Root Directory:

Huckool.Com HuckoolBlog.Com Blog 2009

Index Menu:

Index Bullet Points Photography

Entries:

January February March April May June July August September October November December

06/02/09 - It's February, there's snow in the UK, and so am I. Oh my, it's been a long time since I spent a February in the UK, or seen proper snowfall; four years, to be precise. Has the UK really been struggling the past three winters that I've been away? Everything in the UK now is just... pathetic. This recession's pathetic, our reaction to a couple of days snow is pathetic, and everything here's just hopeless. The sooner I emigrate, the better...

Prior to Monday's snowfall, I had a fairly good weekend, spending Saturday evening at my brother's playing Wii games, then going to the cinema to see Role Models. Spent Sunday at Palmers Green, helping with the Sunday School as usual. I'd just like to wish Daniel (Palmers Green) and Theeba (Taman Tun, Malaysia), two special children currently in my life, both a Happy 9th Birthday, which was on Monday. Who would have thought I'd know two kids born on the exact same day?

Sunday night wasn't so fun coming home, as I slipped off my bike, due to the early snowfall, and I hurt my knee. Wednesday, I did not attend the open day for the Retail NVQ, as the meeting was postponed. Also this week, I've been adapting to Windows Vista, which was recently upgraded onto the home PC. There's a mix of good and bad features to it, but I'll soon adapt. And lastly, I'm now 'Media Manager' to Sim Media's SimTV. It's great to finally be physically helping with the site, that I've been a part of the forum community of for almost four years. I hope it also gives me the inspiration to finally produce something other than The Sims: Big Brother...

13/02/09 - After only managing to scrape five hours over time this week (on top of my ten contracted), I decided to make the most of some time off, and on Monday I headed to the cinema to watch Slumdog Millionaire, a film about a young man, originally from the slums of Mumbai, who suceeds to the final question on 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?'. Having fallen in love with Indian culture the past few years, I got really taken in by this film, and really felt the emotion in the movie.

The film gives a number of odd morals, such as Jamal (the main character) being able to answer the game show questions through experiences in his life (which are shown as flashbacks throughout the movie), rather than what he could have studied at school (which catches him out in the last question). But still, the film is a very real indicator of what life can be like in India. I've met slum kids in Chennai, and they're such bright, beautiful, yet tough characters. Why do I prefer the 'living hell' of Asia to the more 'safe haven' of the West? I guess I just want to be as tough as these kids are...

After being postponed last week, I attended the Open Day at work for Retail Management, though I'm not sure how well it will cater to my needs. To become a manager through the company would require me to be a manager in the UK for atleast three years, and getting there would take atleast a year, which I'm not prepared to take that much time for. It seems like a Malaysian Spouse Visa is the best thing on the cards, as that makes me open to all kind's of work, I'll have to see if I can exploit a Tesco transfer that way...

20/02/09 - I am feeling... shattered at the moment. It hasn't even been that long of a week, or not as long as what next week will be. Atleast I'm not suffering from boredom in my free time, like I was a couple of months ago. I've been trying to learn from this £25 Tamil language learning CD I bought a few weeks ago, but I think I've wasted my money. All it teaches is a dozen groups of basic, set vocabulary; nothing on sentence structure, or even pronouns. It could have been worse; had I not pre-learnt to read Tamil, I would have been completly stuck, as translations were all in Tamil characters too.

I've recently noticed Google has a huge variety of languages in it's Google Translator. Unfortunately, Tamil is currently not on their list, even though it's in the Top 20 of most spoken languages in the world, and ranked higher than Italian. Indonesian however (ranked around 47th), which is very similar to Malaysian, is listed, so I'll have to see what bahasa (language) I can learn through there. Hindi (India's native language, in the Top Five) is also listed, though translates into Hindi characters, which I haven't learnt to read yet, but I've not spent a great deal of time in India anyway.

27/02/09 - It's confirmed, I'm going back to Malaysia in three months time, but this time my parents are coming with me. I'll be leaving on May 29th, whilst my parents will be coming a few days later, staying in KL for a week, before moving onto Singapore for a few days, so I'll still have the chance to see and do what I want. There was a cheap flight available through Brunei Airways for £383, only on the exact days I wanted, but I decided to spend £50 extra and go back to Emirates, mainly because the return flight was twelve hours later. £50 for an extra twelve hours holiday? Yeah, that's worth it.

Though my next trip is organised, I haven't had much contact with my friends in Malaysia this past month; Victoria has been extremely busy, having set up what appears to be a new foster home, whilst both Jyothi and her father's mobile numbers have miraculously died. I just hope nobody miraculously dissapears whilst I'm away from Malaysia every six months...

This past week featured the Oscars, which I only took interest in because of Slumdog Millionaire, which received eight awards. It's not often that you get Hollywood movies based in India, and it's not often they're big hits, especially when they feature serious western taboos, such as child torture. I just hope the two child actors from the slums, Azharuddin Ismail and Rubina Ali, don't let the fame get too much to their heads, though I hope they have decent, prosperous futures. I personally thought they were better than a lot of overly pampered, western child actors.

I can't say that the 'feel good film of the year' is making me feel too good at the moment though. It makes me miss India, Malaysia, and my Indian friends even more, and there's only going to be so much media attention on the current 'slumdog' frenzy. But no amount of imagery or cinematography is going make me smile, only being with my true friends will give me my true 'feel good' feelings. But what can I do right now? Now is simply the time for working and earning, all for a future that I have no idea what will look like.