Missing London already

Waaa belum apa-apa dah rindu London. Padahal baru je 3 jam sampai rumah.

So last Thursday I took the Eurostar straight away after my Strategie class and went to London. On the way to the station I stopped by at a pharmacy to get some prescribed medication. I was served by the weirdest chemist ever. He always repeat the end of my sentences and added 'Yes, yes, yes' each time. When I was talking he would nod vigorously and say 'uhuh, uhuh'. It was very annoying. And he spoke with a very low tone, almost whisper-like. I was like, 'apahal mamat ni'?He was just like the inn keeper in old horror movies.

Then as I waited for my Eurostar, I heard an announcement 'l'enregistrement pour l'Eurostar est maintenant fermé, the check in for Eurostar IS NOW CLOSED'. It was a recorded message, but why did she has to yell at the end of the recording, bunyi macam nak marah je.

Turun kat St Pancras, the new Eurostar station, yang dalam dia macam muzium tak cukup benda nak exhibit. Met Ammar in King's Cross, to take me to his place. Even though boleh je nak claim £30 a night for accomodation, rasanya lagi best duk ramai-ramai, boleh networking, bersosial dan sebagainya.

Jealousnya aku dengan Ammar, rumah best, dekat dengan semua benda (tube, kedai halal, restaurant halal, masjid, taman, jangan kata Nando's, Pando's pun dekat), sekolah 6 bulan setaun, belajar 5 subjek je, periksa sekali setaun, kelas empat jam sehari, pastu tiga hari je seminggu. Seb baik tak teringat nak komplen kat Kak Rash hahaha.

The interview was on Friday at the Petronas office in Malaysia Hall. La kechil je office Petronas. Ingatkan besar. I was given a topic for the discussion during the interview which was on 'Hygiene and food preparation' or something like that. As I read the article to the end, I asked 'mana soalannya?' Seb baik tanya time preparation and belum masuk bilik interview lagi. So buatla benda sama macam kat Educamp dulu.

I was interviewed by Datuk Ainun and Puan Wan Noor Aini, the highest ranking panelists amongst all the other panelists. Wah, seram la jugak masa jenguk dalam bila dia suruh masuk. I had no idea before hand who would interview me. Okla kot, even though rasanya kadang-kadang tu ada jawapan yang tidak menjawab soalan, ye la BM penulisan UPSR pun boleh lari tajuk, ni pulak jawab interview.

Then I had to sit the verbal and numerical test. Ok la numerical tu susah gak aa sebab 20 questions in 20 minutes without calculator tapi yang tak adilnya, orang lain, duduk dulu dia kasi kertas soalan and jawapan, isi nama, baru dia kata start, aku pulak dia kasi kertas, soalan terus dia suruh start. Mana yang nak ngisi namanya, mana yang nak pergi duduknya. Lepas tu kena buat karangan pulak. Adoii. Seb baik ada idea. Yang sorang ni pulak, orang duk bising-bising nak balik sebab dah pukul 7 malam, dia boleh pulak loyar buruk masa nak hand in karangan. Hahaha, memang patut kena gossip dengan akak tu.

The next day ada some sort of seminar. Macam biasalah, budak France kena duduk depan. Tradition ke, sebab Puan Faridah terperasan pastu panggil duduk depan ke, pasal sorang kena pegi baca doa ke, tak taulah. Dah duduk depan kenala buat cara duduk depankan? focus kat speaker, hangguk sedikit sebanyak, kerut-kerut dahi skit, bila orang lain kat belakang gelak terbahak-bahak sebab ada speaker buat lawak, orang depan kena jaga cool, gelak tak lebih 2 harakah, senyum je, muka pulak kena bagi panelist nampak barula dia boleh take note siapa duk depan (saya! saya!).

Wah lunch tak ingat dunia. Buffet yang sangatlah best. Tapi silap strategi. Tak perasan pulak ada counter-counter yang lagi best kat tempat lain. Dua kali la aku makan benda yang sama. Dessert plak stok yang kami student Petronas biasanya hanya boleh tengok dan lihat student sponsor lain makan (unless dia ajak makan sekali la kan?)

