What's on Shenji's Mind: May 2009

Revival

Just yesterday when I was talking to one of Japanese friends online, she told me that she saw my blog. The second she mentioned about my blog, I finally discovered what was the missing link to my life all this while; it was my blog! By looking at the date of my last posting, it's been quite a while (half a year to be exact...) since I updated my blog. As ridiculous as it may sound and as embarrassing as it is to know, I can't believe I totally forgotten about my blog for six months. My sincere apology to all those who have been following my blog all these while for giving you a false impression that What's on Shenji's Mind has reached its "season finale" at the last posting; I wouldn't be surprise if any of you wondered if I ended up brain dead all this moment since there were nothing new on my "mind" for the past six months; anyway, rest assure that your good ol'Shenji is back with his constant postings of what he finds interesting which he hopes that will be your source of online easy reading and comical entertainment. I've also just realized one more thing; What's on Shenji's Mind is already three years old...well more than 3 years old, I believe. Anyway, for today's posting I will briefly summarize what happened to me for the past 6 months while I was absent from the blogging community. To start it off briefly, rest assure that I'm doing fine (surprisingly) and I'm still in one piece; in fact, things are getting better over here in Canada for me. For the past 6 months, what thought to be a dull and boring year in Canada turns out the opposite.

Heavy Load

During the winter semester of last year, I started my third year in my Bachelor Of Business Administration. Given the fact that the courses for third year business students were more interesting not to mention the courses' time table were perfectly fitted in my university week, I decided to take five course (the full load for every students here in Thompson Rivers University) for my fall semester. Initially, I thought it was an act of suicide seeing that the last time I took five courses per semester two years ago, nearly left me dead in the gutter of failure. On the contrary, given the constant reminder from my parents that it would be a waste of money not to take five courses per semester (seeing that international students like me pay six to seven thousand dollars a semester regardless of how many courses we take), I decided to suck it up like a man and deal with my fear of doing badly in university. The courses I took last semester were Introduction to Human Resource Management, International Business (my favorite), Operations Management, Business in Society (another interesting one...) and Introduction to Japanese 2; I was lucky enough to have great instructors for all my courses last semester and in addition to that, I enjoyed most of the courses unlike the previous semesters.

New Friends

Social life for me in Canada was surprisingly better than before. At the beginning, I was expecting that the only person I would be hanging out with most of the time back then was me, myself and I. You might be wondering about the platoon of Indonesian students over here who celebrated my twenty first birthday with me last year; however, as unfortunate as it may sound, the majority of them returned to their country and the remaining are not very close to me, except for a few of them. I wasn't really bothered about the fact that I will be alone for the rest of my winter semester of 2009 since I was so used to being alone; however with God's graciousness, he blessed me with loads of new friends from the land of the rising sun. Talk about miracles happening when I least expected it. It all happened when Yoshitaka, my good friend from Japan invited me to join he and his Japanese friends for a friendly Counter Strike match which was illegally organized at the university's computer lab on one late evening. There, I was reunited with another good friend of mine from Japan, Teppei Sakuma, who skipped the fall semester of 2008 due to his student visa problems. In addition to that, Teppei and Yoshitaka introduced me to their Japanese friend whom I've never met; he was Eiji Hayashi. He was a big guy and because of that, I was a little intimidated; on the other hand, it turned out that he was a nice and friendly guy. We did have fun together at our illegal Counter Strike tournament (despite losing the game badly...) and I knew that the probability of expanding my social network was high. Later on that night at a dinner with Yoshitaka and Teppei, I decided to throw a drinking party at my place on the following night and I asked Teppei and Yoshitaka to invite Eiji to join us. Both Yoshitaka and Teppei thought it was a great idea but they also thought that I should invite some girls to my party as well. Initially I had difficulties facilitating Teppei's and Yoshitaka's request since I did not know many new girls; nevertheless, the second I remembered Maaya and Yuka (the new Japanese instructor's assistant from Japan), I knew that my problem was solved. Maaya was an old friend of mine in the university, however, Yuka on the other hand was someone I recently knew at my Japanese class last semester. As mentioned before, Yuka was my Japanese instructor's assistant from Japan; the both of us share something in common which I like to believe was one of the reasons that made us friends: our mum. If you were thinking that she is my long lost sister from my mum's ex-Japanese husband who's her father, I hate to disappoint you but you are wrong! I know you wish it was that dramatic but what I meant from saying that we have something in common in terms of our mum is that both of our mums are from Malaysia. So back to the drinking party story:Eventually, I had my drinking party on the following night with my Japanese friends and although some of us ended up drunk and unconscious ( I was one of them) on the remaining night, we still had plenty of fun. From that point on, I knew it was the beginning to a good relationship with the Japanese students...as well as more drinking party at my place.

The Pub.

