Monday, April 21

Mission Unfathomable: SSA2219 Exam

Note: Unfathomable means difficult to understand

I am a man on a mission
To ace my SSA2219 final examination.
(Despite my pathetic project evaluation)

The rules are non-negotiable
Three questions, two hours and one last chance
Hold your seats, here comes the unfathomable

Each question average at forty minutes
And Dr Rai asks for four pages at least
In each of those short forty minutes.

Excluding 5 minutes for thinking
I have 9 minutes for one page
Perfectly reasonable planning

"So what's unfathomable?" you said
"Oh," I would say
"It's just that TWO PAGES IS MY MAX!!!"

Teach me how to 'smoke' two more pages per questions
And how to disguise my ignorance in fancy words.
So that I can manage this Unfathomable Mission.

If you have enjoyed this post, you will also like my joint blog with with the M&M at Ultimate Secrets Of Success

Saturday, April 19

Hell Week? Hell Yeah!

I have never felt so alive in a long time. It has been terrible living in a box for the past twelve week.


The last time that I have experienced this feeling is when I was still a member of the Most Ridiculous Force and serving under this huge company, the Serve And F**koff. *Note: Names have been changed to protect my ass.

In order to feel alive, I feel that you have to go through what it is like to be dead, or near-dead. And I have that feeling smacked right there in my face.


Not that I am encouraging anybody to risk their life to find happiness, but I believe that it is a fact that unless you know what it is like to be down, you will never know what being up feels; unless you know what 'absence' and 'scarcity' entail, you will never appreciate 'presence' and 'abundance'; and unless you have felt the shackled burden of extreme despair, you may never understand what is it like to feel alive and totally liberated.


During 2006, while I was walking around the company compound at 2 AM during guardog duty, I lost my headwear. The headwear was earned through the blood and sweat of my friends and I, and the act of losing it would mean either a severe letdown to my friends or a severe letdown to my friends plus extra weekend overtime. Neither was good. And I need to have it with me the very next day for a parade. To make things worse, the DO caught me without the headwear and I was slammed with threats and promises of extra duties, and it is sure as rock that words would get to my company boss's ears and I would be skinned alive.

Adding fuel to the mix, I could not find my mobile phone anywhere. There are still more additions to this series of unfortunate events, but in the end, I went back to my bunk dormitory and pour out all my emotions into a tiny black notebook. It was therapeutic for that moment, but the problem still linger like a bad aftertaste. What was in my mind then? Well, I felt like I had expended 5 years worth of bad luck in that 5 hours. This was the 'despair' moment.


The light shone through the very moment that I found where my mobile phone was - under my pillow. I felt a stream of hope and rejuvenated confidence that I am above these craps. All of a sudden, a senior member of the company heard of my plight and offered me a spare headwear - Great! One problem less. Then one of friends from the guardog duty gave me a call and tell me that the DO had decided to rest his case against me - Great! Now I have no worries. You know what? These three things happened with 30 minutes. I had never felt such joyous liberation in that day.

Similarly, I was in the down for the past week. Monday, I contracted some wave of depression that stripped me of all motivation. It happened when I came home from school. No idea what had happened, probably stress to perform academically. Tuesday, I stayed at home studying for a test on Wednesday. But it had been very unproductive. Wednesday, I went to see a professor to get back my grades for a module project. The grade was heavily (or should I use the word 'severely') below my expectation. After a lengthy discussion, I realised that the requirement to ace the module was on an entirely different level, one that I had never expected before in my life. (My strength lies in biology, chemistry and maths where I am used to always getting the same results with the same conditions. The human geography module - South Asian Study- just doesnt work that way. It really hurts to talk about it) I have one week to adjust my attitude towards the module before the exam. In the latter part of the day when I have my biology test, I performed below my own expectation, despite the test being an "open-books, open-discussions, open-internet" exam. Thursday, I hurt my oral cavity while feasting on my favourite Subway Tuna sandwich. The oat bit of the bread had somehow inflicted a cut in my mouth. Friday dealt the killer blow. I lost my cool during the JAVA Programming exam and underperformed again. There's something unnerving about hearing the clitter-clatter of keyboards all around you while you are trying to think about the questions. I have probably spent half of the allocated 90 minutes in jittery. Mental blocks hit me and I understand for the first time in my life what it is like to blank out and forget everything you have ever studied. I have actually felt mortal fear, for a programming exam! Out of a full sixty marks, my expected score is less than ten. And I was confident that I may get a 55.


Bad luck? Maybe.

Bad week? Hell Yeah!!!

Am I happy? Definitely!


Before you think that I am a madman beyond salvation, let just say that I am thankful for these events for they have sent me some very important messages about my life. It took me some time to calm down before I came up with these.

1) I have been neglecting sleep, proper mealtimes, and exercises for more than two weeks. It finally manifested on Monday. I slept through the whole afternoon, woke up for dinner, and continued sleeping through the night. Tuesday was like a continuation of its previous day.


2) The whole world is always going to be a = a and b = b. Picking up the human geography module is a definite eye-opener to me. It is the heterogenity of the human race that allows it to survive through various natural, artificial selection pressures. There's no reason why its literature and knowledge have to remain static and unquestioned. There is merits in disputing conventions and challenging existing knowledge.

It was the diversity of biology that attracted me to study it. Somehow along the way, I have treated it as a memory game - just copy-and-paste from textbook to the exam scripts.

3) Most importantly, I have not been interacting much with my friends and family for a very long time.

There was a cold realisation after the JAVA test. I wanted to cry my heart out but no tears are coming out of my eyes - seems like they have dried up or something. It frightened me at that point of time. I tried to express my disappointment to a classmate but the tone of the ranting voice was happy. What am I? Psycho-emo? Come to think of it, I have not heard me speaking for quite some time.

4) I have to stop judging my worth based on the mistakes i have made. The poor productivity on Monday, the sub-standard performance at the tests, the you-have-gotten-a-worst-grade-than-your-friend evidences and procrastination for USOS duties have sank my self-confidence and self-worth towards the bottom of the sea.

The boat may have sunk and it was me to blame. It is fine but it does not imply that I am a destined failure nor a bell-curve feeder forever. It's painful enough to deal with heavy schoolwork without the self-sabotage, why should I hurl more insults towards myself everyday?

Life is too short for us to be waddling around blindly or in despair.
So stay focused on the destination and enjoy the journey,
For life is too short
To be spent 'lost' and without a grin for you and me.


If you have enjoyed this post, you will also like my joint blog with with the M&M at Ultimate Secrets Of Success