NUS Trip 2008

WARNING: This is a very long post!!

After so long didn't update my blog, finally I can enjoy the full speed of the Internet connection and start blogging.
But of course, it's around 3am in the morning , and everyone else are sleeping.. =P

Anyway, I went to an awesome university called NUS (National University of Singapore) on 20th March 2008, a few weeks back.
It was their annual Arts Festival, and we UTP Chinese Orchestra team had been invited for the guest performance.
Together with us there are also some secondary school boys and girls from Taiping, mostly Form 3 and Form 4 students.
Our teacher had them helped us out because our standard here in UTP, sad to say so, is still quite lousy...
It's quite embarrassing actually, seeing those kids playing like experts, and we seems like new-learners in front of them...
Well, I guess it can't be help, since they have the opportunity to learn since they're young.

We had a few days intensive training workshop before we left for NUS, so-called to polish up our skills, but basically what we did was just watching the "experts" playing.
At the last day of the workshop, everyone is very excited about going to NUS, providing that it's one of the best universities in Asia.
We finished practice around 9pm at night, after preparing our vests and everything, we went back for some sleep, as we're told to gather by 3am the next morning, but then some bastard ruin my night by passing me 100++ T-shirts to distribute.
I rushed like hell in that few hours and hardly even packed my things when I left to gather with the others.
Damn that fellow....

Back to the story, we took off from UTP around 4am, thanks to the "early" bus-driver...
It is a 12-hours long journey to Singapore, so I take the time to replace my sleep the night before.
However, it's not easy to get to sleep when there are children on board. Those secondary school girls seriously are very active, especially one of them who keeps walking around in the bus collecting donation from us.
They reminded me of my secondary time, when I had so much less worries, less suffering; enjoy everyday going to school, enjoy the kinship between friends, the pureness of mind, the sweetness of relationship...
All these seems so far away now, left only the memories of the old times.


After passing Singapore custom, and finally we reached our destination: NUS.
The first thing in my mind when we entered the campus: "Wow... the campus is BIG..."
Most of us complaint when we have to walk from UTP main gate back to our village, but in this campus, it seems nearly impossible for the students to walk.
They even have taxi and chartered bus as their daily transport, no kidding...
One more thing I noticed when our bus roamed about the area trying to look for our hostels: "The students here definitely are rich..."
Of all the cars we saw in their carparks: Mercedes, Honda, Artis, Vios, Mazda, and many more which I don't know the names...
Man... How I wish I have one of those rides...

We reached our place after a few times rounding the area, and we brought our stuff up to the hostels, and found out that our suites look nothing less than a hotel room.
They're air-conditioned, with TV and everything, standard facilities for a hotel room. It was awesome...
After we put our luggage and everything, we started our activities for the day.

First, we went to their arts museum in their University Cultural Centre (UCC).
Wow... They have a museum in their campus...
Frankly speaking, I find most of the paintings exhibited there are quite disturbing.
I don't know, maybe that's what art is like...









We spent a few hours exploring the museum, taking pictures here and there. All of us seems very 'semangat' in posing for the camera, and we had a lot of fun.
It was quite a while before we were hungry, then headed for the university's canteen for dinner.
The canteen is like some sort of food court in shopping center. Compared to UTP's canteen, haih... terrible....
But then, the food is much more expensive, since everything is twice the price in Malaysia.
After meal, we went back to our VIP suite to rest, thus ended the first day in NUS.


The second day morning, we went to a beach park for some outings.
Initially we had planned to go Sentosa Island for the whole day, but since we have practice session in the afternoon, the Sentosa trip was cancelled. T_T
The beach park was big, but it's very boring when u don't know what to do inside there..
We ended up playing roller blades, and as some of us never skate before, one of the girls even got hurt, and was sent to the hospital.
I felt a bit responsible for her injury, as I'm the one who let them played the skates. Sorry~~

After the beach park, we went to a shopping center named Vivo City.
We had our lunch there, and did some window-shopping (the things there are freaking expensive...) before we left and went back NUS for the afternoon practice.

We were brought to their UCC hall, and it is BIG...
The hall they use is designed like any other standard orchestra hall, and it seriously is grand.
It is just slightly smaller than our MPO hall back in KL, and to think that the hall is just for the Art students, wow....
Unfortunately, the camera was unable to capture the grandness of the building, what a pity...
We had our practice for a few hours, then we're off for a whole night rest again.
Thus the second day ended.


