The New Year songs fills the air. Splendid fireworks decorated the night sky. Shops, especially run by the Chinese, closed for the celebration of a new year. This is the usual scene whenever Chinese New Year comes around. Everyone celebrating it, including me, though I'm not Chinese (I looked like one, but it doesn't mean that I am Chinese). Guess that's the uniqueness living under one roof and one name, Malaysia. We get lots and lots of holiday due to our multiracial society, something that is often taken for granted. Anyhoo, Happy Chinese New Year and Happy Holiday to all my friends.
Chinese New Year in London's Chinatown...
I'm wikipedia-ing Chinese New Year, and I found this: "According to tales and legends, the beginning of Chinese New Year started with the fight against a mythical beast called the Nien (Chinese: 年; pinyin: nián). Nien would come on the first day of New Year to devour livestock, crops, and even villagers, especially children. To protect themselves, the villagers would put food in front of their doors at the beginning of every year. It was believed that after the Nien ate the food they prepared, it wouldn’t attack any more people. One time, people saw that the Nien was scared away by a little child wearing red. The villagers then understood that the Nien was afraid of the colour red. Hence, every time when the New Year was about to come, the villagers would hang red lanterns and red spring scrolls on windows and doors. People also used firecrackers to frighten away the Nien. From then on, Nien never came to the village again. The Nien was eventually captured by hong jun lao zu, an ancient Taoist monk. The Nien became hong jun lao zu's mount." Okie, so I C&P (that would be copy-and-paste), but it's for your reading pleasure, if you are reading my blog. We celebrated holidays a lot, but none of us never took the opportunity to ask how it came into being. We are always ignorant of history, something that most of us considered boring, but actually helped us a lot, if you know what I'm saying. Okie, Edy, stop the crap!!!
But this year CNY celebration is somewhat dreary, mainly due to the recession. To be honest, 2009/2010 is not the best term ever for me; everything is slow, everything is not right, and everything...everything...well, everything is bad. Convex 2009, is not the best compared to 2008/2009, TOT committee is not that good, well to be honest (again), I'm doubtful of the leadership capability of my director, and NRIC committee is not that cheerful as it used to be (2008/2009). Whenever we have free time, most of us (NRIC 2008/2009) would go to the Bilik Gerakan, either to wait for the next class, finish our assignments, lab reports, tutorial, etc, or we just wanna have fun. And for me, that moment is fantastic, to be able to spend precious time with my friends. And I missed the laughters that often fills the air of that room.
And how do I connect all of this to the economic recession??? Let us see:
The economic recession of late-2000s, which begins in December 2007 in the United States and with much intensity since September 2008, affected much of the world, plunging it into the greatest economic meltdown (is this the right thing to say???) since the Great Depression of the 1930s (which also drove the World War II). Malaysia, affected by the recession, has implement necessary steps in order to save what little of the economy we have (cewahh, ayat tu), hence laying off jobs and cut the budget. Budget cut means that companies are not able to support other activities other than their own, thus the word sponsorship does not exist in their account books...hehehe. And laying off jobs means that students nowadays, especially us, the undergraduates, have to study hard to achieve good results, hoping (as well as crossing their fingers) that jobs will be available to them once they graduated with Hons. So, putting all the pieces together, no sponsorship, no money, minimal things to do, no fun. Even Mark commented that their sponsorship for Convex '09 is not good. No jobs, study hard, no time to do fun things, no fun either. Huh...I hope you can see the link. Wow, imagine, how reckless and unsustainable lending practices resulting from the deregulation and securitization of real estate mortgages in the United States could lead to one another, like the book I read about climate change in Europe, which resulted in centuries of warm climate, good harvests and population growth. You got to admit even though we are continents apart, there are still things that links us to one another. One that I could think of: Facebook.
The new feature in Facebook is striking. I like it, centralised, although a bit confusing. It will take a while, before I can wind my way up in this new feature. The old one is easier to manage, i.e. (FYI, that means ib ed), the log out button is easier to find. Anyway, it's good, just good. Facebook is an integral part of our life. For me, I can't survive without knowing what's happening in Facebook. The problem is, I can't access it from my own room, due to the wifi connectivity here in Tekun. And that leads us to our next topic: Wifi connectivity in USM's Desasiswa. Okie, this topic might be a little sensitive to others, but hey, I have freedom to express my thoughts and hence my words (the pact that I made a long time ago in my first post). To begin with, USM HOTSPOT IS SO BAD I CAN'T EVEN DOWNLOAD A 1.0 MB SONG!!! Just 1.0, that's all (there is a 1.0 MB song). And to top it all, the building structure, the low performance of my laptop, and other interference such as the networks between laptop used to play DoTA weaken or appear to weaken the signal, and that leads to zero Internet...huh. But now, USM have taken steps to ensure that every room have Internet connectivity, by installing some kind of router in every cluster of 4 rooms. And yet, the Internet connectivity is still weak, but don't judge others quickly. Besides, the system is still in its infancy, and the low Hotspot connectivity may be attributed to my weak-performance laptop. Time to get some formatting.
Speaking of formatting................hmm...I guess I better stop. The eyes are a bit heavy now...I better get some good sleep, which I'm struggling to have, since my body clock change.
Well, that's all...
ZzZZZzzzzz...
