I Am Not Me?? Warning: Total Randomness Here

Who am I to you?

It is not easy to socialize with your really good friends when you are in Final Year medical school since everyone is broken up into different sub-groups for different postings. For instance, I am currently doing Internal Medicine posting at Hospital Serdang; Naveen doing Surgery; Yan and Charlotte doing Orthopedics; Jac at Emergency Medicine; and Jason doing Psychiatry. Did you manage to see how we are being broken up for good? So once every few weeks, we have a Common Session where all the students gather up for a big class and I was glad that I was able to see those warm faces again since we had a Common Session last Thursday. As usual, Jason picked me up at my hostel and we headed straight to the library upon reaching the campus. I could see Naveen, Jac and Sheila in the library as well. Good to see my Indian friend, Naveen - both of us have gotten so used to racist jokes between us that I can just call him India and he calls me Cina in return. Even though I only get to see him like once in a black moon now...

I'm not sure how much they have been reading on my blog but to my surprise, Jac told me that I do not sound like the real me in my blog. Those words woke me up with immediate effect as I was still half-awake at that particular time.

"It's not the Loi that I know in person."

Startled, I wondered how different can I be? She admitted that she spent an hour the night before just to contemplate which one is actually the real me. I gotta admit I was kinda surprised to receive this piece of feedback especially from someone who knows me so well. India was so quick to defend me by claiming that my blog sounded exactly like the way I would talk in real life. Somehow, I couldn't help thinking, hours later, how do I really portray myself to the community from this blog? What is your perception of me as my blog reader? A friend who knows me well might think of me differently compared to a random anonymous reader who happened to stumble upon my blog.

"It's not the Loi that I know in person."

Those words kept ringing in my ear and taunting me up till today. As though I am having an auditory hallucination, it seems that I can hear the words spoken to me every now and then as if Jac is just standing next to me. I know from the way she arranged her words and from her expression that she prefer the real me compared to the one she experienced by going through my blog. Again, I have to question myself repeatedly, how different do actually I sound here compared to the real me? Am I giving you a bad impression from my blog? It was at this time when I recalled another comment from another friend of mine, Melissa, 3 years ago:

"People who don't know you well will have the impression that you are an arrogant person."

Which is true, because honestly, I do not easily open up to a total stranger and I do not usually take initiative to talk to someone that I do not know. But those have changed over the years. I am more of an open person now as I have highlighted in my first blog post. To be honest, I don't really care much about how the community think of me, I only listen to those really close to me because they are the ones that know me best - like my family, my loved one, and of course my really good friends. 

A friendship is all about your effort and sincerity

Friends.

I am indeed very lucky to be blessed with a few really close friends throughout my life. Starting from primary school to secondary school and to college life now. And I know I will continue making new friends as I march forward in my life. But as you grow older, you tend to see which type of friends is worth keeping and sticking closer to; and seeing how the rest should just remain as friends. I must admit, I was not a popular guy back in secondary school, everyone has their own set of friends and it is hard for me to find someone who really appreciates me for who I am. It was only until my Foundation year when I met this roommate of mine and from that day on, I finally realized how beautiful a friendship can be. Too bad Jon has to depart to Russia a year later. If you are reading this, Jon, how are you at this moment? Did you manage to do what we advised you to do few weeks ago? Those stuff that we discussed for 2 hours at The Domain? Did you?? 

But who am I to choose?

Of course, I am not a perfect friend myself. No one does. But the effort and the sincerity matters. It is when I am with them that I felt a sense of belonging, a sense that I am being appreciated. Indeed I was so happy that Jonah came all the way to Cyberjaya for a drink with me few weeks ago. He is currently at South Korea looking at pretty girls and enjoying kimchi I suppose. But as I am typing this, more and more names appear in my mind and I can't stop but to think of how many friends I have lost contact along the way. I hope they are all doing extremely well. Probably busy with their work, some have even gotten married and have kids. Of course, they themselves have found a new set of friends to hang out with just like how I have found mine at my college.

So how do you define friend?

According to one random dictionary that I referred, a friend is a person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically exclusive of sexual or family relations. To be honest, if I were to take the definition literally word-by-word, I have not met as many friends as I have expected in my life. The rest that I thought were my friends, were merely my acquaintances. An acquaintance is a person known to one, but usually not a close friend. I have known loads of people, but not all of them have any mutual affection bonds with me.