Finally, the big day has arrived.
We went back to the UCC hall for some more practice in the morning, and were told to be all set during the afternoon.
After lunch and everything, we gathered at the preparation room backstage for final tuning and rehearsal.
It was a long time waiting, as we are all looking forward for the big night. At the same time, we took quite some pictures while waiting in the preparation room...

tuning and practice

tuning and practice...

more tuning and practice...

the flutists

the violinists

the wind boys

getting ready...

me and Gary

the cellists

the "siblings"

two handsome boys...

the macho guys

with So-Na teacher, Wen Tai

the girls

say cheese~~

While we're preparing at backstage, I began to tell some of my "favorite" jokes, then a number of people started to join in.
We're laughing so loud back there, that we're even hushed by one of the NUS players.
Anyway, it's then I realized that the mind of those secondary kids are not so pure after all.. They were able to come up with some really naughty stuff, and it was me who's laughing my head off.
I thought there'll be a communication gap between us, since our age are so far apart, but it seems like children nowadays are not simple, not at all...


When the critical time came, we were both nervous and excited to go on the stage.
It's a different feeling being on stage for the real performance compared to the time during rehearsal. We were standing in front of a large number of people, and it was exciting.
In no time, we had finished performing 3 songs in a row: 'Mei Gui Xiang', 'Hong Qi' and 'Storm'.
We're performed on stage for around 15 minutes, and received a big applause from the audience.
It feels great under the flashing lights and the cheers of the crowd.
After our performance, we went back inside the hall to enjoy the performance continuing throughout the whole night.
No doubt, the event was grand, and the performances followed behind were simply great.

After the whole event, we stayed back to take picture with our UTP Rector, who was also present that night for the Melodious Affinity.

That night after performance, we went out for mamak.
As everyone were already tired, we went back and sleep straight after eating.

The next day, after packing everything, we left NUS for another 12-hours journey return.
On the bus, we started to pass around books getting everybody's contact.
We also get the chance to take more pictures together, and below are some random pictures taken in the bus...

Huang Jing - the serious president

Yun Xin - the "loudspeaker"

Ming Hui - the small beauty

Pei Pei - the cutest but also the weirdest one

Shin Earl - the macho girl

'Lo Lo' - Hui Ting

'Si Fu Zai' - Kok Chuan

the "golden child" - Chin Tong

At the back of the bus, we formed a group that share all kind of jokes behind, mostly dirty jokes..

I suddenly have a lot of of small "fans" surrounding me listening to my jokes.
Well, I guess a nobody like me can be famous also sometimes, even though it's for the wrong reason.. haha... =P


After a while, some of the people left earlier by using taxi, only left a few of us and the Taiping students.
We accompany those students all the way back to Taiping, and along the way, I shared some of my real-life stories with them, and surprisingly, they were good listeners.
It was the time to say goodbye when we reached the gate of SMK Hua Lian, and I felt reluctant to bid them farewell.
It was only a few days we've spent together, yet we felt so close, and it's sad to see them leave.
On the way going back to UTP, I've already started to miss them.
Somehow the bus felt so empty and liveless without them.

To all my new-made friends in Taiping, I missed all the jokes we shared, the laughter we've made, and the excitement of sharing my personal life with u kids.

Maybe to u, I'm just another university guy who loves to tell dirty jokes, but remember this, I shall miss u all, and I promised I will visit u guys again in July.
Hope to see u all by then, and good luck for your concert.
May God bless u all. So long! ^~^

My life in UTP

After so long didn't update my blogspot, I decided to post something about myself, here in this small little place called UTP.

Well, I can say that my life here is quite a sad story.
I've always said: "UTP is a good place for study, but not a very happy place to live in."
Since the beginning of the semester I've met with all kind of problems, and the major one: problem finding group for assignment or project.
I've undergo the same situation for 3 times continuously, that is, nobody is available for me to team up with.
It's very sad to think that we have more actually than 100 students in our class, and I know at least 60% of them, but yet there is no group that I can even squeeze in.
I've stopped complaining about it a long time ago, since it happened so often and I'm already numb of being depressed by not having a group of my own.

