Pre Mid-life Crisis?

I have been having thoughts about life being meaningless constantly these past few weeks.

Bored, tired and fed up. I definitely know what I don’t want, but when you ask me ‘What is it then do you want?’. Answer: I have no freaking idea myself.

4 hours of sleep at night for 4 days in a row. I know many people probably do that during uni, but honestly, I hate it.

I have a C++ project presentation later in the morning. The information dialog is screwed up even though there doesn’t seem to be any error in it.

I want to do something ‘radical’ after it. Top on my list: Get two tortoises from MK. Next would probably be getting on a random bus. Or sitting inside the mtr back and forth while reading. Getting an air ticket and flying back to Malaysia (or to Taiwan since it’s so near) impromptu. Maybe take a ferry over to Macau. How about spending the night wandering around Mongkok aimlessly and then ‘hike’ back to Pokfulam. I don’t know.

But I have a feeling that I’d just lie in bed, and stare at the ceiling all day till the sun goes down. What joy. I don’t even have the creative to come up with something to do that would bring me remotely any thrill.

Lol. If any of my relatives see this, I would be expecting another very concerned MSN conversation bombardment from them. So, a note to them – I won’t do anything stupid. Do not worry. I am still able to think perfectly straight. Life just seems purposeless at the moment. That’s all.

Good morning.

The Most 2 Tiring Weeks.

Funny how I tend to blog when I actually need the time to study like hell. Oh well.

It has been preparing for exams and exams all these two weeks. And I am so not in my best condition to face them. For one, I haven’t had any nap time at all since like I don’t know, the start of the semester? People who really know me knows that I nap like a pig. It helps me charge up my ‘capacitor’. But this semester, it has been almost empty if not always. I couldn’t even stay up late to burn the midnight oil even if I wanted to the past few days. My eyes were bloodshot red, I had a headache almost everynight and had to resort to Panadols (which I totally hate).

To add more to my ‘injury’, I have not been eating well all this semester. One meal per day is the norm. Two if I’m lucky. And I went through a phase where I lost my apetite for no apparent reason once or twice during the semester. To my dear DBKL-ers, I have lost my ability to gorge down food like my stomach’s a never-ending pithole. I have lost the weight which I gained since I came to Hong Kong. The only good thing about this is, my old jeans fit again.

But the consequences of not having enough nutrients? I totally feel it now. Now I understand why my mum put so much emphasis on me eating right and having enough rest all these years.

Pressure I put on myself to keep up my grades isn’t helping at all. Having to finish each subject within 2 days is impossible. I almost broke down at the exam hall for one paper coz I got stuck at 5 lines for each and every question. A friend who is ‘unwell’ worries me. My fire to do revision has been extinguished since the 2nd paper ended (and I still have two left, two back-to-back exams in two days).

Re-read what I just typed above. It’s all a mess. Exactly what my brain feels like now. It used to be fairly structured, logical and not totally random.

Even my smell senses have gone whacked. I smell KFC all of a sudden and I feel like eating it. I am so tired.

Bad left knee! *pipiak*

SYMPTOMS
A pop, followed by intense pain, swelling, and a feeling of instability. Your knee may also buckle and give way. Chances are, you won’t be able to continue whatever it was that you were doing.

DIAGNOSIS
Sprained or torn ligament
There are four ligaments in the knee — two run alongside the knee joint, while the other two crisscross inside the joint holding it in place. (Ligaments are the ropelike tissues that connect the femur, or thighbone, to the tibia, or lower-leg bone.) The two most commonly injured are the medial collateral ligament (MCL) and the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL).

TREATMENT
Assuming you haven’t injured your ACL, you’ll probably do fine with a little rehab, which usually involves icing the knee and doing exercises to regain strength and stability in the muscles surrounding the joint. Many people can start walking and jogging within a month.

If you’ve torn your ACL, however, more aggressive treatment might be in order. “Once it’s torn, the ACL doesn’t tighten and heal the way the other ligaments do,” says Edward Laskowski, M.D., codirector of the Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center. “There will be a risk of knee instability, especially with high-demand sports that really challenge that ligament, such as basketball, volleyball, and soccer.” If you want to continue playing high-impact sports, you’ll likely benefit from arthroscopic ligament reconstruction, says Laskowski. Afterward, it will take about 6 to 9 months to get back to aggressive activities.

If you do opt for surgery, don’t rush into it. “We like to have people coming in for the surgery looking like they don’t need it,” says Laskowski. “Studies have shown that if you do the surgery too early, when the joint doesn’t have much motion and there’s a lot of swelling, there is an increased risk of joint stiffness, and the rehab afterward is tougher.”

