Right about NOW, it is 7.32 pm.
I am so tired of waiting I'm not even freaked anymore. o.0
Malaysia Boleh lah.
***
1.12 am
right. so at least the waiting was fun.
***
love charlene's reaction.
'truly we're all meant to stay together'
really thought about today
there would definitely be a problem.
***
12 hours later:
Look! Tyger's happy.Labels: confessions, education, events
injured. boo =(
discarded bandages after miraculous recovery.
theory exam I studied till 2 in the morning for.We were supposed to take photos of arm slings and elevated slings and cpr dummies! But alas we kept being distracted by DR. ABC.
We did bandaging with triangular bandages! I don't like reef knots. They kept not opening. Bandage victim count thus far: 5. None lost blood circulation and required amputation. They were comfortable, could move their fingers and did not experience numbness. I rock. =)
Our dummy was called Little Anne. Whenever we checked for response, we'd bang its shoulders and yell 'SIR! SIR! Are you okay? Can you respond to me?' Little Anne was anatomically... wrong. (See above. Chest area. Right.) Makes me wonder why not name it Arthur and save everyone the trouble.Then we'd pinch it and rub the sternum. (Try rubbing your sternum - hard bone in the middle of your chest - with your knuckles. It hurts, surprisingly.) CPR involves pinching noses, lifting chins, and pumping hearts. Violent process. The test dummy tasted of rubber. =(
recovery position. to be used on drunk people.We were tested on CPR and two types of bandaging. We were not tested on lifting, choking, recovery positions, and what to do in a fire. Also, the many other types of bandages. Syn Dee wants to know how we are supposed to move casualty away from danger. Jason asks how we are going to save people with such limited knowledge. I have no idea.
Ah well. I am now a certified First Aider. I am qualified to save people.
(HAHA)
I passed! =D
Garfield says:
building materials
design communication
intro to design
technical english
national language
design theory
building construction
malaysian studies
computer aided design
design studio
moral
arch history
arch studio
building services
structures
project management
working drawings
environmental science
industrial training
integrated project
and
elective
Rowen! says:
design sounds cool
Rowen! says:
the rest ... make me grateful I'm not studying architecture
Anyone else up for Diploma of Architecture, Building and Design? =]
(I don't envy you the task of competing with Jason though!)
***
Seriously. Who's going for National Service?
***
Just to make things clear:
I will be starting South Australian Matriculation (SAM) in Taylor's University College come January '09.
Anyone who wants to join me - YES. Choose SAM.
by the wayis that not the cutest smiley ever
Labels: education
SPM
I am
EXHILARATED
...
Day 1
I am high from finishing Bahasa Melayu!
I can not tell you how much I am grateful to not have to agonize over
kesinambungan isi
ialah or adalah
-kan or -i
tepuk dada tanyalah selera
marcapada yang penuh dengan kejahatan ini
anymore.
Yes.
...
Day 2
No more Sejarah!
Now that it is safely over, I can say that
I am grateful for the chance to have learnt about the formation of Malaysia and its challenges, the democratic system in our country, the dasar-dasar kerajaan, the symbols of our nation, the World Wars, the Renaissance. A small part of the evolution of our country and the world around it.
Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it, after all. Thank you George Santayana.
(Did you know you're famous in Malaysia? Who are you anyway?)
English.
blah.
I wrote about Stars.
Yes, the essay has Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in it.
This is how it ended:
What are stars but people who shine? People who brighten our lives every single day?
Ten-year-old Hannah Lee had found her stars.
One of our essay questions was My Perfect Future Husband/Wife!
My thoughts:
1. HAHAHA
2. Should I write it just for laughs?
3. No. The teacher will either burst into laughter, think we're too naive, or be bitter and angry. None of which are reactions I am aiming for.
4. Perfect...?
Oh! Up for auction, Jason's Sejarah notes! In files with cows! pretty cows! and bears on them.
Also, my Sejarah notes. =) Which I used instead of my textbook.
(Note: Ajaran sesat, future SPM takers. Read your holy Sejarah textbooks!)
