the last four months...

This is a review of last semester, which was the last of Year 2. It now seems like it started such a long time ago, until you realize that it's practically May, and four whole months have flown by. Classes were fun (courtesy of a very amusing lecturer), extremely difficult (quizzes on Monday based on pre-reading, plus case studies due), and difficult to sit through (reading slides verbatim is not lecturing, sorry...). There were some good times, but at the end of it, all I felt was completely drained. There were so many assignments and projects and quizzes and case studies, and the workload was consistent - no breaks. As someone put it, a test of human endurance. It felt like torture at the time, so I'm just really glad it's over. That said, we really did learn a lot, and some of the assignments were fun. I tried looking through my older posts to link stuff to this one, but there's waaay too many. Seriously. It shouldn't be that difficult to find, though. I did bitch about the semester a bit ;) I don't remember if I put a lot of the good stuff in here (like getting 100 on an essay...).

For Abnormal Psychology, we had to perform 15 hours of community service. These were taken on a visit to a shelter for women with backgrounds involving prison, drugs or AIDS. We were assigned to the kitchen cabinets. The boys were assigned to the men's home, where they washed cars and spent the rest of the afternoon chatting with the person in charge.

The cabinets weren't in the best of conditions. That glass was swarming with those...creatures, and there were a whole bunch of glasses. Viv really got into the whole thing, and went all Buffy on a cockroach. Hilarious :)

The nosy cat belongs to the lady in the picture, who lives at the center and helped us with the cabinets. Lavan got "friendly" with it (check out what she's doing in the second picture on the top), and Hannah (who also doesn't like cats, we found out...) taught undomestic-me the coolest way to squeeze a mop that doesn't involve you having to actually touch it. My latent obsessive-compulsive (using that term loosely, now that I know DSM criteria for the actual thing...) tendencies surfaced - I kept washing the grime and dead bugs off my feet every couple of minutes.

We made many trips to Petaling Street. The first time was for lunch on a Friday in between classes, and the place we headed to was a shop that specializes in beef noodles. The beef comes in three variants - balls, meat and insides. The first time we went there, I happened to be sitting right by where they assemble the noodles, so I just watched as the lady would cut these chunks of red, raw meat, toss them them in the soup along with some stomach bits. The stomach bits were...peculiar. They looked so strange, I can't imagine what they must taste like. We went there again, after our second community service session, and to another shop selling the same thing after the first session. While my friends had their noodles, I had McDonald's twice, and a strawberry filled donut once.

Top L - R: Hannah took this picture while we were waiting for Lavan at the Pasar Seni LRT station before one of our sessions. We always ended up walking through Petaling Street, so my friends could satisfy cravings for air mata kucing, soya bean, watches and the latest season of Grey's Anatomy.

Bottom L - R: The lady at the shop. Check out the insides! Lavan with my lunch.

Some of the random pictures that were taken e we were walking to/from the centers. The Bottom R picture was taken outside the Street Fellowship center.

This is the place where the Urban Feeding is conducted. It's basically a long tent that's erected and dismantled every weekend, in an area notorious for its drug-related activities. The food is contributed by a church (rice, chicken curry, and stir-fried cabbage) or sometimes, by The Chicken Rice Shop. Volunteers fill up rows and rows of plates before distributing the food to avoid any arguments or fights, and there's also Chinese tea and teh tarik available. The people who come here are homeless, and we recognized a few of them from the Street Fellowship. The first time we were there, it was extremely hot, and the tent didn't help. The second time we were there, it was pouring. Both times, there were many, many people who had come there for a hot meal. We learnt that this has been going on for nine years. It made me wonder how many people actually knew that things like this were going on all this time.

We helped by serving and distributing the food, and later by collecting used cutlery. We were quite drained at the end of the first session, probably cuz of the intense heat. Viv actually asked for Mentos. She usually doesn't go anywhere near anything that isn't sugar free.

This semester we had elections for the very first Student Council of the B.Psych program. Hannah was nominated as President, and we set out to make sure that she won :) But by the time we actually got down to posters and stickers, a lot of other people had already started campaigning. We made posters that described her accomplishments, and handed out stickers that said 'Vote Hannah Lim for President!'. Somewhere along the line, we were talking and a light bulb went off, and we came up with the idea for the pink poster. We laid out the paper on the floor of DSA in Wisma HELP, and she lay down on them, and I traced her outline. The place was pretty deserted, but it would have been interesting if there were heaps of people there. All our hard work paid off, cuz she won! Later, I was elected as the Secretary.

I think it was right before the Chinese New Year break when apparently it was decided that everyone was going to wear red. I don't wear a lot of red. I think I have like...one, red t-shirt. And I was pretty damn sure Lavan wouldn't wear red, but she surprised us all. They made me hold Lavan's Sponge Bob (it was a present) for not comforming. The picture on the right is of our prize-winning (!!!) poster for Human Personality, and was taken just after we finished pasting everything. It was a content analysis of personal ads from a website, and Viv had this really cool idea of printing out the ads (or the bits where they described themselves anyway) and cutting hearts out. It looked very, very cool.

That was also when the hecticness picked up, and soon it was Research Colloquium, where we had to present for Abnormal Psychology. The first picture on the top row was taken during the Keynote Speech we attended. Some time in March (it was after the outdoorsy wedding), I had brought Viv's nail polish back, and Hannah and Lavan decided to paint their nails during class.

The rest of the pictures were taken during our lunch in Chili's with Winnee, our former Research Methods lecturer who is leaving HELP. It was the last day of lectures, right before our finals, so it was good to blow off some steam.

So I guess that's pretty much it. I know I still haven't finished parts two and three of the Thailand trip, I'll get to it soon (Vee - I'm trying to entertain you!).


Song for today - Yesterday and today, I've been listening to Beg by Evans Blue and Shattered by Level. Random stuff from a friend, but good stuff.