Perseverantia Fortitudo

I've got good news and bad news.

The bad news is..

I've been swamped with tons of assignments as of late. There's the program that I have to code in C++ to demonstrate the Bresenham and Mid Point algorithms to produce a line and a circle, write a paper on the development and applications of the Root Locus method in control systems, submit a report on the resulting Probability Density Functions and Frequency of Occurences based on a Uniformly distributed, Gaussian distributed and Rayleigh distributed randomly generated values(including its coding and graphs in Matlab), and finally submit the assignment answers on electronic measurement instruments and also probability and statistics subjects. Altogether five assignments, all to be submitted by the end of this month. On top of it, my finals are just around the corner(mid May) and I haven't even started my revision on the chapters beyond what was covered in the mid terms for any of the subjects.

The car is having some problems with the alternator. Previously I had sent the car to a workshop to have the alternator replaced, but the L2 engine rejected the alternator transplant from a Kancil donor, thus resulted in frequent sputterings and also the belting getting ripped apart. After much deliberation(procrastination if you prefer), I had to send the car to the workshop again and have it refitted with a 'recond' alternator from a similar L2 engine. But what I wasn't aware was that Japanese engines employ a relatively lower voltage compared to Malaysian engines(which is ironic considering the fact that all our national engines are direct Japanese rip-offs, except maybe the Campro) and a 'recond' alternator will have an even lower voltage. So now the car runs at a nice 13.5 volts during the day, but it fluctuates around 12 volts during the night when the head lights are on. Oh, and the turbine seems a bit heavy lately, and the turbo lag is becoming increasingly pronounced.

(an alternator is that component in your car that converts mechanical energy to electrical energy, which means that it recharges your battery whilst the engine is running. Without an alternator, the battery will go kaput after 2-3 hours and your car wont move unless you flag down passers by and get them to gotong royong push your car to the roadside)

And finally the icing on the cake, Aidan chan's hand bag got snatched. It happened last Monday morning whilst she was walking to the main road to catch a cab back to her campus. Everything in her hand bag, her lecture notes, her identification card, student card, bank cards, money, her new handphone(which she bought using the money she earned while working part time at a bookstore) and also the MP3 player that the bos besar recently bought for her as a souvenir from his recent trip to Japan was lost. But the worst thing about it must be the fact that the incident occurred just a few houses away from ours. You read about it in the newspaper and see it all the time on the television, but you never thought it would happen to you or someone close, let alone so close to home. But it does.

The good news is..

One of the assignment is halfway done(the hard part that is), another one involves me writing about one of the chapters that wasn't covered in the mid terms which essentially allows me to automatically revise for the finals at the same time, and the other three are straightforward exercise questions which is relatively harder than the usual tutorial questions but more or less the same, and the miss 'I can see the light shining so brightly' has been very kind enough to lend me her notebook for the weekend, which would greatly help me in writing the reports and also finishing the coding for the C++ program(nice notebook by the way, very light!).

The car with all its problems and issues is still dependable, gets me from point A to point B(although at noon it seems like I've made the trip walking instead of driving when I arrive) and I enjoy the sing a longs with the new auditory sensation system. Its not as fast as it used to be anymore, but at least it gets me there. Oh that reminds me, kepada yang berkenaan, sila pulangkan CD Nickelback saya, lagu 'I wanna be a rockstar' tu adalah lagu yang sering diputar di pagi hari ketika saya bergegas ke kelas. Sekian terima kasih!

Aidan chan is downstairs having dinner, watching a rerun of Lost and discussing the significance of all the numbers with the other chan-chans. That itself is good news already.

Dah..dah..nak sambung buat assignment balik. Banyak lak ngarut nyer..

Aaaahhhh..tis a rarity for me to have the home computer all to myself.

Everyones back at their respective campuses and I'm the only one at home. Tomorrows a holiday so I decided to spend the night at home and savour the mem besar's home cook meals. Although everyone is still on the low carbo diet(how come I'm the only one yang tak health concious?), its a better option any day compared to mamaks. If I eat anymore roti sardin I'll either turn into a sardin or worse, jadi mamak myself! Blueeh! By the way, the mamaks at Putrajaya and Cyberjaya are so darn expensive! Add to the fact that its a captured market(in the middle of the night, theres nowhere else to go except a mamak stall), they tend to be vary lazy and the food quality are just ridiculous! Especially Hassan, berejam nak tunggu order! Nak organize a boycott, takde tempat lain nak makan. So? Makan roti sardin looorrr..

Where was I before I got carried away? Ah yes, the computer to myself. What peace of mind it is to sit down and take my own lazy time in writing this down, without the regular announcements like 'Fi dah book kul 11, nanti abaran dah habis panggil ek!' or Nanao chan going

'Lama lagi ke abaran nak pakai?'.
'Yer..lama lagi..nih tgh blank white space lagi nih...idea banyak tapi taktau camne nak start. Kasi abaran carik my center jap...' (well..the last part I said it under my breath la kan..poyo ke ape nak cakap audibly?)
'Yeah right, whateveRRRRRRRR. Nanti dah habis panggil ek..Nana dah janji ngan kawan'

Adikku dah pandai jadi super 'coolness'. Sikit hari nanti kang dah pandai snap the fingers in that zig zag motion lak. Salah sapa? MTV(tele is always to blame).

Anyway, I came home during the weekends and found the C drive totally wiped out. All thats left was the 'Program Files', 'WINDOWS' and 'My Documents and Settings' folders which I swear sat there mocking me in silence. Everything else, from the animes, mangas and scanlations, to the gigabytes upon gigabytes of mp3s, were all gone. 20 gigs of the OS drive, completely empty. Guess the bos besar got tired of all the bugs and spywares that recently took up residence on the computer and formatted the drive.

