Class of '09

In general, a graduation ceremony signifies the end of a student's life in whatever learning institution currently resided. Graduation is when students attain new found freedom after having to go through the grueling torture of a final exam, after having to suffer few grueling years of schooling. Not for a Malaysian high school student though.

Today, I, along with my fellow fifth formers of Raja Zarina, ceremoniously graduated from our school. Our graduation ceremony happens today, but we are going back to school on Monday as if nobody has ever squeaked the word 'graduation'. Then we will be sitting for our major exam on the 18th of November.

The venue of this event was Crystal Crown Hotel, which is just right beside my school. Yes, I can see the hotel from my classroom. Those who attended were required to pay RM48, which was relatively expensive, considering other schools charged their students much lower fees, or didn't charge at all. So close to home, yet so expensive. One would have thought that the hotel would be kinder to its neighbour by not charging high.

Nevertheless, I had a great time throughout the event. I got to see my friends dress up (some for the very first time), take pictures with them (some for the very first time) and perform for the second and very last time with my classmates. We performed four songs (Gadis dan Bunga, What I've Been Looking For, The Climb and Gemuruh), and I thank God we managed to pull it off with the crowd cheering for us by the time we reached our last song.

With Zi Yin
Wei Ting The Indians looking gorgeous and colorful in their traditional clothes

Me, Thevaki, Amutha and Wei Ting

Muzira and Wafi

Hajira and Halimatul

Yin Hui and May

My darling Yvonne =D

Each of us get a thermos mug as a door gift.
As if they are afraid that we will be so unkind to forget where we get our education from that makes us the hope of tomorrow, our school logo is imprinted on the mug to haunt us forever.

These are yours truly, Mariam and Rekha

Halfway through the event and water is not served. And I paid RM48!

My darlings Priya and Yvonne

Thasha, the joker of my class.

Why do high school girls love doing this?

Yin Hui's leg barged in and distorted the circle

Wafi, Khairunisa and Muzira

Yin Hui and I

...plus Mariam!

Shaera, me, Yin Hui, Hazimah, Afiqah, Priya, Thasha and Ezzati

This picture would had been perfect if it weren't because of my proneness to shut my eyes

Jessica

Yin Hui, me, Jessica, Zi Yin, May and Wei Ting

Premala on my right, Lidia on my left and me looking weird in the center

Mun Yi

Poh Lee

My cousin Ke Ning

Staircase effect

Dashy, I want your dress!

Puan Wong, my English teacher

Hany

Puan Sartina at the center, our BM teacher and former class teacher

Kalsyana, Bindhu, me and Halimatul. Hajira in the background

Jeslyn

Looking back, being in Raja Zarina for the past five years has given me a collage of bitter and sweet memories that I will treasure for the rest of my life. Many lessons on friendship, responsibility, loyalty, sacrifice and love I have learnt that have mould me into who I am today. Of course, high school life is so much fun (amidst the occasional emotional and mental letdowns) thanks to the very close friends I have come to know and appreciate. I really hope the end of this year does not mark the end of our friendships.

All of you are going to be missed dearly.

I love you all!

The damage done can never be undone

Over the years, without us realizing it, we accumulate bits of hurtful words, annoying habits and broken promises among us that form a huge pile. All that is needed to set the pile ablaze is a spark, which will result in a wildfire of destruction that cannot be reversed. Whatever damage done in the process has already been done, too late to be undone.

Reality hurts like this.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On another note, happy Deepavali to all my Indian friends who are still in the midst of celebrating the Festival of Lights!

Priya invited me to her house yesterday to share the warmth and food. When I reached there, Yvonne and Yin Hui were already there, among Priya's other friends. Yin Hui couldn't stop giving me the evil stares because I told her I was going to be at Priya's around 1.15 p.m. but ended up there only at two. Can't blame me for it. After all, she has almost always been the one who is late to events, so I was just doing it to make sure I wouldn't be the first one there. Hah. Anyway, Priya said Yin Hui arrived only 15 minutes before me, which means she wasn't exactly early either. Apparently, she had became an object of admiration among Priya's guy friends before Yvonne's and my arrival. That's the first thing Priya told me when I stepped into her house. Probably the reason why Yin Hui was so annoyed at me for being late, subjecting her to social awkwardness. See? This is exactly the reason why I went late. =P

Over there, we chatted, ate, watched Priya's friends play 'truth or dare' (the scariest game to play if you have many skeletons in you closet) and of course, cam-whored (is this word vulgar?). We took many pictures, but they are split between Dashy's, Priya's and my cameras. And then there were some in which I look absolutely horrendous and needed to be scraped off. The end result? I don't have that many pictures.

