Today is a winding road ...

Today, went to cinemas with Mira, Acu and Mak We. We haven't met Mak We in a long, long time. So anyway, in the cinema, Mira and I put our feet on the empty row of seats in front of us. Mak We notices and asks, "You guys actually do that? I understand Mira ... but Sara?"
Me: Uh. O_o
Acu: Haha. NS dah rosakkan dia. She's more laid back now.

And that got me to think. Regardless of whether you people put your feet up onto empty front seats or not ... fact is, I never used to do it before. I just ... felt like doing it today, so I did it. There are many other little things in my life that have changed too. So I came to the conclusion.
Being in Sri Aman gave me skills and experience I don't think I could have gotten anywhere else.
But NS gave me a LIFE.

Long story short, I'd like to apologise for being such a lame, heartless, tightass bitch in the past. xD And THANK YOU to all you people who actually stood my crap and stuck by me. You guys rock. I've got a long way to go, but I really want to change for the better.

Here's to a lifetime of self-discoveries.

Turn it off, turn it all off

Yesterday night, Earth Hour started just as the fam and I were leaving Gombak. On the highway, I realised something; KLCC was missing. xD Then I saw 5 blinking lights hanging in the air, so that was pretty much all we could see of it. Papa drove to the outskirts of town so we could see the darkness close up. Haha.

When we reached home, there was 15 mins to go. So we sat around the living room with Mira burning our retinas with her camera-flashing and listening to music on Nazim's PSP. It was fun.

In other news, I took my undang test today ... and passed!
Ngam ngam 42/50.
Heeheehee.

Oh, and I'm starting college tomorrow!
And totally throwing away my pre-planned 'three month holiday'.
Why?
Because since I got back from NS, I have been BORED OUT OF MY MIND.
Haha. I never thought I'd miss the hustle and bustle of camp life.

Wave as they go by

Three years ago, I was on duty for MPPH.

I promised myself that I'd get the grades to go today.

I'm so sorry, Form 3 self.

:(

Not saying that I don't like my actual grades.
I'm thankful for them.
But ...
I promised.

PLKN Flashback: Sing until your lungs give out

Wirawati D2-02.

I like to think that it sounds just a little bit like R2-D2.
Just a little bit.
Heh.

Anyway, one month's worth of a trainee's life in NS will be spent sitting in a class doing CB. That is, character-building. I have no photos of that era, sadly. Mostly because I only had a big honking film camera and you're actually not allowed to bring it into class in the first place. Apparently, everything we learnt is top secret hush-hush material. Haha.

But it was a good time. I was in CB class 3. Was in two different groups:
3G - Andy, Jordan, Ah Yaw, Khairi, Mat, Ruby, Yoong, Shanti and Wani. This was definitely the most fun I had in CB. It was the first time I realised that there is a Malay version of Wonderpets. HAHA. Yeaaah. What can I say, I just don't watch channel 9.
M-Pro - Nina, Aini, Afif, Keat, Shih Wyi, Mani, NC, Shean (not sure about the spelling) and Andy again. Not quite as rocking as 3G, but still alright. My buddy was Shi Wyi. Since we had to get partners for the second module. All about learning how to help another person and stuff like that.

Now, lemme introduce you to ...
Drumroll please.
Chiki Chiki Pom Pom.
Of Integrasi class 2.
Matthew, Ram, Zizan, Azie, Anis, Yenli, Yunalis, me, Hasbi and Sham.

This was the most fun I had in a class. Insane, I tell you. I laughed till the tears started flowing. This was also where I think the whole situation with the friendship between DELTA wira and wirawati sort of came to be. My group had the highest concentration of DELTArians in the entire class. Other DELTA people in class included Yen, Pei Ying, Dhila, Mubin, Din, Izzat, JF, CH ... there were more I think, can't remember who.

Special credit goes to Zizan (of all people) for coming up with our awesome group name. Nobody had any idea what to name it. I had a marker pen, and an A4 sheet of paper was waiting on the floor. We were all throwing names around. But nothing sounded ... right. Suddenly, Zizan says, in complete and utter seriousness,
"Chiki Chiki Pom Pom."
There was a pause.
Different people at different intervals: Chiki Chiki Pom Pom?
Zizan: *nods head seriously* Chiki Chiki Pom Pom.
Another pause.
Hasbi: *cracks up laughing* Saya setuju!

And so, Chiki Chiki Pom Pom was born.Doing the chicken dance. Cikgu Ruby wanted to teach everyone how to do it, but I guess time constraints ... etc. killed it. But I know how to do it, and Hasbi knows how to do it ... so when we had to do a group performance at the end of our five days in Integrasi class ...
We did the chicken dance!I did the music. Hasbi lead the dance.
Haha.

There were some fun projects in the class. One was ... the wedding ceremony. Supposed to be a demonstration of how the different races get married.

The Indian wedding. Take note that none of the brides are ... well, not all of them are women. xDThe Chinese wedding.

