"How's college?"

Okay guys, you can stop asking "How's college" now. Because I'm about to sum it all up in two huge-ass blog posts. The first post will be about my life there, and the second post will be about the people I've met there so far. Okay? Okay.

A day in my life in KYUEM

6.30 Wake up. Shower. Study. Eat (either at DH or apartment, depending on how lazy I am to walk).
7.55 Start walking from the apartment to the first class.
8.15 Classes start.
10.30 Fifteen-minute break. Soak in the sunshine & clean air at Saad Square. Or grab a drink from one of the vending machines.
10.45 Class again.
12.55 Lunch (which is rice and lauk EVERY DAY), Zohor prayers at Surau, study/socialize/Internet time at RC.
2.00 Class again.
3.30 Tutorial if it's a Thursday. Basically, it's time to discuss our problems (if we have any) with our tutorial seniors and tutor (for me, it's Mr Idrus) and.. talk about university applications.
4.10 Class is over! On Monday, it's Assembly time. Sometimes the teachers are there. Sometimes it's just a bunch of announcements by Student Council.

4.15 Balik apartment, where there are only three possible activities
- Makan biskut dengan Milo
- Tengok anime/How I Met Your Mother/some random movie I downloaded during the weekend. If it's a good movie, watch it with the roomies.
- Assassinate the smaller piles of homework so that the bigger piles can be done during the night with no distractions.
5.15 Sports time on some days, or just continue doing whatever I was doing before. For Melor, it's mostly badminton. Meredith just goes with whatever she feels like. Athira & I are treadmill buddies.
7.00 The whistle goes, sports time is up. You can't enter DH in sweaty clothes, so everyone goes back to their respective chalets/apartments and showers, freshens up.
7.30 Dinner! Which is rice and lauk. Except on Wednesdays. Wednesdays are Western Days. So there's spaghetti or chicken chop or something like that. Sometimes I skip dinner to om-nom on my instant noodles.

8.00 onwards- free game. I've been doing something different every night. For example,
- During Induction Week, it's usually activities with the Student Council. This could mean anything, ranging from chill-out sessions with the 12.5s (where we talked about our future, our degrees and universities and stuff) to everyone-ends-up-crying-and-hugging bonding sessions (where everyone had to share something deep about themselves).
- During Week 2, it was usually a meeting with the Topaz seniors, or a meeting regarding the posts opened up to 13.5s in Student Council, or a meeting with the rest of the 13.5s about 12.5's Batch Anniversary (that we have to organize), and... yeah.
- During Week 3, it was KIWEE- KYUEM Islamic Week. It doesn't really matter if you're Muslim or non-Muslim, everyone pretty much joins in the activities, such as Inter-house Nasyid Competition, or the Video Competition, or the Islamic Quiz, or the Star-gazing Night... stuff like that.
- Of course I didn't attend every single activity every single night. Sometimes we do much more relaxed stuff. Like, the girls will order their burgers from Abang Shafiq for supper, and we all just gather in someone's room and have a loud-music-banging burger party/gossip sesh! :) Heh.
- Last Wednesday it was SHOO's birthday, so some of the girls went through MUCH effort to make it awesome as hell. We ignored her the whole evening before her birthday, basically made her cry in her room... and then at about ten minutes before midnight, almost the whole third floor climbed through the window into the apartment! Lit up the candles on the cake, designated someone to put on the gorilla mask (please don't ask why people have gorilla masks in KY), and at 12:00 sharp we ran into her room singing happy birthday.
- Sometimes, because KY people tend to be hungry almost all the time, one big bunch of us 13.5s will study (or socialize, depending on how important the homework is :p) together at the cafeteria. With food. Because Milo ais is the best study drink in the WORLD.

12.30/1.30 Tidur.
6.30 Get up, repeat pattern again.

What about classes?

Right now, I'm taking Further Mathematics, Economics & Literature. Surprised? If anyone cares to remember, my original subject combination was Mathematics, Accounts, Economics & History. Then, Induction Week happened and after one of our university placement talks with Puan Kas, the Heads of Department came to the GH to present their respective subjects.