Reference: http://www.bestlifeonline.com/cda/article/printer_friendly/0,5508,s1-2-0-0-1939,00.html

6-9 months to recover. *GROANS* I want to play during the interhall matches next year. T.T I don’t want to wait till my final year damn it. Of all the times I could have hurt my knee (as in all those vigorous training during high school), WHY NOW? Argh! !@$!%@!#!#%#$@%!@#

I dread going to the doctor’s in August when I’m back in KL. I’ll really cry if I need surgery. Seriously.

Summer in Hong Kong.

Sigh. Change of plans. I’m not coming back to KL this summer. AT ALL. Engineering training is ending on the 1/8 instead of the original 25/7. I still have to come back by the 13/8 to shift my stuff back up to my room (I’m now in 806A instead of 1412B) which leaves me less than 2 weeks.

No point.

And the suggested alternative by the hall office in case you weren’t here on the 13th of shift your stuff back up to your room, authorize a hallmate to do it. I know my life in the hall is quite saddening. I don’t have anyone who I’m close enough with to ask this favour of. But after yesterday’s shifting of all my stuff to this room, i thought to myself ‘LUCKILY I didn’t have anyone that close’ coz if I did, that ’someone close’ would definitely murder me off the moment I come back to Hong Kong.

I think I was shifting my stuff for 2 hours or more yesterday morning. I didn’t use the cart which you could borrow from the office. Anyways, the point is you think there’s not much stuff, just little stuff. But its the little stuff which kills you. You need to put them in plastic bags. Then you have the other stuff which I used the suitcase as a substitute of the cart. How many times I went up and down 8th and 14th floor I don’t know (more than 20 times maybe?). Actually that’s not the worse, the worse is shifting it in this freaking summer weather.

Oh my f*cking god.

Even though Malaysia is freaking hot, it’s still not as unbearable as it is here. Now I finally know what it is when they’re talking about humidity. I thought hot was just hot. Now I know that there’s a big difference between hot dry and hot humid. It’s just so freaking humid in Hong Kong. I’ve never EVER experience sweating bullets and feeling super sticky back in KL when waiting for the train or the bus. In Hong Kong, the moment I step out of my room, I start feeling all sticky which makes me not wanna go out and explore. Damn it. The number of showers which I would have to take if I do.

Training’s gonna start next week. And the weather forecast says its gonna rain everyday (it has been raining every morning this whole week which is so screwing my basketball ‘training’).

I wanna come home. Bad. *whines whines*

‘Grey’

That’s all I can say about today’s paper. MECH1009 Properties of Materials 1.

It’s Chemistry A Level trial paper all over again. See you guys back in Malaysia next year as I’d most probably have to stay back to repeat the paper this coming August.

Tomorrow – MECH1013 Engineering Mechanics. Sigh.

Apparently, It Can.

After they finished their labs, I contacted Iris. And found out where the mysterious HW LG-3 was. I had to take the lift down and walk down the stairs further. !@$!@#!@#

FINE.

I went back to my hall as you know from the previous post that I had a book due today. I wanted to have a little snack of honey flavoured cereal with milk which I bought fro Wellcome. I thought to myself ‘yay! I finally get to open that carton of milk!’ And when I peeled of the protective thingy and was about to pour it into my bowl of cereal, I noticed the expiry date tag – 17-12-2007. ARGH! SERIOUSLY! I was practically yelling in my room and luckily my roommate was not in.

Oh and that’s not all. I had no choice but to use my Vitasoy as a substitute. As I was squirting it into the bowl, I don’t know what happened and some of it kena my boots. Soyabean-milk-soiled boots. Does have a ring to it, NOT!

If any more crappy stuff happens to me, I’ll really start believing that someone has used some voodoo witch craft, laying a bloody evil curse on me.

There’s a limit to how much ‘positive’ thinking I can generate. I am only starting to get the hang of this ‘look at the cup half-full’ mindset or whatever.

Damn it.

The Worst Week EVER aka. Can It Get Any Worse?

Let’s see. How should I even begin? Maybe I’ll list them down like a f*cking schedule+summary.

Tuesday:
My parents left to fly back to KL. I went with Maryanne for grocery shopping at Wellcome in the evening. Since I was going to be gone out for long, I shut down my notebook. When I came back, pressed the Power On button, 3 f*cking beeps sounded (1 long 2 short) and the whole display screen was dead blank. I tried turning it off and on so many freaking times but still that same horrible sound and nothingness.

Catch: I had a freaking Autocad assignment due the next day, and a Logbook due today. They were in my HD. And I didn’t back up all my files because there was no symptoms of my notebook crashing. F*CK. However, no excuse for me not backing up.

