One of the perks (or the drawbacks, to some) of being an SC member is that you get to know and see things firsthand in the college. The day before his royal arrival, the SC had to help with some final touches in the hall. And did it ever look more marvellous, the setting, the decor, the plants (pride of the greenthumbers.).

That night, people were still busy going about the place looking important. I wouldn't be surprised if they were combing the carpet the right way. I could see my reflection on the pink foyer tiles. They were that thorough.

The day finally came and I guess people were excited. Its not everyday that a prince tagged as the "most eligible bachelor" pays a visit. His visit started with a short presentation by Mr Small in the meeting room. This was followed by a royal tour of the college, visiting key places (of which I believe the chalets were excluded. For obvious reasons.). He was walking with Mr Small in front while the crowd of UEM senior officers followed closely behind, with the royal bodyguards, royal umbrella bearer, royal yes man and some random college notables.

Having worked up his appetite walking about the place, it was time for lunch. The students, being our good selves were already in the hall when he came in. Unfortunately there was a brief period of embarrasing silence when he came in without anyone offering a sembah despite repeatedly being told to do so before.

Well, tough. Lunch was bearable. We had expected generous hints of grandeur, but were terribly dissapointed. Most agreed that our dining hall people can come up with a much better menu than these hotel folks (And at a cheaper price too. I mean RM 45 per head for this mediocrity is inexcusable.) But I can't blame a hotel that calls itself Quality Hotel. What are they trying to prove?

At least the dessert was lovely. Sagu Gula Melaka. MmmmMmMmMm....

Throughout the meal, we were entertained by the lovely Ms. Jo and Grace on the piano. Delivering waves and waves of Final Fantasy songs. During the intervals, we were entertained, much to the embarrassment of Mr Small, with the ungraceful loud clatters of utensils on the plates.

Lunch was cut short because, according to protocol, we had to be done with eating when the Prince leaves. So, no coffee for us. The Council, along with the UEM bigwigs followed him to the office building for a tete-a-tete. There he interrogated, pardon, graced us with conversation. We sembah-ed, said our name, subjects we're doing and our intended course. We even lined up for this. How more mechanical can he be?

Boy, glad that's all over. Looking forward to a normal last week of school till the two week break. Yeah. :)

The water(less) situation has worsened. People are getting desperate. (Not that they weren't desperate before). hmm.

The pool has been closed indefinately. It has to, seeing that its barely half empty. (Or half full. But at times like these, its hard to play the optimist). Plus the fact that the water pump doesn't work. Well, how can it, there's no water to pump.

Even the tank at the surau has gone dry. And the Academic Block toilets. And the pool toilets. And the RC toilets. And the MPH toilets. Going next is probably the Great Hall toilets. If they're not gone already.

I miss the good old days when one could take a piss and be certain that it will flow directly into an underground sewage tank. I've always wondered why my mum insists me to flush the toilet after use. Now, I know why.

Just just now I finally saw water. Yes water. Clear as crystal. I could almost taste it. I would've had not I realised that the water was on the floor. Spread all over. Buckets and buckets of it. Purposely spilt. On the tiles. All around. Wasted. Cleaning the stupid stones while we students are left dry and dirty. Is this a show of the college's priorities. Ooh. Make the Buildings look nice and shiny. Let the students rot. Well, you can take your nice and shiny school and shove it up where some shining is needed. Grrr.

We can't last long in this condition. Think of the stench. Think of the suffering. Think of the possibilities of deseases spreading. Right here in the middle of nowhere.

Help!

Its always that we only miss something when its gone. Like water. Gone are the days of 3 hour showers and massive cloth-washing. Now, things are different. Now, being able to flush the toilet is a luxury.

All this started friday when the showers didn't work. Water pressure was really low. Nobody was really worried for we thought it a temporary condition. Then saturday, rumours started to spread of a state-wide water shortage. People started to get slightly anxious. Night came and there was totally no water save what's left in the chalet tanks. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. We were doomed.

Sunday passed with most having gone on the RM 13 bus to KLCC while the rest lay here waiting the advent of death. Okay, not that grim, but not dissimilar. Thankfully the Dining Hall were still able to cook our meals despite the shortage.

