Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Ashes of Heaven appreciation post - I made a new blog!

3:57 AM

Sunday, September 3, 2017

Firsts and lasts of an abundance of things in life (64 days before)

It kinda hits me in my heart that this is the last time I'll ever see home before SPM. It also hits me like woahhhhh....I'm taking SPM soon. After all this time I felt like SPM itself is like a dream, a road where I have to take but which feels so unreal. Because SPM is one thing, then after SPM there's adult life and college and actually living in the REAL world. I guess I'm too cocooned in the gates of boarding school to even care about reality. Or maybe that I lack motivation to live? I dont know.

I want to get out of school fast but I'm just not ready to face reality. 

Form 5 has so many happy-sad moments because form 5 is when you really get to enjoy celebrations and life at school even when you have shitloads of homework and responsibilities. But it's also sad because it's the last time you'll ever gonna feel all of this. Last sumbangsih, last sports day, last raya, last sahur, last this, last that. And as much as you can still meet the people from high school you can never really relive the moments again. What is left from the five years is just the knowledge I bring everywhere, the pictures; the ones in people's phones which will probably be deleted in a few years of full storage and new phone models, the ones in people's cameras which will be lost after you misplaced your memory card, the ones in polaroid photos which will fade in 10 years, and lastly, the memories. The times you've fought, the competitions you've entered, the assemblies you've skipped, the nightpreps you've missed, the jokes you've laughed to, the people you've talked about, the tears you cry.....everything will be just something for me and you to think about whenever we're alone, or as a story to your children. I'd give everything to live those moments again, but all I can do is to move forward and pray the people who made my 5 years in a stressful energy-draining confined boarding school worth it the best. I promised myself to write about all of it after SPM, so that I can read it again in 20 years, if blogs are still legitimate in that time. 

The real world seems so scary. In STF we are always fed with stories of our peers doing drugs, going clubbing, getting pregnant, leaving school to start a family at 16, getting raped, losing their virginity, having multiple sex partners, running away from home, failing Bahasa Melayu, and all those kebejatan sosial stuff that people write about in Berita Harian. While the worst thing you'll ever hear in my school is honestly probably just the juniors rebelling. and the things that come after that. Not saying that I can't cope with the former, but those kind of things are so gonna be new to me later on. Sigh, I can only pray to God to be guided and protected under His care, and will still steer back into the right path even if I've drifted far away from Him. Until I enter a whole new world, I'm gonna enjoy being safe and trapped in boarding school. 

On the other side of the coin, this year is also the year of the firsts. For instance, this week, I had been given the privilege to travel using public transport - ALONE!!! okay I know, lame. But my parents are overly protective and they are the typical facebook parents who read news about child kidnapping from some facebook post by some aunty and believe in illuminati theories - but they're the cool facebook parents nevertheless :p. And I'm the first born and a girl. Some of my friends can't even travel back home by bus, so I'm pretty grateful that they're not that strict or paranoid or whatever you may describe these kind of parents. They mean well though. 

I don't know how but I was on a phone call with my mom asking for her permission to watch the SEA games with Nashwa (she doesn't read my blog so I can freely mention her name here), thing is transport is a real big issue when it comes to hanging out with me so throughout the week when I was praying for good results for Trials, I also prayed that my parents would let me go out even if it was a weekday. I told my mom that maybe it's gonna be held on Monday - then suddenly a miracle happened;

"Oh okay naik je lah MRT" 

I WAS SO HAPPY THAT MORNING I FORGOT WHAT PAPER I WAS TAKING BUT ALL WENT SOOOO SMOOTHLY. and the best part was I didn't even have to ask her. And if you're wondering; diving - yes I watched diving - may seem kinda boring as a first impression but once you join in the live crowd you'll start to LOVE it. Heck, I think I enjoyed it more than badminton somehow, which I spectated on the day after I watched diving. It was kinda a bummer that 1) I wanted a picture with Pandalela but I don't know how to find her and the people in front of our seats actually got a picture with her and 2) I really wanted to watch basketball :( but the tickets sold out right before we even made plans to go and watch the SEA games :(. But all in all, I had a good time there :). 