The amount of panic and desperation, you can hardly imagine. I called up my brother in Melbourne to ask him how I should proceed. He suggested I take out the hard disk and connect it to an external hard disk casing which I so happen to have! I thought I was saved. But oh no, when a hallmate helped me take it out and was ready to put it in the external hard disk casing, turns out they aren’t compatible. My notebook’s hard drive is SATA and the external hard disk parallel ATA. F*CK!

There was nothing I could do but to do the assignment all over again. I ran over to another friend’s place to get the Autocad installation CD from him and then rush over to Maryanne’s hall (who was so kind to put up with me and lend me her laptop to install and do my work, coz the ME computer lab was only opened until 10.30pm or something like that), paid HKD31.30 to stay over in her room. However, that version of Autocad could only work on Windows 2000 or XP and Maryanne was using Vista. I decided to try a solution suggested on the internet – preheat (turn it on, leave it running for >30 minutes) my notebook and try restarting it. Miraculously, it worked! I backed up all my files into my external hard disk, but did not do so for my songs (15.5gb) because I had not enough space. *sob*

Wednesday:
Worked until 5.30a.m. before getting a little sleep. Woke up late for maths which was supposed to start at 9.30a.m. I thought that it was useless since I’d be sleeping in class anyways and decided to go back to my hall to print out my work.

When I reached my room, only did I realize it was Thursday and my roommate had classes and I forgot to bring take my key when I was rushing to Maryanne’s place. I had to pay another HKD5 to borrow the key from the lobby. F*CK. And when I was finally in my room ready to print out my work, my freaking notebook wouldn’t boot again. This time, preheating it did not work anymore. F*CK. So, I had to go back to the campus to see whether anyone had printing quota for me to borrow. But like me, everyone had used up theirs. Luckily, I called up my jongmate and she had some. Thank god.

Thursday:
Had classes. There was a guest speaker from ICAC during one of my lectures and followed by a quiz. Luckily, the quiz given by the guestspeaker was quite simple. Felt like ‘Dao De Jiao Yu’ all over again. Ethics. Anyways, finished class at 4p.m. rushed to Tsim Sha Tsui to look for the HP Service Centre with the invoice of the notebook which arrived in the morning (mum DHL-ed it over and it cost RM70.00. F*CK!). Finally found the place after 30 minutes of roaming around, trying to find Star House on Salisbury Road. The servicing had to take 3-5 working days. I’ve heard people saying in online forums that HP has very poor service. They usually drag on for weeks and stuff like that. But I hope that’s not the case here in Hong Kong, and that the people here are really what everyone thinks – efficient. *prays hard*

Went for dinner with Maryanne and Daphne, a ‘threesome’ outing for Valentine’s day. Haha. I was so worked up that I didn’t even care that I have an unfinished logbook. I really really wanted some oncoming bus to slam right into me whenever I was walking back and forth from my hall to the campus. We had all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ in Causeway Bay which we had to wait for like more than 30 or 40 minutes? I don’t really remember, because I was ‘with good company’ (quotes Maryanne). Anyways, when we finally had a table, they told us that we could only eat for a time limit of 1 hour and 15 minutes. F*CK. We rushed to get meat and side dishes. The food was plentiful and satisfying. But when the freaking bill came, it was HKD 144 per person instead of the displayed price HKD 118. Rupa-rupanya, V-day’s price was HKD 124 per person and there was another HKD 20 for tea money. Now, I know why my brother advised me to always read properly before signing anything in Hong Kong. Damn it.

When I was back at my hall and checked my receipt for the collection of my pants from G2000. It was ‘14/2/2008′. And I was ‘ …… ‘. If I had checked my receipt before that, I could have collected it straightaway before having that BBQ. ARGH!

Today:
I thought class started at 9.30a.m. and rushed over to campus. When I tiba-ed, the class looked weird. The lecturer was another person, and there wasn’t a single familiar face. I held the classroom door ajar for a moment, faces turned, and I quickly scrambled back out. I thought there was a switch in classrooms and I panicked again. I quickly called my class rep and rupa-rupanya I saw the timetable wrongly – classes was at 10.40a.m. F*CK!

And now, why am I sitting here narrating on my horrible past few days? It’s because I can’t freaking hell find where is HW LG-3 and my fellow lab partners are there which means that they can’t receive any reception on their mobile phones so I am unable to contact them to find out where the hell it is. I thought it was in HW 1-16 but rupa-rupanya, it was amended to HW LG-3. *screams*

Oh, and… I just found out I have a freaking book due today, and I’ll have to walk all the way back to my hall to get it and all the way back to campus. F*CK. And I was thinking of staying here to do my next Autocad assignment.  

