Of Happiness and Valiums

I went out with friends yesterday. Maynard, Irene, Sharon and I met at Sunway Pyramid to have lunch and later lengthened our meeting until well past dawn.

I really enjoyed their company and so much so, that it made me a bit bitter about my current situation in life. I don’t know if anyone is aware, but I’m currently taking CAT (Certified Accounting Technician), which is a prerequisite for ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants). It’s sort of like a professional course for accountancy, in which I’m skipping diploma and degree and hopefully, obtaining my professional certification in 3 years.

See, the bitter part is that I’m taking it in UiTM as an external course.

UiTM is a melting pot of harmony and love that recruits the different sorts of people in Malaysia; namely the deranged, the lunatics, the morons and the Malays (In which one might point out that there’s not much difference).

I’m not a racist (since it’s hard to be a racist if you’re against your own race) but UiTM has made me bitter. I’ve met a handful of pleasant and friendly people here, even some that I might declare as future lifelong friends, but otherwise, I’ve now formed a solid base of my perception on my own race. Let me eloquently phrase it;

WHY ARE YOU GUYS SO GODDAMN STUPID YOU F**KTARDS.

Bear with me, I’m about to go into emo overdrive.

I’m going to share with you two stories out of many I have. They’re highlighted because… maybe because I’m hungry.

Here’s the first story: My first semester here, I had to pay well over a thousand bucks for my exam fees. The previous semesters, that was all paid for by UiTM though rather fortunately for me, they retrenched that policy on the particular semester I attended.

I don’t blame them when I was told the reason why.

For the previous year’s examination, numerous (note: a vast majority) students failed on exams with average passing scores of 50. That showed a staggering lack of concern for students of professional accounting.

“Maybe it was a terribly difficult course, and that they really tried their best?”

Here’s my amused face:

¬___¬

You haven’t tried your best if you failed at a rate of 19 or 15 or even 9 as your exam scores. You cared more about jacking off to Barney the Blardy Dinosaur if the test you failed so miserably at was actually your second or third attempt in three semesters. The President of the student accountancy board (APAcS – Association of Professional Accounting Students; pronounced as ‘Apeks’ by yours truly because they suck.) didn’t fare particularly fare well either;

He failed all three of his papers. But hey, maybe he did try his best.

I’m frustrated by how selfishly they take advantage of their position in life as Bumiputeras and that particular story pretty much speaks for itself.

Here’s my second story: My classmates and I are on the fast-track program, in which we finish CAT in a year (which is the average period for almost all private institutions, so it’s hardly impressive) and we had to take 5 subjects. One of our papers was a T5: Managing People and Systems. Out of the whole specialised accounting related subjects we had to endure, this one was special; It was fully a theory paper.

I admit it’s not a cinch but at the same time, it’s not to the point that only those with IQs similar to Albert Einstein would excel. It was mostly memorising and to some extent understanding, so all you need was effort to read and memorise much like how you treated your SPM History paper.

History was not hard, right? The reason we failed miserably though, was because we played with Barbies and Transformer figurines instead of flipping the pages of the cob-web and dust-covered History textbook, right?

Right.

Not surprisingly, T5 was the hardest exam known to mankind (or the mentally challenged students of UiTM. God I hope they never stumble upon this page).

In fact, it’s such a hard paper, that there was one gleaming diamond of a student that managed to score so excellently, brilliantly, outstandingly well, that she became a legend.

She was a student of many previous semesters, and her name was bedecked in gold for her unmatched brilliancy. It was whispered across the many years and many fresh faces of the professional accounting course and her reputation unmatched. Her score was so marked, so unachievable that it’s almost impossible for us mere mortals to challenge –

She scored a 79.

SEVENTY-NINE, PEOPLE.

While Sunway University borne award-winning CAT and ACCA students, with average scores of probably 80 or more and not a trifle amount scoring above 90, UiTM actually had them cowering in their seats from apprehension and terror.

FOR ONE OF OUR STUDENTS SCORED A SEVENTY-NINE FOR T5 AND BECAME A LEGEND HERE FOR MANY, MANY YEARS.

Here’s me beaming in pride.

…I’m hungry. Will write more later.

I’ve been badgered with the same question for the past two months.

“Why did you cut your hair short?”

Usually, this would be followed by a disappointed sigh, a noted shake of the head or the more polite continuous staring at the mass of short, dried, though stylishly spiky dead rat perched on my head (Which evidently, I refer to as my hair).

In my defense however, I did not intentionally decide to impersonate a Korean actor and subsequently failed miserably at doing so. Here’s a few snippets of conversation between myself and the hair stylist whom decided so abruptly to make me the butt of all hair jokes.

“What hairstyle do you want?”

“I don’t know. Anything? Just make it short.”

“Short?”

“Yeah, like real short. I want to save shampoo.” $_$

“Are you sure? Short?”

“Yeah… sure…”

“But how short?”

“Just… short lah. Everything else is up to you.”

“Yeah, but what kind of style? With bangs, or with longer side hair, or longer tail? What style?”

“Err… short… style?” >_>

By then he probably gave up soliciting anymore hairstyle suggestions from the girl with the fashion sense of a lamp post and just started slashing away. At the speed he was going, he looked a bit like Edward Scissorshands, only with more blood in his face and, if possible, more gel in his hair. The spikes in his hair could’ve held up three bricks and half an elephant.

After hair-spraying and waxing my hair for what seemed like hours, he charged me RM48 and happily I got back to my college bearing a lighter-feeling head and yes, a heavily hair-sprayed and waxed dead rat.

Yay.

I thought it would be a happy ending from there on, but no.

I saved on shampoo but I had to now spend on hair wax.

I had to style my hair before going to class because apparently, people have a penchant for commenting when your hair looks like it’s been electrocuted (That’s how it looks like pre-waxed).

People stare at my chest very often to verify my sex, and don’t bother doing it surreptitiously; o_o –> O_O

Though sometimes, the more polite breed of people in our society would simply approach yours truly, asking “Excuse me, are you a He or She?”

And sometimes, people whom think that voices don’t carry over one metre in distance, would barely pass me before turning towards their companion and asking audibly “Did you see its chest? Did it have any?”

To answer that; Yes. I do have a chest. And yes, it is flatter than Keira Knightley’s… ahem.

I thought it was amusing the first month, but after the umpteenth chest-staring and I-can-still-hear-you-morons side whispers, the novelty wore off and it got slightly annoying. Not to mention the bashing I got from my sister who’d lecture on how it’s a sin in Islam to be mistaken as a boy.

Oopsies.

Anyway, it’s a bit longer now so everyone can lay off my back once it reaches my shoulders. I’d cut my hair short again just because of its practical properties, but unless I manage a way to grow three chest sizes overnight, I’m going to have to find cheaper shampoo alternatives that doesn’t leave my scalp with a burning sensation.