Math
Haha the invigilators are funny! I think the good thing about being in a class room is that we get to know the teachers better and they are just ordinary teachers who deal with students every day.
I have gotten used to feeling isolated because everyone is so far away from my table! I hate not being able to see other people because I get boreddd. Usually I can see everyone from my vantage point. sigh.
Functioning at this high intensity for SPM is tiring. and stressful. And it's not even that intense yet! I still draw DNA and trace hearts and chat with teachers! But it will get worse as the sciences and the chinese and the english lit come along and I dreaddd.
...
Day 4
Add Math & Moral
I am
1. insecure about my handwriting.
2. happy that I was not forced to write anything complimentary about ISA.
3. secretly in love with add math beyond all other subjects.
4. strangely experiencing insomnia.
5. OMG about yee wei's writing.
6. scared about chinese in general.
7. wondering if taking english literature will be worth it.
8. sad that I cannot draw.
9. suddenly amused about the crane I spotted just now.
10. jealous of jason's handwriting.
11. eating grapes.
12. procrastinating. sigh.
...
Day 5
Chemistry
BM cikgu came over to declare my chinese essay a surat cinta. Chemistry cikgu came over to conclude that chinese is susah sangat. Haha.
I wonder what they would do if I brought in a Rubik's cube? =/
...
Day 6 & 7
Biology & Physics
I heart Physics but I found it the hardest of the lot. Probably due to the lack of sleep. I spent half the night reading Twilight. Sigh you see this is why I have self-discipline problems. My only lasting impression of Biology was that it was like Sejarah - only that tiny bit of the very thick Explorasi book came out. Damn not worth it.
Let me tell you why I hate - okay really dislike - Chemistry. It requires suspension of disbelief. It requires me to accept without question that copper(II) ions are blue and carbonate salts when heated release carbon dioxide. It doesn't tell me why. And that is my problem with chemistry. It's like asking why the sky is blue and why your name is ethan.
I like Physics though. It explains things. I am indifferent to Biology. I find it mind-numbingly boring.
But come to think of it not having to know why is my problem with the whole malaysian education system. Two chinese words which say everything : 虚伪
...
Day 8
Chinese & Literature in English
I know Jason seems to have this misguided belief that Chinese will come and murder us in our collective sleep but I am truly satisfied with the effort I have put in and whatever comes next March, I know I would not have done much differently. Which means: It's not my fault. Yay.
Yes, I took Literature in English. But even during the first half of the day when my wonderful friends were laughing at me for doing the extra subject, I had no regrets. I may not have enjoyed every second of it; may not even have liked the novel, but hey - now I have vague ideas of what made Shakespeare great; how poetry has millions of surfaces; how short stories actually say something beyond the happy endings.
...
Day 9
English in Science and Technology
EST does not count. We hung around chatting, listening to a briefing on Melacca and went to watch James Bond.
...
Day 10
Accounts
Lastdaylastdaylastday!
It was actually quite difficult, the paper. Whatever. SPM TAMAT!
.what.a.strange.thought.
=]
Labels: education
cannot cannot. must write even though I have pages and pages of BM phrases and facts and peribahasa to remember. I believe I have made my frustration with writing meaningless essays perfectly clear? sigh. must be chirpy and hopeful in my essay tomorrow.
today is 10.09.08! excited. because I wrote that on my testpad today beside 'tarikh' and it looked very cool.
here in m'sia everyone is waiting for 916. step back, 911 - we have a new contender for 'history in the making'. I read a very funny sentence today: 'if Malaysia were a person, her face would be a very interesting but dangerous shade of purple.' hahaha I think I just like the purple.
my brain has been obsessed with meaningless words like boing and zoing lately. they're just so bouncy! can't you just imagine jumping onto a trampoline?
ciao people. wish me luck because I need it. =(
I don't ever want to take a photo of a malay, a chinese and an indian holding hands and smiling into the camera, then use that as proof that there is no such thing as racial tension. It's demeaning, it's an insult to your intelligence and mine, and frankly, it makes me want to scream.
how. shallow. can you get.
