The Semester of One of a Kind

So far I’ve gone through 5 semesters out of 8 to be completed throughout the course of Undergraduate of Biomedical Science of IIUM. But it was completely packed lots of stuffs, activities, emotions, and all during last semester i.e. first semester, third year. That’s why I name it The Semester of One of a Kind.

July

I join Angklung Club for the performance in Taaruf Week for Gombak Campus and a function held by Tok Pa (the Minister of Higher Education). This is where I learnt friendship has ups and downs and this one it’s the latter. I was so depressed with how they... Ah! Better don’t re-open that dark side.

I went to Jay’s house, experiencing the life of a Felda boy. Of course, there were a lot of fruits till that I almost got sore throat.

Others:

• First time experience of karaoke in tandas.
• Inter-block Bowling Tournament.
• New students a.k.a juniors entry to the kulliyyah and after a while I knew they actually rock!

• Visit to Pantai Balok, Kuantan and Club Med. Hehe...

August

I illegally joined a trip to Pulau Tioman. Haha... First time experience of snorkeling brought me closer to the Creator. How nice the creations underneath the sea water are indescribable. But Seagull Express’ ferry service was damn sucks!

I met Waheeda and Hafiz Hamidun (I love the songs in your album bro!) in a concert held in the campus.

The win in Jobmarket’s Internship Challenge was a great experience! I never expected we could win it, seriuously!

The Odah members of Kuantan campus went to Hutan Lentang and that’s where we ate undercooked ayam panggang due to lack of arang. Haha...

Others:

• Attending dinner with the Dean’s List scorer although actually I didn’t score GPA of 3.5 or above. The dinner was nice but the feeling inside was sucks.
• Lunch with Dr. Jalal to celebrate the win in the Internship Challenge.

September

First time experience of flying over-the-sea to Bandung for the Angklung Competition in Institut Teknologi Bandung and we won the third place there. At least we brought something for Malaysia, IIUM and Angklung Club more specifically. Throughout the days spent in Jakarta and Bandung, I saw, observed and learnt a lot of new things.

Gathering of Gubuans in Mid Valley Megamall was the medium for the first time eye-to-eye meeting between Ihab and Wenkt with me. It was a pleasure experience to get to know them more closely.

Sciencess 2006/2007... I will never forget you all..

Others

• First time experience of changing the money currency from Ringgit Malaysia to Rupiah.
• First time experience of eating belut, nasi timbel, nasi padang. Yummy!

October

I was posted as the Secretary General of SCIENCESS. I’ve never held such post so there’s a lot to learn ahead of me.

I accidentally joined the WacKOS committees. Haha... but ok what?

Others:

• Visited the Pusat Angkasa Negara
• Exam? Apa tu? :-(

November

I visited Terengganu and went to Kijal and places around Kuala Terengganu together with the group members of the Jobmarket’s Internship Challenge.

The most current one is the trip to Pulau Pangkor with Odah friends.

Pictures in Pulau Pangkor

I've updated few things in one shot. Read:
Pictures in Terengganu
Visit to Terengganu

I don't put any captions on purpose. You describe them yourself can you?

Pictures in Terengganu

These are just the pictures. For the whole story, you may read it here. I've updated it.

I wished this makcik would at least put a sweet smile on her face but she didn't. That caused me not buying the satar from her.

To me the satar was just ordinary. Even, I've tasted better satar that this one's.

It's time to put the phone on the ground and for me to do all poses possible. Haha..

Please understand. He doesn't eat rice so that's why he tries to eat something else.

Muzium Terengganu. What a beautiful one...

Other angle of the museum.

Thanks Zubir for the nice shot.

At Masjid Terapung, Kuala Terengganu.

...but the sky mesmerized me more. Subhanallah~

Nasi Dagang. I've no choice but to say I do love Nasi Dagang.

In Bandung, you won't see an empty condition like this is bazaar or shops.

The entry to Terengganu. Once you reach here, then you'll know you have reached there.

Fly...

Seeing the makcik preparing keropok lekor.

...

I love the wave there. It's strong unlike the ones I've experienced previously.