Petang tu ada games. Biasalah Petronas, kalau ada nak kasi motivational talk, mesti ada game. Kadang-kadang terpikir pulak agak-agak Shell or Exxon ada tak buat benda sama kat Belanda dengan US? Lepas tu semua orang duk lepak dekat tempat Tea, yang nak balik tak balik-balik, yang belum nak balik pun tak balik-balik. Time ni la nak networking dengan orang besar-besar. Sembang-sembang dengan Puan Faridah, Datuk Rusti, Datuk Ainun, Puan Wan Noor Aini, Kak Rash. Tapi sayangnya Kak Yam takde time tu. Busy kot.

Pastu Ammar, Ustat, Ghani dengan Rizal teman aku cari kasut. Dah tengok 2 3 kedai still takde yang aku berkenan. Rasa bersalah pulak time tu dengan budak-budak ni sebab semua nampak penat je, tu yang aku ajak balik. Malam tu makan kebab ramai-ramai (berlima je sebenarnya), pastu sembang-sembang sampai masuk tido.

Finally one quote from the Petronas Talk, Saturday morning:
"Jauhi diri dari orang-orang yang bergossip"

i'll be leaving on a jet plane

Ch'est le nord

Today is the first day of winter.

I'm not kidding. It's 1°C outside and it snowed this morning while I was waiting for the bus. Around the world people are celebrating the first day of spring, while here in the Nord, it's just another day in winter.

The temperature began to cool down since late October and it peaked around Christmas. I remembered waiting for my bus at -5°C. Although now the temperature is around 5 to 10, it feels much colder than in December because of the rain and the strong wind.

What's worse is the fact that my radiator is no longer working. I have to resort to using my oven as a heat source.

This being said, I can still enjoy the rainy weather, provided I'm somewhere dry. (Almost) nothing beats the ecstasy of sipping a cup of coffee, by the window, while it pours, while looking at people running for shelter.

Ca, c'est fait!

Wow.

The word kept coming back in my head as I watched the elections results programme on TV3 through out Saturday. Everyone was stuck in front of their computer screens. I spent the first few hours at home and then I joined Jep and Manau in Jep's room.

I am not involved in politics. I am not affiliated to any political parties nor am I a registered voter. But I have a huge interest in Malaysian politics even though people always said that the status quo would remain until forever. And these people are proven wrong when the elections results were announced one by one on Saturday.

Not only the current coalition has failed to secure a 2/3 majority, 5 states has fallen to a new administration as well.

It was funny to see how the panelist on TV3 changed their tones towards the end of the programme as compared to when the programme started at 2pm (EST). They started with saying pembangkang emphasizing on the P and the B to give in a negative connotation, then they changed it to yang lagi satu when they announced Penang has fallen to DAP while PAS strengthen its grip on Kelantan, and ultimately they used terms like pentadbiran baru when it was learned that Kedah, Perak and my beloved home-state Selangor is now under a new administration.

They also changed their discussion topics from racial sentiments played by the then-opposition (although ironically it was the coalition who has been threatening people with racial sentiments), to what contributed to the coalition huge losses, to who among the then-opposition would form the governments in the 5 states controlled by them.

It was also important to note how the keep on holding back results where the then-oppositions have won. The news that the 5 states have fallen to a new administration have been circulating on the internet by around 0100 hours (GMT+8). The kept on repeating the coalition wins on the news-ticker at the bottom of the screen until there were no more wins to be shown but those of the then-oppositions.

And, the panelists have also dared to criticized high-profilers who have lost towards the middle of the programme. They said that it was high time that Samy Vellu retired from the political arena, that Kayveas defeat was a not a surprise, that it was Koh Tsu Kun's fault of not announcing the next Penang's CM that the coalition has lost the state. This is something that they wouldn't even dare to speak about had these people won.

And I do admire Shahrizat's and Tsu Kun's courage to face the public admitting their defeat and congratulating their opponents.

Here are my own analysis of what happened according to states.

Sarawak
No surprises. This state has contributed a lot to the coalition's simple majority in the Dewan Rakyat.

Sabah
Although PKR claimed that it would gain control of the state, the results proved otherwise. Most of the seats, state and parliament, went to the coalition. The state was also one of the major contributors to the coalition's simple majority.

