Hear ye! Hear ye!

OK, how interesting can this be? I'm currently in my CALL Lab (CALL stands for Computer Assisted Language Laboratory) and the technician who is supposed to brief us on what to do today hasn't arrived yet. All of us are still waiting for him. And the best part is this: it's in the CALL lab that you can get the best Internet connections in UTP! Even my room connection could not even open the main page of Blogger!

I've already been in university for a month. So far, I've seen quite a lot, but I'm still a novice about the politics and the goings-on that are occuring here. Fortunately, my seniors are kind enough to relate their past experiences and major problems that took place here in university.

Life isn't very hard for me. Oh, looks like I've forgotten to tell you what happened last weekend with Ivan Chee (my roommate) and Gary Choy (a friend I made from Educamp December 2005) staying in my house for a night.

Like a good Samaritan (chuckles), I invited them over to Ipoh. My parents actually wanted me to return home for the 15th day of the lunar calendar (to mark the end of Chinese New Year) and asked me to invite friends over. So, I called Ivan (who is from Kuala Terengganu, Terengganu) and Gary (who is from Kuantan, Pahang) to follow me, which they gratefully did. We travelled down to Ipoh by bus, and eventually we reached at my mother's restaurant. I then took the keys from my mother and drove them home.

That evening, my parents asked us where do we want to go for dinner. Gary and Ivan had a unanimous decision; they wanted to go for "chicken and bean sprouts" or in Cantonese "Nga Choy Kai". So, very well, we took them out to the Old Town of Ipoh and we sat down for dinner while my father placed an order. When the food arrived, they had the best time of their lives. Ivan thoroughly enjoyed the noodles and everything else and Gary loved the chicken. I being an Ipohan myself just enjoy it as if it was just OK. After dinner, Gary's remark came: "Ah, now my stomach is happy." We all laughed.

For two days they couldn't help mentioning about the dinner the night before repeatedly, until Sunday evening when my parents cooked dinner, a special one. We had prawns cooked with wine and eggs (too bad Gary is allergic to prawns), steamed fish, baked chicken marinated with herbs and spices and so on. Well, speaking of Ipoh home-cooked dishes, after an hour or so, only some of the chicken was left! We then left for UTP that night itself.

All right, now back to some matters concerning me in UTP. Yesterday, I went to the main hall to register for my final examination of the semester. Actually, it wasn't really a registration, but more like a confirmation of your registration. I was given a pink sheet of paper with a white carbon copy underneath it bearing my name and the subjects that I am taking. To my horror, one of the subjects that they registered me in is Islamic Studies! I'm not a Muslim scholar, so how in the world could I be registered for Islamic Studies? I stated clearly in the application form that I'm a Buddhist and I clearly did not check at the box next to "Islamic Studies" while registering for my Foundation course subjects. Upon inspection, I found that I checked on "Moral Studies". I wonder who was the fool that signed me up for Islamic Studies. I have no knowledge or qualifications whatsoever on Islamic Studies. Therefore, I asked how could I correct the error and the person-in-charge replied that I could just cut it out using a pen and write "Moral Studies" next to the error. Then, I'll have to put the pink sheet into a box labelled "Returned forms with corrections" and retain the white carbon copy. Apparently, I was not the only one who faced this problem. A lot of my friends were registered for Islamic Studies, too. One of my coursemates was even registered for both Moral and Islamic Studies! What a shame.

Besides that incident, nothing much has happened, but I'm getting more and more assignments now. In fact, my quizzes are coming, too. I've got to revise whatever I've learnt already. Well, this is university life. So, what do you expect?