Second July

It is the award whereby the receivers get eternal glory on my blog. Ok, I do not have time to do fancy fancy graphic stuff like last year's, so we'll just have to make do with plain old words. A whole lot of them. So brace yourselves.

Without further ado, let's start shall we?

Food of the Year

Alright, this is real hard cos basically what I eat over here, as in down here at sunny Spore, depends on my budget. Usually, I'll make do with the S$1.80-a-plate economic rice for both lunch and dinner, which includes rice, one choice of veggie and meat each.

That was before Subway came into the picture. At one time, I was so addicted to Subway that I was crazy enough to pay around 4 dollars to get nothing but veggies and mayonaise slapped between 2 slices of honey oat bread. But that was when I feel the sudden urge to turn into a vegetarian for a meal (not even a day), which thankfully does not happen as often nowadays.

But then I don't feel like giving Subway the award cos the addiction lasted only for about a month. Plus their self-service drinks dispenser cheated on me once. I happily filled my large cup ( I upsized my meal somemore) with what I thought was ice lemon tea, only to find that it's practically plain water (it's a very very diluted ice lemon tea, thus still having the colouring). That was the last meal I bought from them.

Let's put it this way. If I were to reward myself with food after a hard day's work (usually after db-ing) or somehow I'm feeling rather rich, I would probably not go to Subway. I would go to this Japanese restaurant instead.

It's Nihon Mura at The Cathay. Specifically, I would go for their salmon belly soup. What's unique is that their business concept is somewhat like Marche, which I went for like only once. Basically what you need to do is to survey around food 'stations' and put down your order for a specific dish by grabbing hold of a stick with the name of the dish carved on it. It's hard to explain over here and sadly I do not have any photo. However, I would gladly bring you there for a meal if you happen to be in town and have some time to spare with me =)

Classmate of the Year

Classmates in schools are somehow different from those met in lectures or tutorials. For starters, tutorial mates don't see each other 5 days a week and it really depends on what subject we're talking about, i.e. X might be my tutorial mate for econs but not for my stats. So there wasn't really much time to bond la.

If I were to choose, YH would be the one! This lady is one my of marketing groupmates and is in all my other 3 classes. If you were to sit anywhere near her, just prepare yourself for a fun-filled tutorial full of distractions. She was the one who took this photo of me in stats class by the way.

Lecturer/tutor of the Year

For obvious reasons, I've changed the award's name from Teacher of the Year to this one you're reading. The difference in name, of course, illustrates difference in dynamics of relationship (I just notice how caggih this sentence sounds). A teacher is somewhat closer, or more personal if you know what I mean, as compared to a lecturer. A tutor, on the other hand, sounds more personal but they're often too old (or too young, which happens in my case) to be associated with us (students).

With that crappy introduction out of the way, shall we announce the Lecturer/tutor of the Year?

And the award goes to my macro econs lecturer....

Assistant Professor W.M. Chia!
Clicky on her name for photo

A bit of intro on her. Shall start by stating that she did her Master on economics at LSE under an LSE scholarship. Impressive or not???

I suspect she might be a Malaysian, although it's not mentioned in any of her biodata online. Yeah, I googled her. Here are some evidences:
1) She received some Datuk Paduka whatever award for her outstanding academic performance, before she left for LSE
2) She lectured at HELP Uni College
3) She was an industrial analyst at some Malaysian federation
4) My gut feelings
5) Malaysia boleh woohoo

There are many reasons to like her. Besides the fact that she occasionally adds an 's' at the end of a string of words, her lectures are far from boring. Or maybe it's just me. Sometimes she'll go off topic and tell stories, like how John Maynard Keynes was gay (or was it bisexual? He later married but remained childless). It's easy to see that she's good at what she does. She lectures slow enough, just so that everyone could understand (or at least I do) and holds extra or make up lectures on Saturday mornings when she couldn't finish on the topic for the week. Best of all, she rewards those early birds who turned up for her last extra lecture by providing not-so-direct hints on our exam questions.

In addition to her plus points: she produces nice graphs on the spot (oh-so-straight lines sans rulers), is hip enough to listen to ipod while walking at the carpark (just plain coincidence by the way. Have to stress that I did NOT stalk her), has slight rabbit teeth (if I recall correctly) and plays mukabuka (dying to use this word since HY introduced it to me).

It's sad that I have zero chance of having her as a lecturer ever again, considering that she's from the humanities and social sciences faculty. But oh well, great teachers and lecturers come and go. I'll probably meet another just as good or even better one next sem anyway. Hopefully, fingers crossed.

Loot of the Year

My PSP. Hands down.