I am tired of writing essays which go like this: if we do this, that and everything else, then we can achieve Vision 2020 and be cemerlang, gemilang dan terbilang (because there are no problems that cannot be fixed by a campaign and stringent enforcement of rules and most of all, moral and religious studies!)
I can't stand writing essays I have no moral investment in; I can't stand writing essays I don't believe in. There are only so many times I can write happy idealistic paragraphs on the state of my country when every single day I worry about everything that is wrong today and wonder why our leaders can't seem to think before they talk.
There is only so much I can write before I stare at the paper in frustration because the words ring false, because the words are so silly and weak in the face of the world today where we have real problems of racial segregation, safety issues and political upheaval. Injustice and oppression.
I don't know how to get rid of all this moral uprightness and personal perspective
how to write A1 BM opinion essays again
can't remember how to write without thinking
help.
How to Cheat Using a Coke Bottle
(if you get caught, you so didn't learn it from me!)
I wrote this on the 8th of May, 2008.
2 months on, much is the same. But I am seriously considering giving up the idea of medicine - even if I THINK I still want to do it: learn about how we work, how to heal, how to help. Yes I still very much want to walk this path, but I am on the verge of turning away.
***
I don't know how I feel today. Precision of words would be good for me.
I'm unsettled, I think. Caught between shores and strangely emotional. Lost because I don't know where I'm heading.
Direction. There's a thought.
Argh not happening. I still don't know how to deal with the ... everything.
---
Moving on.
I don't think I can perform under pressure. I mess up, I forget, I look for help - I don't have the confidence to trust my instincts so I look to another person who might not be better than me anyway.
Doctors don't do that. Doctors can't afford to.
I don't know if I can make it and I don't know if I want to risk people's lives on my ability to perform. There are so many occupations which don't decide people's lives right there and then. They're not as vital and not as heart-stopping and somehow they don't make much sense to me. Sure, money is important to me - I cannot live without knowing I will be well provided for, I think - but working for money by itself? I don't like the idea, honestly.
So I was thinking about actuarial science. It's supposed to be about risk management, right? Insurance companies want to know whether it'll be worth it to give people insurance. But the thing is, it's the sick people and the poor people who need treatment and can't afford it. If the risk-calculator says the company will lose money if you give them insurance, then where's the good in that? It hurts people, frankly. It's completely opposite of any ideals people hold to.
The counsellor asked why I want to go into medicine. And right then and there, I had no idea. My brain stopped working.
Now I'm searching for one.
I think. My whole life I've been used to being better, if not the best. It's not (I hope) arrogace, just habit. Now I'm scared - what if I mess this whole thing up? This is not school. This is what you are going to do with your life. This is the rest of your sixty or seventy or eighty years, if you get that far. And there is no blueprint of your life somewhere. We make it up as we go along.
I wish for the passion and the drive people who know what they want have. And thinking about it, not many people have that sureness. Angeline Lee, extraordinary girl - she knows she wants to be a doctor and a lecturer. She may have her doubts but I don't see them. I wish I could commit: this is what I want.
I'm thinking about Jason and Chee Kong. How driven, passionate and competitive they are. They're both in it to win. No doubt about it. I admire them.
Chee Kong told me once that girls have it easy: if he were a girl, he'd just study till pHd level because they're not expected to be the one bringing home the money. Now it sounds sexist. But at it's basest level, it makes sense to me - girls don't have it easy, this I am quite sure of - but girls have so much more to consider. Family, time. Medicine will take forever. Medicine will be all the time. Getting to the highest level and staying there will take everything.
How much am I willing to give up?
Labels: confessions, education
The days ring by in a flurry of 'but I haven't studied yet!'s.
Each exam gets more and more hollow. You should see the happy-clappy essays we write, involving everything from ways to curb the rising crime rate to ways to stop global warming, to ways to eradicate poverty, to ways to curing cancer. I swear, if all the bm karangans written in Malaysia came true, we would not only have solved the world's problems, we'd also have a billion campaigns running at the same time.
The sheer irony of writting more and more rhetoric, all the time. Is there any wonder that the country's leaders are more concerned with talking than doing? It's what our education system is teaching us, anyway - gunakan laras bahasa dan peribahasa! The markers know that's what gets you the A1, rather than what your essay is saying. I mean, as long as you don't critisize the Angkasawan or Khidmat Negara, who cares?
