RACONTEUR-ESQUE SCRIBBLINGS

Way back in 1998. In the true spirit of upholding the morality (ahem!) of female students, my residential college decided to hold a talk for all female students who lived there. Attendance was compulsory, they said. On top of that, to make matters even worse, there were rumours that the rooms would be checked during the talk to catch truants. There were a few problems with this, seeing that we had a math test the next day. Being the kind of people who saved everything for the last minute, this talk just threw all the studying plans in a disarray. Secondly, the idea of some stranger trying to instill morality in us was just not my cup of tea. My mom did an extremely good job on that many years before. She still doesn't like it when I use unlady-like words even under extreme provocation, but at least I'm honest enough to use the words in front of her ;) Being first year students then, we duly attended the talk and were bored to death, while attempting math questions i...

Fellow sufferers of a mild form of Facebook addiction may agree that the famous social network occasionally throws people you might know at your face when you least expect it. Most times, while you might have a friend or two in common, it's quite likely that you may not know who they are. At other times, let's just say that there's a reason (one that you're not exactly willing to divulge) why you're not already friends with that particular person they so excitedly think you may know. Earlier this year, FB decided that it was time to throw *Jimmy L across my path, and since he belongs to neither of the categories above, I approached it with my brand of curiosity and a trip down memory lane - though most of it is a bit hazy, and dusty and (for the lack of a better word), downright strange. This is because Jimmy L happens to be the very first boy I was teased with, at the crazy age of ten -  a very, very long time ago. It was towards the end of the 1990 school year, ...

The normal Luna colour pencil box has about twelve colours. Kids call it red, while older people and the colour manufacturers probably call it vermillion. It was ages ago, in the state of Johor where there was jeep. Of course there were many jeeps, but the jeep we have in mind is one in particular. It was red, and although initially known as the big red jeep, it was later on renamed the bloody red jeep (BRJ). If this jeep could talk, it would have many stories to tell, some happy, some sad and others - just ridiculously silly, or so it thought. The BRJ was a victim of insane jealousy – not that it was pretty or anything of the sort. It was in fact too regular, or maybe it was the owner of the jeep that was a victim of jealousy - from some people who had no form of transport. It doesn’t really matter anymore, because the whole thing happened back in 1998. One funny incident that the BRJ may have experienced was looking on at three lost souls at the dirty beach side of a city th...

There comes a time in life where communication between friends dwindle to the once a year wishes of Happy Birthday, or one of those festive greetings via text message. About half of my friends over the ages have fallen into that category, and as terrible as it sounds, we all live with it and are somehow comfortable enough to think that it is sufficient in maintaining what was once known as friendship. So, it was incredibly surprising for me to receive a text message from one of those friends yesterday... the last I heard from her was when she changed her number somewhere earlier this year. She told me that she had been accepted to continue with her postgrad (in Safety, Health and Environment) in UTM , the place where we did our degree, suffering in the process by having to climb to the second highest point in campus (the highest point was of course the place known as Balai Cerap - an observatory of sorts which also served as a place people used to go jogging/dating/break rules, e...

I suppose it wouldn't be too far off the mark if I were to tell you that it all began with the economic crisis of 1997. You see, it was because of the crisis that the university upped it's intake from 4000 students to over 6000 students the year I went in by absorbing the MARA scholars who were supposed to further their education abroad. It was also because of that, a dorm room that was meant for two found itself with three people. And then there was the old fan. Not any ordinary old fan which would creak like joints on a cold day while cooling the air, but the kind of old fan that simply refused to speed up although you turned the speed to maximum. For that reason, we slept at night with the windows thrown open (after all, we were on the 2nd floor and it was a pretty safe place (university residential college) or so we thought), dealing with the consequences of having cats leaving their kittens under the bed by running helter skelter for help from cat lovers to remove cats an...

A lot of things we take for granted these days such as the ability to send a short message to anywhere in the world, or use networking sites to relocate old acquaintances were practically non-existent back in 1998. Anyway, I recently remembered an old friend and her wonderful (mis)adventures with us during our very short time together (she had an allergy to chemicals and could not continue studying where we were) Here is one of those stories which I had reproduced from my old blog. There was a conversation last night, which involved a name... a very nice name in fact. Anyways, since the name is particularly nice, I remember a few people who had the same particular name, and one of them was a special friend to an old friend of mine. This old friend, T was a very dramatic person (very important information), whereas, H, her special friend was practically an unknown entity... about 3 years older, tall, good looking and walks around - a lot. So although T and a group of us were pretty ...

When I was a kid, I moved to a different state at that obscure time between leaving primary school and entering secondary school. So while my friends stayed behind in the same state, and almost all of them went to the same school together (albeit a different one from the primary school) while strengthening the bonds of friendship, I ended up having to go to a brand new place and had to make new friends from scratch, and being me, it wasn't easy at all. I recently joined a group that carries the school's name, call it alumni if you will and that led me to the school's (official?) website. There weren't many photos there but from the few that were put up, the school looks really different now compared to back in the day. For a start, the single story buildings seem to be part of the past. The few buildings that were in the pictures are at least 2 stories high. I wonder if the main building that was there from the colonial times and is rumoured to be haunted is still the...

