USM-kle.

Sigh. Not a good first line to start with. Sometimes the pain is too unbearable and at last you just wanna let it down, pour it in words, just to make yourself feel better. Or at least, you tried.

For the past few years , you believe you can be the owner of the 'best selling' book. The one that everyone keep talking about, because the characters are too real, the plot wont let you down and the subtle words can touch or punch your heart. Not soon enough, you are told you can't have that book. because you didn't measure up to what the book owner hoped for.

Sigh. In my case, you been given a new book instead . Wrap with a clear plastic, where you can actually read through the synopsis at the back. Cursing under your breath, this is the last book you wish you can have. You lied. They say don't judge a book by its cover, I say don't judge a book by its wrapper. It maybe not as clear as it seems. I hate the fact I didn't have much choice, but to accept, this book.

Dealing with uncertainty is never easy. What if I really love the story? What if the first chapter annoyed me? What if I can't digest the content,? What if it was a mistake but what if ? STOP!

It's killing me. Why don't I wait, until the time come. and slash the plastic with a blade, carefully not to damage the cover. And read up. And let experience speaks the rest.

Will you remember me?

Thousand miles with thousand different stories. Let the pictures locked our memories.

I had to fall, to lose it all

This is my

my favourite all time.

Rosy blood.

Life is about making choices. You can have red , blue, green, purple and YELLOW. Yet you choose crimson. Out of the league. Out of the reach. And you never knew the reason why. So,you make up one. You say crimson is the colour of your favourite rose. You live your lie ....

After SPM, after I left my beloved high school, there are so many choices I need to consider.

1) Matriculation labuan

Nope, I don't want to, seniors said the life is hectic. No guarantee I will get the course I wanted the most.

2) Foundation in University Malaya

Nope, 1 year will be a tough year. No guarantee I will get into medical school.

3) Engineering - University Sheffield, UK ( Shell )

Nope, my family don't want add another engineer who end up as a teacher. yet I didn't like mathematics. Oh please don't remind me.

4) Medicine school at University of Ain Shams, Egypt

Yes. Guarantee a medical school. No hard road, you are in the right path. and BIG NO. why? I love challenge, not my intended to offense, but I see average people can apply too. and get accepted. I know I deserved better.

5) IB - Kolej Mara Banting, Malaysia

No guarantee. 2 risky years in Malaysia. After than I can go abroad, pick my favourite country as easy as I pointed the globe. There are the top scorer, the best students from different states. even 16 A1's scorer. The kiashu. Yes. No doubt, this is firm. I choose YOU.

and, the new story begins.

I become the mid student. No longer the scorer, no longer the high achiever, no longer the award holder. Watching from distance, now I realized this IS CHALLENGE.

I struggle. To adapt. To breath. To focus.

Every night, I will look up the sky. Watching moon and the stars. And suddenly leaped across the hardest part, when I already made the wishes upon the falling stars.

The best part?

Trust me, this failure is much more sweeter than any well-earned victory. Because the roses live among the thorns, and when you bleed, you might as well say, THE ROSE AS CRIMSON AS YOUR BLOOD. As sweet, as Your favourite one.

BLANK

It took me about few minutes to pick a suitable title. Then, I just move on. leave it blank.

There was so many things going on last few weeks but I wasn't in a good mood to press the keyboard. So, on 6th July 2011, the day of the year, IB result was released. Everyone was looking forward for it, in a very different way (of course). I can feel the butterfly and buffaloes in my stomach. I never feel so nervous like this.

9 pm.

I was in Bella's house, press the keyboard slowly. Carefully key in my ID and password. And cover the laptop with a magazine. Out of the blue, Bella pulled it down, and I stared at the monitor, a number change everything.

34.

to be exact 33 +1

For a moment I had this long pause, and stare at the monitor. Yes, it is a 34, not 36. I didn't meet my uni requirement. I can bid goodbye for UNIVERSITY COLLEGE CORK and NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF GALWAY. I can't reach IRELAND.dreamland.

I cry, I cry. I took wudhu, solat and cry. Cry and pray. and pray and cry.

When you actually put so much hope, like putting a single brick everyday, side by side and top of others, arrange them creatively , stick them with the strongest cement you can earned, make them a house. And do believe it is your dream house.

And when the wind blew....

No , when the typhoon came, it destroyed everything. In a split second, everything scattered into million pieces. So do my heart. and my parents'.

BUT

it is not everything about the house, I mean the result. I couldn't believe I became this strong girl. Look, seriously when I was a junior in KMB, heard bout how many seniors didn't get to fly, didn't get into their preferences university, I was so pity on them. and it scared me as well.