Now its monday. The prince is coming tomorrow. Hopefully he doesn't find a filthy dead college in his midst. Some say he's staying for dinner. That so? Why the heck for? Reminiscing one's fond college memories? Go ahead. But bring lots and lots of water.

----

And finally, there's the net problem. I've been meaning to update since last friday (no, really!) but alas! Net was nonexistent in the boys' side for the past week. I went on behalf of the SC to see the IT executive. A complete waste of time. All I got was bureaucracy and red tape. I'd probably have to sign some forms in triplicate just to even suggest for her to speed things up. Blargh! Luckily Mr Small was much more sympathetic. He promised (a gentleman's word, no less) that he will get to the bottom of this. He even hinted that we might be seeing wi-fi sometime soon. But don't get your hopes up. These thigns take ages. Bureaucracy. Tsk.

----

In another unsurprising turn of events, Battle of the Bands has been postponed AGAIN. This time to Friday the 2nd of April. Apparently some seniors have classes that wednesday night. So Friday it is. But then there are (again) rumours of letting us off earlier for the break i.e. before that Friday due to the water draught. I won't count on it though, since we have our housetrips AND the water shortage isn't going to last very long. Well, not a week long. Please.

----

Last Friday was a very interesting assembly with the Banting winners receiving their prizes and a (neat!) video presentation by the SC. Turns out we lost to the KMB (or MCB as they prefer) by one point overall. One miserable point. They won because they sent at least two teams for each sport. The points were 3-2-1 for first to third. If we get first, they can always match us by winning second and third. But I'll stop my gripes here lest we be known as sore losers. The only thing that should be sore were our sun-burnt skins and fly-filled stomachs.

BTW, for KYUEM Students, you can get the video by visiting my computer (POO - "don't click here" // MyMovies) under MALECHALET in the students' network.

----

Come to think of it, with the Prince's visit and all, the water shortage could be a form of tulah (Royal Curse) received from insulting the Banting people too much. God Forbid.

The College is about to experience and honour of nonpareil. It is with great pleasure I announce the Royal visit of His Majesty Raja Muda Perak Raja Dr. Nazrin Shah on the 30th of March 2004.

This remarkable man studied in both Cambridge and Oxford (and I thought going to one was already such a great feat). He then went on and received his Masters or PhD in Harvard (my mouth seriously fell open the moment Mr. Small announced it during assembly. I mean WOW!). He's currently the Chairman of the Oxford-Cambridge graduates society of Malaysia or something.

And this man, this great great man is coming over to visit us.

(pause for dramatic effect. let it sink in.)

In an unrelated development, the Battle of the Bands has been postponed till Wednesday the 31st of March. Or maybe it is a related event, since the earlier booking of the hall was revoked since preparations are being made to refurbish it in light of the royal visit.
The prize money has also been altered to RM 150 for first place, RM 120 for second and RM 80 for third. Then other prizes include best vocals (RM 50) and best musician, a mixed category of guitarists, keyboardist, drummers, bassist etc. (also RM 50). Good for them.

We are nearing the end of this half semester, with the 2-week break looming in the horizon. After that, it would be intensive preps for the exams. Oh there are the housetrips during the break. Though a few people have voiced their discontent with the organization and many more are not going. Tough.

As for the university talks, to quote Mr. Small, "...they will tail off next week as the residue of the British Education Fair subsides.".

The Student Council now have their own notice board. Ta-Duh! :) Its really swell, with 7 compartments on the 1 x 2 m space. The most right displays the organization chart, followed by the Council notices, then the Student Services notices, highlights of the month, calendar, dining hall menu and a shout out column, similar to the tagboard to your left. waay coool! heh.

Recently, the dining hall have switched to plastic pink plates rather than the compartmental blue trays. What's the story? Maybe they just don't want us to take too much food and waste. Or, they for once want us to feel more civil rather than like inmates. Personally, I'd prefer the trays since I don't really fancy fruits mixing with my curry. :P

And the most not really surprising news of all (don't hold your breath too long) : The Monkeys Are Back ! Reports were initially treated with ridicule (Owing to the confidence the school has on the expensive exterminators), but recent sightings have put the whole school on the alert. Watch your clothes and undies, gentlemen, the monkeys are back with a vengeance.