Friends come and go.

Yes, friends do come and go. It is up to both sides to maintain depending on how they value the friendship. We need both sides to pull the string to keep it tight. I know very well that I might not see India as frequently as I do now after we graduate, or even Jason and the rest of my friends. Just like Jon who I only meet once a year every time he comes back to Malaysia for holidays. But the friendship is recharged with every meeting and the laughter you shared upon the reunion. It reties any loose knots and repaints any rusty chains between the both of you. If you have a friend who has let go of his side of the string, there is no point holding on. Let it go.

Okay, back to topic. I know I have strayed very far from my intended discussion really. I can't really see a big difference between the real me and the current one typing this blog. Probably I don't open up that much in my blog, of course I don't pour everything into this blog. A blog is not a diary and a diary is not meant to be viewed by public. It's just a place for me to hit at, once a while when i feel like writing, yeah, I love writing actually, have produced a few short stories of my own. I have an entire file at home filled with all my short stories. Those are being inspired by the novels that I read as part and parcel of growing up. And yeah, I love reading.

Reading Carrie at Borders, The Gardens

I was passing by Borders yesterday when I came across the book, Carrie by Stephen King. I have seen the book loads of times but have never taken any initiative to even try to read it. The best Stephen King book to me by far is Pet Sematary having received it as my birthday present many years ago. So I was reading the first few pages of Carrie and ended up sitting on the floor so engrossed in the book that I almost forgot why I was at The Gardens at the first place. I have a movie to catch!

In my humble opinion, the best way to improve your English is through reading. When I was young, I started by reading Enid Blyton's books, the books that color up my childhood. Words such as The Faraway Tree, Moonface, Dame-Wash-A-Lot, Mr. Whazzisname -  do they ring any bells? And then I moved on to detective series such as The Hardy Boys, The Famous Five, and Secret Seven. My, those books were really intriguing to the point I pictured myself as one of them. And when I moved into upper primary, I started reading the Harry Potter series and I finally settled at adult series such as The Lord of the Rings, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tuesdays with Morries and works by John Grisham, Dan Brown, and Stephen King. I have finished reading The Lord of the Rings trilogy like 8 times and have never grown tired of it. To me, it is a masterpiece. The ending was so perfectly written that I shed tears all the time when I finish the book. To me, to be able to create a totally different world, different species, different cultures, different languages is something really wonderful and significantly unique for JRR Tolkien. Dan Brown's series, on the other hand, always tend to have a big twist at the end. But Digital Fortress remains my favorite among his works.

Honestly, you don't need all those English tuition classes to improve your English. I never like the way how Chinese school in Malaysia teaches English. They are too schematic, too one-sided, too closed-minded. I have been a tuition teacher once and I saw how the kids are being taught nowadays. For instance they are given a picture of a boy drinking a glass of water, and next to the picture, they have words like this: Ali - drink - glass - water. And the student is supposed to form a sentence like: "Ali is drinking a glass of water."

Goodness, what do you learn from this?

Why can't they just give a picture without words so that a student can write something like, "It was hot in the afternoon and Ali was feeling thirsty after reaching home from school. His throat was as dry as a bone and he decided to drink a glass of water to quench his thirst." In this freestyle way, students get to think out of the box and get the chance to express their English in a more versatile way. Students learn mininal from the very structured English classes that only emphasize on tenses and grammar. Of course learning tenses is important, but I feel it is better for the student to take initiative himself in reading story books and learning tenses all by himself. I did not know much about tenses when I was in Standard 3 too. For instance. I just know that "I am a boy" sounded nicer than "Me is a boy" and therefore the latter is wrong. But do not be surprised that many youngsters nowadays (thanks to Facebook Newsfeed system) cannot differentiate between "I" and "Me" and when to apply them. No one taught me grammar, it was all from story books. Of course my English is not perfect, you would probably find loads of grammatical errors from this article itself, but hey, I am in a hyper mood today and I can talk just about anything in my blog today. Guess I am just too free or too talkative. I guess that was why Jac said I am different here. Maybe I should really sign off here otherwise she would be spending 2 hours thinking next. It's Saturday by the way. Have a good rest, folk!