Packing, Leaving

It’s basically one of my least favourite parts of being overseas: putting all your stuffs in boxes, not to mention throwing some away because they won’t fit; getting the melancholic feeling when you see an empty room instead a room with your stuffs strewn all over it; and enduring a thirteen hour flight back home. Gee, what a way to celebrate one’s birthday.

Then again, maybe it’s just me. I know others who were tremendously excited on the prospect of going back home. Crazy people.

Anyway, I wish to say thanks to everybody who had wished me a happy birthday on Facebook and other places. Now that I’m going back to primitive dial-up connection, I might not be able to update my blog as much, so in the near future, if you’re wondering whether I’ve dropped off the face of the planet, then rest assured. I’m still breathing… somewhere.

The next time will be from Malaysia. Cheers!

Yaz.

Good News!

Well, since it’s overdue, I’ll give a recap about what happened during the May Ball, but first, let’s give way to a much more exciting piece of announcement:

I got a FIRRRSSSTT!

Yep, that’s right. A First! A First! A First! First! First! First! FIRRRRSSSST!

My friends and I went swimming in the morning until noon. Then on our way back we decided to stop at the Senate House, where the results are posted, to check them. I was really nervous, for reasons that I’m sure I’ve explained before. I think my friend was, as well, since he dreamt the night before that he got a two-two. So we went there, approached the notice boards and looked at the results. I saw my name absent from the First list and my heart sank. But then it wasn’t on the 2-1 list either. ‘Well, that can’t be right. There’s no way in hell I can get a 2-2,’ I thought. Then I realised it was the year above’s results and ours were just below it. And there’s my name, in the midst of Firsts. I think I screamed out a bit, just like the one above. Ha ha ha.

Oh yeah, my friend got a first too. We were delighted!

The May Ball was awesome. I heard that last year a bulk of the people attending have to queue for like two or three hours to get in but this year I stayed in a friend’s room who lives inside one of the main courts so we got in earlier than the rest of the people. They have tents with different kinds of food inside and at the Neville Court’s cloisters they have champagnes on ice. Not that I tasted it so I don’t know how good they are but from comments I heard apparently they were like £80 per bottle, which is quite expensive as champagnes go, so they must be really good. Next, going out to the backs they have a tent for oysters, nice and fresh. In hindsight, I should have gone back for seconds, thirds and fourths (well, I did go back for seconds) since the oyster tent was only available for three hours until midnight.

There were also tents of Mexican foods, chocolate truffles and cookies, pizza, smoked salmon bagels, ice cream and chocolate fountains, available in milk or white, in which you can drench your strawberries in. They were really good. There were also swings, a giant slide and bumper car rides. Unfortunately, I didn’t take lots of pictures that night. The only ones I have were shots, or rather videos of the fireworks performance, which I must say, was probably far better than the Cambridge City Council’s on Guy Fawkes Night. So there you go.

Notice the river was packed with people. They’re not really attending the ball. They were just folks wanting to catch a glimpse of the fireworks up-close so they parked, or moored their punts on the Trinity part of the river. If somebody falls in, I doubt that person can resurface easily die to the sheer number of punts on the river.

They were also offering punt rides for the night, which sadly, I didn’t take advantage of, since my friends were more interested in the bands and music that were playing. Which reminds me, I’m not usually a fan of live music and bands (though I sometimes dance in my room, with the curtains drawn close) but there was one that was really good and I couldn’t help but join in. I think it was called the Go! Team, or something.

The Ball lasted from nine until six in the morning, but there were always things to do, so you won’t get bored, at least not until the last half hour, when things were winding down. They serve coffee and tea all night too to keep you awake. Personally, when I was tired of walking around I always nipped into the tent where they have stand-up comedians, most of which were really really good. One in particular reminded me of my Londoner ex-roommate, the way they talk is exactly similar. It was very enjoyable listening to the lot.

At the end of the ball they took the survivor’s photo, which is the photo of people who had lasted the whole ball. I was in there, though I’m not sure if I looked okay or if I looked shabby and exhausted with bloodshot eyes.

And yeah, my friends (yes, more than one, and on separate occasions) complimented me on my bowtie, which looked really good, especially for someone who had just learnt how to tie it that very afternoon. Yay, I felt elated!

So yeah, that’s the ball as I remember it. There were other finer details as well but telling each and every single thing here might be pushing it, he he he.

Yaz.

I just learnt…

…how to tie a bowtie!

Went to Marks and Spencer the other day looking for a bowtie. There I met this guy in my college at the bowtie section, so I asked him, ‘Buying a tie for the May Ball?’

He said, ‘Yeah.’

‘You’re buying the one that you have to tie for yourself?’

‘Definitely’ was his answer.

Because of that, I felt reluctant to buy one of those clip-on ones. Guess it’s kinda the same as when you’re in primary school and you wore those clip-on ties. Not bowties, but normal ties. I think I was also influenced by an interview with an army officer that I read somewhere, in which he said he’ll never be caught dead in one of those clip-on bowties.

So here I am, a mere few hours before the May Ball begins, learning how to tie a bowtie. Here’s the end result, what do you think?

Well, couldn’t have done it without YouTube, so I’ll be forever grateful. You know, when I stand at the mirror, looking at it, I can’t really help not feeling a bit like, err… Bond. Ha ha ha.

Yaz.

I Can’t Get Out of Here?!

