Pre-University Things

*blows dust off this blog*

Assalamualaikum and hello, how long has it been since I last blogged about my dull life? Last time I did was in April omg I was still in MUFY and now here I am done with my first semester of my degree life in Monash. Anyway, here's an update of what happened in the last weeks of my pre-university life including not just the studying part but also what I could remember happening before entering uni. Only doing this now because realized I'll be busy from tomorrow onwards and might leave this blog to rot for the next year or something. Will do a separate post on my first semester!

Alright, before I left MUFY I went for two more events before finals which were the MUFY Games and Myanmar refugee tuition. Like what had been mentioned in the previous post, the MUFY Games was somewhat like a Sports Day. My friends and I signed up for charades, only finding out the night before that we were required to join an additional two other non-sporty game which are Taboo (kind of like a describing-guessing game)  and Win, Draw or Lose (draw and guess). Our group name was Where Is Phei Nie because our friend Phei Nie who we wanted to join our team decided she wanted to have an off day instead lololol. Anyway to cut a long story short, we didn't get any prizes for charades...

 but we got a 2nd place for taboo and 1st place for Win, Draw or Lose out of 15+ groups lol. 'Twas a fun day.

Later on during the one day break for... something.. (gosh I should have updated sooner), Amira and I decided to go to the Urbanscapes exhibition. We went from our place using the Sunway BRT and switched to LRT in USJ7 and went to KL Sentral to meet up with Tiffany, Azlinah and Jeremy where we hopped off to Masjid Jamek and walked to the place. I somehow preferred last year's exhibition better, but hey this year's one provided a lot of aesthetic settings for people to take their pictures at. We decided to go cafe-hopping afterwards so we went to LOKL Coffee Co. and Hoppers KL to grab a bite. Tip: Get some light snacks or just one to two main course per shop that you go if you're going in a group because cafes are usually expensive lol and you'll share so that you don't get too full to try out food at somewhere else. It started raining heavily and we were stranded without umbrellas so we used Grab to go to Central Market / Pasar Seni and also walked through Petaling Street. 

Went to visit my ex-coworkers during Mothers' Day for a small party because the store was moving to the new Starling mall in Damansara. They were technically my "moms" when I was working there.

Next was the Myanmar refugee tuition which Sharmilee, Amira and I signed up for under the Sunway Student Volunteer club. I had been wanting to volunteer for this since last year but the timing would always clash with classes. The tuition was held in a church, and you can choose which age group to be with and for whatever reason I chose the youngest group, around 5-8 years old? BAD IDEA jkjk I forgot how loud and how much fun being a kid is. Anyway I was kind of surprised by how good they are in Maths hahaha and they love watching Boboiboy! And there was this kid I don't even know where he even picked up Malay he was giggling and showing off counting numbers in Malay and repeating this sentence "Hidup susah mati pun susah." #deep. Amira who was teaching 12-13 year olds say that one of the girls will be moving to the USA soon and had to change her name again after having half a dozen names already from moving to one place to another. Overall, it was an eye opening fun experience!

Playing Rock Paper Scissors with the kids. Got them to call Sharmilee as Bob.

Taught this fab girl named Senle how to draw princesses hurhur.

Anyway, finals ended right during early Ramadhan. I don't remember much about the papers except me watching Produce 101 the night before my English paper and keeping up with updates about BTS in the Billboard Music Awards hours before my Maths paper when I should be studying ahahah. Tbh I still miss MUFY life especially the friends I made because most of them are doing Medicine or Pharmacy and will only start next year as there's only one intake for them. You'll know how much this impacted me in my next post zzzz. 

There was the Sri Aman iftar event held in Ima's place. The food was great, and it was nice meeting up with a lot of people I haven't seen since SPM. To say that it was an enjoyable experience... well, I won't lie that I was extremely anxious beforehand for whatever reason. The first half an hour being there was terrible as I couldn't think straight and my I was panicking and being anxious and awkward that people asked me if I was okay lelz. More on that too in the next post. I guess the pics from that event was great and made me look like I'm a cool person who's in this cool event with cool, pretty girls at a cool place lol. I would like to thank all the familiar faces whom I get to talk to and enabled me to relax a little bit.