The Malay wedding was done by my group along with Fantastic Crew.
'Parents' of the 'bride'. Me and Mubin.'Parents' of the 'groom', JF and Yunalis.The 'groom', Zizan Haikal bin Adam and Hasbi as the tuk kadi.
And the lovely 'bride', Sham Shaza binti Mubin! xDThe happy couple. :D

We also had to do funerals. My group did Chinese funeral ... Izzat as the corpse. Not as laugh-inducing as the weddings, but we still had a good laugh.I think you can see why.
My 'hat' kept falling into my face. And everytime we were supposed to cry, we ended up in stitches instead.

But yeah, we had a lot of fun times. Mubin's camera and his collection of photos of sleeping people. Yunalis and the cute little dance she made while singing the Chiki2 Pom2 cheer. Sham and his insane laugh. Infectious! xD And the little dulu-dulu sing-along sessions Hasbi, Zizan, Azie, Yunalis and I would have when we ran out of stuff to do and the teacher wasn't paying much attention. We were the rowdiest group in class, the reason why the teacher kept asking us to go up first whenever presentation time came around. Hehe.

Yunalis and the baby Rubik's cube she spent days on trying to fix. xD I wanted to give it a try, but I was worried I'd be clumsy and break the little thing.

Next up, maybe a recap of how my days in Kenegaraan class went. :D

Mission accomplished, chap!

Went out with Nad, Hannah and Sophie yesterday. :D
Had teppanyaki for lunch, then basically lepak all over the place. I wanted to buy new clothes, but couldn't find anything really really nice, y'know? But had fun window-shopping anyway. Then Hannah said she would belanja us ice-cream, so to Baskin Robbins we went! Watched an episode of Wizards of Waverly Place on Hannah's iPod (I actually really enjoyed it. Haha. Cute story. I just wish they'd do away with the fake audience laughter, it kills a lot of the jokes.)

We also went to Borders, where Sophie met William Shakespeare.
...
Yeah, he's the same height as me. Uncanny!!

We told Hannah to get a facebook account.
Instead, she got a facelift.
"I'm BOOKFACE! :D"

We did a lot of bookshop-visiting. Hannah bought some Jonas Brothers biography thingy ... and Sophie won awards for Best Observation of Stubble on Celebrities. xD Nad bought The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I bought Lost For Words by Lorelei Mathias. Yeah, a romance. I wanted to find something written by a local writer, I don't care whether English or BM, but a story, y'know? But I couldn't find English fiction and the BM books ... um. Their synopsis scared me. As for Sophie ... she bought nail polish. Hehe.

Tried to catch her unawares. Candid shot. Y'know, weird facial expression, etc. But dang, Nad's too photogenic.
D:

Finished the day sitting in Coffee Bean. Ate some chicken pie and chicken puff for dinner. Felt good to go out with them. Been far too long. :) We thought of a movie, and Sophie wanted to karaoke, but ... I really enjoyed just lepaking with them.

Today I went for my driving ceramah. The classroom had little spray thingies to chase away the bad smell. Would have been nice if the perfume they used wasn't bad to begin with. Felt queasy the whole time I was there. D: But thank gosh, the speaker wasn't as boring as I expected. He was actually pretty funny. The youngest person in the class was 16, there to take his motorcycle license. The oldest was 34. I could tell which of the boys are fresh out of NS ... by their haircuts. Haha.

So, now I've got a book to study. Can go back anytime to take the computer test. :)