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to rehabilitate all the drug addicts in the country. Cheers!
Angry.
1. What the hell happened to meritocracy?
You know, what our history text books taught us was that Islam introduced the concept in Spain. They introduced 'greater social freedom' by judging people not based on their wealth, or who they knew, but by knowledge and skill.
The UMNO Youth Education Bureau commented today that "PSD scholarships are being taken from the bumiputras to be given to the non-bumiputras. The quota for non-bumiputras has increased from 10% to 45% but the number of total scholarships has remained at 2,000.We object to this move because it now means that 700 scholarships for bumiputra students are gone."
WHY is it that race counts when you are applying for help in furthering your education? Surely the powers up there don't want us to think that a certain race is better than another? That would be wrong because that is precisely the mentality that brought us the Holocaust and the Second World War. Racial purity as a philosophy failed the moment Adolf Hitler decided to act on his delusions.
There are plenty of criteria you can use for the handing out of scholarships. Academic and cocurricular accomplishments, background. People who need help and deserve it. Don't give it to the datuk's son, damn it. If he can buy a datukship, he can afford to send his children to uni. If he didn't buy the datukship, then he is doing well enough to send his children to uni anyway.
Give it to the teachers' children, give it to the police force's kids. Give it to the repairman's son helping out at the garage who dreams of breaking the cycle of poverty and could do it, too, if only you gave him a chance. We hear the stories every day. Our seniors we live in awe of because they seem to have done everything and more - yet they don't get the scholarships they deserve. No, they don't have ministers for uncles or neurosurgeons for fathers or society women for mothers. They are normal people who have worked hard, and dared to hope.
99.9% of our DNA is identical, yet we spend most of our time focusing on the 0.1% which is different.
Race is not a factor. Yes, you say that the bumiputras in Sabah and Sarawak need a quota or they would not get into our local universities. They cannot be left behind, you argue. The truth is, if they had proper education and the facilities we do, they would do just as well. They could do better. They are being pushed aside. You point at the quota left for them in universities but how many students with bright futures give up in primary school and secondary school? Help them. Help them before they become disillusioned with the country and give up. Don't you dare say there is no money. You sent an Angkasawan to space. He came back and the experiments were destroyed on landing.
2. There are so many things wrong with the Malaysian education system. It would be supremely ironical if we produced successful, respected graduates in spite of the flaws like Singapore does, but no, the sad truth is we don't. When something is broken, fix it.
One example: I was sitting in a theory class on driving the other day when the instructor posed a question, told us we were all wrong, and proceeded to tell us the answer. I filed it away, then an automatic response popped up in my mind: that's not going to come out in the test.
It is not my desire to be as shallow as that. In fact, it was to my complete horror that it happened. It was a piece of info that was going to be useful when I got on the road, and it might save my life one day. Yet my brain labelled it insignificant because I was fairly certain it would not appear on a test. This is ingrained in the system of almost every student in Malaysia, people. It is wrong. This results in people who will never go beyond what they need to know into what they could know. This is a closed mind: there is a box, and there is nothing outside the box.
3. Chinese is our mother tongue, yet everywhere in the nation, people are struggling to score an A1 in SPM Chinese. Surely we are not that incompetent? After all, we have mastered your mother tongue: Bahasa Melayu or Bahasa Malaysia (which have you changed it to this time?). We have even, lo and behold, mastered notoriously difficult subjects like Additional Mathematics and Physics. Why is it that a mastery of Chinese eludes us? Would you care to explain why an A1 in Add Math and Physics only require scores of high 60-s to low-70s when Chinese requires us to score, at the very lowest, high 80-s? The requirement for an A1 has even jumped to 94%. But of course you knew that. You drew the graph that year, didn’t you?
The Chinese language is the language of the future. The whole world is fighting for the chance to learn Chinese and grab a piece of the China pie. Why are you stifling the growth of Chinese in your country? You have countrymen who are willing to teach you the language. Why are you stabbing those who will help you in the back? You have to believe. You have to accept that we are Malaysian. We were born here, we grew up here. Whatever you do, we will always have love for the country, patriotism, loyalty. We will come back and we will give back. Have some faith.