Priya is so adorable here =D
Her sisters - Leena and Anita
Yin Hui looks like she is going to faint anytime soon. That's why I like this picture. I know...doesn't make much sense.

Clockwise from me: Erm...me, Priya, Chiew Teng, Yvonne, Dashy and Yin Hui.
=D
I love that they look so candid here although what they are really doing is posing for another camera.

Friends find the sweetest
sense of happiness comes from simply being
together.

~Unknown

A prickly tale

Everybody, meet my cactus.

I bought it a month and a half ago when I was supposed to get one for Yin Hui's birthday. Since buying three would be more worthwhile, I got three; one for the birthday girl, one given to Jess and the other one for myself.

Ain't mine pretty?
Well, yes. Until yesterday.

I got home at night after parents and I sent both sisters to their respective places (one to airport and the other to her hostel) to find my cactus flattened like a pancake.
It's still sort of pretty, but it also used to be five times taller.
How can this happen?
I saw it five hours prior to its premature death and it looked at its pink of health. I watered it every week and let it sunbathe almost every day. I was so nurturing to it, okay!
And what do I get in return? A miserable lump.

You know what's more dissatisfying?
The fact that I've been doing the same for Jess' cactus.
And look at hers!
Still pretty and prickly.

P.S. Today I asked Yin Hui how's her fluffy, woolly Rock 'n' Roll (that's what we named her cactus) doing. She said it still looked the same. Darn.
And I gave her the cactus in the first place to make fun of her inability to take care of a living creature. Now mine's dead.

-_-

It's not like I have been doing things I shouldn't be doing, but I really should start doing the things I haven't been doing but really should. Maybe I have been doing things I shouldn't be doing after all.

Bitter Hearts

I dreamt of unity among us,
of caring and compromising hearts,
of understanding and mature minds.
I hoped for the bickering to stop,
for the cold war to melt away,
that the conflict between us
will not just be forgotten,
but becomes a lesson learnt
so that history does not repeat itself.
I prayed for forgiveness to happen,
among the angered and
the misunderstood,
for them to learn to accept
each other’s differences,
to come to terms with
each other’s reason for being angry,
and to put themselves in the other’s boat.
I tried to mend the damage done,
only to accidentally tear it apart,
to cause a deeper wound
and more misunderstandings.
This is when I realize that my
hopes and wishes have been too ambitious.
I have been so naïve to think that
I can easily bridge the widening gap between them,
when I don’t even know how to build bridges
in the first place.

In reality,
conscious choices have been made,
to sacrifice friendship and love,
for the preservation of egotistical selves,
and the unwillingness of childish minds
to talk things through.
The tongue-lashings and the back stabbings
serve to only make things
spiral out of control,
into confusion and haziness.
Insults have been hurled at both directions,
out of pride and denial
of one’s imperfection,
and humans’ vulnerability to make mistakes.
I have been pressured to take side,
which I cannot,
simply because of my belief that
right is not easily distinguished from wrong.
The decision is not mine to make,
whether they will one day become humble
and self-aware enough,
to part with self-righteousness
and conceited souls,
in exchange for
harmony, love and respect
toward each other.

I'm getting older I feel so young

This birthday has been a pretty great one for me. Yes, for all you uninitiated people out there, 17th September of seventeen years ago was the day I came into this world crying like a baby. Heck, I came into this world as a baby.

I do realized that 17th September is so 6 days ago. It seems a bit late to talk about my birthday, but I just came back from Penang, so please excuse the delay. =D

I am not going to say a lot about my birthday because I'm too lazy to go into the details because if I do, I will only end up dragging the story and make the post unnecessarily long because I can't help it, and readers will become bored because a long post without pictures tends to feel extra draggy. You get it: I'm not posting any pictures because if you want to see pictures, go find Jess' blog or facebook profile. She will post them up. Eventually.

Reasons why I am so grateful on my birthday

1. Because big sis rescheduled her flights, exchanging them with her colleagues in return for flights to less desirable destinations just so that she could be home with the family for my birthday. She came home at one in the morning and gave me a teddy bear, a cool (should I say vintage-looking?) sling bag and toiletry bag because I complained the other day that my old one was torn. Of course I absolutely love the sling bag! Thanks sis for sacrificing your flights for me. And thanks for the gifts and the time you set aside to be here for me. =)

2. Despite having to sit for killer add math papers on my birthday, I was in a jolly good mood. Maybe a little too good to the point of being delirious. I was unusually relaxed and didn't put in much effort in studying add math the day before. I know it doesn't really sounds like a reason to be grateful, but me being in high spirit because my birthday was drawing near probably prevented me from over-stressing myself in the attempt to cramp 21 chapters of cryptic formulae and concepts in less than 24 hours. At my most relaxed pace ever, I managed to scan through 13 chapters that I felt I could understand most before sitting for the papers. Sure, I was clueless for the most part of the exam, but I was also assured by and aware of the fact that under any other normal circumstance, I probably wouldn't had done any better if I had put too much pressure on myself to finish every chapter in the reference book. Mr Ng, if you happen to read this, please don't kill me.

