The pursuit of happyness

Well, it's that time of the year again. Yes, just one more day to the end of 2008. I wanted to do the usual siukai’s year in review but thought that I might make it brief this year.

2008 has been a terrible year, the worst ever. Gys left us suddenly early in the year and the few months that followed was basically hell. I believed all of us close to him were very badly affected and as for myself, it took me a few months before my life could resume to "normal".

But what is normal really? How can my life ever be normal again, knowing that I will never see my dearest buddy again, at least not in this lifetime.

It is almost a year now since Gys left us. It seems like just yesterday when we were having a Christmas Potluck at Kok’s house. That was the last major gathering we had as a gang. I miss you man.

I still remember right after Gys’s passing, I emailed my lecturer informing him that I needed to postpone one of my lab sessions because I was quite distressed over Gys’ death. And you know what his reply was?

He just said, "Okay."

Not even a word of consolation. Nothing.

It’s a sad world out there.

Screw you man! (I just needed to get it out of my system!)

For a while, I was angry with GOD or whoever was in charge up there or down there for taking Gys away from us. I mean, he was such a good guy. Why him? And in such a cruel way? For a while, I lost all my beliefs in religion.

However, I chanced upon a book a few weeks back about a guy whose daughter was brutally murdered and one day he got a chance to meet GOD and ask GOD why he lost his daughter in such a way. Though the book is fiction, it opened up my mind. Maybe where Gys is right now, he is much happier. I mean, this world is a sad place; terrorists attacks, financial crisis, all other kind of crap. What’s there to miss about this world? It’s a fucked up place.

Maybe Gys is living a better life now, free of his illness and maybe he is even attached! Ha. Way to go man! :)

Things happen for a reason and I’m sure Gys wouldn’t want us to be sad anymore. Nothing will ever bring Gys back to this world and we all got to move forward with our life. So Gys, if you are reading this, I know you are. :) I just want to say that you are my best buddy ever and I will miss you always. We will meet again k!

Remember the goals I made during the middle of the year when I said I wanted to score 3As? Well, I did not accomplish it. I scored one A+ though, got close to another A and failed my Maths. Yes, it’s siukai vs Maths again. Am I disappointed? A little cos I thought I could at least get 2 As. As for Maths, I kinda gave up during the middle of the semester.

Yah, I know I mentioned that nothing is impossible, I still strongly believe in that. I’m sure with plenty of time, maybe like a hundred years, I would be able to score an A for my Maths. Ha. But, in the fast pace world of University, time is a luxury. Ha, so I know my limits and thus decided to give up my Maths module.

On the bright side, I no longer have to take Math modules anymore! And that surely deserves 3 loud cheers! Yip yip hooray! :P

Something "amazing" also happened during this semester. One of my tutors accused me of cheating on my tutorial. Apparently, my answers were quite similar to a few others in our tutorial class. This is what he wrote in his email.

RE: Cheat on Tutorial written submission

Folks,

Your written submissions for Tutorial Main Question are all the
same. I am wondering why.

Notice the email heading. Apparently he determined that we cheated on the tutorial already. And notice the email body. Yet, he is wondering why. Hmm… is he stupid or what? Ha.

A few explanations from those involved followed. Most of them were quite nice and humble, addressing my tutor as Sir (my tutor is not a professor, just a graduate student), one even added, "Thank you, very much. & sorry about the misunderstanding." Most of them were simply trying to polish his boots, kiss his ass, hold his balls and trying to get out of the situation.

What about your dear old siukai?

Well, what do you think? I gave him hell of course. Ha.

I wanted my email reply to be short and sweet, so I drafted the following:

RE: Cheat on Tutorial written submission

Screw you!

Lots of love,
Siukai.

But I thought it was missing something, so I came up with another draft:

RE: Cheat on Tutorial written submission

Fuck you!