Highlight of the week : Battle of the Bands organized by the Music Club. Friday. 9.00 pm. Great Hall. Casual Decent. Free Admission. Lots of Prizes to be won (by the competing bands.) :)

The lifesaving test is over and everyone passed (yes, even lil' old me.).
16 people took the Bronze Medallion while 4 others took the Bronze Cross (which is a higher level).

The lifesaving candidates would like to express our highest gratitude to Mrs. B, the Foords, the very kind swimming examiner (Mr. Tan?), the senior lifesavers and all those that helped us to keep afloat. :)

-----

The Greenthumbers are at it again. Landscaping or whatever it is they're doing to the cafe-RC path. Looks promising, with a dry water-fountain and stray pebbles that keep digging into your soles. Have fun gardening. :)

-----

Tomorrow's the UK education Fair. Remember 11 o'clock in the morning the bus leaves. And we're coming back at 7 pm. 6 hours of browsing through Pictures and Prospectuses? I don't think so. And they told us "No Shopping.". Tsk.

Monday, we had a mass presentation by the University of London. All four of their sub-universities came (King's, UCL, LSE and Imperial). An interesting insight into life in the City.

Tuesday, the oh-so-wonderful Incubus Concert Trip. Well, okay it wasn't that great. OAG (*swoon*) and Pop-Shuv'it were the opening acts. It started late, as expected. When it was going back time, some people turned up late, clearly imitating their artiste-idols, but Mr. Fellender wasn't amused. He called for the bus to leave without them (at 11.45 pm. That's roughly a half hour allowance from the time the concert finished at 11.15-ish pm). It caused a minor ruckus back in college. Some people weren't happy. Which pissed some others. It was brought up during the staff meeting. Seemingly died down. Came back to life for a brief period. Gone, but not quite forgotten. The life-cycle of College issues. Geez, people. Can't you just adhere to the hour set, for once. Discipline yourself. Mr. F's kind enough to have petitioned for us to go out in the first place. I mean you don't get this in Banething (among the many-many areas that we're better off in). Please, please don't take things for granted. Please.

Wednesday, a seemingly ordinary day. The after-class period started with a University Talk (Birmingham; complete waste of time. And I think Warwick came in the morning for lawyers.). Dinner was a (not quite so) pleasant surprise of spagetti. Still needs some improvement, but the intention of switching from the tiresome trio (chicken chop, burger and chicken pieces) was very much welcomed. Ahh, wonderful western wednesday.

Thursday, another University talk, this time for the medics. Which? I can't remember. Sapphire's Hotdog (or Dawg, as they prefer to call it) is simply delicious. Topaz's not-quite-a-Pizza Massala ? I have no idea whatever happened to it. The choir practices began today, led by our beautiful Ms. Jo.

Friday is today. Today is Friday. We have an assembly every Friday. Therefore we have an assembly today (Gee, thinking skills does come in handy afterall). After that is the cleansing Bath University Talk. Bath? Oh, its only THE most prominent university for engineering. Nothing to boast about.

Saturday, will see a bunch of kids going for the life-saving award. Don't Drown.

Sunday, will see the same bunch of kids, plus lots more to go visit the UK Education Fair in PWTC. Remember, the bus leaves at 11.00am so don't be late. Except if you're the bus driver. We've anticipated his lateness, that's why we told him to come at 9 am. Haha, okay we didn't. But I think its a good idea if we did, considering their blemished-like-a-kid-in-puberty record.

Have a great compulsary stay-in weekend, KYUEM :)

what? The Concert.
what concert?? The Incubus Concert.
WHAT?!? when??? Tonight.
WHAT?!?!? you're going???? Yes.
WHAT?!?!? WHAT?!?!? How????? Its a school trip.
lucky bugger. Deaf bugger.

-----

They got back almost midnight, some after. The MidValley bus broke down and well, one of the Banting buses had to take a detour to salvage them. Obviously that bus was packed like a tuna can and according to many, it wasn't an experience they'd like to relive any time soon.

