I’m taking the subject Moral and Ethics this trimester. While everyone thinks it’s a stupid and boring subject, I think it’s fairly unique and interesting! Why?

Besides being able to do an extremely entertaining presentation on Terrorism, we were all supposed to do some kind of social work as part of the coursework!

Usually, social work in our country means you go to some old folks’ home, orphanage, hospital, or home for the disabled, to do some work and help out in some way. This typically involves cleaning up, preparing food and drinks, entertaining and accompany the people et cetera.

With only two people in our group – me and Glen – we decided that we do not want to go to the places where other people are going. We did some investigations and found out that most groups are going to old folks’ homes, kindergartens, and most common of all – the Cyberjaya Fire Brigade.

Jeeez, kindergartens and orphanages are fine, but social work at the fire department? Makes you think we’d have to help put out fires or something…

Anyway, after much consideration, we settled with the, presumably, most fun idea of all – a visit to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) in Selangor. Through the phone, we made an appointment for a Saturday afternoon, and they accepted.

On September 8^th, we went to SPCA Selangor at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. Expecting a really fun afternoon, we stepped into the rather smelly receptionist area. I mean, after all, we’re dealing with animals, and I really like animals, so how bad can it be?

First, the ‘admin’ lady was like: “What? Voluntary work? Why are you guys so late? There’s nothing much left to do already!”. Then, we were brought into the animal shelter compound, where the ‘admin’ lady told another lady: “These people are here for voluntary work! Do you have something for them to do? No? Find something for them to do.”

Luckily for us, the other lady was really friendly, she looked Australian. She introduced us to a girl, who seemed to be the daughter of the owner of the place.

The girl told us there’s really not much to do at that time of the day, but we could help out with the cleaning of food bowls, as they were going to prepare dinner for the dogs soon.

So she brought us to a place where a huge basin filled with soap water was, and instructed us to wash the food bowls piled beside it. God, when piled up I think they’re taller than both the heights of me and Glen combined! I’ve never seen so many bowls waiting to be washed in my entire life!

So we were on. Glen started washing the bowls with a small scrub and the soap water in the basin, while I rinsed the bowls and piled them up for drying.

I must say, the process was extremely gross because we had to remove unfinished food from the bowls and all the remains went into the disgusting mixture of soap water, rice, vegetables, and dog saliva – Into which we had to dip our hands repeatedly for like, more than a hundred times.

It gets a thousand times more revolting when water from that basin gets accidentally splashed on your face, and even once, into my eye. Oh SHHHIIIITTT!!!

Anyway, we finished washing the piles of bowls in about an hour. And we were so proud of it. That’s the time where we wondered how the good people at SPCA managed to wash so many of them, twice a day, DAILY!

They must love animals so much to commit such a sacrifice!

With our major task done, we were free to look around the area and play with the animals!

Basically, this place is divided into two parts, the dogs’ shelter, and the cats’ shelter. There were many, unbearably cute puppies at the dogs’ area!

And kitties at the cats’ area! – This one looks kinda bored.

Oh how I wish I could adopt one of them and rear ‘em at home! But then if I did so, Jon’s rabbits will be made dinner by the new pet. Rabbits are, after all, at the bottom of the food chain.

On September 7th, I, along with a few committee members from Tourism Club, went on a trip to the MATTA (Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents) Fair at Putra World Trade Centre.

The few people who came to this fair with me are committee members of an upcoming trip to Hong Kong. As the appointed advisor to this project, I skipped a Friday class to come with them, but not at all unwillingly, of course, since Friday classes are insanely boring~!

The main purpose of this visit is to obtain information and quotations for a trip to Hong Kong, and with the information we could organize the trip on our own, without requiring the actual services of travel agents.

Being sufficiently familiar with Hong Kong myself, and with the full dedication of the committee members, I believe that we can organize a more interesting and cost-efficient trip than, in my opinion, the travel agents!

