- 28.02.08 in the marae @ Epsom Campus, Auckland, New Zealand -

Doing the laundry is a pain these days, what’s with all the rain. It’s been a week, and the constant rain is starting to get on my nerves. I have a bundle of clothes I need washing. We don’t have the luxury of having a dryer in this house. Wait, is there dryers on sale in the market for household use? I need to look into that.

I’ve been back in Malaysia for a little over a month. My holiday is coming to an end. Not really, but I’ll be going back to Auckland on February 7. I’m going to be early, I know. I initially thought Mira and I’d go to Wellington for a week or two, but with very little money left in my account, I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. Trust me to waste all those money I got on pointless things. I know I have only myself to blame.

My English is also getting a little bit rusty. I need to write more before going back or I’ll never hear the end from Sheryl’s energetic mouth. She already reminded us waaaaay back then to not let our guards down just because we’re on holiday. Speaking of Sheryl, I still have two electives to choose. I haven’t decided on anything yet. I took Linguistics in the first semester of 2008, and Computer Science in the second. I’m thinking of taking Japanese, but what about the other elective? I’m at lost. In the end, I guess I’ll just take up Sheryl’s offer of doing Teaching Literature (LANGTCHG paper) or something as an elective. The problem is… I totally hate LANGTCHG papers. The final paper for my last LANGTCHG subject was full of WTFness. I wonder if the lecturers actually knew how poor the questions were. It didn’t help my mood much that our frying pans in the kitchen caught fire two hours before the test.

What should I do about this money problem, I wonder. The allowance won’t be in until early or mid March. I’m not worried about my food money. I’m more worried about the money I’ll need to prepare for the rent. $192 per week WITHOUT electricity and internet. The $200 per week accommodation allowance is barely enough to support us. Why haven’t those people in the Ministry of Education given the allowance a raise already? Even if it’s just by $50, it would already be VERY helpful. Houses and rents are going up, and food prices are climbing up the ladder way to gleefully. The prices aren’t going down, so shouldn’t our allowance go up too? Come on. They can’t expect us to work ourselves to the bone while studying, or to rely on our parents. Not all of us are rich.

I’ve started another separate blog for my gameplay logs. It’s not what I’d call blog. I’ll be updating it way to often to call it a blog, so I’ll settle for a log. I’m calling it PlayLog. I’ll be dumping my PC, Nintendo DS, Wii, Playstation and PSP game logs there. I figured it wouldn’t be appropriate to dump everything on this blog. I tend to ramble long. Oh, and I also need to finish those Wordpress theme projects I’ve started. Can’t be using other people’s forever, I guess.

On an important, site related note: I’ll be taking after the site more carefully after this, and I’ll try to update often. I’ll check my personal mailboxes more often too. I’m sorry if I never replied to hosting application and whatnot before, but I’ll try to after this.

- 25.09.08: St.Heliers School, Auckland, New Zealand -

I haven’t been blogging seriously in this blog for a while, and I haven’t been in touch with my hostees and my friends on Friendster, Skype, etc. I haven’t login to YM for God knows how long. The only place I’ve been updating regularly was my Livejournal (LJ). My most personal matters are always updated only on my LJ that I’ve been keeping since 2003. I’m sorry, Adi, for not even realising that you’ve left your last entry in yours, and that I failed to notice your e-mail. My inbox gets more than 100 e-mails everyday, and sometimes they get into my junk mail folders. I hope you’ll be successful in whatever project you have next, and may we cross path again as bloggers, I hope.

It’s not that I’ve lost interest in blogging; it’s just that I’m starting to be annoyed by the many definitions of ‘blog’ and ‘blogging’ that seem to jump out of nowhere.

Blogs used to be really interesting once upon a time when not many people keep chronological logs online. In 2001/2002, domain owners have close ties through meaningful journal entries. By meaningful, I meant entries that have the power to leave an impact - something like an imprint to one’s memory, not just something that you read today and forgets tomorrow.

I may be what people call old-fashioned or uncool or not-happening, but I definitely cannot stand blogs that don’t give a damn (pardon my language) about pt sounctuations and word structures. Not to say that your grammar should be perfect (mine is far from perfect that I shudder when I think about it), but I’ve always thought that one of the points of writing is to improve in your writing skills. If blogs are kept in TXT/SMS language, what’s the point? Also, is it so hard to start the first word in a sentence with a capital letter (for some people)? I really, really don’t understand.

I’ll try to get familiar with blogging seriously about personal matters again after my finals and during my summer holidays. I’m also working on a few Wordpress plugins and wordpress themes which I hope to share sometime in December.