Sincerely,
siukai

Ha. I wished. The final email looked something much like this:

Hi **,

First of all, I think it's really unfair that you use the word cheat in your subject without first doing any investigation. If you use the word cheat, it means you have already judged us. And this coming at a time when we are all doing our preparations for our exams, it's really very upsetting and disrupting.

I agree with *** and ^%^. If you look at the questions for tutorial, most of the questions are very straight-forward, Each player gets several million "things". So we just replace things with "bytes". It becomes each player gets several million "bytes". It's simply just replacing the word with another word. If that is copying. Wow, maybe I need to get another dictionary. Pardon me for my sarcasm; I'm really quite pissed off at the moment.

I'm really very disappointed that someone would accuse me of cheating on my
tutorial. To think I even gave you good reviews for the student feedback. I
guess I was very wrong about you. If you are convinced that I cheated, then
you can give me zero for this tutorial. Life goes on. No point explaining
further if we are already given the "death" sentence.

If not, I think you owe us an apology.

PS: I can't believe I spent 20 minutes drafting this email trying to explain
something which should be quite straightforward.

siukai

So, did I get the apology I demanded? Well, of course!

Hi, siukai,

You're right about my misusing of the word "cheat". I should not judge
you in that way before listening to your explanation. Sorry about
that.

So far, based on what I have heard from you guys, I cannot tell if you
guys have cheated or not. I will send your submissions to the lecturer
and let him to judge.

Way to go siukai. Just to warn you people not to push siukai around or he will give you hell. Ha.

But, how did this story ended?

His final reply came, (with the unaltered subject, RE: Cheat on Tutorial written submission)

Well, we have decided that no punishment will be imposed.

Regards

When I read that, I got all hot again. His reply implied that he still feels we cheated, just that no punishment will be melted out. It’s like being acquitted but not proven innocent. So, I drafted my reply:

Hi,

I think you should go for English lessons.

Regards,
Siukai.

Ha. It remained a draft though.

For the record, I still got an A+ for this particular tutorial. Ha.

Other things happened throughout the years but my memory seems to be failing me. Ha. So, we shall move on to my resolutions for 2009.

Top on my list: Be Happy. :D. I’m really tired of worrying about this and that and feeling frustrated every time. I just want to be happy. Life is short. It’s really a torture to drag your feet through life and pulling a long face everyday. I want to smile more, laugh more and be HAPPY in 2009.

Number two on my list is to score 5As this semester. Ha. This may seems a bit ridiculous and rather ambitious but hey, you wouldn’t know unless you try. So, why not? :)

Item number three is to pass my IPPT on the 4th RT session and obtain a Silver. Ha, yah siukai has failed his IPPT yet again and is condemned to another 8 weeks of Remedial Training. I have no complaints about that because I did not train at all. Ha. But I have to start training now; I’ve got the whole of 3 months!

Number four on my list is to love my family. We can’t choose which family we are born into. It is fate that we get a chance to be family in this life time, no matter what wrongs or how crappy their behavior, we are still family. And a family should stick together no matter what.

Number four on my list is to love my dar dar MORE. Nowadays, love is not enough, taken inflation into consideration, you need to love MORE. Ha.

Number five is to love my friends. I don’t have much close friends; only the loser gang. So this year, I wanna shower them with more of siukai’s love and crap of course. Ha.

Next is to blog more frequently, at least once a week. I feel that when I’m writing, I feel happy and alive. And it helps to polish up my writing skills. So, what the heck, more siukai crap for you guys! I’ll even throw in new siukai’s stories if time permits. Yeah!

And finally is to eat more healthily. My health has been quite bad in 2008, must be due to the junk food and the lack of exercise. So in 2009, more veggies, more fruits and less meat. Gosh, it’s going to be tough. Just typing about meat is making me hungry. Ha.

This unhappy year is going to end in a day’s time. It’s going to be a brand new year to look forward to. I hope that I can find happyness (purposely spelt like that) in 2009. And I hope you reading this will find yours too. Here’s to a great year ahead!

Happy New Year! :)