28 days left.

I just got off the phone with my mom. My father has been losing more and more weight. Last time I was back, he had already lost a lot of weight. His clothes were clearly too big for him, and his big broad shoulders that used to be round was instead caved in. It pains me to imagine what he look like now.

Well here’s another instalment of my time in Perth. I got a digital camera around that time, so do enjoy the pictures. No more irrelevant image placeholders. 🙂

*~*~*~*~*~*

The year was 2000. At 12 midnight, the Y2K Millennium Bug struck, causing thousands of airplanes to fall of the air… wait that didn’t happen. 🙂
Something worst happened though. George W Bush won the highly controversial US Presidential Election against Al Gore, thus beginning his reign of terror. More conspiracy theories about Lady Diana’s death surfaced on Women’s Weekly magazine. And my all time favourite reality TV series – Survivor premieres.

I was 18 years old, which means I was finally legal. 🙂 It didn’t matter though because for the past 2 years, I had been successfully following my father into casinos without the bouncer checking my ID. They would always check my sister’s ID and sometimes my brother’s too, but never me. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Its my second year at University, and I was beginning to feel the pressure of keeping up my good academic grades thus far. The kiasu spirit in me was failing and I could feel it. When I was in high school it was easier to compete with other students, but its a whole new ball game at University. At Uni, the students here chose their course because they’re good at it and they like it, not because they are required to do it. They’re mostly DUXes, Best Physics and Best Maths students in their respective schools themselves. I was competing with the best of the best in Western Australia, and it was difficult.

It came to a point where I said to myself "Ahhh… screw it. I have had my peak. I was the DUX in my high school; I graduated in the top 0.6% of the state; I’ve achieved what I wanted to achieve and its time for me to enjoy life." And that was that. I began to take it easy, stop being so kiasu, get involved with the International Students Committee (ISC) more. And goddammit I need to change my nerdy image.

Thus beginning my transformation, for better and for worse.

THE BAD: As soon as I put less emphasis on my studies, my grades slipped from an 80 average to a 70 average. 🙁

THE GOOD: I finally have a life. 🙂

Instead of burying my head in the books as I did for the past 3 years in Perth, I began going to the gym, organising major social and cultural events on campus, and just meet lots and lots and lots of people. My social circle virtually exploded this year.

It was definitely a refreshing change for me. I had course mates who finished University after spending 4 years of attending lectures, go home and then study a bit more. They graduated Uni without meeting anyone other than their course mates and their lecturers, and they went through their young adult life without even having a girlfriend. Sure they get a scholarship offer and a first class honours in the end, but they’re missing out some of the best moments in life and social opportunities that they simply could not get outside of Uni.

As soon as I began to have more acquaintances, I began to go out more. And as soon as I began to go out more, I began to want to look good. The clothes that I got for free from some Coca-Cola promotion simply doesn’t cut it anymore. So I committed a sin. I began buying my own clothes. Nothing expensive though, just the average middle-priced range of clothing from Levi’s, ROMP and Just Jeans. That’s enough to put a strain in my AUD30 a week allowance from my parents. I did not have a AUD500 a week allowance or a gold Visa card that my friends had from their parents. And despite how I ask/beg/plead my parents, they simply wouldn’t budge. Money no enough. I need more money.

So what’s an 18 year old boy gonna do when he has no money? Work at McDonald’s? Wash toilets? Prostitute myself to rich housewives or *gasp* gay lords? No no no no no. I had to return to my nerdy roots. I rememberer how I tutored Wendy before and I enjoyed it. I decided to do it again, and this time round I will ask for $$$.

I put up an ad offering tutoring services in Physics and Mathematics for high school students. It didn’t take long for a father of a Year 12 student to respond to my ad. My first client. Damn I was nervous. I was shaking when he called and spoke to me. This father was no easy person to deal with. He wanted the best tutor for his child, and he would accept no one without first asking for their resume. A resume?! I don’t even have a resume! I was 18 for God’s sakes! I hastily prepared one, listed all those big big awards I won and faxed it over to him.

Luckily he liked what he saw, and he asked me to meet him at his place so he can introduce me to his daughter, Esther Lee. Did I hear daughter? I was secretly smiling inside. The initial meeting went well. It was supposed to be a meeting to evaluate her progress in Physics so far, but to me it felt more like going for a matchmaking service. I was so nervous I trembled everytime I talked. It didn’t help the fact that Esther is Korean and looked naturally beautiful. We agreed to meet for 2 hours every week at Garden City library, and I charged her AUD20 per hour for the Physics tutoring. It was still the best job ever – I get paid to hang out with a pretty girl to talk about topics that’s second nature to me.

Then I committed another sin. I took my first pay, went to Garden City shopping center and bought a Tommy Hilfiger perfume. Then it became a terrible addiction. My next one was Burberry Weekend, then cK Eternity, then Davidoff Coolwater, then DKNY Man and next thing you know I have this huge collection of perfume in my bathroom and no money left in my wallet. I don’t even know how the heck I was going to finish using all these perfume. I think if I were to go into the coffin and it I still all these perfume left, I want to be sprayed with all of them first before they put the lid over me.

Anyway, near the end of the 2000, two life-changing events occurred. The first was that I ran and won the Student Guild (student union) elections for the position of International Student Committee Convenor (president), thus beginning my first serious step into student politics, and also marking the first leadership role I took. Just for the record, it wasn’t as bad or as boring as it sound. 🙂 But I’ll spare you from the pain and write about it in the next instalment. Heh.