The thing is, I thought after exams you’re supposed to be free to do whatever and go wherever your heart desires. Instead, I found that not to be the case, for me at least. Don’t know how that happened. A friend in London who was also my housemate when I was in Wales has asked me to visit him there lest, as he put it, he’ll be sad (I must admit, I’ve been putting that off for more than two years already). This time I was planning to, but then I realised that there’s always something going on here in Cambridge these days: a few volleyball matches, end-of-year barbeques, end-of-year get-togethers, the May Ball, and the most awaited unveiling of the exam results, which will happen sometime next week. I really wanted to be there when they announced the results to see it for myself since with this sense of impending doom that I feel at the moment, there’s no way I’m gonna ask somebody else to check it for me, but alas, we don’t know for sure when, exactly, is that going to happen. So there you go. I can’t extricate myself from this place until the end of term. The best I can do is to hope that the results come out early and I have the last few days for a London peregrination, even though that means I have to rush through my packing to go back home.

There was a booming display of fireworks across the sky last night. Right when I was about to go to sleep too, how convenient. Well, that signifies one thing: the May Week is here, and the colleges have started to organise their May Balls. Wonder which college was it last night. Well, I’m really looking forward to the Trinity Ball on Monday. There’ll be food, overflowing wine (and non-alcoholic drinks too, of course), chauffeured punts, fireworks, and not to forget succulent oysters. From nine o’ clock up until dawn. Wonder if I can last that long.

Yaz.

Pollens

I guess I’ll call today ‘The day of the pollens’. But seriously, I’ve been watching from my room window and those white pollens were everywhere, fluttering around ever so gently with the breeze. Some were swirling in my room, even though I opened the window just a teeny bit. Must be a heck of a day for people with hay fever.

Not much happening at the moment but there are quite a few things to wait in anticipation for. There’s the Trinity May Ball, which is going to be on the 18th this year. Speaking of which, I don’t have a suit for it yet. Or a white shirt with pointy collars. Or a black bow tie. Wonder if I should just hire a suit for the night or buy one that is passable to wear some other time. Sigh… to buy or not to buy. That is the question.


Unlike last year, this year we’ll get the exam results before the end of term. And unlike last year in which I wasn’t worried about the results, this year it'll be a nerve wrecking wait. There are people who kept telling me, "Oh, you'll be fine. You'll get a first" and to be honest, that just unnerved me even more since people have put expectations on me. Guess this is what happens when you know you did badly, though to be fair the exam WAS hard, and there was a general consessus about this. Oh well... just wait and see.

Yaz.

Choir

Hello people. I had quite an enjoyable day yesterday. There was an event going on in Trinity… well, two actually… namely the Trinity College choir singing from the college rooftops and from punts on the river. The rooftop one was held at noon while the latter happened at around nine in the evening. I recorded some of the singing on my camera but I stupidly adjusted it to a crappy setting and… well, the videos suck. Shows how much I know about cameras. Anyway, watch at your own risk.

This is the one held at noon.

The other one is held at dusk on the riverbank behind Trinity. My seating position isn’t really the best one… you can’t even see the choir people singing. And there’s the fact that I don’t really have an ear for choir music so I can’t really say anything about it. However, what I can say is that the whole thing by the river feels nice, lots of people gathered together during twilight at the bank with singing voices permeating the whole area. I sat there with my friends and we just chilled and drank some apple juice. Other people brought wines and stuff, hee hee.

And… as compensation for the crappy videos, I also uploaded last year’s one, which is a bit better, I think.

Yaz.

P.S. I would have posted this earlier but youtube takes like one day to process the uploaded video, so there you go.

Failure

This might not work forever due to the ever-changing contents of the internet but in the meantime, it's still functioning and is funny as hell. Type 'failure' into google and click the 'I'm feeling lucky' button. Found this somewhere in the net.

Yaz.

It’s over

Finally, after one year of hard… or maybe not so hard work I finally gained my freedom. My exams ended last Friday at noon. Phew! The thing is, I only managed to blog about it now because a few things had happened that conspired to keep me occupied, namely computer games. I swear, I tried hard but I can’t tear myself away from the computer and stop playing. Must be all those pent-up exam frustrations.

Anyway, I’m sorta back to normal now, or at least as normal as you can get when you know you have a whole month of doing nothing in front of you. My exams went okay… errr, actually that’s not quite true. I was thoroughly and utterly disappointed with my last paper, in which I’ll probably get less than fifty percent. It was that bad. I’m sure I’ve never done any exams so badly like I did that one, not counting Olympiads and the like, of course. Well, everybody else is in the same boat so I guess that’s a comfort, in a way.

We had a punting excursion planned as a post-exam celebration. It was held that Friday afternoon. I was planning to miss it since I have Friday prayers but Henry, our year representative and CUCES president managed to sweet talk me into going. I know it’s because he needed all the Trinity College members that he can get to hire the punts. Still, I relented anyway. We boarded the punt at Trinity and I asked the people in my punt dropped me off at Queens College for the prayers. Going to pray by punt, can’t say I’ve heard that one before.

I’ve told a few people, some engineers and mathematicians, that I’m free now and they told me to stay away just in case they feel like causing me bodily harm. Ha ha, I guess not everybody’s finished yet. As for me and my newfound freedom, I still don’t know what to do with it. Oh well, I’ll think of something. Go somewhere, maybe. As for now, I’m gonna finish FFIX.

See ya!

Yaz.