On the Island

I'm posting this directly from Pulau Pangkor, Perak. I love and am happy being here. The next two days will be exciting since we've planned many things to do. You can expect when my odah friends gather around - it'll be chaotic and havoc! It's just 7 of us. Fiza cannot make it with us. If he's here, it'll be more and more exciting (with his never-stop-from-talking mouth of course).

About the entry for visit to Terengganu, I've finished it but I don't bring it to Pulau Pangkor because I didn't expect the internet service is available here. Later ok?

The rate or cyber cafe here is quite expensive. RM4/30 minutes for foreigner visitors and RM4/hour for Malaysian. Is it fair? Surely NO.

Visit to Terengganu...

Many unexpected experiences happened. Entry and pictures (a lot of them!) - later.

Next Monday - Pulau Pangkor! Yey!

Update:

For more about what initiated this trip, read this.

There's a reason why I mentioned about visiting "Terengganu" instead of visiting "Awana Kijal". The prize we won only mentioned 3-day 2-night stay, meaning that we can only stay; no breakfast. We have to cook by ourselves. Made it worse was that we didn’t really won the stay in a hotel room with luxurious conditions, thick comforting bed, a tub in the bathroom for us to drown in warm water-bath and all. No, we won something else, unexpected. Better not to mention more of that. Let’s put full stop here. This supposed to be a happy story, right?

The journey took about 90 minutes from Kuantan to Kijal, Kemaman. There were 6 of us; Hafipah had to walk out from the trip since she got her sister to deliver her baby soon. We’re waiting for good news Pip! 2 boys and 4 girls with 2 cars joined the trip planning to fill the semester break with something nice, something unforgettable.

Unfortunately, the first day we arrived, the rain fell really hardly like the day didn’t allow us to do any outdoor activities. Lucky me, it was a good condition for me to get rest and sleep; you know how tiring driving is. The rest, they got to find umbrella to walk and see the Laut China Selatan from private beach of Awana Kijal.

Then in the night we went to a restaurant named Bahtera (yah I could see why it was named so) to have our dinner. Special for that night was Ikan belut. Yummy! I have tasted belut previously while in Bandung but this time the taste was different and the size was bigger. The way the belut was cooked also different and made it so delicious unlike other kinds of fish. The rest were the ordinary meals we have tried before.

Move on to the second day, it started like usual. As planned, the girls went to the beach, having their private time there while the boys went to find breakfast. They ordered nasi dagang (o.. o.. nasi!) and we have to find it about 10km away from where we stayed! Can you imagine how far that was just to find breakfast meals? But me being me, I didn’t really mind. That’s just a small matter.

The plan for the second day was that, after having the breakfast next to the sea under the sunshine, we shall go to Kuala Terengganu. But there was a problem with one of the cars causing our plan to be disturbed. But being in one lovely group, we moved together. One has problem, the rest will share. We fix the problem, finding mechanic till night and there you go, problem fixed when it was already dusk. Fortunately, during looking for the mechanic, we got time to go to supermarket to buy materials for our dinner. The chef? You can guest who... ;p

After having dinner, we split. The girls stayed in the “hotel” while the boys went to meet some relatives. Nothing much was in the second day and night.

Third day! This is the climax. We checked out at 12pm then we went to Kuala Terengganu! A journey of 2-hour from Kijal brought us right to the city where once we reached there, the floating mosque greeted us with smile and salam. The day was nice, no rain and a little bit hot. Just nice for a day trip!

After meeting a friend, Fahmi who willed to be our tour guide for that day, we straightly went to Muzium Negeri Terengganu, the biggest museum in Malaysia. Basically I didn’t expect that Terengganu have such a huge museum – full of histories and artifacts ranging from animals to ships, keris to batik. But the best part was that, the building itself. The design and architecture, mesmerized me up to a point where I thought from any angle you take shots of picture around the museum, you won’t regret the result.

And that’s where we ended the day and then we looked for low cost hotel for a-night stay. A RM40 room for the boys and a RM60 room for the girls; both equipped with TV, air-conditioner and so-so beds, just nice to accommodate a night stay-and-sleep. But wait, we didn’t spend the night with rest and rest all the time, but the tour guide brought us to a small kampong coffee house to try its – don’t laugh – mi magi! Basically, the meal was nice and me being me, I don’t really eat magi. Sorry Fahmi... ‘;p But thanks to your cousin for belanja-ing us the dinner.

