Back to classes

It’s Monday and for the first time in many weeks I’m forced to wake up at the ungodly hour of 6a.m. to be ready for studies. Yup it’s the first day of my masters program and what a "treat", the pasca siswazah department of UMS has scheduled a whole week of talks on such “interesting” topics like research methodology, statistical analysis, proposal writing, sampling methods and other more topics that threatens to send my eyelids into an involuntary closing to fall into the deep pits of sleep. Yup after months of relief from having to attend lectures, I’m back in the student’s seat. Today about 37 of us science students (several which I found were stay backers from my graduation batch) had to take a seat in the conference room at the School of Economics (SPE) and was bound for an endless talk from 8a.m. to 4p.m. Ah the memories of having to catch the hourly bus, packed to the brim with undergrads (I wish I had my own car!) and having to walk under the hot Sabah sun from the bus stop to the place.

The only saving grace is that they actually fed us not once, not twice but three times in between the various sessions. Lo and behold the spread was surprisingly good unlike the horrid food served on most functions by our university Golden Café (must be because several professors were the ones giving the talk). Several kuihs, coffee and tea, nice hot rice with chicken curry, assorted vegetables, karipap, cakes and fresh slice papaya.

Well it was nice with the airconditioning on full blast and comfy cushion seating but after being droned on by my old Sejarah pembentukan Malaysia professor who kept on repeating how he suffered eating ubi kaya throughout the whole Japanese occupation for the entire semester it was bland to the point of boredom. My next door seater, Adeplhy Peter was nodding off and threatened to slump into me. At least the next speaker, Prof Perumal from the medical faculty was better off and at least made some interesting points and jokes. Yet I still had my trusty book (currently The Last Juror by John Grisham) to while away the time until the end. Ho hum, four more days of the same treatment before actual lab work and countless meetings with my supervisor next week. Must remember to grab a cubicle from the exiting master students so there’s a place to jack in my laptop and sleep during the lull.