And that was after the Banting entourage ended up in Seremban while on their way to Banting on Saturday. Thanks to the world's most efficient bus service.

Banting itself was a different experience altogether.

I wasn't there personally, but I did gather soundbytes [some translated] from those that went :

"In one word : Charity-case" --tasha

"For the first time, I couldn't wait to get back to college." --ren

"What's for lunch? Oh, its Fish and Flies. Again." --aman

"They have good sports facilities. But the whole corridor where we stayed [stretches his arms] was quite dirty. Got rubbish here and there one. Then the room no power-socket. Very sad you know." --yong

"Our supporters rock! I think we pissed them off, ha ha ha" --rapek

" [Content not fit to be published. Roughly it was about the Bus Driver being described in very colourful language.] " --taj

More later. :)

One day I woke up and realised that having a blog requires a certain degree of responsibility and commitment.

To update frequently.

Well, well. Its been a week since the last entry hasn't it? Time sure flies when you're often trying to maximise the utility of every hour. I mean we only have so much time to study, go for a meeting or some other, go for sports, watch anime, etc. But enough with that rant. All this talk about being overworked is getting a bit tired.

Speaking about talks, the ones by them university speakers were, well, interesting. Those that presented were Edinburgh (its in Scotland. Think Sean Connery. In a kilt.), Imperial (Very Good. Better still if you have 300 pounds to spend a week. That's just for accomodation.) Southampton (Claims their extensive optical wires research paved the way for the internet. Well, in that case I've got a bone to pick with them about our net.) and Bristol (No Comment. By the time I decided to pay attention it was already over.)

They were all the same; 1) They speak only good things about their universities (ratings, student-educator ratio, research), 2) They speak good things about our seniors (and how good their results were in that university), and 3) They almost almost always end up by saying it doesn't really matter which university to choose, since our sponsors (JPA, MARA, PETRONAS, PNB, TNB, KPM, FAMA) and our college (KYUEM) will only let us apply to the good ones.

So, what did we learn from going to 4 similar talks a week of roughly 2 hour sessions (though it feels like never-ending) ? Except clever marketing skills (You have to be funny and interesting. And you must show us nice pictures. But even that's getting routine.), well nothing new. And even if we somehow missed any of the talks, we can still find out about them at the UK Education Fair this weekend (which I think is strongly recommended for all juniors to attend. in other words, GO!)

At least that was my summation of the talks, from an engineering point of view. I'm not sure about the medics, but theirs are probably along the same lines ( "To be honest, its really really tough to get in. After all, you only have four spaces in your UCAS form. But we'd be honoured if you'd waste one for us. It makes us look good." )

----

As I was typing this last night, the MidValley trip people still had not returned. They're probably having too much fun and didn't want to come back.
Turns out the Banting people weren't back yet either. Maybe they too were having too much fun. Hmm.

It is with deepest regret that I submit this correction to an error from a previous entry :

Banting never came. :(

Oh, well. Its really not that big a thing. Too bad for them, not being able to know what joie de vivre means. Ehem. It means the joy of living. heh. (Which reminds me, whatever happened to Mr Small's French classes?)

But fear not people. If Banting can't come to KYUEM, we'll bring KYUEM to Banting. Next weekend with a crew of 120 strong. You know, the KMB Games Carnival thinggy.

Next week will see university talks, university talks and more university talks. Imperial College, Birmingham and Whatshisname. Did I mention there'll be some university talks next week? Its really great to have the university representatives coming all the way down to meet us. Though, there's that nagging feeling that they look like a bunch of tourists visiting the national zoo. Us being the rare primates exhibit.

Here's to another idle KYUEM weekend. Cheers.

When the only thing worth blogging is a blackout in a little outpost settlement deep in the lush Malaysian jungles, you can just roughly imagine what exciting lives we lead.

Sadly, thats how it is here in Lembah Beringin. Except the fact that the little blackout meant more than just a little light bulb gone kaput.

