A Weird Wet Weird Dream

Hello people! It has been 3 weeks since my last post, my last furious post. Don't worry, I'm not gonna swear or curse in this post. Back to the normal GGM (good girl mode) haahaaaaa! But I'm not a faker. Alright, first thing first - my update. Well, well, well. I've been sick like a dead dog for about a week. I had no idea why. Maybe it's because of the stupid weather. Anyway, it was just an ordinary flu and I'm still alive, whether you like it or not. By the way, my definition of flu is inclusive of fever, cough and flu itself. I'm sure ALL of you have had a flu before but still, I'm just gonna elaborate on my sick condition to give you a better picture. Well, that's not exactly the reason. I just wanna make my post look longer, that's all.

Righty-O-babe. Fever - I was feeling hot and cold like that song of Katy Perry's. Burning hot on the inside but freezing cold on the outside, got it? Cough - Well, coughing like a grandma but surprisingly without those thick, greenish phlegms. Flu - Just the normal and typical runny nose with disgusting nasal fluid and stuff. Eeewww! I'm not gonna go into detail. I had been feeling as such for the whole damn week. Paracetamols and medications were useless. They only made me feel more exhausted with ongoing sleeps without having any curing effects. So, I let my own immune system battle against it and it won!

Recently, I had been doing some Christmas shopping with my family and we shopped in almost all, if not all, shopping malls in KL. So far, I had only bought 2 Chinese New Year clothes, which is a rather surprising record, because I would have at least bought 7 or 8 like what I did in the past years. Of course, it will not end there with just 2 pathetic clothes. The search continues! We also bought lots and lots of stuff for the new house such as cutlery set, plates, bowls, cups, wooden planks (for me to put my babies in my room), comforter sets, bed linens, plasma TV, fridge, washing machine, aircon, induction cooker, rice cooker, pots, detergents??, mop?? and the list goes on and on.

We're going too far. Alright, back to the main point of the post. Last night, I was having this very weird dream. Kinda hilarious but ugghh, really weird. After that dream, I remember my mind saying that I would not wanna join MSMBB Quiz ever again. Why, you might ask? Here it goes. In my dream, all the contestants in the MSMBB Quiz had to strip down to their underwears, regardless of whether you're a guy or a girl!!! How awkward is that, huh? Guys had to strip down to their briefs or underpants or boxers or whatever the eff it is. And girls have to strip down to their bras and panties. Mindblowing? Haha! I remembered watching the semi-naked bodies of my team mates, our opponents from other universities and myself in underwears!!! Oh my dear Lord! And the worst part was, we had to stay like that for the whole competition, which was 3 freaking days! Everyone was in their underwears during the qualifying round while answering the 50 MCQ questions. Then the second day, everyone came dressed up but the semifinalists would have to strip down again. Imagine seeing them in their underwears while doing proposal presentation up on the stage with hundreds of eyes glaring around. And of course the third day was the same thing, the buzzer round. The two finalists (my team and UM team) were battling head to head against each other semi-nakedly to press that buzzer. I wasn't sure whether we were still like that during the announcement of winners because I woke up from the dream. Gosh, I so wished to see the ending!!! My oh my, why on earth was I having this kind of disgusting dreams?? But anyway, it cracks me up every time I think of it.

I miss that moment so much. And I also miss having those sleep inducing and mind torturing lectures in UCSI, fun lab sessions and doing all those bullshit presentations. Suddenly feeling so emo and missing my time in UCSI.

Seeing that I've never talked about the quiz, I thought I would take this chance to briefly brag about our victory, ok? I was the first person arriving at the Blue Ocean Hall. Actually I was on time but I don't know where were the other UCSI students. I started walking to and fro outside the hall because I don't feel like going inside the hall, disturbing the organizers doing their stuff. Somehow, Ms Lim (yes, the Fermentation Ms Lim) saw me and invited me in. We chatted a while and she wished me luck. She even asked," You cant wait for the quiz to begin, is it?" They must have thought I was very much anticipated for the quiz. Damn it! Then she continued doing her stuff. So, I sat there alone, looking like an imbecile. Some of the juniors, whom I didn't know, came and wished me luck as well. I was flipping through the Biotech book but couldn't even complete reading a single sentence. Too much distractions. Musics and drifting of tables and chairs. Instead of revising, I was looking around the beautifully constructed hall and making phone calls to my lovely team mates, rushing them to come over to accompany the lonely me as soon as possible.

About more than half an hour later, they arrived. Thank God! Then students from other universities like INTI, UM, UM Terengganu, Monash, AIMST and others flocked into the hall. After my team mates had settled down, we registered ourselves at the counter and each of us got a goodie bag comprising of a black MSMBB T-shirt, a booklet, pens and sweets. So nice of them for giving us sweets. Well, nice for someone with a sweet tooth, like me. More people came in and we started socializing. I'm not so into socializing but managed to make a few new friends from INTI, UM and AIMST. 98% of them were revising but both UCSI teams were just fooling around and talking and walking around the hall without any notes or books in our hands. Could it be because we were the host? Maybe. Oh come on, as if you can do effective last minute revisions! Frankly speaking, I cant. So, I was chatting with Kelvin and we wondered why are those people looking so stressful. We're here to enjoy, for God's sake. What? We're being cocky? No, not at all. We don't even know what to revise for the last minute and we don't have any tips, mind you! Then I saw Ms Yap at the back of the hall and I ran excitingly towards her. She asked, "Wah, so relax ah? People all studying but you all just walking and joking around." She even challenged me, saying that if my team ever gets into the final round, she would treat me a meal in Tenji (she broke her promise, as expected).