Perlis
I thought PAS had a good chance of gaining this state as there was an internal conflicts in the main coalition party. Not only all parliamentary seats went to the coalition (which is 3 by the way), PAS has not been able to get an influential presence in the state assembly.

Kedah
This was a shocker. I thought PAS could only make huge in roads in this state but not to the point of gaining it. I was happy to hear that it will form a coalition with PKR to form the state government but I was quite disappointed when they somewhat refused to accept the sole DAP assemblyman into the new government.

Kelantan
Not a surprise. I always thought that PAS would either get a huge majority in terms of seats or sweep clean the state seats. But Awang Adek's lost in both state and parliamentary seats that he contested was quite a shocker. I expected Annuar Musa to win and Mustapha Mohamed not to, but the results proved exactly the opposite.

Terengganu
I was quite pessimist about PAS's chance to gain back the state. Terengganu has always been the coalition's state except in 1999 but even that was due to an exceptional circumstance. I thought that PAS would at least deny the coalition of a 2/3 majority in the state, but I was wrong. Apart from that 89 years old Maimun Yusuf have splitted the votes in Kuala Terengganu. If all the votes that she gained went to Mohamad Sabu, the latter could have won even with a slim majority.

Penang
I've always thought that this time the state would fall to DAP. At the same time I didn't expect Koh Tsu Kun to lose his maiden parliamentary bid for Batu Kawan. I was also disappointed when the new government announced that PAS's assemblyman won't be included it the new administration. I hope that the 2nd bridge project would continue but with a few adjustments (like not having a rest-stop in the middle of the bridge) and that the monorail project would be reopen to a more transparent tender as the previous one was done in a suspicious manner.

Pahang
No surprises except for Najib's increased majority in Pekan, and PKR's win in Kuantan.

Malacca
I thougt PAS would have performed better in some parts, and DAP to sweep away seats on the state's shoreline but not to the extent of denying the coalition from forming the sate government. In the end PAS won no seats, and DAP managed quite well.

Johor
The coalition fortress is no longer impenetrable. The only time in recent memory (ie when I started to get interested in local politics) that the opposition managed to secure a state seat was in 2004 which was in fact due to some technical glitch. Now, 4 seats went to DAP and 2 to PAS, with 1 parliamentary seat went to DAP as well. It seems that the leak in the coalition's fortress is situated around Muar area.

Negri Sembilan
Well, Khairy won Rembau. But I have to point out that Chegubard, his opponent managed to get 20000 votes compared to KJ's 25000. In other constituencies this might not seem much but when you're in a David vs Goliath (or in this case Chegubard vs KJ) battle in a coalition fortress losing by 5000 votes is something to be proud of. Other than that, denying the coalition of the 2/3 majority was also unexpected (by me).

Perak
Well, a friend of mine who is a staunch coalition supporter, has indeed wished for the state to fall to a new administration due to the fact that his family has been affected by the reshuffling of the candidates in the state. Kayveas' defeat was not unexpected, however Samy's was. He said before the elections that even the army can't stop him, but apparently he has forgotten that the people can.

KL
If only KL was a state.

Selangor
Wow
I never expected that. Although I was quite happy that my constituency is no longer under the coalition, be it at the parliamentary or state level. I heard 2 jokes from my friends about the fall of Selangor. One is that all the voters who should've voted for the coalition were all ferried to Terengganu to vote as phantom voters. The other said that the fall of Selangor was Khir Toyo's fault for having langgar pantang larang pakai susuk tempe. I really do hope that the new administration will reinstate the local council elections.

The coalition has been denied its 2/3 majority in parliament. From only 1 seat, PKR is now the opposition leader with 31 seats behind DAP's 28 and PAS's 23. Those political analysts who said that the PKR is en route to oblivion should now find a new job.

As for Perak, I don't see why the new MB should be from PAS seeing that it has scored the lowest among the new administration. It would only be fair if it's someone from DAP since it have bagged the most among them. Plus it would be a fair and a balance share of power amongst the new administration, DAP 2 states, PAS 2 states, PKR 1 state plus heading the parliament's opposition.

I hope that they would prove that they are a viable alternative to the coalition or otherwise, it would be unfortunate for Malaysia and Malaysians in the future.