I’d better pen off now before I start rambling and ranting randomly all over again.

We organised a small Farewell Dinner for our seniors last night. It was full of fun. Our theme was blue, hence the overwhelming shades of blue you can probably see from the picture. John, Sheryll and Jackie are also in the picture. I was genuinely (but pleasantly) surprised at Sheryll’s attire. She’s wearing a light blue kebaya, which looks cool on her.

Gift exchange, dance performances, singing, just lounging around chatting with each other - we had so much fun last night. Everybody let go of all troubles and just enjoyed the food as well as each other’s companies. I missed the seniors’ performances, though, since I was washing plates at the back when we realised we were actually running out of plates. I guess it was because they kept throwing the plates and then taking new ones for desserts and snacks.

Angie’s Kitchen was our caterer. They serve halal Malaysian food, and last night’s food was their super delicious Chicken Curry Kapitan. The boys made wonderful-looking fruit salads too; watermelons (the most expensive fruit we found in Auckland, $24/kg), strawberries, grapes, kiwis, pineapples and bananas.

Halfway through the event, I realised that I haven’t yet finished the portfolio Sheryll wanted us to submit before Friday, 4pm. By the time the party ended, I went home really tired and ended up sleeping longer than I should.

p.s/ One of my ex-friends REALLY pissed me off. Since I know he’s stalking my blog, I’ll just leave this here in case he decides to contact me. If you’re not Yukihito and you happen to understand it, pardon my harsh words. I meant the message below for only one person.

裏切り者　の　幸仁 へ,

何だよ？！ウザイな、お前。何度も説明したんでも、まだこの私を電話するか？あの日から、お前の事、　全て　忘れたんだ! 全部終わったんだ！お前と　もう関係ない　だから　もう電話するな！

お前の声聞きたくない！
お前の話も聞きたくない！

友達？私達が？冗談でしょ？何時から？何の話だ？お前が私を裏切られたでしょ？　何も知らないお前は、この私の友達じゃないんだ。

お前が大嫌い！ ）：＜　それは本当の事だ。

I don´t know whether or not I should feel… elated that a certain housemate that I see no need to mention her name (since we´re most definitely NOT friends, just acquaintances with brief and forced encounters) actually READ my blog. Oh wait, maybe one of her friends did, but I didn´t even say her name O_o

She happened to read the part where I was raving about how she pissed me off just by breathing the same air, and did I mention that she freaking SNORES every night,so loudly too. I don´t usually talk bad about people unless they really do annoy the hell out of me.

What´s even funnier is that she confronted my other friend about it, who was all ¨Huh?¨ when confronted. Why, woman, why? Why couldn´t you just gather up your courage to confront me personally? I live just next door, for God´s sake.

Or maybe you´re scared of me? Not that I care. Glad that I won´t be staying in the same apartment with her after November 18th. I´ll be going home (I miss you, Malaysia!) for summer until February 7, 2009. When I return to Auckland, I guess I´ll technically be living in a hotel fully serviced apartment for the whole 2009 academic year.

The semester is getting busy yet again. It has been raining so much lately that I didn´t get to snap decent photos that can be shared with everyone. Anyways, I´m now in the middle of two assignments. One for Linguist203 and another one for Educ225. My weekly lab report doesn´t count, because that´s what I´m going to have to do every week all the time.

During our Professional Development session with Sheryl today, we were briefed about our school visits starting tomorrow and the next four Thursdays thereafter. I´m still not sure if I am or am not looking forward to the school visits. In the end, we´re all going to have to do a presentation about the teaching of English in New Zealand compared to the one in Malaysia. I think I can do that. I´m also thinking of making a flash presentation instead of just the usual powerpoint presentation. Heck, I haven´t even been using Microsoft Office for a while now. I´ve been using OpenOffice for a while after my Office went haywire after a certain update.

In Linguist203 lecture, Mark was telling us more about sentence constructions and the type of sentences. I´m guilty of not paying much attention because I was typing up my Linguist203 assignment due next week (on the 22nd of August). I think I´m done with the assignment. I may need some proofreading and clarification on my copula constructions. That, and then I can submit the assignment before the due date.

As I´m typing this, I´m currently in my COMPSCI111 lecture. Today´s lecture continues the previous topic, The Introduction to XHTML and moves on to XHTML and CSS. I´ve done the exercises. I´m really glad I´m taking this course. I have absolutely no problem with this topic, and I´m hoping for a good grade. At the very least, I´m putting high hopes on this course to make up for the B´s and B+s I got in the last semester. I hope to get at least A for this course (though I really want an A+, but alas I don´t think I´m that good yet).