2 weeks at home and 2 days in KL. That's how short my holiday was. Only now I realized it was too short but when I was doing nothing around at home, I thought it was long.



Home is great. My parents are as usual. My sister getting more and more fanatic of anything pink. My brother acquired the most changes. He has trimmed down by doing workouts on a daily basis. I lost him in arm wrestling. At Form 4, he has already towered over me. I think he's easily a 6-footer now. He took up drumming since my dad's drums were now put in his bedroom. My sister quietly practice it when he's not around. So, both of them can drum. My dad and I can't it's hard to have your arms and legs moving independently. My grandaunt is as usual.



Bintulu, my hometown, have changed a little bit. There's a double lane highway to the hospital. The road to the new airport is still under construction. Pizza hut just opened a branch in town and everyone's visiting it. Many are not used to the restaurant. I could see the lack of confidence in the patron faces as they eat. On the week I arrived, we had take away pizzas for 3 nights in a row. Everyone noticed I got fatter. When my family first saw me, they all burst in laughter. My neck they said is as big as my head. I had to come with all sorts of excuses. My hair was long and that contributed to the "fat" effect.



I didn't manage to meet most of my friends. The only ones I hung out with were my friends from UiTM and Unimas who are on holiday too. Ahmad is struggling with first year law in Shah Alam, Afizal doing civil in Unimas while the rest are doing diplomass in Unimas.



I was able to use the car almost everyday. Driving around town reminds me some of the good times I had with her. Even when I was in KL, the Swatch shop and Starbucks brought memories of mixed feelings on our last... jalan-jalan. She's not around coz her holidays are at year-end. She gave me a shirt with Size S. My family saw the shirt and the only person who fitted into it was my mum. I'm prompted to go back again this winter since I've not seen here for over a year. But two weeks of winter holidays would mean a high flight price over days at home ratio. If my mum's not using her enrich points, maybe I'll beg for her to buy me a passage home.

I've put aside blogging for a more than a week now. The trip home was long and tiring and the jetlag is horrible.



Will write more once I'm in the mood to write.

I'm writing this from Pittsburgh's departure terminal using the free wireless. Our flight to Newark is delayed till 8 p.m. from 5.45 p.m. It's only 5.1 p.m.



This week has been an interesting week. Not the usual week where it is the same the week before and the week after. I'm going back. The summer session was wrapping up. My long-dreamt iPod arrived. Last night, I reformatted my laptop for the first time I bought it. In fact, I reformatted it twice. First it was hit by some spyware before I updated Windows. Tried to install Fedora but IBM's install utility formmated my windows partition as NTFS and Disk Druid can't resize NTFS. I'll wait till home where I can get a bootlegged copy of Partition Magic and resize the partition.



The iPod is an amazingly beautiful object to posssess. I had problems transferring songs.

The past few days were not regular days for me. The second summer session is finishing and I had to drag myself to finish up the last history homework and the take-home final. Professor Kats gave us a treat of pizzas and sodas for class today. I had to make my presentation on Byzantine Empire and it's cultural legacy. Hassan wrapped up the class by making a presentation on Malaysia. Professor Kat is very fond of Malaysian students. I suppose he has met many of us from the previous semesters that he had thought. This session had altogether 12 Malaysians for him. He kept mentioning about Malaysia at least once a week throughout the 6-week period. He commented on its diverse culture and traditionalism despite being developing nation as well. He said many electronics products here in the United States are manufactured in Malaysia.

I had a conversation with Irwan's landlord yesterday. He was a very talkative old man who digressed from giving Irwan advice on safety rules in his rented apartment to talking about Malaysia and state of steel workers. Like Professor Kats, he comented on the many electronic products manufactured on Malaysia. However, I am not that particularly proud of this fact for many of these products, perhaps all, are of Japanese companies who took advantage of the cheap wages in our country. Have we benefited from the foreign investments especially in the industrial areas of Shah Alam and Penang? Perhaps economically but I doubt it would a long term one. Malaysians are hired as blue-collared workers. I doubt there will be transfer of technologies as what some may have expected. Other companies such as Dell and Intel have massive operations in Penang but there is very little significant R&D going on over there.



How much more educated can the Malaysian society be? We had thrived through our cheap labor but that was simple human capital that did not require any advanced knowledge in maths or science. I've been reading my world history book especially on the topic on how Russia and Japan emerged to be industrialized nations. Japan in particular had selective Westernization which kept certain Confucian values. Education is given top priority so literacy rate was among the highest in the world. There seem to be a recipe for this success. I suppose many Malaysian leaders and politics have encountered similar readings on the successes of other nations but I am not really sure how are they working on it. The Prime Minister addressed the matter of having a knowledge-based labor force. He spoke on it inspiringly but I am not certain on how much work has he and his government has put on it. It is true also that the efforts come from the people.



As I grew up, my friends and I grew more matured. We once limited discussion to matters of entertainment like toys, sports and games. I've been discussing a lot about the state of our country with my friends especially with my fellow scholars who I've been living, eating and studying with for the past 2 years. They came up with ideals on how this country should be run. They came up with critiques especially on the education system. Professor Kats mentioned last week that it is good for the young ones to be dreamers as whether we like or not, everyone has to go through certain changes in life. The ability of being able to dream fits the ability of being able to adapt to changes. Anyway, I do pray that with all these ideals and dreams hope for a nation so unique and culturally diverse like Malaysia, come great actions. Haha. Sounds like Spider-man.

British tracks worth listening to :



Eric Clapton - Blue Eyes Blue

George Michael - Fast Love

George Michael - Amazing

Lisa Stansfield - Real Thing

Simply Red - Say You Love Me

Jamiroquai - Canned Heat



I think I have an inclination for British music especially the one with good bass and jazzy beats.

Looking at the date on the computer clock, I just remember that it has been a year since I left Shah Alam. The last few days before I left home was pretty boring I stayed later since MARA had a pre-departure briefing after the summer session ended.



Packing was an easy thing to do. It was more joyous than unpacking which was a very emotional chore after returning from Sarawak. I had built quite a home in my Cemara room that a single economy flight ticket won't allow that much luggage to be brought home. Lucky thing my mother came a few weeks before I left so I seized the opportunity of her lightweight travel.



I have always been a last-minute person. I enjoy procastinating and the adrenaline rush of doing things at the 11th hour. I did not really pack until the day before my flight back home. Thanks to a crazy night out with Tzuo Hann and Evelyn where I had my last glasses of beer before being an underaged drinker in America. As a result, there were things that were left in the room. I left my pillow which over the one year period, had acquired a rather strange world mapped due to the sweat and occasional drooling in my sleep. I regretfully left my bolster that had been in my possession since I was 6 years old. I left a self-assembled table (Nicholas assembled it actually) that I bought from the nearby Giant supermartket for RM 50. I left my laundry basket. I even left my Calculus textbook but fortunately I managed to tell my roommate to pass it to a friend of mine who is from the hometown. I remembered rushing to Cemara 4 hours before my flight to Los Angeles just to pick up the book. Christopher (the guy whom I left the textbook with) was in a biology class in Section 17 so I can't pick it up.



But among the things I left, nothing was more unusually meaningful than.....



a spanner.