BUT

hey, I been here, I was there. I am a failure (not really). I take it back, I didn't meet my university requirement. But this phase actually makes me realized, my result would not mean I had to forget my dream. I'am a runner, with a good start, but I felt down in a sharp turn. I hurt. I'm broken. But, nothing beat the taste of RISE ABOVE YOUR FAILURE.

And I would like to remind myself that the world is a huge place, I may not end up in my dream university, but there are hundreds of opportunities and different people to meet everyday. And I had a very good cry, this keep me going. But I never regret that I took IB at the first place. I may not be proud of my result, but I'm proud of what I have become.

Alhamdulilah.

p/s : Thank you Bella, KN, ezzad and ah huyy for support and supper!

MOCK-ing

Mock Interview is a compulsory interview for all KMBians. I bet you should be thankful as this trial interview gives you a quick test to evaluate whether you are prepared enough for the real university interview or not. Fuh! And here are some of the tips for you.

Before the interview day

1. Why?

The most favourite question is

“ Why you wanna be a doctor?”

And the most lame answers are

“ I want to help people”

“ My mom is diagnosed with cancer, or my grandfather is died because of hepatitis”.

No. You need to find a concrete reason why you want to be a doctor. Do ask yourself “ Why I wanna be a doctor so badly?. The interviewers will not impress with any emotional engaging stories related to pain, or death. But show your enthusiasm by deliberating your passion towards medical stuff for instance or talking about your wonderful experience on hospital attachment, which would be a good topic to start with. Not to forget you already wrote “the reason/s” in your personal statement. So, he/she might as well ask you to further explain it. Be prepared.

2. Feed your mind with a lot of medical articles and recent news.

General knowledge is crucial, you should know significant diseases in Malaysia, like dengue, cholera, heart disease and do google about them. If you know them in details, that would be a bonus, but don’t create stupid answers. The interviewers might not a doctor, or people who are major in medicine ( mine was a major in Mathematics) but they know stuffs. You are in a big trouble if you think you can lie about science.

Apart from that, the MOCK interviewers are English people who are staying in Malaysia. He might as well ask about current issue in Malaysia, like BERSIH and political stuff. If you are ignorant all these while, please read about those things. Unlike locals, he won’t judge your opinion ( yes, I am being prejudice here) but he just want to make sure you are not living under the coconut shell ( I hope you get me.) Oh yeah, worldwide issues are worth-knowing, like typhoon, tsunami or earth quake, just for back up.

3. Read your Personal Statement

The last wise step before your session is read up your personal statement. If you had jot down anything regarding the activities / achievement, make sure you remember them vividly. Give the interviewer the crystal clear pictures if he asks. You might as well write your activities in a blank paper and doodles about it the night before.

During the interview session

1. Accent

The interviewer will give you a welcoming smile and introduce his/her name. During my time, he will give you a minute or two, and let you introduce yourself and your backgrounds just to unwind your mind. After that he/she will start with the questions. Take note that she/he is a foreigner and his accent is there. No matter how slow he/she talks, our minds still need some time to interpret his questions. So, if it happens that you are ‘blur’ about what the heck his question is, try this tips.

“ I am sorry sir, can you re phrase the question *smile* ?”

Instead of

“ Pardon sir, can you repeat the question *smile* ? ”

Mind you, the first one is usually works. But don’t use it too often; you might end up look like a dumb.

2. Smile.

This is crucial. A doctor is the one who has great soft skill like the ability to communicate efficiently with the patients or his/her crews and suitable BODY LANGUAGE. Be confident and smile, that’s the trick. If you are lucky, you might get Irish interviewers, which are friendly and easy going. I do feel safe talking to them as if they are my friends. But one big problem, their accents are strong. So, back to the basic, a nice plastic smile won’t hurt, right?

3. Ethical issue.

Before I forgot, you need to read about ethical issues such as abortion and cloning. He might as well put you into intense situation, where you need to abort the child or not. Or should the government approve the GMO foods for the people. Trust me, he don’t care about your stand but he cares about your reasoning. Open up your Theory Of Knowledge handbook, reasoning part is there. This is the time where he gets the chance to access your credibility as medical students. As we all know, ethical issues are tough because we cannot draw a line between what is acceptable in our culture and what is not. How about the people of different culture and religion? Do they agree with our stand? I bet you are brilliant enough to judge it yourself. Please don’t look so extremist, but well balanced is needed. You don’t have to condemn the other choices, if you have made the chosen one. Don’t worry, they won’t provoke you. That’s for sure.

4. Question

If you have any questions, you are free to ask at the end of the interview session. And don’t forget to thank him.

Hope you will succeed, and make sure you get an A. Mine was an A- J

Break a leg!

p/s I am sorry, I know I should decided to put he / she / they for the interviewers but I am too lazy to do that.

