – I attended the “supposing” last class for Software Reliability and Quality Assurance and Human Machine Interface lecture. I think I am running out of mood to attend classes now, was not paying much attention to the lectures. I want holiday! I want vacation!

May 5, Friday – There was a dancing practice for all the participants of the homestay. I have not being dancing for the past 4 years. It was good to dance again in a sense. Suddenly, I miss my seniors in Rangers. They are very nice and one of them passed away already. She was the main instructor for the traditional dance which I first performed. She is always so kind and patient. Dancing is a good exercise and it a good activity for knowing each other better. It was a tiring day indeed.

May 6, Saturday – My brother and I went to the tyre shop to get his car 2 new tyres. Then, I began packing for my trip to KL. Jian Rong and Gan joined me for the trip. We were going to stay a night at Aunty Good Cam’s place in PJ. We took a bus there after reaching Puduraya. We had problem finding the right bus as there were too many buses and too many people. We took bus no. 6 there at RM2 each. An aunty from Australia welcomed us as we reached. We put our bags at aunty’s house before going out for dinner at the nearby shop lots. We explored ourselves around the area after we had our dinner. As we reached home, we had a rest and did some chatting with aunty’s youngest son, Yeh Ern. Uncle seemed to be very busy on that day. Yeh Ern lends us his room for the night while Jian Rong slept downstairs, in the reading room. It was raining heavily. I had problems sleeping nicely due to the coldness.

May 7, Sunday – Around 6.15am, we woke up and prepared ourselves for the exam. We called a taxi and headed to Puduraya. The taxi cost RM12, with RM1 as service charge. We walked to Confucian Private High School, which is very near to Puduraya bus station. As we arrived, it was quite early and only a few students were there. There were more than 200 students applying for the scholarship but at least more than 10 people were absent for the exam. According to the examinee, they will select 50 candidates for interview, based on the exam. From these 50 candidates, they will select 20-30 people for the postgraduate scholarship. The exam hall was freezing cold. I was silvering even with the jacket on. I was surprised to see some of my other MMU friends there, such as Chin Nee and BJun. The English for the English paper is weird. It is the Japanese-style of English. There are 3 Japanese papers, each with different levels of difficulties. A is the easiest and C is the toughest. Each paper takes an hour. Candidates with no Japanese language proficiency need not take the Japanese papers. Only around 50% of the candidates took the Japanese papers. The exam ended at 1.20pm. I met with Travis kor kor for a very short lunch at a beef noodle restaurant before heading back to Malacca at 2.30pm. The noodles were nice, recommended. The shop is just beside the street, on the same side as McDonalds and Nandos.