I went to Bukit Jalil by the sg buloh-kajang mrt line -> lrt ampang line ->  lrt sri petaling because it was the supposedly fastest route there. Actually I would save A LOT of time if I took the KTM to TBS then interchange to lrt sri petaling. But on the first day I missed the KTM by 1 MINUTE then I have to wait like another 40 minutes for the next KTM if I wanted to take it, so, the long way there it is. But I did try to take the KTM eventually, when I went back home from watching Badminton. The next KTM to Sg Gadut would arrive in 20 minutes when I arrived at TBS so I thought it was reasonable enough to wait. (Plus TBS got convenience stores and food vendors can't say no to food). It was the peak hour of the day and the KTM coaches were filled with people and I had to sardine myself in. I went in the women's coach - where supposedly only women should board, but then there's these two guys i don't really know what nationality but they're foreign workers, who also boarded in with us. There was this announcement that all Men in the women's coach should depart to other coaches but those two guys didn't even move a muscle, even after the whole coach glared at them. But they did no harm, so I guess it's....mitigatory and tolerable. Hahaha. Taking the MRT and LRT and KTM for the first time was really exciting for me somehow. I feel all grown up and independent, for once. 

This week was also the first time of me trying Korean Food (Dubuyo je padahal but okkk it counts!) and watching a movie at the cinema with a friend - also, with yes, Nashwa, so cringeworthy la asyik orang sama je takde orang lain ke -  Okay you can say it again, omg lame. But seriously though, two things, 1) My mom is conservative and she only started allowing me to go to the cinema with my friends after I turned 15 (you can say I'm lame again) but 2) I'm not really a fan of watching movies or tv shows or dramas and things like that, I'm more inclined to reading, so it doesn't bother me much that I've never gone to the movies with my friends before. And it was the first time I've ever watched a horror movie at the cinema. You know I really think they should charge 50% less for horror movies because for every time I sense some creepy shit Annabelle doll is gonna pop out from the screen and attack that little girl I covered half of my eyes. But Okay what it's not like I'm actually closing them, I still can see the bottom half of the screen which shows the floor and people's legs but hey it's progress  so I am officially not just not lame, but also not a scaredy cat :).

Ahhh, the joy of being granted social mobility brings you a lot of new experiences. 

Sadly, I have exams and limited pocket money. So I can't really go anywhere else much or even go out frequently this week. I already made a list of "18 things before 18" though, so after SPM I have at least 6 months to complete the list and venture the country before enrolling to pre-U. For now, I'm prioritising my papers. 

Speaking of SPM, today is my candidate day! Candidate Day is a tradition in my school where we kinda celebrate the person who's candidate number is the number of days left to SPM. I'm A064, and there's 64 days left to SPM, so that makes today my candidate day. My previous seniors used to sing the candidate day song everyday. I think my batch did it during PT3, though not to everyone (I was K030 during PT3 so my candidate day was 30 days before PT3 haha thank god I dropped a class this year). And tomorrow is my brother's birthday (4th September, he shares the same birthday with Beyonce which is why he always get all the attention). 

In conjunction with my candidate day, I decided to make this my last post before SPM, unless I have the time to write another post anytime, which is highly unlikely. I would like to apologise if I've ever said anything that offended you and I've never approached you about it because there's a strong chance that I've forgotten about it huhu sorryyyy. To those taking SPM or IGCSE (my sister's taking IGCSE in october pray for her poor soul), I pray the best for you. Forget how you did for Trials, these 2 months can change your life. Insyaallah, believe and istiqamah. 

Sincerely, Syasya xoxo.  

2:54 AM

Friday, August 25, 2017

Extracts from my diary (72 days before)

4:11 AM

Thursday, May 25, 2017

Blood, Sweat & 5 years (163 days before)

Little that we know that the end came so soon. So, so, soon.

3 weeks before PPM, we started our daily trainings. At first it was during prep, then we utilised our hours after prep, then it shifted from nights to afternoons post our examination papers. My academic progress at the moment is horrendous (ok to be honest it's not THAT bad, but I'm an ambitious girl with goals to achieve, you get me). But Nashwa and I had a mutual feeling that we could prove ourselves worthy during this tournament. It's been 18 years, 18 consecutive years. We wanted to be the ones who'd break the streak. So we thought that it would be a meaningful trade off, to make room for intensive training. 

Thing is about trade offs is that you do that because you assume it is gonna bring a better outcome, but we people assume too much on the future we do not know of. 

My life this year if full of trade offs and I guess for the past few months, most of it is for either a) debating or b) add maths. HAHAHAHA. Good news is my add maths results are practically quite stable now; Solid As to Strong A-s. (BUT ONLYYY if you decide not to look at my add maths pop quiz/surprise tests results, ALL IN RED INK) Seriously though, when I say I've been giving a lot up just for debating, I'm not kidding. I was supposed to be in the District team for MSSJ merentas desa and I had a strong chance to represent Johor for MSSM, looking at how well I did for MSSD, but I gave it up because SSIDC was on the same week with MSSJ intensive trainings (but SSIDC was BS) You could say that I purposely left the basketball team because I couldn't skip classes twice per month and I had to lead the debate team, I didn't talk to my teammates - who means a lot to me even until now - as much as I did previously when I dedicated my 5pms to the court because of that. I gave up on every other thing that I value of, that I actually love, that defined me, that made who I am, because I believed in this team. My overall results, dynamites, my running career (and my sleep and my social life lol) ....everything. 

