so it was bearable after all

the noise has quite evened out after two months’ worth of catching up with each other, now replaced with occasional shrieks and “ohmigawd”s over the wall. the wall in which on the other side, has been abandoned without a care except for the first day of the week, and now lies (hangs) oh so forlorn without the caressing of the owner, who has found a new found love on the other side and hangs out there every so often that she will, and can ignore all the shrieks and “ohmigawd”s. so it was bearable when she retreats and and sleeps but the abandoned lover weeps in its place, crying over the loss of a dear friend, a most delicate but superficial touch no longer received. and so it wept by her.

problems of learning and coping with non-conceding adults

Yet another rant post of the week.

This might seem a bit exaggerated at the moment but yes, I have no particular liking towards this whole affair called formal education. It all seems to time consuming and tedious to go through. For some, classes might be hard and some might be wild with curiosity, ecstatic and ask all sorts of question during classes and all that bull. But no, those sort of thing don’t excite me. Not anymore. Not anymore.

I regret doing this engineering thing. Maybe for now, since it’s still early in the semester (and way too early till graduation) to thoroughly conclude everything. All the subjects seems very old and formal, concrete with straightforward answers and manuals and guides and slides. Everything has been laid, and will be laid out. Everything has been studied by the great figures of the past, and you, the ambitious ardent youth, must follow these things.

In a way, it’s all too easy. There are no longer challenges nor room for independent thought which you can crawl into and think about all day long. It’s about doing your work, which will work just exactly as everyone else. A set of standards to follow without any way of going around and do something new.

The classes, well, here at least, are most fastidiously boring. Intelligent stimulation is absent, and the people are mindlessly learning like drones and lecturers pour out their rehearsals, the same things they said for three years straight. They have lost their spirit, and only look forward till the end of the day; sit back and sleep soundlessly until morning comes to repeat mundane routines till authority tells them not.

But it’s not about them, really. It’s about yourself, where you feel almost bored all the time. Perhaps everyone else says the same thing, but you feel your degree of boredom is amplified. You set yourself distant, because you know, your mind doesn’t work exactly as them. You crave, for something new, someone new, yet these things will always disappoint you in the end. They often do.

Maybe because you are born with an intelligence far above others (or so you would like to think), everything seems trivial. You can’t connect. You understand people, not based on their pathetic emotions, but on reasons. You can understand things quickly, and would like to move one, far far away, leaving all the others behind.

But here you are, stuck. Stranded on an island with no like-minded peers, and being deprived of the things you could have done/learn/know out there.

When I was 15, I went testing for a Mensa IQ test and scored 180++.

there’s nothing to write

All these classes feel like nothing. There is this constant agony going to the same place over and over again, knowing what you’re gonna learn, where there are no wonders left for you to ponder about. Of course, one might say this is due to lack of interest, even lack of understanding, but I’d say it’s a lack of will to continue learning for another 4 years doing the same thing again again. Sure enough college life could be surely interesting, but only for the first few weeks. Other than that there’s no fun.

These walls, are oppressing. The room is somewhat liberating, because of the privacy, yet amplifies your loneliness. So you put a piece of paper, writing “Are you hoping for a miracle?” and put it on the wall for whatever reasons you don’t know. It gives you something to read, I guess. Then a huge spread of black papers, where you are trying to fill it up with words and quotes from dead and damned philosophers and soothsayers, and yourself, which amounts to nothing.

You wake up in the wee hours of morning and listen to the deathly silence, appreciating it. Such things can no longer be enjoyed as the dastardly noisy women constantly singing Malay Songs three in unison loudly (horribly too) till late at night. How annoying.

And there’s no internet. So you don’t really know of Salinger’s death until today, which is somewhat… shitty, although it does not bring any whatsoever significance to you.

How… depressing.

what i’m learning

Since most will want to wonder (and eventually ask) what the heck I’m learning for my first year in engineering, I shall, try to elaborate it to you as simply as possible. By doing this, I think I will gain some idea of what exactly I have been learning for the past two weeks.

There are altogether 5 course subjects concerning electrical engineering, and 2 electives, and one for IELTS (Ugh).

1. Programming

So far the most interesting of them all. Because you can actually use the computer (i.e. internet) during classes and type type type without really listening to what being said. Been to two classes so far, and ah, doing this is actually fun. In the words of the lecturer “If you want to be good at C, you’d have to play with it“. Giving commands here is so much better than using Flash, and HTML codes. I shall have fun.

2. Introduction to Electronics

Blegh, I hate this one. It’s all about those diodes and atoms and power such and such. We’ve only gotten to Semiconductors so far but already, it’s so… boring. The reasons for this is perhaps the lack of proper structure of learning; depending on printed slide shows is boring as fuck. Without a book, we are left powerless. I should by one… soon.

Of course, there ‘s the lecturer, but she is.. well, a bit imposing, presses her lips at the end of every sentence, and will speak with a most outspoken body language. An orator, perhaps, but she is one of those who will not accept the ideas of other people at an instant, and will try to uh, mark her territory, if that’s a accurate description, playing her duty with complete compliance, and will not accept anything outside her parameter. Something like that. An ESTJ. Put simply, I don’t like her.