PLKN Flashback: Misty mornings

Took this on a very, very misty morning. Mid-February.
One thing about camp; when the mist comes along, you can't see a thing. You could stand on the padang kawad, and it's like you're standing on an island inside a cloud.
On this morning, we were supposed to practice kawad for the competition. In the end, only the boys practiced because us girls came down at 6.30 a.m. to practice, before morning roll call at 7.30. Now I remember ... it was a weekend.
Boys goofing around. They were doing some kind of squatting exercise. Moment they were done, they started ROFLing. xD
Mist lifted a bit by this point. Girls went back to dorm early, but Yen and I hung around to watch the boys kawad. It's awesome how they can do it so well, in perfect synchronization. Everytime we girls do it, we end up looking clumsy and fast-forwarded. xD
The only other Sri Amanian who reported to camp. xD Seriously, I don't know what I'd do without her. The first week in camp was absolute crap. Barely knew anyone and felt like crying everytime I thought of home. Even though we only got to talk when we went down to the surau and during breaks from CB class, you seriously made my days easier, Hamizah. :) Thanks for being there ... listening to all of my ramblings and complaining and sharing my thoughts on almost everything.
Yet another person I wouldn't have been able to survive without ... my dorm-buddy, Yen. We were the first two people to step into D2. We walked back and forth to logistics together, that first week. When I got elected ketua dorm, she helped me out, gave me advice. She got me to think straight when my brain was a complete mess and when I was PMS-ing and thinking about too many things at once.
We became like siamese twins, the way we went around camp. It helped that she was Chinese and I was Malay ... when we sat down together in DM, nobody had any reason to separate us. xD When things went cuckoo inside the company, she had the guts to make diabolical schemes to fix things. I was never bored. We always had some crazy little plot we were working on together. And she is an excellent 'digger'. We were the most well-informed trainess in camp. I went from being a total blurcase in Sri Aman to 'I know something youuu don't!' :D in Indera Pahlawan. No duh I was still a blurcase, but Yen kept me well-informed. Haha.
So, one more time, to the best dorm/camp/company-buddy I could ever ask for ... thanks for everything, and 'I lap u'. Haha. All the best now that you're starting college!The four pangkat girls of DELTA. From left to right, Jamie, Yen, One (Wan) and me. We had a rocking good time together. That very last night in camp, we were the last four in the dorm to sleep. We didn't want to sleep, really. We played UNO, prank-called people (if you could call it that ... it's kinda hard to fool people at 3 in the morning) and lay around trying to stay awake. Yen was the first to pass out. Jamie and I thought of squeezing Colgate onto her face, but we ended up falling asleep 45 minutes after her so that plan failed. One was the last to fall asleep. I still don't know what time she admitted defeat. xD
The 8 pangkat people of DELTA. From left to right, top to bottom: Mizan, Arun, Zizan, Samad, me, Yen, One and Jamie. DELTA is the best company when it comes to the buddy-buddy relationship between the wira and wirawati. Mostly thanks to Cikgu Gee for holding meetings on a regular basis and encouraging us to interact with each other. Ironically, it was the 'denda' we got for losing our flag that brought us closer together. From writing the surat kiriman rasmi asking for our flag back to the bizarre and awesome majlis peminangan bendera to our partnered kawad sessions and the DELTA jamuan on our last Monday ... I couldn't ask for a better company, Alhamdulillah.
The Weekend Joggers' Club. Haha. Another reason why DELTA is tight I suppose. Regular joggers are DELTA people. The most regular being me, Yen and Mubin. In the photo, top to bottom, left to right: Me, Yie Ping, Yayi, Mubin, Yen and Shean. We have no PT pagi for weekends, so roll call is always at 7.30 a.m. Anybody who feels like jogging just come up at the normal 6.30 time slot, jog around for a while then hang around waiting for the others to march their way up. I think jogging would be the main reason I lost 10 kilos while I was at camp (!!!).

Random photo of us getting the 'gifts' ready for the DELTA jamuan. Me, One, Hasbi (can't see him, he's hiding behind One), Cikgu Gee, Zizan, Yen, Sheda and Din. This was the start to DELTA lepaking in the DM towards the end of our camp days. We didn't have any activities, so you can imagine our boredom. So a certain number of us just ... never went back to dorm until time came to bathe. Haha. Good times.

Shedding our responsibilities. Green for DELTA, blue for BRAVO, red for ALPHA, yellow for CHARLIE and the remaining two for the penghulu and penghuluwati.

More in the future! Yea, I'm just indulging myself with these posts. It's been a week and I've finally shed off some of the 'gah I miss camp D:' feelings. But there's just a little, titchy ... OK, not so titchy bit still in me.

PLKN Flashback: Nice place you got here.

So. This is where I spent 27th December 2008 to 11th March 2009.

Yes, I'm finally doing the update. xD I'm still not very sure how to do this ... I brought a journal to camp and it's less than ten pages short of a full book ... and that's because two weeks of events is missing from it. What can I say, I ran out of free writing time at some point.

First off, the view of the camp!First glimpse on the way in. That's the padang kawad on the left.

View of the wirawati dorms and the surau from the padang kawad. My dorm is the one right next to the surau. Best view in the house, can see everything in camp.Here's the lake. The random people are on the road headed for the Dewan Makan. Between the dorms and lake is the kembara halangan ... obstacle course.

Aaand ... here are the wira dorms. The girl and guy dorms are separated by the surau, volleyball courts, sepak takraw courts and a longkang. Hehe. Oh, and the zinc wall surrounding the girls' blocks.

View from the path snaking away from the classroom blocks. My dorm corridor. Taken on the last day ... err, morning. We had to be at the DM (dewan makan) by 6.
The DELTA flag! A little worse for wear ... the paint cracked over time.
The dudettes I shared a dorm (D2) with during our 2 1/2 months. In no particular order: Yen, Shanti, Yunalis, Fang, Nia, Mani, Atul, Pei Ying, Ummi, Bibah, Faizah, Mok, Azie, Aimira, Fatimah, Miera, Ekin, Arma, Yoong, Tem Mee, Sun, Yayi and Yie Ping.My locker! Yes that is a flying cat.Full celoreng. You can't see it, but the inside of the pants read: "Sara K. Ikmal WWD2-02". My ID number. xD
Some of the DELTA girls. Both D1 and D2 in this picture.Red card I got because of my bad ankle. It acted up every few weeks while I was there. But I only got the red card the very last time it hurt, on a Thursday. Haha. Wore it for two days, during which Yen became my tongkat for the only reason that wirajaya was on Saturday and the kawad competition was on Monday. Speediest recovery I ever made. xD

More photos to come! And some tidbits on life at camp. :D

DELTA GO

Aw, I do kinda miss these people.

Full update? One day. I'm lazy right now. xD