Part of that world

I loooove covers. YouTube-ing cover versions of songs I like is my favorite procrastinating activity, no joke.

(One time, I sat down at my desk at 10 PM to work on my philosophy paper, fell into this YouTube Trace whereby you go into YouTube for what is supposed to be just 10 minutes and suddenly when you regain full lucidity you realize HOMG 5 hours has passed!! I started on my paper at 3 AM, no joke.)


But you have to see this!


Part of Your World - Disney's The Little Mermaid
The Good:

I used to want to fast forward and skip this scene when I was young, 'cause it bored me so much. Now I am completely, utterly in love with it. Twenty-plays-a-day that sort of being in love.


The Bad:

Not that I have anything against Miley Cyrus lah, but I feel that even my friend (who is not blessed with crazy amazing vocal talent) punya shower-singing is better than hers loh. What is so amazing about her that she can charge people $250 for celebrating her birthday with her. Apa itu!


Hallelujah
The Good:

This version is one of my all-time favorite songs. I was listening to this over and over again in the car on the way to Ipoh for Qing Ming last April. I had just gotten my Grinnell acceptance that same morning, so I was happy, but sooo nervous about my Macalester decision which wasn't announced yet. Till now listening to the song evokes that same intense feeling, like damn excited about going to college like that!

This is one amazing cover of an already amazing song.


The Bad:

(This one is so bad it's just plain shocking.)



Also got a lot of pretty amazing covers lah of course. I shall share if I am one day delusional enough to think people care even the slightest bit what I find on YouTube.


But I shall share this one last thing okay?






Aaanyway.

We were at Karen's house the other night (she's the college's Director of International Affairs).

We were having dinner and writing postcards to international students who were accepted.

Sad, sad news: No Malaysian was admitted. This girl I know applied, and evidently she didn't get in.

I was so so soo disappointed when I found out. Okay this will seem lame, but I fantasized about having a real Malaysian on campus loh. ("Real" Malaysian as in, Malaysian who hasn't left the country 10 years ago and went off to live in US and is more American than Malaysian.)

Three Singaporeans were admitted though, which is as close to a nasi-lemak/char-kuey-tiao-eating person as I can get.

(Admittance rate for international students this year is 7.5%. That is crazy competitive!)

But this Malaysian girl whom I got to know because she also applied to Grinnell the same time I did last year is applying to transfer to Grinnell, and I hope she gets in.

I very badly need to practice my orang-Malaysia accent, because people tell me I have no pronounced accent and when I say that I can speak in a super Malaysian accent, people find that incredibly hard to believe. (LOL but I'd been told that I speak like I am singing a song.) I am losing my lah-ing tendencies!

Speaking of Malaysian pride, I'd wanted to write about this thing that happened last semester that I was very proud of, but evidently from my blogging frequency you can tell I got lazy.

My friend and I made rendang, and people liked it. YEASHH! It was for this international food bazaar, and we had this coupon system where people paid for a coupon for 5 dishes. Got people come back for seconds okay! Must be pretty decent right, if people are willing to spend their coupon on your dish again.

Then a couple of weeks ago we had this international cultural show, and I wore my baju kebaya for the fashion show segment. People complimented on the kebaya okay. (Complimented the kebaya, not me loh lol.) And I personally think the kebaya looked the best amongst all the other countries' traditional clothing loh, but that may be the bias-Malaysian in me speaking!

So you see? Malaysian culture is waaay amazing.

I actually also performed this Indian dance for the cultural show. The weeks prior to the show were horrible!

Over the weeks I had 4 papers, 4 exams, and various smaller assignments, in addition to that I had to go for the Indian dance practice every other night. And as if I hadn't bitten off way more than I could chew, I was also taking Javanese dance classes. There were times when, right after dinner I had to go to the art center at the south end of campus for Javanese dance, immediately after that had to rush to north campus for Indian dance, then straight after, go start on my homework / study for my exams.

Horrible. I slept an average of 3 hours per night. I had more Oreos and Twixes to keep myself awake than anyone ought to.


But then, that is hal-hal lalu lah.


It is now 6 AM and I am leaving for Iowa City for ice skating at 12 PM.

I think, I really need to sleep.

Au revoir!

My friends went to Saint Paul...

... and all I got is this shirt (and cup)!

Seriously, I'm very grateful. Those are not just some random cheh kai cup and shirt okay, those two were bought from the bookstore of my dream college!

Or, it was my dream college. I dunno why I wanted to get in so badly back then. I mean, it's just as unknown in Malaysia as Grinnell is, it's just as crazy cold as here, and it's neither higher ranked nor more selective (which reflects badly on my being rejected grrrr!).

Anywaaaay.

My friends went to Minneapolis for spring break (SPRING! I thought it'd never come!), and me, being the crazy kiamsiap person that I am, decided seconds before we hit the "Book now" button on this hostel website that I don't want to go anymore.

I want to save money.

(Seriously expensive. $50 for ride to Des Moines, $140 for shuttle to Minneapolis, $150 for hostel, and an estimated $200 for food and museum entrance fees etc etc. For FIVE days only okay!)

So of course my friends protested loh, tried to justify why $550 is a reasonable price for 5 days in Minnesota (4 days if you don't count traveling and settling down time and all). (And if you were wondering, $550 is equal to a little over RM2000.)