3. Circuit Theory

This is well… fairly interesting but a bit frustrating. It’s basically a more in depth stuff of what you learn about circuits (series and parallel) and the laws and calculations surrounding them. So it’s a physics thing. It’s frustrating because there’s labwork and I don’t as fuck know how to use a digital analogue trainer (thingy for the bread board where you put all the resistors and LEDs to be controlled with), and the lecturer sure ain’t gonna explain to us how to use ’em stuff. And you’d think setting up a parallel circuit is easy. It sure ain’t, practically.

4. Workshop for Engineering Technology

It’s Kemahiran Hidup in a pretty name. Count the colour codes of resistors, memorize the safety regulations of the lab, etc etc. Boring. Ugh, I never scored 48/60 and above for Kemahiran Hidup during those three years in secondary school…. But well, you get to go inside a lab… so it’s manageable. And the lecturer keeps saying “Your handwriting reveals your personality. Make it bigger”. Dude, I sure ain’t gonna change my handwriting. You think I’d want to please you. No way la labu.

5. Engineering Mathematics

The classes are boring. It’s relearning maths over and over again. Most of them are covered during my foundation. Yawn. The lecturer is female and takes 20 minutes to set up the projector. Yawn. *listens to mp3 and draws trees outside*

6. Pengajian Malaysia

Sejarah in disguise. It’s awful. The only upside of being here is to watch people other than your own classmates, it being held in a theater room with about 50 people (rather than 24 familiar faces). The teacher has a degree in Bahasa Melayu, and keeps saying “Rentetan itu, kita boleh mendapati bahawa…“. But I love history. I just don’t like learning ’em inside a class. Maybe I’m too selective of what kind of history I want to read. I dunno.

7. Feqah

Never had this one before. But it better be good.

8. IELTS

Meh…. the teacher’s presumably of German birth, judging from her quite British but not quite English accent, and her ability to speak German fluently (without an ugly -cht sound) and well… her face. Is it destined that I shall never get a male English teacher for the rest of my life? How… disappointing.

***

So that’s it. 24 slots, each running for 55 minutes. So that’s 22 hours of classes a week. Tiring. Ugh, I’m gonna have to start doing homework soon. Soon. Probably after I pack the desktop to my room so I can get uh… pumped up.

(Akram dan Shafiq, sila jangan marah kalau kamu berdua balik dan tiada game untuk bermain. Kalau mahu complain sila buat sekarang.)

the sound and the fury

A rant post.

Between days in that place, there are nights. Those nights are like transitional times that lasts only but a while; time is sped up, leaving only forgotten routine movements, the full blast of music until sleep is achieved.

But, in the middle of the night. In the middle of the night.

In the middle of the night, there are certain creatures who like to come out, bringing with them meat to be savaged. Beasts. Together the bring, their chant song. Stomp stomp stomp. Ruffle ruffle ruffle. Laughter Ha Ha Ha Ha. More exclamation marks. And with those exclamations, you are brought to illumination. Lights are on. Not out. You look around and see nothing but the shades and hues of worn out furniture from the fluorescent light outside your room.

Awake.

Fuck.

wtf?

Aku di rumah sekarang yay.

Last2 kena kongsi meja ngan seorang gadis berbangsa cina sbb plug ader sblh meja dy jek. 1 malaysia tak?

From here.

It’s funny how I am condensed to one simple sentence. Shit. Do bother to check my name, asshole. A week after living in the same house.

back

I’m back in BMI using my housemate’s broadband (seniors). Just so you guys know, there ain’t gonna be much posting from now on during weekdays. Even weekends, and that depends if I’m going back home. There’s no stable WiFi here… so yeah, whatever.

In the meantime in all this absence of internet and a computer, I will be reading and writing and playing the effing guitar. Oh… and studying those electrical stuff. I don’t know, being an engineering student and all, it doesn’t really suit me, you know. Because I’m interested in many other stuff. Aiyah, I’ve been dreaming of giving a reply infront of the whole class in case something happens like “You know, I’m more of a Social Science student” kinda thing. Shit.

Ah well, degrees are degrees. You’ll end up hating the things you love if you’re forced to learn it the “correct” way anyway.

I’m fine

now is the time for liberal thought

jadi apa yang patut dilakukan adalah bungkus kesemua buku-buku kegemaran kamu waktu kamu dalam kegelapan dan kesedihan dan bawanya bersama kemana-mana sahaja kerana kadang-kadang, bila kau tiba-tiba rasa keseorangan, atau “lost”, kau boleh jumpa consolation di situ.

tak perlu lagi kau menunggu waktu berlalu sehingga kau berjumpa dengan ‘the one’ atau yang absolute, kerana menunggu itu hanya membuang masa dan harapan kau akan menggunung begitu tinggi sehingga ia jatuh dengan agungnya. kau harus teruskan hidup, dan jangan leka dengan semua hal-hal orang-orang kebanyakan. biarkan mereka dengan mereka. bukannya kau sombong, bukannya kau arrogant, bukannya kau berfikir kau lebih hebat daripada mereka, tapi sebab kau tahu, yang kau berbeza.