The first round kicked off and we figured that we just screwed it. So many different answers among the 4 of us. I guessed Dr Hon, Ms Lim and few other organizers were kinda disappointed. We thought we couldn't even make it to semifinal round. After the first round, my team did not expect much and just went on to the ice breaking session during the Social Night. We played several lame ice breaking games with all students and get to know each other better. Then, we headed for dinner.

During the second day, we were late and joined the other teams for breakfast where the semifinalists were announced. My stomach started entangling because of the anxiety and I could not eat anything. But Kelvin was still eating very happily and heartily. The 4 of us did not have any preparation the night before as we knew we couldn't have made it to the second round. Of the total 11 teams, 5 teams were eliminated and 6 teams surged into the semifinal round. Muthu and Alicia were announcing the list of semifinalists and UCSI Team A got in, as expected. So, our team (Team B) cheered for them. Suddenly, we heard Alicia shouting UCSI Team B. The 4 of us was like what has just happened? We were looking at each other with all those confused, numbed and idiotic looks while the AIMST team, one of the semifinalist, sitting on the same table with us, were congratulating us. I was like, Oh my God! We did not prepare for anything and today is the proposal presentation thingy! Kelvin was like, what the hell are we supposed to do? After breakfast, we went to unload piles and piles of thick reference books from Chin Hong's car. We actually kinda scared the other teams by the super big piles of books we brought. But we didn't actually use them anyway, haha! In the semifinal round, we were isolated from the outside world for 4 hours. No cellphones, no MSN, no email, no Facebook and no talking to other people other than our own team mates. We had to be followed and escorted even to the toilet. Not follow into the cubicles, of course. Common sense please. And I had to go to the toilet twice before presenting. Damn! She (the junior) waited outside at the basins! Somehow, I felt like a prisoner or convict. During this 4 hours of complete isolation, we have to come up with a research proposal regarding the theme we got from lucky draw earlier on. Our team got the theme HEAL. So, health first came into mind. Briefly, our research was about preventing cancer using gene silencing and siRNA technology. Ok, enough said. I don't wish to see those question marks keep popping out from your heads. We worked really hard, extracting all brain juices we had, stressing up and hurrying to complete our presentation slides. Thanks Keith for the slides layout. It was very attractive, I must say. Thanks Kelvin and Keith for presenting. Chin Hong and I were basically the ones who would be answering the questions. We were the second last team to present and we were extremely nervous. The hall felt so cold that I was actually trembling. Not sure if it's because of the cold or the fear. But I trembled! Dr Hon and Dr Jennifer (Caucasian professor from UM), who were 2 of the judges, kept shooting us with questions. To make things worse, Dr Jennifer is actually an expert in RNAi technology! Anyway, we learned how to work together as a team under super intense situation and the experience was quite fun.

After the presentation, we expected Team A, with the theme FEED, would have enter the final and I actually quite like their idea. On the third day, the result for finalists was announced during breakfast after 16 hours of incubation. Again, I couldn't eat though I didn't expect much. It's just that eating breakfast is not my style. When Muthu announced the result, we were totally and unexpectedly surprised that both teams with the themes HEAL were in the final round! Muthu claimed that he expected our team to be one of the finalists after seeing our presentation! And again, the 4 of us were completely stunned and started giving each other those silly looks. We jumped straight into bed after the tiring proposal presentation and never did any further research or preparation for the final round. But we still fought to our best ability *fingers crossed*. Both finalists had to do a 10 minutes wrap up presentation to market our own products and the audience had to vote for their favourite team. I found it very creative for the UM team that they decided to heal the environment instead of health. I mean, how many people could actually think of that. That's brilliant and outstanding. In the buzzer round, our team lost by 4 points. Oh well, we did our best. And so, UM team walked away with RM2500 and ours with RM1000. Needless to say, my share of RM250 had already long gone gazillion years ago!

After the competition, both UCSI teams went to celebrate by watching a highly stressful movie (Valkyrie). We should have watched a more relaxing movie instead (Slumdog Millionaire) but couldn't get tickets for it. After movie, we went for dinner at The Garden. The end! We had a great time. We could actually be very serious and very silly. I learned a lot from them.

Here are some shots of our best moments during the MSMBB Quiz (with the clothes on, of course).

Opening ceremony of MSMBB Quiz 2009

UCSI Teams A and B

It's been a great pleasure working with these guys. Miss them lots~

The ice breaking session during Social Night. That's KK on my right and the other big guy from INTI (if not mistaken), erm...cant remember his name. Sorry!

UM & UCSI Teams A & B

Mind cracking moments during lunch time. Serious people at work. Don't you agree?

The moment of truth. Well, we kinda figured who's the winner.

UM Team A won the first prize and UCSI Team B was the first runner up!

With one of our panel of judges, Dr Hon

With our lovely Dr Renee

With our personal trainer, Muthu!

Closing ceremony of MSMBB Quiz 2009

That's us in some infamous chinese papers after an interview and photoshooting session

Haaaa.....I enjoyed myself and had a lot of fun during the Quiz. Thanks to the persuasive Dr Renee though I turned down the offer twice. Not because I'm a cocky asshole but more so because I'm too lazy to do revision. That's an excuse, not a reason! Anyway, glad I grabbed that opportunity. It was an eye opener for me and undoubtedly experience enriching! I will for sure join this type of quiz again in the future.

I guess I have made it long enough for this post and I hope you still haven't die of boredom. Alright guys, love you. Peace. Happy Christmas & Merry New Year!