 

Hm nothing much happened during the fasting month. My cousin invited my family and I to go this fundraising event for this movement called Small Changes which is a community of youths organizing various projects throughout the year like conducting education camps for the rural communities (Cayssey joined this according to my cousin!). It was inspiring to listen to the committee talk, as most of them are students studying overseas like in the UK, US, Russia etc. yet they came back during their break to participate as to give back to the unprivileged. They do believe that we, as youths, can make a difference in improving the state of the people. Anyway, I met Iman there who forced me to join this sketching/drawing activity whereby our work will be auctioned off and the proceeds will go to charity. Again, sitting there in a circle surrounded by people watching what would we draw made my mind go blank with my heart pounding and my hands shaking. In the end, my paralyzed self just watched what the others did while I sat there pretending to be ok ahaha later on I forced my brother to take my place. I took my sketching paper and went off to a secluded corner to draw before the time limit ended. 

Iman's art (Batman), mine (Wonder Woman) and my brother's (cute Cat Batman!)

The fasting month passed and it was raya. Don't remember much about this too. Went with my family on a trip to Penang where we acted like total tourists. Went to several popular attractions there like the Upside Down Museum, Hameediyah Nasi Kandar and the Penang Street Art (where we ate the famous shaved ice balls). Had a great time by the beach too! I don't think I need to mention the amazing food, isn't it like common knowledge already ahah. As I just finished reading the last book of the Crazy Rich Asians series by Kevin Kwan, I couldn't help wondering and studying the people there too and imagining if they were millionaires or something (blame my overactive imagination). 

Moving on. I had been wanting to go to Merchant's Lane, a cafe in Petaling Street for a while. I was thankful to have Aynn and Shelly to join me and have brunch there. The ambience was great, although we did had a hard time finding it at first. As usual, later we walked around to take pictures.

On to the next activity, Ilham one day just messaged me if I was interested to go to this art exhibition done in Ilham Gallery (it really isn't owned by her). Of course I said yes duhh and turns out Aynn, Azra and Maryam were joining too. We celebrated Ilham's birthday before we walked to the gallery with a humble cake from McCafe. The gallery was situated at Ilham Tower (all the Ilhams amazing) and once we reached there, a woman asked us if we were like art or photography students lel. The exhibition was called Ilham 2009-2017 Contemporary Malaysia Forum and featured works related to Malaysia, including controversial stuff. It was very interesting as we get to see a timeline of Malaysian student activists protests, a satirical political card game with local elements, the 2016 Miss Universe Malaysia costume, and other thought-provoking items.

And then there was the MUFY Graduation ceremony. Gosh everyone looked like they came out straight from fashion magazines. The food was great and it was nice to see my friends all dressed up. Was among the many others including Amira who received the Monash University High Achiever Award, alhamdulillah. It was a bittersweet event because while we get to enjoy the night, for most of us our university life literally starts the next week excluding the medic and pharmacy students (which was heartbreaking too knowing that it'll be 8 months till I last see them). 

Last but not least, literally 2 days before university started, went to the Asia Leadership Conference I signed up before finals. It was a platform for students to learn and discuss leadership skills with scholars from Harvard University. Most of the speakers have extensive knowledge in policy-making and had traveled across dozens of countries in empowering youths to be socially responsible in leading others, including the founder Samuel Kim from South Korea who served in the United Nations and Panche Kralev who was the former Minister of Education and Science of Macedonia. My favorite workshop that I attended was the one about Design Thinking, on how your creativity and imagination can be used not only for art but for social change that can help those living in poor conditions. The speaker, Helen van Baal from Germany shared her experience of her team creating a baby incubator which was 0.00001% the cost of the ones used in hospitals so that new mothers in rural areas could use it to lower the rate of death in premature babies. Honestly the event was very informative as I didn't know there were so many other options in life which were more effective in helping others than the direct ones we have been taught in schools, such as through policy-making. 

So this was a very long post. I apologize for that. Anyway, thanks for reading and stay tuned for my next post about my first semester! Also, please pray that I do well with my internship that starts tomorrow..