It was inevitable that more drinking party were thrown at my place every Saturday night and my place was soon transformed from a living dormitory to a make shift pub (which gave me the idea to open my own pub later on when I'm old). I happened to know a couple more Japanese students thanks to Teppei's birthday party which I attended in the middle of the winter semester this year. Seeing that they were nice people, I decided to extend the invitation to the new Japanese students I met at the party, to drink at my place every Saturday night. Of course it didn't take long for us to became closer especially when we had a couple of beers and vodka to help extend the friendship. Unlike my previous years in university, I drank a lot this year until the extent of getting drunk at almost every party and making my friends and family worried about my drinking habits. Of course I wasn't worried about it at all seeing that I strictly adhere to one of my personal principals which goes by "work hard and play hard"; since all of us had been working hard throughout the week with five courses on our hands for that semester, we should enjoy ourselves once a week to balance our lifestyle.

Operation Final Winter

It wasn't long before the final exams for the winter semester arrived; time passes so fast especially when you're having fun. Moments like these are the most dreadful experience any student can have seeing that burning the midnight oil and spending more time at the library becomes compulsory rather than optional. To make matter worst, with five courses to prepare for, my level of anxiety increases day by day as time draws closer to my examination's date. Despite having a tactical plan easily devised for the preparation of every subjects, the execution of the plan which involves strict compliance to the preparation schedule is not an easy task. Nevertheless, deviating from the plan was not an option for me or I would have risk a chaotic preparation which would eventually lead to my academic demise. To sum it up, it was extra work and less sleeping hours for me that time of the semester. Nevertheless, my "pub" still opened every Saturday night as usual; the only difference about it was there were not many "customers" as usual seeing that they were all busy preparing for their exam. Eiji and his girlfriend Pamella (who's also from Japan) continued to be my "regulars" during the final exam season.

We've got a man down!

I still remember there was one night after a long day of studying, Eiji, Pamella and I were drinking together as usual. We had a card game of "high low" where the loser will have to drink a shot of vodka and guess who was the biggest loser that night? Yes, you guessed it right; it was me. Consequently, I ended up finishing most of the bottle of Russian vodka and it wasn't long before I was wasted. That night didn't end despite I was dead drunk; Eiji and Pamella asked me to accompany them to MAX, a dance club in downtown Kamloops to spend the remaining of the night. Seeing that I always try my best to please my friends in any way possible, I decided to follow them in my drunken state. When I reached the dance club I could barely walked straight and both Eiji and Pamella had to keep a close eye on me. Instead of dancing and having fun in the club, I spend most of the time in the men's toilet puking; it was so bad until one of the bouncer noticed it and he kicked me out from the club. That night, I was outside the club sitting on the sidewalk trying to straighten myself out while both Eiji and Pamella were in there partying. However, it wasn't long before they noticed I was outside the club therefore, they decided to take me home. As they were carrying me to their car, I vomited more and I immediately dropped to the ground before vomiting more. The second Eiji mentioned something about changing the place to Thirsty Dog which was another dance club, I panicked frantically seeing that I couldn't continued with my current state or misery. According to Pamella (which I doubt she was telling the truth...) she said I started screaming for my mum saying how much I miss her and I wanted to go home so badly. She even said that I tried to walk home and she had to bring me back from wondering the streets aimlessly. Eventually they all brought me home and the second I reached home, I started to puking more again. I was puking in the toilet bowl and my worried roommate had to made sure I didn't hurt myself. Eiji carried me to my room but just before we reach the room I needed to puked more so I immediately rushed to my room's kitchen sink to throw up more. Pamella was patting my back while I was puking and after I finished unleashing the entire 3 course meal for the day from my stomach, the both of them tucked me into my bed. That was one hell of a day but I was so grateful that I had good friends like Eiji and Pamella to watch my back when things took a disastrous turn for me.

Operation Final Winter pt. 2

Despite getting wasted a day before, the preparation for the final exam continued as usual. As the days grew closer to the final exams, so was the completion of my preparation. Despite that, I felt the lack of confidence mostly because I was afraid that I might not be able to remember what I studied. More over, there were a couple of courses which I did not get A for my midterm exams therefore, to achieve at least an A- for the overall course would require an A+ for the final exam. The problem was what were the chances of me pulling an A+ for the final exams? Not good, I thought. My Operations Management was the first course to come back with an overall grade; to my surprise, I did horribly wrong and I only got a C+ for the overall course. Devastated and sorrowed, I knew that was the end of my academic for the semester. I was so demotivated to perform well for the other courses; I knew that it was going to be difficult to score at least an A- for the remaining subjects. When all means fail, the only last resort is the act of God; I then prayed so hard that God will be merciful to me and bless my remaining courses with at least an A-. I eventually sat for the remaining exam and I did my best for them; the rest was up to God. Several weeks after the exam, the results were back and I was a nervous wreck the moment I checked my results online. To my biggest surprise, I scored A for the remaining courses and my GPA increased. I was filled with utmost joy; I remembered throwing my right arm in the air, gaving a loud victorious cry and thanking the Lord for his miracles. The war on the final exam was won and I was glad to know I did a great job. Mission accomplished!

To be continued...