Tomorrow being Valentine's Day, I'm naturally inclined to pick up a story from the most interesting period of most our lives... the scholarly years. This is the story of Valentine's Day 1999. 13 February 1999. Dinner time. My roomate and I were having dinner with a few friends where one of them was wooing her in a very old fashioned way. My roomate (with my help) hinted quite loudly that there were no activities planned for the next day, except a movie trip with Preeto and her sister, which was not what anyone really wanted to do, but nobody wanted to be indoors all day either. Apparently, no amount of hinting could penetrate the guy's head, and we finished our dinner... as we were headed back to our respective destinations, I (ever teh busybody) turned around and asked... "Hey, aren't you gonna ask her out?" He looked as though someone had kicked him on the shin with a pair of spiked shoes. But he kept quiet. As we turned, I heard one of his...

This story goes way back to 5 years ago when two 20 year olds were made into roomates (by some higher forces known as the residential college management)... and the trials and tribulations that followed :) How many of us would have had roomates who were born in the exact same year, and same month albeit 9 days later, and while 1 roomate was born on a single digit date, the other roomate was born on a 2 digit date, but adding up both those digits, you'd get a single digit which is the exact same date as the first roomate? However, their story begin a little earlier than 5 years ago... after becoming friends due to being in the same course and for the same reason why ppl actually become friends in the first place, these two ppl were faced with quite a number of occurences that would one day make them look back and realise that they were probably jinxed. See, what used to happen back then was, (this was a year before they became roomates) having the same classes, they used to ha...

When you hang out with ppl long enough, you tend to use the same type of language especially when speaking. In the course of "hanging out" with my friends from university, i noticed that one of the phrases overused was "jump off a lake". Logically speaking, it doesn't make any sense jumping 'off' a lake, when the lake is actually a body of water with nothing to serve as a platform for you to 'jump off' unless of course you're a toad idling it's time on a lilypad. Some time later, the phrase " my foot and a half" was extensively used to address never ever cases... cause "my foot" was not sufficient enough to emphasise the feelings expressed during those times. Whenever I got home during the holidays, my sister would give some comments about the phrases that I picked - and for this she said; "you better be careful or else you're really gonna have a foot and a half" - which obviously fell on deaf ears. ...

It's March! Time for another story about the jing bang! Twas many years ago, in March when 3 people were out to celebrate their 19th birthday together, marking the end of their teens and all other things, and the beginning of some things for some people.... hehehehe. Anyway, to make things easier (not only for the reader but also for me), I shall refer to the people involved based on initials... Amongst the girls were D, M, C and me, and the jim bang consisted MS, N, V and R. Birthday people were D, MS and me. It was a cloudy afternoon on the day we planned the 'birthday party'. D, M and I got at the meeting point on time, with our cute lady like umbrellas in tow.... C and R was supposed to meet us at the location, whereas MS, N and V were supossed to meet us at the meeting point but were nowhere in sight at the stipulated time... The cloudy day begin to show it's true colours by showering us with an unwelcomed drizzle followed by rain... not a storm, but just s...

Hmm.. many might mistake this as the movie made back in 1996. Personally, I’ve never seen it myself, but the ghost and the darkness here refers to a certain basic math lecturer I had in first year.The funny thing was, math being quite an interesting subject managed to put even the most alert of students to sleep with this woman droning on and on about the subject. This is however, NOT a character assassination of the said lecturer but my own thoughts on the happenings in her classes. Firstly, her classes were mostly at 11:00 am, time for brunch, so of course a bunch of hungry 18 year olds would need a bite before going for class, therefore, there were obviously lots of late comers to the class, and plenty of disturbances…Secondly, she loved hovering near the bright lights of the projector, thus hiding part of the slide she was teaching from and casting a hilarious looking shadow on the wall. It curiously looked like a rocket, or shuttle cock or something conical… hehehe… And, it wa...

This incident happened way back in 1998. This was a time when the ghost and the darkness had completely lost me, and I had completely lost her… but somehow things around her were always bound to be weird. In the true spirit of upholding the morality of female students (yeah right…) my residential college decided to hold a talk for all female students living there, and attendance was compulsory. There were rumours that the room would be checked during the talk to avoid truancy. The problem was, the next day we were supposed to have a math exam and last minute work is what most of us are famous for. It was like living in a nightmare. Anyways, we duly attended the talk and were bored to death, even with the math text book. Sitting pretty near one of the exits, we hatched a plan where at certain intervals, one by one of us would get out and go back to the room to study. And it happened. Sitting in the room and doing math questions as if life depended on it, my roomies and I heard the...