This was an experimental shot done with the Panasonic FZ30, Tama 58mm 2x telephoto lens on 55-58 stepring of the same brand, Hoya 52mm CPL*; shot at 1/640 seconds in S mode, set to 12x optical and 2x digital zoom [totals up to 48x zoom]. Post-processing; Noise removal with Neat Image, desaturation and level adjustments in Photoshop CS.

Hmm. Good enough to make for a stock photo, I suppose. Composing at 24x zoom is EXTREMELY difficult without a tripod, a small twitch and the moon goes off-screen. What do you think?

* the CPL was resting on the tele lens, which isn’t something advisable as it might damage both the lens and filter. I suggest getting a filter that fits the lens, i.e. mount the filter on the camera lens first, and then attach extra conversion lenses on top of it.

Raya has been nothing but exhaustion. Well, I’d very much like to blog about the good things that happened during raya, but that would be too boring because I could imagine every other person [who celebrates raya] doing it. Jumping on the bandwagon isn’t really my thing.

So,..hmm.

Holidays are finally over. Not that it’s a good thing, but it isn’t a bad thing either. I surprise myself with this indifference, actually. It’s somewhat of love-hate thing for me, when it comes to MMU’s academic calendar. Well, most of the time, it’s actually something I just love to hate. You see, this weird excuse for a uni doesn’t run on two semesters, it chose to operate on three TRImesters instead.

Two long trimesters, and a short one, in a sequence of 4, 2 and 4 months. and that often leaves us with plenty of short holidays. Someties the breaks are just a week, and the longest are usually over a month. The problem with these breaks, are that we have plenty of replacement lectures [which cram and fuck up our timetables and biological clocks]. It’s fucking annoying to have a fucking lab session postponed to just a few days before the fucking finals! Bleargh.

Another thing to bitch is the length of the term breaks. They range from 2-5 weeks, depending on the transition. The fucked up thing is, 2-5 weeks is too short to apply and get a part-time job, and too long to sit around at home after a short vacation. Other local unis get breaks spanning up to 2 months, and overseas they get leave for the whole fucking summer!

Us? We get short holidays, and miss our chance to do some decent part-time jobs as most require at least one month of training, or at least one WHOLE month of commitment. Finding and applying for the job alone consumes so much time by itself leaving insufficient time to actually work. Going on a holiday takes time to plan, too. You can’t possibly plan it BEFORE the holidays cause you’re fucking stuyding for the fucking finals!

To just rot at home for 4-5 weeks is just…sad. Sad is the only word I could find to describe it, because anything that is synonym to it just fails to describe just how…sad…it is. You can’t possibly play games EVERY damn day, and plenty of the guys can’t possibly jack off continuously for extended lengths of time [you gotta eat, too], and to go out every day to town? Too much waste of time and money.

Unless you have something to occupy your time with [a gf to bang, for example], MMU holidays just render your brain to a slobbering mush, which takes a while to recover once the term starts. That’s why you see plenty of students slacking off each time a new term starts, you see. Their brains have been reduced to stuff that looks like it came out of a proboscis monkey’s ass.

It’s gonna take a couple of late nite yumchar sessions and staring blankly at a miming lecturer before the brain regenerates itself. By the time it fully recovers, however, it immediately gets squeezed dry as it would be the time for midterms, assignments and all that shit.

Bottom line? I have to get some ppl to go yumchar with me >.<

I have to spend RM10 worth of petrol, and almost 1 hour on the road, everyday just to attend 1 hour classes.

What a waste.

I always wanted to condemn the ones who shed tears of blood when they are 1% short of an A1.

“boohoohooo,… I got 14 A1’s and 1 A2. I’m such a moron!!! I’m the biggest dope in the world for not getting a 100% A1!!!!!”

There, there,.. at least you spoke the whole truth. And you admit that you’re the biggest dumbass on the planet. I hope more people are willing to admit this. They should have a support group for these people…

Ah Beng: harlow, my name is ah beng…

Crowd: hi ah beng.

AB: …and, and…sob, sob,.. I only scored 15 A1’s and 1 A2. WUAAAA!!!!!

crowd: aww… that’s alright..

AB: .. i’m the stupidest SPM student everrrrr!!! NO ONE IS STUPIDDER THAN MEEE!!~~ *wails*

crowd: its okay…we know that, cause we’re idiots like you too!! cheer up!!

Man, that would SO rock. Anyway, back to the real gripe. The Star has highlighted the things I’ve always wanted to say out loud for a VERY long time. The only thing that has kept me from doing so is that I lacked solid facts to hold my words. [I hate to stand tall when I'm on wobbly ground].