Most Memorable Event of the Year

I have to admit, the first half of 2008 was a blur. It's as if the year only started after moving down here. Taking the chance and moving to Spore to study is definitely a milestone. I mean, me? LJY going overseas? Alone? The crybaby who wept every morning during her first few years in primary? I'm still amazed that I was strong enough not to cry out of loneliness over here. Never ever.

Let's see..how did I manage? Firstly, thank god for my PSP. I listen to mp3 til I fall asleep every night during the first few nights. Also, I used to look at this big family photo of mine in my PSP, at least once a day, right before I sleep. But not anymore =)

Secondly, the orientation for Malaysian students really did play a part. If not for the seniors over here, LJY would've been long gotten lost at Nantah.


And if not for taking this chance, yours truly would not have achieve a weight of nearly 55kg (I used to be so underweight, according to my dad), have squeezy biceps for curious friends to poke at (almost inching the borderline of molesting sometimes), thighs that are so huge that when I look down at my feet, I can't even see my knees (Ok that's scary. cos it's as if I'm fat, except that when I try pinch my thighs, I can't really pinch because there isn't much fat in there I suppose).

It seems that I'm enjoying so much over here til I'm giving impression that it's effortless to study here huh? There were stressful times as well. Am just glad so far I've managed to handle them.

Hangout of the Year

I couldn't decide whether the gym or this spot:



deserves the award.

I used pass by that spot every morning when there are classes. The view is so breath-taking that I tend to slow down my pace just to have the moment a wee bit longer. Walk a bit further up, there is also another spot (behind the Student Services Centre, the highest point in campus) with an 'industrialized' Spore view. From there, you can literally see hundreds of cranes gathered at one particular corner (the port maybe?). Ok, I'm exaggerating on the number but you get the point.

But since I don't really hangout at that place, so the award goes to Jim! Cheers to weight benches, power racks and pec deck machines.


Craziest Act of the Year

More freedom over here minus curfew equals more crazy acts. The craziest among all I've done, I would say, is non other than taking up db and the packages that come along with it. By packages I meant travelling almost all the way across the island alone, going to gym, doing night jog, being slightly more health and figure conscious, taking up swimming and having steamy affair with tank tops.

I have no idea why in the world, of all extra curricular activities (ECAs) and the long list of other cooler and drier sports (like archery and fencing, to name a few), db came first into my mind. I have never ever tried water sports prior to that, except for this one time when I went canoeing with my dad and bro (I think you were there too right?), when we were on vacation at Sabah. That was like years ago. Other than that, nil. Not even fishing.

I'm so glad that I put down my name and managed to gather enough courage to turn up all by myself for the db tryout earlier this year. Didn't manage to pull anyone to go with me because the word 'db' is cursed (or rather magical) I tell you.


What I notice is that at the mention of the word, people would go on cue and widen their eyeballs or drop their jaws together, at the same time. Then when they ask what other ECAs I'm joining and I replied 'piano ensemble', the leave their jaws hanging open for a split second longer. Cos the image of muscles normally does not go hand-in-hand with the image of a delicate pianist, you see. After that, I just can't wait to tell them that I'm involved in Chingay, preparing for a fan dance.

Compliment of the Year

As you may have already know, but if you didn't, compliments on my physique are very much appreciated, thank you trima kasih a bit paiseh. I've received quite a number of them throughout the past few months. But! I would give the honour to the first ever I've received, which is from this dragonboater in my uni's team whose name I have forgotten but whose face I can still remember vividly.

I've only seen her once for that day and that's it. Never met her after that. We were actually paired up doing this exercise with a medicine ball and that's when she let it out, to which I replied with a smile followed by a 'nolah'.

****************************

And that's it. All those basically are the highlights of my 2008.

The MSN buddy of the year award is missing this year because, well, I don't really online and on my messenger these days. Yeah, already antisocial punya me getting even more antisocial. Another award - the coolest quote - is also removed. I figure that there's too many cool quotes this year (mostly from lectures) for me to quote so don't bother lah.

Looking back, I wonder how will it be like if I were to be sent to UK instead. Hmm..I would imagine myself with Daniel Craig's English accent and tonnes of hoodie jackets. But seriously, I'm thankful that I've ended up here. No regrets.

I get this warm fuzzy feeling everytime I walk to MickeyD just to get a cone, which is only around 5 minutes away. To me, that's like a post-teen pre-adulthood kinda thing to do you know. Have cravings? Just go get 'em. No curfew or whatever crap.

One word for 2008 - bizarre.
As the penutup, I say bring it on, 2009 =)