Keep doing what you’re doing. One day the Chinese will all fly to Singapore, to Australia, to Hong Kong, to America, and you will beg them to come back. When they stay where they are, you will be angry. You will blame them and call them disloyal. This amounts to treason, you will say. And you will forget, like we always forget when we are in the wrong, the day when a member of parliament stood up and declared, ‘If you are not happy, then go back to China.’ You will forget the day when leaders of the country swore that the keris would be soaked in Chinese blood. You will only be angry because regret is not in your vocabulary.
4. This is an appeal to the Education Ministry. Moral education is a waste of our time. We are not learning to be better people. There is no meaning in memorising definitions of moral values. It is negative psychology at its best because memorising it? makes us hate it. Believe me, the integration of moral values through the subject Moral Education is flawed.
If you disagree, please TELL us how it is benefiting us and the country. Issue a memorandum, make a statement, hold a press conference. Don’t ignore the problem like it isn’t there. What problem? Interview any secondary school student in Malaysia. (Did you know that nowhere in the 36 moral values is ‘honesty’ mentioned? One would think honesty is the first value we need to learn as a nation – the reasons for this statement need not be elaborated. Besides, Lincoln has his own legend about honesty! You don’t hear stories about moderation, do you?)
5. Replace Moral with Geography. Somehow, someone decided long ago that Geography is not a required subject for students above the age of 15. It is an embarrassment. Most people wouldn’t be able to tell you where Turkey is, let alone the name of its capital. Who was the person who decided that knowing about the world around you is not important? Our three years of Geo were dedicated to Malaysia. Somehow the other 194 other countries in the world never made it into the picture.
6. Deciding to teach Math and Science in English was the best decision you ever made. Don’t shake things up by proposing to change it back every few months. Don’t give people false hope that it’ll all go back to BM; how are they going to accept facts if you keep feeding them lines about reviewing the system? So certain people have problems with learning in English. That’s why it’s called the education system, so they can learn. If not now, then when? You surely don’t expect them to miraculously become masters in English after they move on from secondary school? This matters. Please don’t produce another Nur Amalina who went to England as Malaysia’s top student and failed a basic English test.
Please. We criticize because we care.
Your children have been sent to Australia. Have you no faith in your education system? Then make the changes. They might not benefit your children, but they will benefit the children of the nation.
Surely you care too.
there is a faith people have in doctors, a belief, however unfounded it may be, that they will help to make everything right again. it is an illusion, of course, one that is roughly exposed whenever a loved one is hurt or harmed or gone but still, after the pain numbs, we keep believing in doctors. the elite group who meddle with our bodies because we give them every right to do so. they have certificates that we people have given them to help and to heal, proof that they know more than we do about our own bodies.
people believe that doctors are inherently good, just as they believe casino owners and lawyers are inherently bad. not a fact. because they can't be, the way horoscopes just can't be right - they encompass too many people and too many situations and we are human beings caught in this huge huge web of action and reaction. who knows when the next gust of wind will come, and change everything?
at the most primal, human beings have only two choices - fight or flight. and I have the utmost respect for people who step up and will do what needs to be done. when most people stop and stare, or look away, or just plain run and hide themselves away - doctors - I believe they will never step away from someone who really needs help. in a situation where they can help, they will. because knowledge and heart and ego is a powerful combination.
Doctors Without Borders have doctors helping and healing in China, Myanmar, Sudan - disaster-striken areas without proper healthcare or sanitation, without proper food, clean water, comfortable accomodation. man-made or natural, disaster is disaster, and the effects are so often hidden away behind press conferences and videos that glitter like gold. there is so much hurt in this world. so much hate.
this web we're all in? our part of the web is fine. the hole on the other side of the web? can't see it. doesn't exist. it's there. of course it's there. it'll always be there. truth is, the hole will get bigger and bigger, until the whole web collapses. but we'll see that when it collapses, no sooner.