The second occurred in an mirc internet chatroom #ironic which Wendy had introduced to me a while back. (Yes, in the olden days, there were no blogs and the only way for people to socialise online was through mirc.) I had been popping into this channel sporadically back then. Most of the time I was inundated with ‘asl’ when I went online and finished with a ‘gtg’ after 3 lines of conversation.

One day, I was helping a friend of mine do a survey, so I was privately messaging each chatter and asking him/her some questions. Unfortunately for me, I was mistaken as a pervert and subsequently banned from the channel by an operator nicknamed sapphire`LiL`aNgeL. I wasn’t happy. So I asked for mercy. She unbanned me, and strangely enough we began talking. I introduced myself as Kenny…

…And she introduced herself as Nicole. 🙂

6 weeks left.

So here’s more of me reminiscing the good ol’ days. I know these will be very dry and uninteresting reads and I’ll probably lose whatever pitiful amount of readers I have left, but its important to me to write it down because its a memoir, things that I still remember now and I don’t want to forget when I leave Australia. I seriously don’t expect anyone to read it, much less comment on it. So please bear with me while I write my thoughts down. 🙂

Note once more that the images are mere placeholders and is not related with the text in anyway. I’ll scan appropriate pictures in once I return to Kuching.

*~*~*~*~*

The year is 1998. Viagra was released on the market, giving spam e-mailers something to annoy people with. BJ Habibie became Indonesian president, which I still think is the cutest name for a president until Susilo "Bang Bang, you’re dead" Yudhoyono comes along. Gossip mags were still talking about Princess Diana. And Bill Clinton said "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

Year 12 in Beaufort College were more or less the same for me. I was still a target for bullying. I was still having my silly little crush on Vicky. And the friendship I shared with my gang grew stronger by the day.

At 16, I became more aware of the social ills around me. Sex, drugs and gang fights were still new to me and to hear about it happening to people I know at high school was a rude awakening. One of the more amazing ones I’ve heard is this. In the boarding house at school, the girls stayed on the 2nd floor while the guys stayed on the 1st floor. Girls are not allowed on the guys floor and vice versa. So in the middle of the night, the girls would go out to the balcony, climbed over the railings and dropped down to the guy’s balcony, have sex, then climbed back up onto 2nd floor again. Truth or urban myth I have no idea, but that’s what they say™ .

There’s on little incident happened that year that puzzled me. I caught a not-so-close friend of mine crying in the men’s room. When I asked him what’s wrong, he said "My stupid parents lah. They wanted to cut my allowance from AUD500 to AUD200 a week. Crazy lah! How can I survive?". Yes, it must be very difficult to survive on a AUD500 a week budget, considering you spent AUD50 from arcade games, AUD200 in the casinos and the rest of the money doing God knows what. Some people have it too easy.

Something amazing happened to me mid-year in 1998. For reasons I can’t explain, I suddenly lost a lot of weight. Around the same time I ditched the glasses that I wore religiously for the past 5 years and went for contact lenses. Suddenly there’s chatters about some girls liking me or something, though I did not pay much attention to them. I went to our high school prom night wearing an expensive *cough*hired*cough* suit. Next thing I know I was actually nominated as the Beau of the prom. Seriously, if you were to say to me 12 months earlier that I am Beau material, I’d laugh at you showing my crooked teeth and double chin. I didn’t win, though I did get to dance with a very pretty Year 11 girl from China. It was my first time holding a girl I don’t call ‘Mom’ so close to me, so that was interesting 🙂 – except I don’t even remember what her name is now.

I had a major argument with my parents regarding the choice of my career. "This is my life and I can choose what I want to do. All you think is yourself and your business, what about me?" These are stinging remarks I said to my parents and the thought of it hurts me till today because my father actually still remembered what I said. I told him that I wanted to study a technology-oriented course at University. Being a entrepreneur himself, he’d rather see his son study Commerce, be his right-hand man and take on the family business. My father replied, "Doesn’t matter if you don’t want to study Commerce. Doesn’t matter if you don’t want to take on the family business. I can always sell the business off anyway. I can’t take it with me to my coffin." Considering the circumstances now, I really wished he didn’t say that.

Academically I didn’t do too bad, since I was one of those boring straight-A students that everyone hate but parents like to rave to their auntie-auntie friends about. I graduated from Beaufort College as the DUX of 1998 after achieving top marks in all four Maths and Science subjects, did my parents proud and secured the title as the uber-nerd of the nerds. The DUX title did do me some justice though, because the bullying stopped almost immediately. The first time I bumped into Hazis after I won the title, he actually said hi to me. Apprently you gained some sort of temporary celebrity status when you’re DUX.

It didn’t seem significant when it happened, but when I returned to Kuching that year I was appointed an ambassador (fancy word for "marketing tool") for Beaufort College. The consequence of this was that I was introduced to a girl called Wendy. Wendy is my age, studied at St Theresa and was about to do Year 12 in Beaufort soon. I was asked to help polish up her Maths skills, so I started to tutor her. With her being from an all-girls school and me being freshly officially rejected by Vicky after I confessed my feelings to her, my relationship with Wendy blossomed quite rapidly. It was actually her that introduced me to mirc and the channel #ironic which we would use to keep in touch when we’re not *ahem* studying Maths. Anyway, ugly things happened between Wendy and I in the end, but the fact that I knew about #ironic actually became important later on as it was through that channel that I met someone who virtually changed my life.