After that, we spent about an hour sitting next to the sea, seeing the development of Kuala Terengganu. Having people of origin of Kuala Terengganu with us, they told us many things about the place – what this and what that.

Fourth day. It’s time to shopping, I mean for the girls. We went to Pasar Payang (one of us called it Pasar Payung LOL) to look for gifts and foods. Again, me being me, I’m so-so about shopping, so I didn’t spend too much for 2 senyum-sokmo t-shirts, a pair of kain batik for you-know-who, keropok ikan and some other foods I have never found and tasted. Next, we went to Losong, where there are so many kampongs with the front name Kg. Losong so-and-so to buy keropok losong. Nothing much there because some of us have other plan to buy the no-difference-from-keropok-lekor foods.

Then we moved to a place next to the beach named Batu Buruk for a sip of air batu campur before splitting from Fahmi and thanking him for guiding us when we were in Kuala Terengganu. Believe it or not, he slept with us (of course I mean with the boys) in the hotel instead of sleeping at home the night before! That’s so kind of you Fahmi.

That’s where we ended the trip in Kuala Terengganu and then we headed to straightaway to Kuantan. On the way, we dropped by at Kuala Kemaman to look for the best keropok lekor and satar. For the first time, I tasted mi calong. I’ve never heard of it and to me the taste was delicious. Yummy!

The journey was nice. The best part in it was not the trip itself, but what we’ve gained from it. It strengthened our relationship among the six of us. We’ve known each other better as time was spent seeing the same people along the 4-day-3-night trip. I’ve heard Artika speaking her Malaccan accent. I’ve listened to a lot of stories from the other girls. And about Zubir, I’ve seen him teasing the girls inhumanely and that what triggered the laugh and loud. Haha...

No Mental Exhaustion

I know, it’s not yet 11^th of November where I suppose to finish my final exam paper. And I also know that I made a statement in last entry that I wanted to be abstinent from the internet to pay full attention to the examination. But, that was just no more than a statement. Haha…

Let me put this thing like this; internet and Zaki are not separable. Can? That’s another statement! ;p

No, I’ve still got to go to the internet to do some research for the final exam. For your information, unlike previous semesters where I bought at least one textbook, this semester I didn’t buy any. It’s all because of this reason. So, I have no revision book to look to. So the back up plan was the internet! Just key in the word in Wikipedia.com (for example) and there you go, the exact same information you can get from the textbook. Most importantly, they are free! (not considering the fee for the CC la of course). So my point is that, don’t buy book, go to Bandung instead! Haha... you know what I mean right?

Besides the internet, I have e-books also to refer to and of course they are also for free. So what’s the point of buying expensive textbooks while you can get them for free? And what make it worse is that, you buy them but you just take it for granted. You never read it. That’s so pathetic... So not me!

Apart from that, among all semesters along my way as IIUM’s Biomedical student, this semester the pressure for the final exam wasn’t that much. I learnt a lot from earlier semesters - don’t be too much pressured, or else you’ll be stressed out! Enjoy the exam instead! And yeah, that’s what I did in this semester – I enjoyed the period all the way through. Whether the paper was difficult to answer or not, that’s different story.

I pasted a note on the wall – No Mental Exhaustion. It inspired me a lot. Whenever I felt like my brain cannot take it anymore, I’ll get rest. “Rest” in my way isn’t always the same like other people. Mine is like singing out loud like no one ever bother my out-of-pitch vocal and record it and listen to it again and again, doing some designs with Photoshop, playing simple game like Pairs, getting some short brief sleep with the radio is on loudly, and most importantly going to the CC and do whatever I wanted! When it’s time for prayer, then I’ll perform it and spend some time reading the Quran after that. That’s what I called “enjoy” in order not to get mental exhaustion. The yield – no mouth ulcer this time! That’s a symptom when I’m stressed out, but this time I got none. Congrats to myself. Haha... it worked! No mental exhaustion!

Ok, one more paper to go. This last one is MGT1050K Management for Non-ENM which I suppose not that hard unlike the other core course papers. So I think in this 5-day gap I can make it to cover everything before I step into the exam hall, answer the questions, step out of the hall and shout MERDEKA!!!

Terengganu– I’ll see you then!