First post after leaving Sodom&Gomorrah (SG=Singapore)

It's been like forever since I last updated my blog, and reading through the last post I have, I get this awesome feeling knowing that I'm no longer stranded, and forcefully held in Singapore. Those days are gone.

So I don't actually have much to say as it's almost midnight and I should totally be working on my homework, not blogging. But I figured it'd be nice to write a short update, in say 2-3 lines about how I love my life now (the last time I loved my life was like what? 5 years ago? before Singapore ruined it?). I love the fall season for it shows clearly the beauty of God's creation when the leaves change color, some to yellow, some to red, and some others to brown-ish yellow. For most part of the day (unless early in the morning or when I walk back to my apartment at night), I enjoy the wind chill which means no scorching heat. And most importantly, I love the idea that God may actually be working on something great in my life with my being here. No one knows, of course, and neither do I, but if everything happens for a reason, how could my leaving Singapore not have a much more important reason?

So my classes have been going pretty well for the past 7 weeks, and coming up next week I have a midterm exam for my Real Analysis class covering Topology.
....I'm running out of ideas of what to write as my cough med exacerbates my drowsiness. So I guess I'll wrap it up here and save the best for the last, if any...lol

25 weeks since my last post

Does time really fly? Nah, I don't think so. You have no idea how every second feels damn long to me since I moved back to level 2 with the other person I've been working with seated right at my back, practically allowing her to turn her head around looking at what I'm doing every single ticking of the clock.
To date, I'm left with 8 more weeks of working here, or 41 more working days to be more precise. Trust me, it doesn't get any easier towards the end and in fact, I get much more trouble surviving.

These past few weeks I've been doing quite a lot of thinking, and this perplexing idea of my making mistake moving far away from all of my friends in the god damn island has indeed been damn annoying. Again, don't get me wrong, I will never change my attitude towards the Sodom&Gomorrah-in-South-East-Asia. The only thing that I'm gonna miss from this hellish island is clearly my friends, with whom I've shared 5 years of my life with its ups and downs, curses and gratefulness. For once I was standing at this crossroad thinking if I should get going, stay a while longer or even turn to a new direction. But what happened last night really changed everything. Gosh,how could I be that stupid thinking that staying a while longer might not be that bad?

Wondering what happened last night? This is getting arousing, isn't it?

So there were 9 of us brooding over where to have dinner at one of the made-in-singlish-island subway station. One suggested KFC, one was longing for pizza and the rest were just starving. Desperate, we decided to have a bite at a Japanese food stall (damn, it wasn't even a restaurant after all! How lame!). Everything had been going so well until one of us, who can't stand Jap food, bought something from outside the fuckin' Jap stall. One of the staffs then approached her and said that they didn't allow outside food, just like any other stalls in Sodom&Gomorrah. So she insisted on keeping my friend's food at the cashier (WTF?!?), ignoring our telling her that it wouldn't be eaten in their premise. Ma-de-fa-ke!! What were they thinking? Where were we? Jail?!? The police does keep stuffs from visitors in a jail, but a restaurant? What a joke....Well, that was still fine with us though.

As we were about to leave, my friend asked for her food back, accompanied by the other 2 friends of mine. I had no idea what went wrong, yet when they came back to our table, the stall's manager was following them, pointing his hand yelling "We will keep any outside food, that's our policy". Go to hell you son of a bitch! Your policy'd make a lot better sense in there. He even said "Don't talk!" to another one of us (well if he couldn't talk maybe he should just shoot you, fucking moron!!) and added, "Don't fight with us over nothing". Funny huh? Who the hell do you think started the fight? What an ass!

Really troubled by the way they treated us as customers, I finally spoke out, telling them how wrong they had been treating the customers since the very beginning when they asked to keep the 'outside food'....and bammm!!! He started to make no sense in his argument, bringing up nationality. "This is not Indonesia!", he said. Of course moron! If we were in Indonesia, we wouldn't have to argue with you. You would've been dead by then. I really wonder if those singlishmen ever realize how bad their English sounded. They just never learn, do they? This bastard seemed to think that we Indonesian speak English worse than they do, saying "You Indonesian speak broken, barbarian English!" WTF?!? Ha..ha...ha...now this is funny. Indonesian? Broken English? Look who's talking!!! It took me no longer than a second to reply "What about your stupid Singlish with all those walao mah meh moh?". Really? Those singlishmen of all people?? Telling us how to speak English??