3. I really enjoyed spending time with my family at night without any one of us being absent, which was becoming increasingly difficult ever since big sis started working in Singapore (and around the world) while Jess attended college. We had dinner and an awesome time at dragon-i restaurant. What more can I say? It was great food, great atmosphere and great company combined. After that, we watched G-Force, a movie about a bunch of cute guinea pigs trained as spies who saved the world from human destruction. Frankly, the movie was kind of boring and very predictable (like, duh). I like the really grumpy hamster though. Haha.

4. My sisters surprised me with a karaoke session at Aeon the next morning. They invited Sammy, Yin Hui and Kristine to join in the fun too. I had actually suspected that something was up since my sisters had been acting suspiciously, but I decided not to give it much thought since it would be awfully disappointing if there really was nothing going on, and very conceited of me. Still, I was really surprised when my sisters led me to our karaoke room which consisted of Sammy, Yin Hui and Kristine with huge smiles on their faces. Surprised because I didn't expect to see my cousin with Sammy and Yin Hui. Weird combination. I was very touched by my sisters' effort to make my birthday a memorable one, which they succeeded darn well in making. I realized at that moment that some of the closest and dearest people (excluding my parents, of course) in my life were breathing in the same room for the very first time. And thank God, they all got along really well. Well enough to not cause a catfight anyway. =D

5. Growing up, one of the biggest issues I have always struggle with is insecurity. This birthday has reminded me of the love that surrounds me and how silly it is of me to always worry about whether people really like me or just tolerate me. As much as I dislike it, being the center of attention once in a while is a nice feeling and makes me feel important. LOL.

To my parents, sisters, Kristine, Sammy and Yin Hui, thank you so much for making my day. I love you all. =)

What about teachers?

For the past two weeks, my school has been having talks on specific subjects for us Form 5 students so that we can do superbly well in our SPM exam and make the school proud with our strings of nothing but A1s. Yesterday was Bio talk by our school's head of Biology teacher, Puan Poon.

At one point, she was explaining to us the 3 papers that we had to do during the exam. She explained that the first paper was the objective paper. And as if we did not already know, she went on to say that we are allowed to shade only one answer for each question on a piece of answer sheet.

"I know that some students will shade two answers because they are not sure which is the correct one. Then when teacher marks the paper she will put her answer sheet with all the holes for the correct answers over the student's sheet and tick one of the two answers that is correct without knowing that two choices have been shaded. But for SPM, your answer sheet will be checked by a machine. If it detects that you shaded more than one answer for a question, your paper will be rejected straight away. Machines are smart okay."

LOL.

Okay, so those are not her exact words, but they are pretty close.

Have a nice day.

I think they call it Gerkorama Carnival

This morning, I went to ACS school for its carnival, mainly out of Sammy's persistent (and annoying) bugging. =) There were food stalls, band performances, other performances, haunted house that according to Hakim, was lame, and some artsy stuff. I had a good time because the weather was being kind; no scorching hot sun and very windy! What more can I ask for?

LOL

Free to Fall performing. Sammy and Yvonne.
I like this picture for some reason. Hah.

Ai Lee with Mei Fong in green trying to avoid the camera

Home grown band

This picture was snapped when Chiew Teng turned, so it ended up looking like she wanted to kiss Yvonne.

I asked them to pose for another one.

And they decided they couldn't get enough of each other.

At last, an almost decent-looking picture.

Yvonne and Priya.

Juwita Suwito. She rocks! I love her voice.

Some shuffling group all the way from KL.

In the midst of the shuffle, some guys got into the mood and broke into a dance too.

I think he's an ACS guy. He sang a number of Mandarin songs. Really liked his singing.

He was so good, he received flowers and a cupcake from the audience (guys lah). Then somebody put on him a pair of shades. I guess to make him looked cooler.

Drumming session.

Paintball!

That's Hakim (left), Cheng (right) and their friend (centre). I totally forgot about taking pictures with them.

For some reasons I like the trees. A bit haunting. Haha.