You can go only as far as you think you can ( Part 1)

Every day, like a jobless person, I would wake up at 11 am and sometimes I missed my suboh prayer. Thus, I ending up qada’ my solah when it is nearly zohor. Shame on me. I know.

But today, I wake up so early and I didn’t sleep after my suboh prayer. Like usual, I login into my facebook account, twitter and reading some of colleagues blog.

So majority of my friends continue counting days before the result come out. So do the IBians around the world who took their exams on May 2011. The real result will come out on 6^th July 2011, GMT 12, which equivalent to 9pm local time in Malaysia. And I’m freaking nervous. I am. It is not like SPM, where I excel in trial MARA, where the only subject haunted me in my dream was ADDITIONAL MATHEMATICS, which later on leave me a big smile looking at my an A1 in my SPM slip.

But it was a golden history. Getting into KMB is a new life, new challenges and new resolution. I am in the same college with the best students from Sarawak, from Kedah, from Sabah, and lots of the people are super smart. And they are proficiency in English language. I realized their English is one level higher than mine, so I just pull off my socks, and did everything I need to improve my English. Well, in a new environment people are told to be well adapted, or die. You need to learn or you would not be able to communicate well, to make friends or to lead an organization. Some remarks I got like

“You have a heavy accent. You really need to work on it” or

“You have a good English but your accent interfere my judgement towards your language section. But as I know you are from there (Sabah), so it is not fair to minus your mark. ( Oral session). And end up I got the highest oral mark 27/30. Alhamdulilah.

Even in MOCK (trial) interview, where the English Man ( I forgot his name) who interviewed me, left my butterflies in my stomach but it turned out to be so much fun. He supposed to read my personal statement and commented on it. I laughed at how he pronounced Kota kinabalu as “ketaaaa kinaaablueeeeee” . He went further asking about torpedo, where I put as my greatest achievement in science field, where we ( Karl Kus, Nelisa Ameera, Hisyam and Fadzrin) won the first prize, after spending few weeks on the lab carried out the project. And sometimes we went back to hostel at 2am, (: it was an awesome memory, thank you guys.

Funny though, and I got A- for it ( mock interview). I’m ecstatic.

So, I learn and learn. And I adore some of my beloved friends like Afiqah Moghni, Syed Hadi ‘Arief, Fareeza, Nadhirah Kahar , Atiqah Azmi,Bessima, Bella (this is my senior) , Esther and Jeniffer. Some of them were from my former school like Nelisa, hazim,Vilzan and Johan Malik. They have very good English, and I like how they put the words together and make it rhythms. They might not realized that they played major role in inspiring me to write better essays.

Oh yeah and I am a big fan of seventeen magazines, and a bunch of thank you to the editor and her crews for putting the great articles where I usually pick up vocabulary and updates my ideas from it. But the problem about being a magazine reader is your grammar will be haywire. Seriously, my English teacher will never forget to write something like

“Brush up your grammar, jemz” or “ Interesting, but be careful with your grammar” at the bottom of my essays. Yeah. I should.

And I know, it is time to speak up. But among Malays, sometimes we are too lazy to speak in English if we are not in the academic classes. We are comfort just let Bahasa lingers around our daily conversations. That is the reason why, I always stay in Esther and Jennifer’s room. We use English in our daily conversation, mainly because Esther is Chinese from Sabah and Jen is mix Chinese Sarawakian. Thank you for letting me in and help me improve my speaking part and also being my proof reader (especially for TOK). But honestly, I will laugh my *** out if I heard them spoke in Malay. Poor them. Sorry, they are sooo cute and adorable. And their accent too.

Secondly, staying in their room really inspired me. Both are them are robot! Hahaha, they really really study hard. I feel so motivated watching them reading, surfing for good articles and doing revision. No wonder they got an Honor roll for every single bloody semester in Kmb. I never had one, but I never give up. I am studyholic too, do call me nerd. But I feel bad if I didn’t flip academic book for a day, even when it was a holiday. I remembered Fareeza (my sayang- my neighbour) upset seeing me reading in her room. HAHAHA. Plus the never-ending- assignment made me who I am in KMB.

My greatest achievement in KMB was 33, and I need a 36 to fly to my Ire(dream)land. So far yet so close.

Back in MRSM, I never doubt I can make it. Score 3.5 every semester and entitled “Anugerah Penghormatan Pengetua” is not tough, not really hard. I studied a lot, and alhamdulilah I got it. But college is not gonna be the same. If I am not mistaken, I was the 170^th scorer out of 300++ last semester. I just a normal student, but I never lose my faith. Maybe my redz (reziki) are meant for the future achievements. And I believe, IB did change me, a lot. Making me closer to my Creator, and put my solely believe in Him. Not because my efforts. Not because the great teachers ( even they are really great). Not because efficient discussion with IRP mates. But because of Allah, the Only One who helps me in studies.