Once we were there, we scoured almost every corner of the fair for promotional fliers, price sheets, trip packages, and also talked and collected a lot of information from different travel agents.

It’s still very funny, thinking back how we continuously sat down at random travel agents’ booths, demanded tonnes of information and material from them; and just when the agents thought we were genuinely interested, we’d shamelessly stand up, thank them for the information, and walk away! Haha!

But that’s our right as consumers, isn’t it?

Apart from informational stuff, we also got a lot of other things, such as balloons!

Representatives from Taiwan and Korea tourism industries were giving out free balloons, and our group took so many that it was very easy to tell precisely where we were at, as there were so many balloons bobbling above our heads!

In fact, we took so many balloons that some passerby parents thought we were distributing balloons and asked if we could give some to their children! LOL! But, of course, how could we refuse!

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After we left PWTC and headed for dinner, Eric’s car, which I was in, refused to cooperate with that day’s good mood and broke down.

We had known that something was wrong with the car during the journey TO the fair, because the engine temperature had been rising at an extreme speed, reaching boiling point in every thirty minutes.

So, Eric parked the car beside the road while we waited for the engine to cool down. As we were waiting, an Indian guy on a motorcycle stopped and asked if we needed any help.

This guy claimed that he’s a mechanic of BMW, and showed us a BMW logo on his jacket, which, suspiciously, looked like the kind of jacket that you can buy at any Pasar Malam‘s for fifteen Ringgit.

Well, he could be a real BMW mechanic, of course! I’m merely remarking upon the possibility of him being a fake one~~

The BMW guy checked the car and told us that the ventilator a.k.a. ‘fan‘ has stopped, and that he could help us get a new one if we agreed to pay him forty bucks for the trouble, and another hundred and thirty Ringgit for the ‘fan’.

You know, it sounded suspicious, and we knew instinctively that it was an obvious overcharge. But since the guy said that we could pay him after he’s bought and replaced the fan, and none of us were really good in repairing cars, we accepted his offer.

It turned out that the guy really knew what he was doing! He came back with the ventilator, replaced it with the broken one, and started the engine. Everything was fine!

We were grateful, of course, but we still thought that we could have done with a cheaper price. So we bargained with him and ended up paying him a hundred and fifty bucks for everything, which he accepted anyway.

Come on, there’s no need to feel sorry for him! I’m sure that he’s still profited from our transaction!

Gosh, it has been so long since I wrote my last post!

Admittedly, I wasn’t in the mood of blogging during the last two weeks, I won’t make any excuses… It was pure laziness.

But of course, I do have a reason for the ‘mood-less-ness’ of blogging. For the last two weeks, I’ve been putting a huge amount of effort in ’saving’ my attendance in university!

You see, two weeks ago, I was very shocked to find that my attendance for four out of the six subjects that I’m taking this trimester, are less, no, are MUCH less than seventy-five percent, which is the minimum attendance needed to sit for the final exams! Justifiably, i guess, due of my difficulty of waking up early in the morning.

Of course, if I really missed ALL of my morning classes, I’d be lucky to score anything more than thirty percent for my attendance, let alone sixty. But thanks to a couple of my friends who generously took my attendance whenever possible, I’m still not in that big of a crisis.

Anyway, sixty percent meant that I couldn’t skip any more classes, not even once, until week twelve, which is this week – the week in which the bar-list is announced.

And so I did, I attended every single lecture and tutorial, even the 8a.m. ones. Whenever I had to wake up early the next morning, I’s never bother to sleep at night. Sometimes maybe just for a few hours, and usually none, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to even if I tried!

All in all, it was the sleepless and ‘zombifying’ days that destroyed all my mood of doing anything useful – Yes, I consider blogging as useful – And hence the long period of no updates.

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The good news is, the bar list finally came out, today! And I am ludicrously lucky to have all my subjects qualified! Hahahahahahahaha!

Many things happened during the last two weeks, I’ll write about them one-by-one in the next few entries!