Members' Merdeka Sale at MPH

I received a postcard from MPH who's promoting their Members' Merdeka Sale. The sale starts from 1 Aug 2007 till 5 Aug 2007. (1-5 Aug '07)

Discounts up to 20%.

Exclusively for MPH Readers' Circle & MPH Kidz Club members.

15%* discount on all books and 10%* discount on CDs, cassettes, stationery, cards, and gifts.
20%* discount on all M014 and M028 titles.

*except items already on offer or promotion, value buys, agent controlled items, newspapers and magazines.

Sale open to MRC, MKC and MIM members only!

Words in italic are printed on the MPH postcard.

Blogging TIPS meme

All right! Here's another meme lined up for me (and for you, too!). If you find it simply enticing and you simply have to do it, then hesitate no more. Jump on the bandwagon now!

Chris from book-a-rama tagged me anyway. Let's see how it goes!

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START HERE:

It’s very simple. When this is passed on to you, copy the whole thing, skim the list and put a * star beside those that you like. (Check out especially the * starred ones.)

Add the next number (1. 2. 3. 4. 5., etc.) and write your own blogging tip for other bloggers. Try to make your tip general.

After that, tag 10 other people. Link love some friends!

Just think- if 10 people start this, the 10 people pass it onto another 10 people, you have 100 links already!

1. Look, read, and learn. **-http://www.neonscent.com/

2. Be, EXCELLENT to each other. ***-http://www.bushmackel.com/

3. Don’t let money change ya! *-http://www.therandomforest.info/

4. Always reply to your comments. ******-http://chattiekat.com/

5. Link liberally — it keeps you and your friends afloat in the Sea of Technorati. ***http://chipsquips.com/

6. Don’t give up - persistence is fertile. **-http://www.velcro-city.co.uk/

7. Give link credit where credit is due. *****-http://www.sfsignal.com/

8. Pictures say a thousand words and can usually add to any post.**-http://scifichick.com/

9. Visit all the bloggers that leave comments for you - it's nice to know who is reading! -http://stephaniesbooks.blogspot.com/ **

10. Make a blogger template unique: change the background colour, or add a background picture to your header. http://chris-book-a-rama.blogspot.com/

11. Ensure font size of words is not too small and colour of words don't drown in background. - http://booksloveme.blogspot.com/

END HERE

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Now for the next few victims:

1. kittycat from A Pregnant Pause
2. erlynda from __advent child__
3. Princess Shin from -Cherry, Plum, Peach and Damson blossoms-
4. Zeek from The Way I See It
5. Eric from Comtech
6. Becky from Becky's Book Reviews
7. bookgirl from bookgirl's nightstand

Okay, I don't have ten people but seven is just fine!

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows at only RM69.90? Unbelievable!

Today is the 21st of July. Today is the day all die-hard fans of Harry Potter are waiting for. I only managed to read yesterday's Star newspaper and was mesmerized with Carrefour's, and Tesco's advertisements on the latest Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows book.

It'll only be sold at RM69.90! The retail price is RM109.90. Check out the big difference! Since I'm only writing about it now, I wonder if there are still any books left at those supermarkets! Wish I could write about it earlier so those who are unaware might have known about it.

I won't buy the book now. At the moment, my spending is more focused on textbooks for my courses. I might only buy the book many months later when the price would drop. Nah, I'm not that excited to read the book NOW. I've not even read Half-Blood Prince yet!

Anyway, guess what? There are some interesting old movies at my uni's library! Now, I can watch movies in uni, too. I don't know where the TV room is and I'm not so bothered to find out. I suspect I'll have to fight with others to watch the channels I want! I spotted the movie 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and was eager to watch it. I asked the man in charge if I could watch another show, he said I could watch as many as I want! Now, isn't that nice??

The poor international students!

Whoa! I'm quite sick of travelling around almost everyday in uni. And my class hours are scattered throughout the day. Now, I miss my old school days where learning in classrooms only takes place from around 8 am to 1 or 2 pm, and then it's home sweet home after that. I still have lots of time for homework and studying when I come home from school.

Plus when we're in school, we don't have to travel around to get to classes unlike in university. I feel it's quite a waste of time travelling to classes. Waiting for the bus, then rushing to get on it first...and my hostel is at the other end of the world!

Yeah, yeah...I know I should not complain. I should be grateful that I'm even there in the first place. Like what some people would say, I should adapt myself to the new environment. Well, new to me anyway.

So far, classes were okay. Lecturers could speak in understandable English and sometimes, they'll teach in Bahasa Malaysia. One of my friends was not so fortunate to get a lecturer who taught in English. He taught in BM and there are INTERNATIONAL students in class who don't understand the language.

What she told me was very funny. The lecturer would teach mostly in Malay and sometimes throwing in some English words, too. Luckily, the notes on the screen are in English although the grammar is wrong!

Let's say he's talking about the environment. He asked, "Adakah kamu gunakan air untuk bathing?"

Then, "Adakah kamu gunakan air untuk cooking?"

That's his way of teaching in English, too???

If you were an international student in his class without any knowledge of Bahasa Malaysia, all you would understand is..."Blah blah blah bathing?" and "Blah blah blah cooking?"