Now, when there’s a problem going on, there’s one thing I believe, and that is to attack the problem, not the person with the problem [hahaha, okay okay, the first few paragraphs contradicts this belief, but hell, that's how I would describe how I feel, and of course, those do not mean to contribute anything to solving our current issue].

So, how do we fix this? And avoid them in future? Let’s address the issues one at a time.

Desire for ‘easy jobs’
HAHAHAHAHAA!!!!! You tell me, what job is easy? He1y, being a prostitute and beggar is hard work, too you know? Hookers have to dress well, look hot and can fake orgasms to draw in clients [I have no experience, on any of these, but I bet they're tough!], and beggars have to look sympathetic enough to survive the next day [hey, it said reported that some beggars earn Rm3k a month just begging, no shit!!].

Wake up, noob. There’s no such thing as an easy job. All job require effort, and if it’s something you lack, then don’t whine.

Shouldn’t be inconvenienced by jobs
This is another joke. You can’t expect to get a job that perfectly meets all your needs. You’re going to have to sacrfice Sunday nights, and sometimes spend Saturday morning finishing up the shits you left over when you could have done it on Friday night. Inconvenience is only a hurdle. I didn’t have my own car when I did my part-time job duirng my SPM holidays. I had to rely on trains and buses. Albert still does, right to this very day. His workplace is in Bukit Jalil, and he lives way out in Segambut. But he gets on the public transport, and after over 4 years [or is it 5], he still depends on it.

But get this, he knows the system so well, he actually moves not only to work, but to almost ANYWHERE around KL and almost always manages to be punctual. So, fellas… the lesson here, is not to run away from the problem, but to face it, and work your way around it! Albert did it, I did it.. why not you?

Lack of communication skills, especially in English
This is quite tough to fix once you’ve graduated, really. This is one case where you have ‘lentur the buluh at the rebung’, hahahaha!! ["melentur buluh biar di rebungnya" directly translates to bend a bamboo, do it at its stem. It means to make a change do it at the source.] in this case, the rebung is the period of time BEFORE you graduate. Now, how do you improve your communication skills. Easy, talk. Talking is the most basic form of communication [duh]. But the juice, is the how, the when, and the who.

Talk to people. Not just your friends. Talk to your lecturers, your seniors, that dude sitting in front of you taking down notes. Don’t be afraid to talk. Don’t be shy to speak. What have you got to lose besides some breath? I believe the key barrier here is language.

Perhaps the one language that really unites us isn’t really BM, but English. It’s unfortunate to see how many of us are not proficient in this simple language, know it, and instead of choosing to improve, they avoid the language altogether, preferring to speak in their mother-tongue, only to those who can understand them.

I especially hate it when a bunch of Kelantanese get together and they start tongue-twisting their way, leaving me to be the lamppost. It sucks, you know? Sure, it’s great that you’re making the effort to preserve your mother tongue and be proud of it, but don’t let that get in the way of your own success. Probably the one reason why my circle of friends are made up of equal chunks of a variety of races is that I can reach out to them.

I speak Malay to my malay friends because a lot of them can’t understand the English I speak, and can’t respond well in English. Also because I’m a Malay myself. I speak in Malay to make them feel comfortable and to maintain the pace of the conversation.

When I speak English to my chinese friends, I do so with a bit of a chinese twist, peppering bits of chinese exclamations, short phrases and cuss words. Why? Because by doing so, it shows effort that you’re trying to fit in, by blending with them. Now I can freely add words ‘tiusss’, ‘machibai’, ‘kanina’ and ‘nia ma’ without much error because I learnt from the best. [guys, aren't you proud of me?]

The same goes with indians, I would go ‘dey, macha!’, vary my voice levels and shake my head around when I talk to them, because they’re comfortable with it.

One thing I love about living in this country, is that I can freely talk to anyone of any race, and if I don’t understand a word or a phrase, I could always ask because they’d be more than glad to enlighten me on their mother tongue.

When speaking to people, make sure they can relate to you, and likewise. Ease your way in, and don’t force your way through.

Lack of Social Skills
This is the result of the previous problem. When you can’t talk to people, you can’t make friends with them. Simple shit. Solution: see above.

Not Hungry Enough
What does this translate to? Can’t figure it out? Let me read to you: YOU PUSSIES HAVE BEEN PAMPERED SO MUCH YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW TO FALL AND SCRATCH YOUR KNEE!. That’s right. It simply means you don’t have the word ‘hardship’ in your vocabulary. Mum always feeds you, and Dad always bails you out of shit. How do we fix this? This is something I can only ask parents to do.

