#20 Start of Summer

Start of Summer


It's summer-time again! This is my second summer and marks the end of my sophomore year at this university. Who knew I'd have lasted two years in this place called Taiwan, that I have disliked during most of my residency here? Ever since I quit Monash, I never really had the thought that I'd be one day a university graduate, really, never even once it came across my mind, though I really wish that I could graduate, get a college degree and start working, this is a story for another time I guess. 

 My summer job which is due to start this week has been delayed because my Certificate of Eligibility application was approved late so my application for the visa was also delayed. That said, I had one whole week of an actual holiday of not needing to do anything, which is quite good because I really needed some rests.

 For the whole week, I was just doing my own stuff, minding my own business, sleeping really late at night and waking up whenever I feel like it, procrastinating on my bed like nobody's business, really felt like paradise for me. 

 Also, since everyone was so free with nothing else to do, I always make dinner and everyone would actually come over and eat, and then we'd have movie (they preferred horror) and sometimes beer, everyone was just chilling and enjoying life, God, I hope this could actually last longer, preferably a month or something.

 One more thing is that my friend lent me his gaming laptop for this whole week, so I have actually been gaming for almost the whole week now, that is really quenching my long-chronic thirst for some good quality gaming. Sometimes I really regret that I bought this shit of a laptop like it can't really do much except like document processing and shit (which to be honest, the whole point when I bought this laptop), then the battery decided to not last for more than 2 hours, even on super power saving mode in which the performance was cut in half, and then the keyboard started to not working as well, which really frustrated me because my parents have really spent a fortune on this laptop for me.

 Well, I guess I could say that the first week of summer started really great for me like really gave me some time to charge myself back up before going to Japan for my summer internship. Well, I do wish that the internship will go well because I am, to be honest, quite nervous about it. First thing is considering I have to stand for 8 hours a day, I am afraid that my back would be pain again from my old sport injuries, and then there's this fear about not being able to cope up with the Japanese style of work, I've heard so much about how Japanese work and how stressful they are, not only because of work but because of all the rules and the way the Japanese socialise.

 That said, even though I know more or less from how the Japanese works, I still get quite nervous really. So, I spent quite some time during this week to have some conversations with myself and try to adjust and orient myself to try to open myself to the Japanese society and the brand new environment, with so much isolation from what I have been comfortable with and stuff, I even Googled on how to adapt to a new working environment, Google Street Viewed a lot on the vicinity where I will be spending the next two months on, looking up the profile of the hotel that I will be working in and stuff, so to minimize the shock that I might get when I arrived there.

 Well, this post should've been quite a happy and relaxing one, and I guess it took quite a gloomy turn. But, I think I am still optimistic that I would be able to cope and adapt to the new environment there. I wish myself best of luck there!

#19 End of Semester

End of Semester

Semester Review


End of the semester came so quickly, it felt like #1 has just started and now it's already a few more weeks towards half of #53, really, time flies.

 This semester was overall quite hectic that I have had so many things to do and deal with, well, most of them association work and stuff, and because of that, I have neglected quite many things, especially in my studies. Of course, neglection to my studies wasn't solely because of association work, another big reason was because of good-old procrastination.

 Remember during #1 I have set up a few goals to achieve during this semester? Well, almost none of them has been realised. For the income part, I think I have achieved almost NT$8,000 a month, still around NT$1,000 to reach the goal, but I think for the next semester I am going to be able to well exceed that goal as I am getting part-time employment. I am going to have so much more time to myself next semester, and I think I am going to focus more on working and saving up money.

 For the other goals, none of them has been achieved really, so looking back, I feel like I haven't been achieving anything that I wanted to achieve, only giving time to studies and association work, plus procrastination. Not to say that studies and association work isn't important, but I felt like these two combined have already taken a huge piece of my time pie, and I feel like I don't really have any other time for anything else.

 Still, another thing that I am still having a hard time to overcome is my habit of procrastination. The fact is, most of the time I know it damn well that I really have a lot of things queuing up waiting for me to finish, but somehow I just couldn't make myself start really doing it, until the last moment, when panic strikes. I really do not understand how this happens, although I really try to focus and do, sitting in front of my desks, removing the distraction, somehow I just couldn't focus and just unconsciously going to do some other things thinking I am being productive. 