When class was over, he would then say, "International students, untuk mengetahui masa tutorial, sila jumpa saya di bilik one-oh-one (101)."

The poor international students would then only understand 'International students', 'tutorial', and '101'!!! They would certainly get the wrong message! They would think that international students would have their tutorial classes at either room 101 or at 1.01 p.m.. Well, see how they received the message!

What in the world is the lecturer thinking??? He could at least have said this in plain English, couldn't he? You know, the stories get funnier each day.

This is what they have to go through in almost all their classes. I thought the universities were supposed to teach almost everything in English? What happened? And the course that the international students were in was not even a Bahasa Malaysia course.

Homework and Speeches!

Had my first classes for each course that I took up this week. And yeah, lots of homework/assignments, too. I think I can still call them homework, right? Assignments may sound more sophisticated but it's still homework to me.

I've visited both the libraries in my university's campus already and borrowed two books from each! We students or undergraduates(???) are allowed to borrow only 4 books for 14 days. Well, I borrowed two books for my course and two Sophie Kinsella Shopaholic books! Now I don't need to buy them anymore! Saved me about RM60++.

And to go online, I have to sit a couple of buses to get to the library. Plus there's no WiFi in my hostel! There's some garden outside with Wifi available though. Those with laptops can enjoy surfing the Net in the bright sunshine outside. Haha! If it's raining, then they can feast their eyes on sparkly droplets of rain while going online at the same time. Whatever lah...at least they don't have to sweat or rush for the buses just to go online. =(

Oh, about 2 nights ago, we had the chance to hear a speech from ex-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, who was in Kuala Lumpur. It's got something to do with our country's 50th Merdeka. 6 universities participated in this momentous event and a student from each uni can ask His Excellency, Kofi Annan, a question. They were supposed to ask questions but they were blabbing for a long time before finally asking the question. When they were done talking, I still don't know what their questions were.

Poor Kofi Annan! I guess he had to listen hard and concentrate on what the students were saying. I even suspected that the questions are not even their own questions in the first place! Maybe somebody else wrote the question and they picked a student with a good voice to ask it. So far, the best question-asker is from Universiti Malaya. She's the only one who asked a question without referring to a piece of paper.

And during his speech, most of the students in the Dewan did not pay attention or even bothered to listen! And the VIPs in KL could see us! It was so obvious that majority of the people present were busy talking and laughing with their friends. One of my friends was very excited to be able to see Kofi Annan live on the screen. Some people don't even know who Kofi Annan is!

It was quite a memorable night. I wondered if we appeared on TV since it seems like such an important event. Our Prime Minister and other political leaders were there.

Incidentally, no updates on books or book reviews for the moment. But I'm reading Shopaholic and Sister by Sophie Kinsella now. The books I'm supposed to read for my courses are somewhat thick and full of words! If I were to read all the suggested books for reference, I would not have time to eat, sleep, or do anything else.

Anyway, will try to post a book review soon. University is taking up most of my time.

Blogging from the Library!

Hey there people, I'm currently blogging from the university's library! Supposed to have class this morning but it was cancelled as the lecturer was stuck in some traffic jam or something. Sigh....I woke up around 7 am so I would not be late for class but in the end, the lecturer herself was late. I then decided to visit the library!

It's huge! There are two libraries here and I don't really know where the other one is. Gotta find out later. Even in this library, things seem quite complicated. Lots of things to find out about. Lots of places I should know of.

I'm only allowed to go online for 30 minutes. Sad, right? Haha! Well, they probably didn't want to make us Internet addicts, which is kind of good or we would be stuck in front of the computer all day and all night long, abandoning our assignments and other homework.

By the way, I bought 'The Prisoner of Zenda' yesterday at Popular, Gurney Plaza. I've read Prisoner of Zenda when I was in Form 3 for English. That was the abridged version. I hope I'll have the time to read books now.

Okay then, I'm going to explore the library. People were staring as I was walking here and there, pretending to be interested in everything when actually I was finding my way around! Haha! Never mind, the other first-years are as blur and lost as I am. A few seniors were very helpful, too.

I guess my half hour is up. Had better be off now!

Too Busy To Blog!

Hello...hello...this is the first time in almost a week that I have the opportunity to blog. My first week of orientation was super busy and I couldn't even find out where to buy newspapers. So, I did not read newspapers or any book for a week! Therefore, no book reviews for a while!

Anyway, I met lots of great people in university. Unfortunately, most of them speak a lot of Mandarin but they spoke in English with me. My new friends come from different places so it's pretty interesting. I'm still getting to know my coursemates. In fact, I'm getting to know about everything there! My friends and I kept losing our way during the first few days but now, we are more familiar with the roads.

I'm interested in learning a new language in university. I was initially hoping to learn French but couldn't sign up for it because the classes clashed with my English class. And the lecturer teaching French might be a little annoyed at me as I was not really prepared when I went to register. She was very cool with me when I went to her for the 3rd time to drop the Spanish course I registered when I went to see her for the 2nd time. Nah, I'm not so interested in learning French now. Not from her anyway!

So many things to do and learn in university. A friend and I felt that 3 years would not be enough if we wanted to do everything offered there. However, I'll try to do as much as possible while there's still time!