1. The head of the Mathematics Department basically said that "If you're aiming for the Top 5 in the UK for a degree in Economics, then the policy now is that you have to have Further Mathematics."
2. Puan Kas basically implied that for a degree in Economics, Accounts at A-Level is not even merely unnecessary but actually not advisable too, simply because it's a vocational subject, not an academic. (In layman's terms... it has really low weightage.)

My brain broke. So yeah. Cancel Accounts, cancel Mathematics, and put in Further Mathematics. So now my combo is Further Maths, Econs, and History. I thought I was done in that aspect. But NO. An hour later after I submitted my new subject combination, I get a text from the Deputy Head saying that History and Further Maths are clashing. Whatafak? So with a heavy heart, I got my priorities straight, deleted History and added English Literature, a subject which has equal weightage as History.

But no matter. I'm having tons of fun with my classes now. :) My Economics teacher, Mr Jamal, is extremely... interesting? Heh. He has a fresh, new way of looking at things because he's studied and lived in USA for a while and is thus exposed in a completely different way than normal local teachers. Discussions and debates are the BEST part of his lessons, especially as all the questions are so thought-provoking!

For example, when we learned about Money and its' four essential functions, we were divided into four groups and each given a separate question. One of the questions that I found most intriguing, eventhough it wasn't my group's question- In the first World War, the Germany currency was worthless. People burned money to keep themselves warm. What they DID use as a medium of exchange was cigarettes. Explain why this happened.

So yeah, we had to get up and present our opinions and everyone asks questions and usually there's a debate that ALMOST becomes a fight but not really la :p, just differences in beliefs. Haha.

Literature is GORGEOUS, absolutely gorgeous. My teacher's name is Ms Isabel Swift, and she's British and young and beautiful and enthusiastic and passionate and yeah I'm going to stop now. Let's just say Literature lessons are the highlight of my day, every day. Our texts include Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, The Importance of Being Ernest by Oscar Wilde, and some poem anthology which is really famous LOL. We've already done two poems and the first three scenes for Streetcar. I love doing readings in class! Especially since we're encouraged to read with American accents. :p It's hilarious!

And of course, it helps that she loves to show us funny videos that tie in with literary devices, as well as clips from relevant films. MARLON BRANDO, EVERYBODY. That is all.

And now, we come to.... Further Mathematics. At first, my mind was really closed towards the subject, and I kept worrying about how everyone in my class got like 90-over for Add Maths, and the highest mark I ever got was 86, and, ugh, everyone's so smart, bla bla bla... and then lessons actually started, and I made the startling discovery that it's actually not so bad. ;)

Further Maths is divided into two- Pure Maths, and Applied Maths. Pure Maths is what everyone else that is taking Mathematics is doing- except we're learning it twice as fast. Because... yeah. Applied Maths is divided into two again, Mechanics and Statistics. For my juniors who are acquainted with Lady Add Maths, Stats is all about cumulative frequency curves and probability and combinations & permutations, stuff like that. Mechs is basically a brilliant mixture of Physics & Add Maths, except maybe the questions require a higher amount of logic. Memorizing formulae isn't the key objective here, but actually understanding how to unravel the mysteries of forces; energy; equilibrium. It's interesting. :)

And. Yeah. Mr John Highton teaches me Pure, while Mr Colin Dant teaches me Applied. Yeah, I know, Mr Jamal is my only local teacher, well, apart from Ustaz. The rest are expats. Oh well. Everyone's beginning to develop a British accent.

We follow the block system now, so in case anyone is bothered,
Block 1 - Economics. NB 2.1
Block 2 - English Literature CR 2.8
Block 3 - English (IELTS) - free period until after CNY, due to lack of teachers.
Block 4 - Further Maths: Pure CR 2.10, Acad 2
Block 5 - Islamic Studies LT 1
Block 6 - Further Maths: Applied CR 2.10, Acad 2

Btw, the weird letters and numbers are my respective classrooms. :)

Um. Yeah. I guess that's it. :P HAHAHAHAHA
I'm really tired guys T_T
and I've lost my blogging mojo, ugh.

Oh oh oh and I got voted to be co-director for organizing committee of the 12.5 Batch Anniversary. Plus group leader for the fund-raising for Topaz, but that's a long way off. Mmkay. That's all. :)