Transience

Hallo Leute, I haven't been on this blog for ages! More than a year perhaps? My last post was in 2016. I thought I'd have given up on blogging, but recently Twitter switched to 280 characters limit and I have been making full use of it, then I thought to myself, if I wanted to write verbosely, I could have just blogged about it right. I could use Facebook too, I guess, but recently, I'm not too into Facebook, and I think no one much really comes by my blog, so, I guess, my blog is the best place. 2016 was a roller coaster and 2017 is a continuation of that and there's only about a month left in 2017, and I'm probably in the most stressful stage of my Master's and it will continue soon up to early next year. Idk I've not been enjoying this journey so far. Everything I feared back in 2014 came back to haunt me. I had always been so sure of myself from a young age wanting to go into academia and when I'm actually here with it staring it in my face, I'...

I just realized I haven't had a 2016 post. I haven't been on blogger lately cuz well, I haven't written any full pieces because well, my thoughts are not coherent for the past half a year, and I've generally been busy with life. I also pretty much spew everything on Facebook and then feel bad afterwards but when I actually have the space for long extended posts on my blog, I just can't write jack shit. Today I feel like writing for some reason, but it's pretty much gonna be freestyle and a mishmash of different things. The first thought that comes to my mind when I decided to write this is how I wish I stop wanting things, would that not make my life a lot more peaceful? Maybe not wanting things leave you with no drive or motivation, so there must be some balance some where, but if wanting things make me so unhappy when I don't get them, is the solution to just not want anything at all? I want things but I don't put in the effort, and it's not gonna ...

I just realized I haven't been here a while. So today I was buyin' Dominoes pizza and this guy followed me from Maybank. I saw him outside Maybank and he came into Dominoes after me. Basically his story is he gotta pay for medical expenses cuz he got beat up and lost his money, I could see his black eye, and he was trynna get money from sellin' some printouts with some kalimah for 20 ringgit, of course he asked me first if I was muslim. In my mind, I would like to tell him I wasn't, because, well, that's kind of the easiest way I brush off people who ask me if I had religious beliefs. So, after he told me his story, I would have just you know brushed him off as I usually do to hecklers, and who knows how legit is his story, I've had too many experiences being duped, he said he really needed it cuz he was hungry, so I just offered to buy him a pizza, that's usually my SOP when it came to people like this back in Canada (if they weren't legit, they'd r...

I feel like going into interviews in Malaysia, a Canadian degree is quite eye-catching because not a lot of people are sent there. Biomedical engineering although not as numerous, but thanks to UM, it is a pretty popular degree. I am glad, very, very glad McMaster tacked on Electrical to the Biomedical Engineering degree. It opens up a lot more options here to also apply for electrical engineering jobs, since jobs that are explicitly Biomedical Engineering is non-existent, or at least, reserved for people with postgraduate degrees. One thing I realized about engineering jobs is that it's quite diverse. You either go into a specialized position that works in one team and working directly with the technology or you're more of a bridge between different teams and take on a more leadership role because you'd already have technicians who take on the main role of implementing the technology. In the latter, it requires a big picture view as compared to the details, although knowin...

Life gets harder as you grow older. Decisions aren't clear cut. There are repercussions for any which way you decide. You just choose to be sad or happy about it and try to count your blessings and try to live with either one of your decisions. I was scared of failing, but I was more scared if I succeeded. Sometimes when I went for interviews I just thought to myself, I'm going to try, but I hope my effort wasn't good enough and there's always someone out there way better than me, because I was scared of what happens after. I don't know how I'd deal with it. I'd be overwhelmed. I'd have to be committed to the new reality, whereas if I failed, I'd retain the status quo. Nothing gained, nothing changed. I could go on doing "what if" scenarios in my head without actually living it and face consequences. That was how, I thought, I could live multiple realities at once. Maybe that was why I kept sabotaging myself. When I finally let go, and just...

Gentle, lightly falling snow from pallid skies Frozen lakes, lonely trees on an all too familiar trail A photograph of beautiful transience Warm chocolate streams and pillow-soft waffles And banal conversations over coffee Dying rays of light through the window pane  As we watch the orange change to amber change to black The quiet, understated things that touches hearts and memories cherish. I would like to call that love. -12.13 am, Oct 2nd 2015, K.L.

I don't even know where to start. Which thread of thoughts do I want to pursue first. Well, it's more than two months after my homecoming. A lot has happened and several Facebook status updates has passed regarding my latest preoccupations, ranging from re-accustoming myself to local culture and geography to socio-political and religious commentary. The first month was pretty much all the Ramadan and Raya festivities. I'd only started looking for jobs in August and it has continued to present. I've been so busy going in and out of interviews, applying here and there. I'd even put my otaku-no, anime-watching activities on hold. Currently, I'm only following the remnants of Ore Monogatari! and Shokugeki no Souma. I'd really like to do a series of separate posts about the thoughts I was preoccupied with, but I don't know when is that going to happen, and I'm probably on the verge of starting a job anytime now.  I've only been posting short ...

I wrote this way back in May 2013, but I never published it.  I should probably write this down before I forget. This whole of second year has been a disconcerting, yet humbling experience for me. Forget school for a moment, but it goes a lot deeper than that. First year, I would say, I was pretty carefree of a lot of things. Too carefree in fact, that I lulled myself into a sense of security. Come second year I realized, have I been sleeping all this while ? Why is it that I'd only started realizing things now, after a whole year have passed ? And even after that, I realized that I thought I've seen it all, I could handle everything, but I was wrong. I had overestimated myself, and it made me realize there's more to being grown up than just paying bills, living alone without the hu-ha's that you usually have as teenagers. Being grown up is also about respecting others. It's about being considerate and not taking advantage of other people's kindness. I...