July 6th, 2011 (Wednesday)
2 weeks before, I asked Dad if he can drive me to Sandakan himself on July 6th and he’s okay with it as going to the city is a monthly ritual for our family as my Mom is from there and half of her family members are still residing around my old Grandma’s house at 7 miles from the downtown area.
Unfortunately, something came up thus he, Mom, and Arif had to go on June 26th, leaving me with no reason for him to drive me to Sandakan anymore.
It’s been more than 10 years I think, since I last took the bus and flight isn’t an option because I’m saving money for the program itself.
Therefore, today I took the 8 o’clock morning bus together with two of the programme committees, Ajie and Jijah to Sandakan this morning. I departed from my house about 15 minutes to 7 and reached the bus terminal exactly at 8. I gave my mom a big hug and bid them goodbye as I climbed up towards my seat.
The whole journey was about 6 hours and throughout the first one and half hour, me and Jijah had a little chitchat as we exchanged stories to each other about what happened in our lives for the past 2 years since I last met her while I was doing my foundation.
We stopped at a small cafe around 12 afternoon and since we weren’t given so much time, I just grabbed some drinks, chips and local snacks after a very excruciating visit to the loo. I drank 2 cans of 100 plus while accompanying Ajie finishing up his lunch. We hopped back into the bus 10 minutes to 12:30 p.m. and only then I took out my iPhone to text Mom that I was already less than 2 hours before reaching the destination.
‘A Nightmare on the Elm Street’ was playing on the flat screen but I barely can see it as half of the screen was blocked by Ajie’s ‘spiked’ hair though we were actually sitting 3 rows from the the front seats.
I guess I better off listening to my iPod instead. Unfortunately, I only synced my 2 out of 11 playlists as I used up the other 100 GB space to store my American TV series. Whatever.
We stopped at the 4th Mile in front of the Tyng Garden Hotel and less than minutes, my friend Lala came to pick us up. She drove us with her dad’s Toyota Prado and we reached the Kompleks Sukan Sibuga as we were going to stay there for the night before departing to SMK. (A) Sandakan where our programme is going to take place.
3 rooms were given to us girls and I got the largest room with 12 other girls. When I got there, the 1st group of the programme’s committees who were flying from Peninsular Malaysia were already there.
I quickly unpacked my stuffs and only I realize that I hadn’t packed any toiletries! So, I went to find Belle and asked her to buy me the stuffs I needed.
Around 7, all the committees and facilitators were instructed to go down to the cafeteria to have dinner all together and before we went down, I took few minutes to snap few pictures.
After Isya’ around 8, all of us were gathered at the middle of the hostel area, and our Head Facilitator, Bro. Fadzil, instructed us to form a big circle and sit on the grass. Thank God I was wearing my usual khaki trousers instead of my Nike track suit cause that’s the only track suit I brought with me.
Then, Bro. Fadzil gave each one of us a piece of A4 paper with a pen. We were required to wrote our most beloved person, the best memory with that person and the most hurtful memory with that person. After that, we gathered all the papers and put them in the middle of the field. Then, Aziah called us one by one to get one piece out of the piles of papers.
The next instruction was to find the owner of the paper and when we found the right person, we have to think of one thinking that can represent the very person. But if we got our own paper, we were required to return in to Aziah for re-shuffling. But then, after asking like half of the people, suddenly someone said he or she didn’t get a paper. What?
At that moment, I noticed one small piece of paper was tossed in the middle of the field. Probably Aziah or Bro. Fadzil didn’t notice, but just to be fair, all the papers were re-collected and re-distributed once again.
The weird... well, more like awesome, thing is... I was holding Sr. Mashi’s paper, while she was holding Jijah’s paper, and Jijah was holding mine. A perfect triangle! So my job is to interview Sr. Mashi. The thing is, Sr. Mashi is actually my senior by one year when I was in Form 1 in SMK.(A) KK. So, I kind of know her a little bit more on who she was when she was 14. What a coincidence as she wrote those memories when I was there witnessing them. Therefore, all I have to do is just to ask her few more on details. SMK. (A) KK is a boarding school. Yep! I was there merely for one year and when I was in Form 2, I asked my parents to transfer me to other school. My uncle who was also my Geography teacher went against my decision but he knew that nothing he can do about it. What actually happened back there? I don’t want to write them in here. But even until now, every time I think about boarding school, only one word comes to my mind. I won’t say it in here though.