If my day gets any worse, will someone please take a gun and shoot it right at my head. I really can’t take this anymore.

KILL ME.

Kopi-O License.

Incident/Accident (I don’t even know which is the proper term to use..):

1) Drove the left side of the car up a curb and dented the bottom left part of the car which (thank god) was hardly noticeable unless you squatted down to look on Mum’s Day because it was slopey, couldn’t see it and was too busy looking out for cars of my right to turn out. Sigh.

2) Drove (yes, DROVE, not reverse nor anything) the left front wheel (and yes, the LEFT side, AGAIN) into a drain at night. Again, it was slopey and I was waiting anxiously for the HUGE Rapid KL bus to pass by before slowly easing out. But oh nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, KONK! I drove right into the drain and swore – ‘FUCK!’. My parents and godparents were in the car. Luckily, my dad was too angry and busy yelling at me and the rest of my family were more concern about the car. Anyways, the drain’s width was smaller than the wheel’s diameter so no dents or anything like that, just scratches. Two guys and my goddad lifted the front car up while my dad hit on the accelerator to reverse the car back and it was okay. Sigh.

3) Drove(?) up another curb, this time on the right side. Was not so horrible this time as the curb wasn’t so high and I was just touching it unlike the other time where the car basically went UP and DOWN again. BUMP BUMP! *faints*

Damage count to the Vios : 3

Sigh. Yes, it’s true. I’m a horrible driver. I wish my brother was here to teach me because the way my parents do with ‘drive slower!’ and ‘be more careful!’ and ’see how I drive!’ doesn’t really help much at all. Unlike my brother who tries to teach me how to have a better judgement on MSN with actual theories and not just vague advise like those.

I wish I had the chance to wreck up a ciplak car while experimenting all the turning circles, angles, whatever and not have to bang up the Vios. Everytime, my heart sinks when I realize I damaged it again. Sigh. And it doesn’t help at all when my dad shouts and yells at me. How come he doesn’t realize that I’m already in sorta a shock and know that I’m wrong and that I AM trying to improve, not make the same mistake again? Give me a break.

I’m still wondering why Malaysia uses Kancils as driving test cars. See what kind of people (meaning me) they give license to! It’s amusing too, now that I observe that whenever I damage the car, it doesn’t involve collisions with other cars or animals, just INANIMATE OBJECTS! Things that are STATIONARY!

GOD I SUCK!

Hope my brother sends those sensor thingies which I’ll install on the car quickly over from Australia!

Great.

Screwed up the only paper I thought I would actually do a little better for (except for Maths lar that is).

Just great. Life sucks.

Please just bear with me as this is the only place I can wallow myself in misery in and whine all I want without hurting anyone else’s ear drums. Thank you.

Screwed Up.

Funny. Was feeling tired and not really great yesterday (probably due to you-know-what). Anyhow, I got stuck on Tom Cross’s Chapter 5 of ELS until midnight. I still had Mutasim’s Chapter 5-9 which I totally hadn’t touched nor payed attention in his class before. But I still ‘napped’ hoping to absorb more at a quicker pace later.

Guess what? 3a.m. alarm rang.

Snooze.

Rang again.

Snooze.

Again.

Turn off.

Woke up at…. 8a.m.

(Quoting Jian Wen) SHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTT!!!

Sigh. And I hadn’t even finished Chapter 5! So I decided to sacrifice those FOUR CHAPTERS and re-read Selvan’s and Dino’s. And thank god I did if not I would have passed up a booklet of blank pages just now. This exam was sad. Not as sad as my A-Level Chemistry trials paper though, on the bright side. At least I think I’ll be able to get more than 20(?) marks. Bwahahahahahaa!

Somehow, I always get really happy and high when I enter the exam hall unprepared. XD. It feels great! Totally the opposite of what I feel when I prepare a lot. It’s like coz I don’t wanna feel let down after all that effort and tend to pressure and worry myself to death. Oh well.

I have Fluid Mechanics paper tomorrow. And here I am, blogging. I just never really learn from my mistakes. Does anyone do actually? I wonder.

All I Need – Mat Kearney :
…..And if all we’ve got, is what no one can break, I know I love you, if that’s all we can take, the tears are coming down, they’re mixing with the rain, I know I love you, if that’s all we can take.
A pool is running for miles on the concrete ground, we’re eight feet deep and the rain is still coming down, the TV’s playing it all out of town, we’re grabbing at the fray for something that won’t drown…..

I am grabbing at the fray for something that will drown.