I guess he had no idea how to defense his nation's singlish so he brought up security camera to stop me from going into more details about how disgusting singlish is. Poor you singlishman! I'm very good at despising your language, you really should've let me continue. "People looking at you, camera everyhere" (still singlish-ly, of course). Well, in my defense, "We have nothing to be ashamed of, you son of a bitch! You should be ashamed of yourself for treating customers like this".

Like I have repeatedly said, Singaporeans do need to learn a lot about customer service, although I'm not really sure if they'll ever get better at that. They just suck at it.
Anyway, we finally left, winning of course, after despising the disgraceful singlish in front of a bunch of people who use it daily. I did what I had to do.

Well, since my philosophy of life is that LIFE = Learning Incessantly From Experiences, what did I learn from this? Easy! I learn that most Singaporeans think that they are better than Indonesians (maybe they are the only ones who can understand how that is so) and that singlish might not be the same with broken English (again, LOLZZZ! note the cynicism!!). So friends, do you seriously want to spend the rest of your life here, surrounded by those people who disrespect us deep down in their made-in-sg heart? Don't be such a fool! I clearly don't wanna grow old seeing my children and grandchildren singlishtizing themselves. That said, I'm so leaving this place.

my 25th week at work

This week...yeah time passed really fast this week, thanks to my on-maternal-leave boss who btw will still be away for at least 11 more weeks, lucky me. Without her being around, I'm practically being the boss for myself LoL...so yeah I really enjoyed my time at the office, where I can do whatever I feel like doing and leave anytime I feel like going straight back home. Well, don't get me wrong; I still have things to do, and by "things" I mean those related to the job, but as always, I did them all quite fast so I had more free time for myself to work on my German vocab list.

Another highlight of the week is this decision I finally made after nearly 6 months. Yeah, I finally shortened my maybe-applying-to list of Stats doctorate degree programs to 2 univs: Wisconsin & Purdue. It took me like some couple of days to decide that only Wisconsin survived as the final choice, partly due to Purdue lacking renown researchers in the multivariate statistics & linear model fields. To date, I haven't yet decided if I should really file an application to Wisconsin and frankly speaking, I don't think I will. I know how this makes me sound like a complete geeky waverer, but somehow it just makes me feel better knowing that I have gone through all the univs more thoroughly, and by doing this I hope that I won't regret my choice in the future, unlike my previous regret in choosing (or being forced to choose) high school.
So, should I really be given chance to pursue my graduate program in the States, it's gonna be either Penn State or Wisconsin, with 0.9-0.1 being their corresponding probability of having me around LoL....

Today itself was a great, albeit short, getaway for me. It's been quite a while since the last time I watched a good movie, and finally, after waiting like almost a month, I found this Wild Child, which didn't let me hesitate for a single second to rate it 5/5. Yeah, it's a great movie, after the very disappointing Quantum of Solace. So for those needing a time off from daily routines, this is a must...before the long-awaited Quarantine and Four Christmases which will be released together on Nov 27.

By this time next week, I'll have been working as a Statistician (or, Facebook Analyst) for exactly 6 months. Wow, now this is an achievement...I just can't believe how I could survive the job this long, which started even prior to my graduation ceremony last July. Now I only hope that I'll still be given strength to survive for another 7 months until next June before I can finally convey this thought of mine to the 'boss', "Hi, I'd like to let you know that I want to resign next month. Please do whatever things necessary to get me out of here asap"

....can't wait to go back home, yeap, 26 more days

I'm so free that even this random conver is posted on my blog

So it was like 1.30PM just now when I was kinda busy playing Who Has the Biggest Brain that this Canadian guy showed up, scared the hell out of me asking, "Hi Haskell, you remember when we first talked, you mentioned about your interest pursuing a graduate study in Biostatistics?"
"(Errrr,did I? Oh crap, that again...I was joking, you know, like for the sake of getting the biostats-related job) Oh yeah, sure I do, what about it?", I replied.
"We've been having this conversation with *some random guys I don't even bother to recall the names* and there's a possibility for you to be in the first batch of the new PhD program in Biostatistics", so he said.
"So is that gonna be in NUS?"
"Yes, I think so."
"(OK, forget it. I'm leaving soon anyway. And what was that? First batch? Woohoo no thanks, I know exactly how it feels to be in the first, second, or even third batch of something new, like my senior high years where I was one of those in the 2nd batch. Crap. Things were just newly developed, not stable, and unprofessional. And wait a sec, did you just say Biostatistics? With the word "BIO" on it? Bio like in genetics, genotype, phenotype and so? Well, no, I'm not into it). Well sounds great, I'll give it a thought"
"Yeah, sure, just let me know, I'm still gonna be around until next Friday"
"Alright, sure I will (not). I'll see you around then"