As for between me and Jijah, I already told her most of the things she needed to know while we were on the way to here. So, we considered it as done.
Anyway, as we’re kind of sitting together, Jijah told us about the accidents she had around the Main Campus and I came in with my story too. Yep! So far, I fell off my bike like so many times already, and I had 2 accidents on road but no severe injuries so far. Well, Jeremy - my scooter, has a lot of scars on his body though. As we also required to tell the other party about the most embarrassing moments we ever had, all that I can remember is the moment when I was talking to Farid about half an hour only to realize he’s actually not Farid but he’s Faiz the identical twin brother. These two are now doing Medical in Kuantan Campus.
When all of us already done finding the right person, we were once again being ordered to go back in circle and one person was called in front to talk about the person he or she interviewed just now. We got to witnessed lot of sweet things, especially when we get to see some bromance among us.
When it was our turn, Sr. Mashi was called out first and she called out for Jijah as she was going to tell us about the story we shared earlier. She told us that her impression on Jijah is that she’s a very fierce person. But for me, Jijah being fierce is the first time I ever heard about it. Everybody seems to agree about that though. Well, maybe I’m just kind of person who isn’t easily affected. lol
When it’s Jijah’s turn, she called out for me and told all of us her first impression of me that she think that I’m more like a tree. Not the figure of course (though I was kind of almost jump into that assumption) but she said, I’m someone who have a very strong principal and beliefs that rooted down deeply into the eart that no matter what happens, I’ll always be strong. To be honest, I was flattered when she said that. She mentioned earlier that I’m a unique person when I was waiting for the name of the composer of the movie score of ‘A Nightmare on the Elm Street’ in the bus earlier. Well, most people don’t know about that. I love movie scores. Among my favourite is Transformers score albums by Steve Jablonsky. The latest album which is the Transformer: Dark of the Moon (The Score) is just crazy. Tron: Legacy’s movie score by Daft Punk too is just off the charts, people!
Okay, back to our story here. I mentioned in the paper that my beloved person is Shasha. Yep! She’s my best friend! She’s from Singapore, she speak weird Malay sometimes, but I do still get her and she’s the craziest and wackiest person I ever met! She’s going to be in her final year in Biomedical Science starting next semester. She was there through all my ups and downs and I owe her so many things. The best memory is definitely the very first programme we worked together as partner, which is ’09 SCIENCESS career week. We were appointed as the Program Coordinator of one of the sub-programme and things went really crazy. We got to meet students from 6 other universities and colleges and it was a really awesome experience! We fought here and there but there are times we just looked in each other eyes and convinced ourselves that we can do it all. Bottom line is, we learned so many things about each other while working together in that programme. The most unforgettable and hurtful memory I shared with her is of course it goes without saying, is when I was decided to leave Kuantan Campus to pursue Architecture in the main Campus. It was so sad that day and the moment i finally said to all my friends that I was going to leave them, everybody just broke down and me too. I love them so much but their favourite teddy bear gotta go. lol
Anyway, when it was my turn, I called out for Sr. Mashi and told all of the people about the first impression I had when I first learnt about her is dated when I was just a Form One student. I saw her going to Taekwondo practices like 3 to 4 times a week and though she was just 14 during that time, she already holding a black-brown belt. Therefore, my impression on her is that she’s an awesome person. She told us the story when we went to Johor (also when she was in Form 2) for Girl Guide Jamboree involving multi-countries. She said it was nice to see other people from different countries. She also told us the story when she got so embarrassed when a ball came to her while she was passing a group of boys who was playing football, she tried to kick the ball but her shoes also flew with it.
I think this is a very nice way to get to know to each other quickly. Plus the sharing moments and the extra gimmick at the end of the session - we were celebrating Jasmine’s birthday, I felt a little but light-hearted compared to when I just got here. I learned few names that I can remember and hopefully I’ll get along at least 80% of the people by the end of this programme.
That night, after taking a nice and long shower, me and Belle pulled out our mattresses and placed them under the fan in the middle of the room. I was so exhausted after traveling 6 hours on the bus and after chatted with Belle while putting aloe vera mask on my face (it felt so good!) for a bit, I fell asleep with only one thing on my mind: to get up early tomorrow and prepare myself before heading to the school.