I always wonder, am I the only person here that's having this kind of problem?
I don't see other people face difficulties in finding group, or even friends.
The question "why people don't like me?" always pop-up in my mind from time to time, but I still can't find the answer after 3 semesters being here.
I guessed people don't like the way I act, or the way I speak, or maybe it's something else, I don't know.
But as far as I'm concerned, I've been very nice and generous to everyone here, especially my batch people, and I've spent more time and effort on them compared to other people.
I just hope that I can get some answers, at least know why I've been treated like this.

It is the start of the mid-semester break, and I'm stuck here alone while all the others got something planned out during the holidays.
I guessed it can't be help then, since I'm always so transparent between them, and I doubt they even remember that I exist.
People say I've been isolating myself, well, I guess I am now, but not before they isolated me first.

Now I very much do things on my own, especially during meals.
I can count within both hands the times I've eaten together with other people since the beginning of the semester.
My juniors often asked me why I always eat alone.
Well, I guess I enjoy being alone, or more accurately, I'm used to be alone.
I now understand a little bit why some people isolated themselves from the world.
When you give out so much and receive nothing, you would rather keep everything to yourself.

Throughout all these years I've been working hard to socialize with people, joining activities and so on, all because of one purpose: to prove my existence.
I've grew stronger over these years, maybe not much, but at least tougher.
Tears is much harder to drop now compared to 2 years back then.
I've learned to endure the pain of being alone, and surprisingly, I'm already used to it.
I don't know whether it's good or bad, but I guess that's me in present state.
Some people say I'm very emotional, and I never deny it.
I'm an emotional person, who tried hard to control my emotions over time, but always failed.
Well, I guess the environment has a big factor on it.


I just called back home this evening after so long the time, and was so glad to hear my Mum and Dad's voices.
I found myself trembled with joy while talking to them, then I realized I've missed home so much.
When a person is caught up with storm at a foreign land, the place he'll think most is home.
Well, I guess it applies on me too.
For a person in my situation, home will be the warmest place to be, because your family will never fails you or leaves you.
How I wished that I'm home now, rather than staying in this unhappy place.


I guessed this is all I can say now.
I'm tired of being mad at everyone else for not befriend with me.
If it's fate that I will spend the few years here alone, then let it be so.
However, I can't say that I don't have any friends here at all.
There are people here who cares for me, and I really appreciate that.

To all my friends, I thank you, and I still want to be friends with you.
So, please don't leave me alone, even though we are not in the same course, even though we won't meet everyday, but please, at least remember that I exist.
For those who don't find it in your heart to befriend with me, please, there's no need to pity me.
All I want is some caring and sincerity, not a shed of pity.

That's all from me, a guy who's in his 20th year on Earth.
May God bless me and my friends for the years to come, and by God's will, I can graduate from here.

PERMATA Camp 2008

This is the 2nd time we had a PERMATA camp, a motivation program named "Soaring The Eagle".
For me, this is not actually the time for learning, but more of an opportunity to relax.
Imagine a nice resort with fully air-conditioned houses, providing us 6 meals per day, having a nice swimming pool and nice beach, who will seriously want to go there and learn?

However, I did learned quite a lot of things from this camp, from applying smart tactics in improving ourselves, to appreciation of the people around us, especially our parents and friends.
Through this camp also I made quite a number of new friends, mostly Malays.
We shared our experiences, our problems, even our jokes together.

It was really a nice camp I can say, even though the fact that Petronas spent RM1,000 on each person per day sounds a bit too ridiculous.
I wonder why Petronas didn't increase our monthly allowance, since it has so much money to spend on PERMATA camp?
Why can't they just dismiss the 5-days program, and give us RM1,000 per month?
That will help them save more money, and we will be more motivated with more money to spend rather than attending some boring sessions, is it not? Haha... =P

Anyway, I enjoyed the camp very much.
It was fun and meaningful, and at the same time very relaxing.
Below are some pictures of us during the camp (most of them are taken out of boredom...):

Before....
We went to the lighthouse before the camp starts.


After....
Jing Zhi suddenly wanted to drive the bus...

Singing karaoke in the middle of driving??

Jing Zhi fall asleep, tired of singing...

It's my turn...

Zhi: "Hey! I'm the driver, not you!"

Me: "You're a damn lousy driver! I'm taking over the bus!"

Philip: "Shut up you two! I'm driving!"

"ARRGGHHH!!!"

See, that's what happens when u let Philip drive a bus... =P


Too bored... Playing in the cargo space...

Even tyre also want to take picture...

The whole bus is ours!!

To the left....

To the right....

The Sleeping Beast??

Yeay!! ^~^