 Well, that day I watched this video talking about procrastination and how the mind of a procrastinator works, and I found the description really accurate, so I thought I might want to share it here.

 Well, I have been having a lot of fun during this semester and I really enjoyed life. Every day was a busy day but maybe because of that, I didn't bother about many other things, like the semester goals and things like that. I didn't save any money for this semester, and I didn't achieve much of my goals this semester, and I stopped doing Spanish on Duolingo and stuff, I was only focusing on association work as well as studies. But it was really a happy one, probably the one semester that I enjoyed the most and the most stress-free one.

 Well, hopefully, I'll be able to meet my goals next semester while I think of what kinds of goals I should achieve, and this time really put my effort into achieving it.



#18 Birthday Week

Birthday Week


It's my birthday week this week!

 Well, I am officially 23 this week and to be honest, I don't really feel anything much. There was one big surprise for me this birthday though, Joyce came all the way from the Philippines secretly to give me a big, huge birthday surprise. Well, she did what I couldn't, really. I love you so much, Joyce.

 Well, Happy 23rd Birthday to me now. Don't really have anything to wish for except for the happiness and wellbeing to everyone around me, friends and family. Had a blessed year though, everything went quite well, although still, procrastination is always on me, it was a good year otherwise. 

 Well, Happy 23rd birthday to myself! It has been a really good and blessed year, and I really appreciate all the celebrations that everyone has done for me, especially to Joyce who travelled across an ocean just to celebrate my birthday. Thank you, Joyce, and I love you so much.

#17 Trip to Kaohsiung!

 Trip to Kaohsiung


After a year-long work together with the ex-cos of the Malaysian Student Association, we actually planned a trip to Kaohsiung, a southern city in Taiwan, sometimes more seen as a southern rival of the northern Taipei City, as you really do see a lot of people from Kaohsiung comparing themselves with Taipei and vice versa.

 I have been to Kaohsiung once, though not really of a tourism nature, I went there during my first few days in Taiwan as I have left some important documents back in Malaysia and I went there to retrieve it from my brother. Back then I only had a few hours in Kaohsiung, not really able to explore the city much, and finally, after two years of confining myself in Taipei and New Taipei City, I finally flew out of the cage and travelled.

 To be honest, I wasn't really enthusiastic about travelling inside Taiwan because I thought that everywhere in Taiwan is more or less the same, and I am not really a nature kind of guy so most of my travel happens in city bounds, and to me, cities looks the same inside the same country, more or less. If it wasn't because I take this trip as a trip to strengthen bonds between my fellows that worked our ass out for one whole year, I really would not want to go.

 Well, we've are in Kaohsiung City while we speak, and although it is a city, with a population of about one-third of my residence New Taipei City, it was much less crowded gave me a serene vibe in an urban setting. The roads are considerably wide even for alleys, those super-tight alleys that are very common in Taipei are less of a view here in Kaohsiung, in fact, I have never seen those during the times I am here, and I thought, this is how a planned-city looks like!

 But urban-planning wise, there is one thing about Kaohsiung that is kind of annoying to me - the climate. I have long heard stories about how Kaohsiung is very hot especially during summertime, almost unbearable kind of hot. Well, I am here during times when it's not really summer yet but it's not really spring, and it got hot, really hot. Well, just to keep it simple, all of us got sunburnt quite bad after only two days under the sun, some even with sunscreen on, which really says something about Kaohsiung's sun.

 The trip was planned as our "consolation" or something as such after one year being together working on and going through so much together as a team, although the attendance wasn't 100%, but at least most of us are here already, which I don't think after this we can gather together like this anymore since everything will be caught up with their future planning and stuff, of course, it is impossible to have everyone coming together again, well, sounds really familiar. 

 The trip was really fun, we got our first-time stay at a backpacker's hostel, and lucky our group has just enough number of people to occupy two full rooms all for ourselves, at least for our first-time experience, we don't have to be stuffed with strangers. But overall, the hostel was quite acceptable, equipped with a common room that has tables to take to people, or we can enjoy 24/7 movies at the lounge, or we can have games and beer and stuff at the rooftop lounge, although a little hot. We had quite some beer as well as games together on the first night since we were still energetic enough. The hotel itself is really cosy enough that we really enjoyed our stay there.