New parents, hear hear! When your kid fucks up on something, don’t fix it for them. Teach them how to get out of the shit themselves. You can give monetary and moral support, but whatever you do don’t do it for them Unless, of course, it’s something they’re incapable of doing, like changing their own diapers or fixing the damned car. Dads, teach your sons how to pump his bicycle tyres, how to refill the battery fluids in the car or how to fix the broken tap. Moms, teach your daughters how to clean up an egg that broke on the floor, or how to stitch back that button or how to reheat last night’s leftovers.

Teach them that if you want things done, do it yourself. It’s okay to ask for help if you’re stuck, but it’s not okay to depend on others to get it right. That way you encourage them to think creatively and to bring out the hardworking spirit from within them. Take it from the kid who was brought up by the coolest parents on the planet.

Overprotective parents
I’m not too sure about this one. But I have seen cases when a kid fails his maths paper, and during the teacher-parents meeting, the parents scolds the shit out of the teacher for being unable to teach his kid properly. You get my drift.

Too much tuition
HAHAHAHA this is yet another joke. Well, I’ve been to tuition classes myself, but my parents made sure I don’t spend too much time on books and made sure I have a life, too [yes, my parents pwn j00]. I would think the real problem here is that so many parents have so little faith in their kid. It’s quite an irony really, they expect their kid to score as many As as possible, yet at the same time, send the kids to excessive tuition as though the kid is a dumb mule. Many of them forget the original purpose behind tuition and tuition centres across the country have taken advantage of this very well.

Every parent LOVES bragging rights when it comes to their children [don't fucking lie]. Especially if its about academic performance. This is probably the mian reason that kickstarted the whole cycle. You see, the original purpose of school was to educate and introduce new knowledge to its students. The original purpose of tuition classes was to enable the students to do some extra exercises and give them a chance to ask further questions that they never got to ask during school. Apparently, this isn’t how things are.

At the way things are going at the moment, it seems like tuition centres seem to be places that guarantees, I repeat, GUARAN-FUCKING-TEES a kid would score plenty of A’s for his exams. How do they achieve this? Simple, give them 200 maths problems everyday. You think I’m kidding? Why don’t you give it a try.

Now that we’ve clarified the situation, how do we fix this? Believe in your child. God didn’t breathe life into that body to a useless doll. Every single person has an area where they excel. Some may perform well academically, some do well in sports, others in music, etc. Of course, there are also those who excel in ALL aspects, but does EVERYONE have to be like that? If your kid sucks in academics, don’t tear down his spirits saying he’s an idiot; that way he too will convince himself that he;s an idiot and will refuse studying saying to themselves ‘i’m an idiot after all, why waste the effort to study?’. And when they fail in exams, they just proved to themselves that they’re academic losers when that’s not really true. In another extreme case, don’t keep burning them that they’re geniuses and that they MUST score straight A’s because that’s not really true, either.

Excellence comes out of passion. Passion comes out of love, not out of hard labor. Compare someone who sings to please his audience and someone who sings to please himself. Believe in your child for who he is and he is capable of. Of course, you can help them by sending them to tuition, but don’t overdo it. My parents always let me go mamak with friends after every [yes, EVERY] tuition class, and when I get home, I can just do some stress-free work, like just glancing over notes, or reading my comics or just doodle on some scrap paper.

Your kid can only excel if he wants to. And in order to want something, he needs a reason to burn his passion. If the reason is just to please his parents, it won’t burn long. When he realises that he’s sacrificng his pleasure for someone else’s, he will start to feel the burden, and slack off. And when he does, the parents might get dissapointed and he’s stuck in his own dilemma, and blaming himself for being a loser, in the end. After that, he would listen to emo rock, dress like an Ah Beng and prowls Sg. Wang and Times Sq.

Ok, kidding.

Obsession with scoring many As
Same as above. It’s a chicken-and-egg situation really.

Taking things for granted
I don’t quite understand this one. Parents taking their kids for granted, perhaps? If so, then let’s take a look at some possible scenarios. Some parents might not appreciate the fact that their kids happen to be good at something non-academic [like a talent for drawing for example *cough*]. I’ve met plenty of people who had their parents give indifferent reactions to something they achieved, like say, the dude whose dad says what a useless talent it is for the dude to be proficient with a slingshot. I have a cousin who has excellent aim, no matter what projectile he’s using. He can launch anything and hit its target with such amazing accuracy I’m surprised why he didn’t take up archery or something. There was once a monkey munching away on his dad’s mango tree. He took off his sandal, and in one flick, he smacked the animal right in the face! The throw shocked the poor bastard sending it scampering away into to woods behind their neighbourhood. When I commented this to my uncle, all he said was ‘He could hit a monkey he aimed for a few sceonds, but couldn’t hit A which he aimed for a few years.’

I shall leave you to figure this one out for yourself.

*************

So there you have it, at least the best I could think of. Am I wrong? Fine, what’s the proper way, then? You tell me.