But the big difference between me and them? I have to pay for it out of my own pocket.

It's very easy to say "Just go!" when your parents are paying for you loh, but when you see all the money draining out of your own bank account you seriously feel the pinch.

BUT BUT!!!!!!!!!

The big big BIGGEST difference between me and them is......

I just bought a new camera!!

Yes, a Canon Rebel. Oh yeah.

(Or also known as Canon EOS. America always has to set itself apart from the rest of the world eh?)

/happy happy happy/

I finally succumbed to my 2-year-long dSLR lust.

Still had to pay for it myself, so I'm feeling the sting of an emptier bank account, but so worth it loh.


(Side story: I got an email from Wells Fargo about an overdraft in my checking account. But I didn't remember doing anything also! $500 was somehow transferred from my savings account to my checking account, and ultimately to my PayPal account! But then I logged into PayPal and my account balance was $0.00! ZERO! Like OMGWTFBBQ where did my money go?! So damn menakutkan my heart was about to burst! But a simple-yet-kancheong phone call to PayPal customer service solved it all. But can you imagine! Suddenly going online one day and realize five hundred dollars mysteriously vanished from your account. All I can think of at that time was "My mom is going to kill me!")



Aaanyway. A friend of mine was surprised my parents weren't paying for it.

I was surprised that she was surprised!

I mean, why should they? These are "extra" stuff what, things that a person should buy only if, after careful evaluation, he decides that it is worth his money afterall. (Emphasis on "his" money, not "his parents'" money!)

So weird la, some of the people here. They are so close to being 20 years old, yet they are amazingly dependent on their parents.

So far everyone I've talked to have their parents book their plane tickets to fly back home and to college for them. When I found out, I was so shocked. I cannot ever ever imagine my parents doing that! (Somemore, before I came here, when I found out I overlooked time zone differences and would be arriving in college a day early, I had to figure out my own transportation and place to stay for the night.) (Not that they don't care la, just that I should figure things out myself, and go to them if I memang dunno what to do.)

And would you believe, some of their parents even came with them when they flew to Grinnell. Went to WalMart with them, helped them buy stuff, helped them settle down.

They have credit cards for which their parents pay, all the way from home!

APA ITU!

My parents gave me a bank draft with enough money to last my 4 years when I flew here, and that is it!

I opened my bank account, and the credit card that I have right now is my own. I am responsible for paying my credit dues and keeping track of my funds so that they last me 4 years la.

I am damn proud of the fact that I pay for my credit card balance with my own hard earned money okay! (Er I have a campus job.)

Maybe that's why they happily spend so much money la. Always traveling during each school break la. They swipe their parents' credit card saje, don't have to worry so much about the funds in their own bank account also.

Sometimes their dependence can be very enduring. Like when this girl says she doesn't know how to cut apple because the maid does it for her, or when I get asked to help repair a hole in a pair of jeans (19 year old dunno how to sew?!), it is very amusing, and the teasing that ensues gets a lot of laughs.

Those are all very cute la, but when it comes to financial matters dependence is not not NOT a good thing!

Next time I have children, I make sure I pay for only the necessities, make them pay for all the extras themselves. Make them learn how to save and spend money wisely.

Because when your kid buys more coats than she needs and tries to reason that she "cannot wear the same thing too often", you know something has gone wrong.

(Coat story completely true loh btw.)

Oh my oh my I digressed.

Oh and I discovered the amazing coolness that are Crumpler bags.

Seriously! Crumpler bags emit coolness like none other. In the world of bags, they are Zeus, king of all Bag-Gods, and all other bags are mere mortals. Crazy good-looking!

No need to say, of course more expensive than average la.

But because they are Zeus-bags, and also because they do not scream "I am a camera bag! I have a big fat DSLR in me!" I got them.

As a reward for myself for working so hard these few weeks LOL LOL LOL KIDDING.

But seriously, I think having a camera bag that is obviously a camera bag may be very risky if you take it out with you everywhere you go, because it's like dangling a bait for people who want to have money but sendiri too lazy to go earn them themselves.

Crumpler also has (cool-looking) bags for normal use la of course. If anyone wants me to get a Crumpler from here for them I'll be happy to oblige, 'cause I know KLCC punya Crumpler can go up to a few hundred Ringgit more expensive than here!

(Update on the side: I'll be back in 1.5 months!!!! SO EXCITED!!)


It is spring break, but I have to do research and write a position paper on North Korea and its nuclear issues for Model UN punya security council session. Cannot complain too much also la, sendiri sign up for it one.




This is me, signing off -----> "OFFFFFFF!!!"

Sei loh

OMG OMG I have so much work to do, have been pulling so many all-nighters, have been skipping a few meals, haven't been replying emails, desperately trying to stay on top of all these papers and exams, and guess what I'm doing now.

Talking to my friend on MSN about her crush dilemma.

Seriously!

When I have an 8-page paper on education and social reproduction due tomorrow (NOT a fun topic to write at all!), the last thing I want to be doing is giving "advice" to a problem as minor as "So should I tell her how I feel about him so that she wouldn't mind us crashing their date?"

OMG. I thought I left that behind when I graduated from high school.

It's hard to be empathetic and take people seriously when you know they're making a mountain out of a molehill.

On to other news, I've only done 4 pages out of 8 for my sociology paper. Die for sure!