Nico

I just received a comment on one of my older posts, which made me realise that I’ve been ignoring the comments on this blog quite a bit, and I’m really sorry about that. I’ve been pretty busy, even right now during the vacation period, which means I don’t really have time to think too much about comments. So to Samantha, this reply is 3 months late:

I did absolutely nothing. The sprained neck just got better by itself, and the pain was gone after around 2 weeks I think, which meant that I was back to terrorising motorists and pedestrians within quite a short time, since I’d passed my driving test at around that time too I think.

Nonetheless, it’s nice to know that there are actually living, breathing people out there who actually bother to read the rubbish that I post here, even those whom I don’t know personally. So thanks for the comments everyone, and keep them coming – just because I don’t reply, doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate them.

And in an effort to make more time to reply all my comments, I have decided to withdraw from my faculty’s Orientation Week. It was a tough decision to make, deciding whether or not I should stay in the programme and keep up with the rest of my crew in FoE. In the end though, that constant dread in the pit of my stomach won me over, and I composed an email and sent out to the O-Week head informing him of my withdrawal.

The thing is, I’d started feeling really burnt out and deflated somewhere before study week had begun, which was quite a long time ago, and I’d never really recovered from that. Maybe it’s because I took up the job too soon after the final paper - but that’s something I don’t regret doing, because if I’d turned down that job offer, I wouldn’t have been able to work in such an interesting environment with colleagues who watch my back so much. Or it could’ve been the Berkelah trip – returning to work 8 and a half hours after returning to the country can leave you a little bit winded. But then again, it could be because of the preparations for the CSS Freshmen Orientation Camp coming up in a week’s time, but let’s be honest, it wasn’t really very intense, though it did burn up one of my weekends and result in some rather late nights.

Whatever it was, I was just sick of going through my days feeling depleted, slightly sleep deprived and without a peace of mind, which is why I’d decided to sit out O-Week, and have a good rest, while everyone is in campus and too busy to bother my brains out.

(That last sentence was just a joke, by the way, so don’t take any offence to it.)

And that was that. So now, I shall go to bed, hoping that nobody’s gotten excessively pissed off because what I’d done…

It all started with Monday – a studio session with the Neon Green Elevator at Boon’s. We had Desmond on the keyboards, which had a broken D key. Maybe they broke it just for Desmond. Then there was Jeremy on vocals, having the time of his life singing Aerosmith, and wondering if wearing tighter underwear would allow him to reach Steve Tyler’s unreasonably high notes. And of course, we had Ewen on guitars, reminiscing about the first time he’d ever jammed (which was also at Boon’s), and giving us a surprise in the form of our bassist, Clarence, who told us he wouldn’t be joining us for the session, but later decided that he missed us too much (awww…).

And then, there was me, making a fool of myself and making Ewen regret not bringing his earplugs. He later discovered after the session, much to his despair, that he’d brought them after all. Despite of that, I think he, like the rest of us, had enjoyed the session very much. In fact, I think it’s the most fun thing I’d done throughout the entire week.

Tuesday was the beginning of the Berkelah trip, though it was more of a “trip” then it was “Berkelah”. We met at 9:30pm and spent the rest of the night travelling to Kuantan. When we finally got to Berkelah though, it was actually pretty cool. In fact, the water was freezing, and since I was born without any insulation, I was freezing my ass off at the third cascade of waterfalls. That said, the place was really pretty. Too bad Wednesday night was cloudy, or we would’ve been able to look at stars as well. Nonetheless, Wednesday night did provide us all with a rather memorable incident in which somebody found himself/herself in a rather - dare I say - ”comfortable” position (Hahaha), but I shan’t elaborate for fear of being screamed at by the person in question.

So I got back on Thursday night at midnight, and went back to work early on Friday morning. Then I got dragged by Agnes into this gathering with the Science FCG. So I went to PS after work to meet up with them for dinner, which was somewhat embarrassing, since everybody had just about finished up their food when I arrived, so they had to sit there and stare at me while I ate and lamented out loud about being the only Engineer present. We then adjourned to Desmond’s house for a chocolate fondue party, and an impromptu screening of “White Chicks”.

After everyone had left, Desmond, Jeremy, Charlotte and I sat down to try to create a theme song for our FOC, which was themed “Conquer” (“Huh???”), but after realising that we wouldn’t be able to do anything constructive without coming up with a few chords first, and that writing a song would’ve been much more fun if the theme was “Konker”, we decided to head home.

So here I am, blogging on a lazy Sunday afternoon. My room’s a mess, I can’t see the surface of my table, and my bags from the Berkelah trip are still lying in front of the bed, un-unpacked…

It’s good to be home.