I cried post round 2 AND round 4. Actually post round 4 I wasn't even crying - I was literally wailing. I felt like at that point in life nothing is going right in my life. I thought that if you work hard, you'll get the outcome that you wanted. But I did work hard, I did pray a lot, but why didn't it go the way that we hoped it to be? I didn't know what to explain to my teachers who noticed my absence for a week, I didn't know what to explain to people if they saw the rankings. And the lost was personal to me, I have to admit. If whoever reading this saw me wailing post round 4, I'm sorry. I thought that it meant our only chance to break to quarters was gone - but actually later we knew that we wouldn't break anyway if we won that round. So it kinda served as a closure for me - a message that it was just not meant to be. Memang rezeki sampai situ sahaja. 

I'm pretty sure everyone worked hard and sacrificed a lot in this too, but well, this was my first and last PPM. And I guess I thought people expected a lot from me, as much as I expected a lot in myself. We've never won a debate tournament before, and looking at how we could survive Zone, I thought that we'd do fine in Nationals. Honestly, I didn't like it that we were ranked amongst people who didn't invested as much for debate as we did. I detested the fact that some teachers went up to my teacher saying that they did better than STF in rankings. Every single member in this screwed up society is starting to define your debate progress by looking at how you did in this screwed up unfair system when you know that you deserve better. 

But the biggest thing that bothered me was; How long will I stay this way? Why am I always not good in everything I do regardless of how hard I work? Why do things never go right? What do you want me to do? SPM is coming up man, if the same luck I have now will be the luck I have during Trials or the real deal SPM papers then I'm screwed for life. 

Later on when I finally got my shit together, I started to see the good in it, gradually. Maybe because of the fact that I sincerely worked hard for debate, I believe berkat usaha itu akan datang dengan cara lain. Maybe I'll get a good university or a big scholarship, or maybe I would prosper better in whatever I would decide to do in university. You can't determine it for sure, I know, but Insyaallah, if you keep up the effort, niat ikhlas, like my add maths teacher told me, Orang baik memang end up apa yang dapat mesti baik jugak, fun fact: not to toot my own horn, but she said that I am baik and the phrase was directed at me HEHEHEHHEHE lek (aamiin) 

And also, slowly, I started to see this as not the end. I was devastated because I envision PPM Nationals as the last tournament, the last chance. Sure, it is, and you can't deny that. But this wasn't the end of me. This is just a part of my long journey and turbulent waters do come to havoc your life. This is just a phase, and I will keep moving forward. Something good will happen in the end, this is not good, so therefore, this is not the end. 

From all the choices that I've made in high school, I would say debating was the best one I've made. If it weren't for debating, I wouldn't be brave enough to speak my thoughts, I wouldn't have the courage to even talk to people, I wouldn't see the world in many perspectives and with a more open mind, I wouldn't even care about the people around me. Debating made me who I am, even though my past achievements weren't all that good. This is where I made friends, made enemies, and most importantly, shaped myself. I learned to love debating, not just as a platform to obtain certificates or to make myself endearing to interviewers. I love the sport of it, I love the debate family; my teammates, teachers, trainers. And it helped me to love myself. 

To the people who has been sad about not achieving certain things for the last time, this maybe the last, but this is not the end. God knows it's for the best, and all we can do is to believe. Sometimes achievements are not just winning or simply the trophies you get. Achievements are the things you learn along the way, the bond you create with the people around you, the values in what you do, the things that a selfish person who's only in it for money, for recognition, will never obtain, ever. (Side note: Not saying that winners don't value what they do, but this is more on your purpose as to why you do it, not your outcome, it's undeniably amazing if you're a winner and you are also strong willed and sincere and all those good adjectives that I always forget to mention because I hardly pay attention in Sir Rashid's class nowadays huhu I'm sorry Sir) 

All in all, I guess this is the last of high school debating for me, Alhamdulillah and thank you for everything. I know how hard my team worked for this. I know how hard my team worked for a lot of things. I know that everyone who was unlucky enough not to go far can do better in the future. Don't give up. I wish you all the best of luck in the future. 

InsyaAllah, istiqamah and believe.

7:14 PM

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