A blackout means, among other things :

a) Depressingly hot chalets. You don't have to worry about not being able to cook in your chalets when the whole building's one giant toaster oven.

b) Even more depressingly dirty swimming pools. If you haven't figured it out yet, EVERYONE pisses in the pool once in a while, not just you. There's a reason why pool is spelled with a P (yes, that was a pun). The pool cleaning mechanism won't work without good ol' electricity. Hence, the whole place smells like one giant toilet. Wow, what an excellent companion for your extra-large oven.

----

Mocks are over for most juniors. They have just begun for the seniors. It wasn't so bad, myself having survived a most interesting Econs paper today. This whole week has been really quiet, especially since seniors are given a study break. The juniors in general declared their own holidays. Ahh, the beauty of living in a democracy.

KMB is hosting a Mega-Sporting Event thing next weekend. There'll be hundreds and hundreds of people from various colleges partcipating. Or so I hear. Our own college is sending a hundred students, and we can only leave on Saturday after classes. Great. That means we'll have to play as soon as we get off from a most amazing 2-hour bus trip. Personally, I think its a splendid idea. (the Mega-Sporting Event, not the leaving on Saturday bit). Especially to our students. It would have the same effect of visiting the orphanage to realise how blessed you are to have loving parents. Heh :)

Oh, and I also heard that some of them (our KMB counterparts) are coming over this weekend. Let's give them a traditional KYUEM welcome. Yes, I'm sure there are other ways to make people feel welcome without the samurai game. Though the thought is tempting. Especially after what they (and every other team) did to our rugby squad.

Well.

To all MOCK takers, KMB game players and the people in Admin who are responsible for settling our electric bills, BANZAI! uhm, yeah.

So ended the KYUEM Rugby International, woops i mean Invitational Rugby 10's. Though a debatable success, it left lots of things to be desired. For one, is it called invitational or international, though the banner displayed both? One would probably stick with invitational, since there was nothing international about the whole event. All teams were from KL and the surrounding districts. The only thing remotely international were our dear friends Gilbert, Canter and Carisbrook. Rugby brands all.

Maybe it was the rules that were international. Which must mean we locals play with a different set of rules. Ours probably have a less emphasis on physical contact or any unneccesary brute force. We are afterall a race of caring and polite Malaysians.

As for our college team, lets just say we weren't on fire and blazed through the event with amazing skills and prowess. Any flame at all was but a flicker and put out soon afterwards.

Eventhough the college team did their best and tried reaaallly hard, even almost scoring once or twice, it was pretty obvious that we didn't have enough balls to pull through. Some buggers stole our school owned rugby balls, you see. Yes, the ones with the serial numbers.

KMB, KDU, KTJ, KKK and those other Angry Mobs were simply amazing. Most impressive of all were the Bukit Jalil School. I have no idea what they feed 'em there. Would you believe it that the school sent a bunch of form 5's to join the Under-20 category and another batch of form 3's to join the Under-18 category. And, they, them, those athletically engineered superbeings still managed to win in both categories. Champions for the Under-20 and 1st runner-up for the Under-18. Truly an appropriate time to gape and exclaim your WTF's. :)

If you're still wondering what kind of a game Rugby Union really is, then read on. I went there with a slight misconception of the game. I know not of any Rugs in the game, but I suppose when you're being tackled it does feel like the rug's just been pulled from under you. By the bye, a tackle is an action a big muscular guy does to another big muscular guy. Though not in any romantic way. unless they're masochistic. And gay. And whats with the name Rugby Union? Whats so unifying about the game? Besides big sweaty bodies being piled up on top of each other. Ugh.

After two days of roughing it out on the field, the players (and the hardworking organizers, though they should've been focusing their hard work towards their studies. Heh, to each his own.) finally blew the final whistle to mark the end of the tournament. What good came of it, I know not. If fame was what we sought, it certainly paved a name for our College Rugby team. Yep, "KYUEM, The Team To Beat". (If you can't even beat us, you might as well just go home.) I know, I know, I'm being mean here. They boys were actually quite wonderful. Especially the seniors, who sacrificed quite a bit for the college. I salute you all, and may you show the same tenacity in your A-levels. InsyaAllah.