On education

For some odd reason, I find myself in an odd situation in which I apparently must write about.

The past two weeks have been anything short of educational for me, started off two weeks back in Universiti Putra Malaysia of which I had unknowingly volunteered myself for a public speaking competition to which I figured out how bad ONE wrong turn on the roads of KL can go and eventually lead you straight to KL Central in your pursuit of some McDonald’s fries, of which in the oddest of places do you actually find remarkably odd sources of inspiration (afflatus: new word picked up by Ain and I courtesy of MC Stiff), moving an hour down the time line, you are at no point in time to ever ask any of our pool of immigrant workforce - doing the menial jobs which we Malaysians are of the opinion that it is beneath us, and we move to complain on our unemployment rates - for directions, the individual may look Malay, Indian or Chinese, but the moment you realise that they are not, immediately walk the other way cause the moment you say “I think I’m lost how do I get to UPM?” all you’re gonna get is a blank face for five seconds or so, and he’d say “UPM??? Tada” and shake his head.

A few hours later, as I was presenting my second speech (and the last) I realised another aspect in my development as an orator, never try to be something you’re not, or in my case, don’t even try to be funny cause you’re only gonna come off lame, and the fact that i really need to slow things down, learned that the hard way, and yeah, the best kind of education is the one that gives you a slap in the face”

Moving on past that weekend, on Friday, I finally fulfilled my quota of which that every driver should get himself into at least one road accident, (in my terms traffic collision, owed to the fact that I do not believe in fate, coincidence or accidents) the one thing one learns is that one should always have a stash of money to pay for the damages incurred, keep a cool head when you’re lost, and that when shit hits the fan, you just have gotta be man enough to clean up the mess.

Further on was when dealing with the relatively underpaid University Security Officials (how I enjoy putting pretty labels on inherently insignificant titles). The fact remains that no form of generalisation would ever work for any part of society and that we’re all inherently unique and that there are the ones with insecurities and would do anything in their “power” to cause inconvenience on your side just to show that they are inherently superior, relatively speaking. When faced with these individuals, do as they’d have you do just to appease to their dire need for self augmenting, but if possible, do it in a way to get under their skin, I know I did :)

Odd thing happened, as i got on the U80 to find my way back to UiTM for a session with my academic advisor (sounds so much better in English relative to their title in Malay). It amused to to see how on the rapidKL busses (after getting on it for 5 mins) the bus barely moved and two scrawny looking men came on and went checking tickets. Need I highlight the fact that there was barely any need for tickets to be checked when you board the bus at the terminal station of which people generally can’t get away with not paying for their tickets, but the part that really amused me was the fact that on these scrawny men’s uniforms was the tag “enforcers”. Its amazing how one can be so insecure and how he littlest things make them feel better about themselves.

More fascinating is the fact as to how I wrote this post at Central Market and that how I’m now done with it and I’m already in Shah Alam. I shall now put on my game face and meet my Academic Advisor.

*In light of recent examination stress, the author has put forth the writing on The Wall*