 For food, Kaohsiung City really does have some good offering for food. We went to Ruifeng night market there, which is quite well-known, considering that when we got there, it was cramped as hell, like it was totally the first time in my life where I really experience people cramping like sardines trying to walk, it's really like a full-scale grid-lock traffic jam, except replacing cars with people; and we came across this presumably Filipino woman (I caught her Filipino accent) pushing her way out of the crowd without considering the fact that it was so packed literally no one could move. I almost fell down because of her pushing, well, that was a little bit of bad experience but back to the food, the night market was really different from what they have back in Taipei.

 Night market in Taipei although much more spacious with much more stalls, a lot of the stalls sells the exact same thing, even having identical stall banner and design, so to me, Taipei's night market offering is really lacking in terms of variety, and I got sick of it real quick for the fact that they sell the same thing every freaking where; if you'd try taking away all the identical stalls leaving only one left in the night market, I'd say half of the night market would now be empty. But, this isn't the case for Kaohsiung, there was just so much more variety inside, although still with some repetition, I was really spoiled with choices! Considering the prices aren't really too high there, I had a ton of food really, especially with those sweet sweet oysters which I couldn't really find in night markets in Taipei, I really enjoyed it. I ate like 20 plus oysters in one night and I'd say that I really, really enjoyed food and night market in Kaohsiung.

We went to quite a few places of interest though, in Kaohsiung, we actually made plans for the trip, due to some delays and the weather, we skipped quite some of the plans for good. We visited Ruifeng Night Market, Qijin Old Street and places around Qijin as there are quite some popular tourist spots there. We rented 3 4-seated, electrical-powered bicycles to go around the old street, it was fun, the weather is so good that despite getting sunburn, we got to travel freely around the old street, and took quite some nice group photos, it was really fun, especially when we were on the bicycle, we talked and laughed, having the time of our lives after a hectic year together.

 Overall, the trip was really a successful one to me as everything went very well. Yes, it is the last time that most of us are able to come together and do something as one, to come together and talk, play, laugh and really have fun and bond together. Really, to me, this is the best kind of ending for this team that got together for only a year. Although from this on, at least for me, the team has been officially dissolved. 

 Anyhow, for the first time travelling out of Taipei and actually have a trip in Taiwan, the trip has been really unforgettable, it's been so long since I had a road trip with friends and I really was enjoying the experience again, let's hope we would have more time together in the future! Here's to our friendship and more trips together!
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#15 #16 End of Another Chapter

 End of Another Chapter

...where to go next?

#16 marks the official end of my term as exco for the Malaysian Students' Association in my university. Time really flies, it felt like one month ago when I first started taking up the post of treasurer for the association.

 To be honest, taking up the post of treasurer came as a bit of surprise to me as I wasn't really told that I will be the treasurer for the association, especially when I have absolutely no idea about how to do journal entries as well as all those financial report thingies. Initially, I was going to be the vice-president for the association, which I was actually asked to take up, but then because of reasons, as well as considering that I might not have what it takes to take up such heavy responsibility, I declined the offer and opted to take up another post instead, but not expecting anything really in fact, so, when I was contacted by the president, I was told straight that I was going to be taking up the post of the treasurer.

 Well, being in the position for one whole year, besides getting some chronic lack of sleep and, I actually managed to learn quite a bit about money management in an organisation, and more than anything, being able to work in a team, and able to learn and practice more on how to communicate in a team.

 Well, as of now, all these association work finally came to an end with a super extravaganza party, together with many other associations and societies, we did had a hell of a last day when we were rushing to get all the documents ready for inspection during the annual report day for all the association and societies in the university, but although it's very tiring, I didn't feel too happy that it is going to end, but in fact, I started to feel a little empty.

 Indeed. Whenever you are freed up from the busy schedule, you will empty inside, having no idea what to do next. I did give some thoughts into what am I going to do after all these have finished though, I thought of continuing to focus on my Spanish studies, and learning some programming, like overall, I wanted to learn stuff that prepares me for the future, like practical skills, as well as spending more time working so that I can meet my goal of earning at least $8000 a month.

 Well, no matter what the next step is, I'd say this year was very fulfilling for me, like work hard play hard kind fo fulfilling. It really did remind me of the days I work in an association during my high school days, having a great team working together towards the same goal, that feeling is the best.

 I only hope that the friendship we fostered during this one year will see its continuity in the future. Great job everyone.

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