I wasn't really that bothered to begin with actually, I have all the mp3s safely copied onto the ipod already(thank god I didn't procastinate!) and I can make new copies of the animes from some friends here who are staying at the hostel(one has 250 gigs of anime stored on his drive, so no worries there). But I think it hit Nanao chan the hardest, shes the diligent one in keeping up with all the mangas and scanlations and downloading each and every issue of her favourite Deathnotes, Yakitate Japans, Speed Graphers and other mangas that I've never heard of. Now she has to redownload each and every issue and build up her collection again. Suffice to say, the computer was totally hers right from the moment she got back on Friday till the Sunday evening when I sent her to her campus in Shah Alam.

On the way to her campus, I offerred to burn copies of some animes that my friend might have downloaded onto his computer at the hostel, perhaps replace some of the animes that were lost in the formatting process earlier. So we went through her choice of animes..

'Kawan abaran ada anime apa?'
'Tahla..kena check la. Maybe Bleach ada kot, then Slam Dunk. Prince of Tennis pon maybe ada..'
'Yakitate Japan?'
'Nope.'
'Second Coming?'
'Nope.'
'EyeShield 21?'
'Takde gak.'
*long pause on her part*
'Kenapa kawan abaran tak download anime yang best best?'
'Uhh..ntah. Taste lain lain kot'
'LoseRRRRRssssss'

'Yawwwwwnn...WhateveRRRRRR'

Aku pon boleh jadi cool gak aper!

'APEKAH...?!!'

Is what I said out loud when after Friday prayers few weeks back, I found my loafers no longer where I had left it earlier.

There are a lot of things in this world that really irks me, stuff like the slow poke who stubbornly sticks to the fast lane even after I tail him/her real close with my headlights flashing, the guy who jumps the que in front of me and feigns a nonchalant demeanour as if he has all the right to be there in the first place, the guy who talks incessantly about himself and has neither the mental capacity nor the slightest intuitive ability to comprehend that me puffing away with that faraway look is just my polite way of saying 'I hear ya...but I don't think I have enough memory registers within me to keep track of all your girlfriends/fiances/conquests'. Guess having an extensive variety of filler words does have its disadvantages sometimes.

But those are just irks, things that you dislike but you learn to live with. After all, we do not exist in Elysium, we make do with what we get, be it good or bad.

But to get my loafers stolen at a mosque? Sheesh! Dahla orang pegi nak menunaikan kewajipan terhadap Tuhan!

I know it is quite a common occurence for your shoes to get stolen at the mosque. Hell, when I was in Sekolah Agama, my friends would walk to the Wangsa Maju mosque in Hang Seng's(quality japanese slippers by the way) and return to the dorm in Adidas and Nikes! They even planned beforehand what sandals to swipe for that week. I even had a friend who peddled these sandals to sustain his 'mesin kuda' habit(Oh, you don't know whats a mesin kuda? Good for you!). So in reality I do realise that these things happen, its just that when it happens to me it really pisses me off. Why? Let me elaborate..

a) I have only one pair of loafers and I practically wear it everywhere. Losing it severely affects my mobility. Can't go to class in slippers, cant get into the library with slippers either, even if its a Hang Seng. If you're wondering as to why I only have a pair, its really plain and simple. It's a loafer, you can wear it anywhere and it goes with everything. Guys don't mix and match, well maybe Lord Elton John does, but I don't.

b) Because I only have one loafer, I deem it a worthwhile cause to appropriate a relatively large fund in acquiring it(depending on economic constraints la kan). Add to the fact that I am really lazy when it comes to window shopping(hmm..come to think of it, apa yang aku rajin ek?), I usually stick to one brand, even if it costs a whopping 200 ringgit(I can wear it anywhere, all the time and goes with everything, good deal in my book).

c) Lastly because its a Hush Puppies(damn you pencuri kasut!). The shoe's lightweight, feels like not wearing a shoe at all and that H2Ox sole has that certain bouncy feeling to it. Yeah yeah, branding pon plays an element jugak, but mostly its because of the comfort attribute.

So thats why getting my loafers stolen really pisses me off. There are other reasons jugak, like it forces me to wait for everyone else to clear the mosque so that I can take the selipar tandas and not accidentally pinch someone elses slippers(sheesh..such a boyscout), but the above points are those that get to me the most la.

So yeah, I went to Alamanda straight after Friday prayers, walked around for awhile in slippers whilst contemplating on which shoes to buy, withdrew money which could have been used for other more useful purposes(masuk tabung XBOX360 ke) and buying the exact same Hush Puppies loafers with its patented H2Ox sole. Color pon sama gak(what can I say, am a habitual creature).

Oh well, lets look on the brightside. At least I have two selipar jepun now, and can alternate between selipar A, a Hang Seng, and selipar jepun B, a Micro(an up and coming competitor from China) for Friday prayers.

2 weeks ago dah pakai A(albeit forcibly), last week dah pakai B. This week nak pakai A balik ke? Pakai B la. Nak jadi rebel, tanak conform.

p/s: For everyone out there yang nak updates, sorry la, been really busy lately cos nak dekat exam dah and all these lab reports and assignments dah start to pile up. Dulu ingat nak just write whatever passes my mind jer on this blog, never imagined people would be reading it. Kinda cool in a way tho! As for the anonymous comment, ni bukan New Straits Times ada periodic publishing. Hampehgas ke, cargas ke bargas ke tong gas ke..kalo dah itching sangat nak baca something on the web, gi the star online. By the way, aku still hidup agi.