The Road through my Fucked Up Life.

Road paved on 9:27 PM |

Half done, half to go.

Yup, now we have finished the MB part of our MBBS. And according to Richard's dad: The 2nd part is easy, because it is all BS (bullshit). My uncles took to calling me doc (dog) as I only deserve half of it. Kononnya I will be called doctor when I become a real doctor and doctorrrr when I become a specialist.

Yup, after two and a half years of being in med school, finally a convocation. A damn blardy long and boring function for us to receive Sijil Kepujian Tamat Fasa Satu di IMU to be more exact. So dumb.

It's long, it's bloody boring, it's annoying, but it was one of the best events in the past few weeks. I get to meet noisy, boisterous people, the silent, quiet people, the rude, the elegant, and all of them my friends.

And since most of my readers are from M2/03, I don't see the point of blogging about convo, but I guess I'll put my 2 cents about the event.

Convocation for us started on Friday, when we had our last lecture as a batch in the auditorium. Walk into the audi and whoa... those are my friends, sitting in those chairs that I thought I was so glad to forget. There was Mr. Pervert Hiong Chin, making noise loudly as usual, Mr. Noisy Daniel talking on and on, Miss Scary Sheena making her presence felt and so on. And we were arranged like kids in kindergartens into our seats.

Then a gay guy gave us lecture. Now, this guy gave lectures with lame jokes. He was just trying to hard. And a pharmacist to boot. Dumbass who is buttering up to the Dean of Pharmacy Peter Pook. Either that, or his is gay partners with Peter Pook. Come on, Peter Pook is confirmed gay and he is also gay.

Miss Dayang Siti Cute Yuhana - "Maybe they just play tennis togther."
Yeah, in bed, whacking each other balls.

Jody Goh - "Maybe badminton"
Yeah, in bed, whacking shuttleCocks.

But I digress, I am not going to commit so many lines to a pharmacist. They are not worth it. Bla.

We were taught how to go up and shake hands with the Chancellor ("Man with most lebeh suit" - Daniel) and bow and walk. Like we were kindergarteners. How in one hour, we can be reduced from being half doctors ready to accept our half-cert to small kindergarten kids. Haha.

We did many things on Friday. We went rejoined our clique, go Ta-Kei with our gang and mamaking. As for me, it was CG lunch with my CG gang and I sure miss having all of us sitting together and just talking lame. And I had a Futsal game with my futsal gang. And was planning to have a debate with the debate gang (which unfortunately did not turn out). So in total, I have three gangs I hang out together with.


On Saturday, I actually have to wake up at an uneartly hour of 5 so I can reach Jody's hse so we can carpool to Hilton. I don't get why must we have a blardy rehearsal. It was super boring and to listen to the gay pharmacist lecture us again... sigh... B-O-R-I-N-G.

I think that this convocation is very in the words of Daniel, LEBEH! Because we aren't really doctors yet. It is just a mark that says: ooh... halfway doctor dee. Like it was something parents are supposed to be proud of. I mean, so many friends brought their whole family, including grandparents, grandcousins, aunt and uncles. Hell, I brought my grandpa too, only becos he won't be able to go all the way to Aussie to see me graduate properly and we have to make do.

But the fellowship... to DIE for. To be back among friends, to just laugh and joke and make noise in general. It was nice to see Sheena losing her power as the batch rep (haha) and to finally find out that I am not really that short after all. And still not knowing names of all the tudung-ed malays. Tough luck.

And cameras, cannot forget the cameras and flashes. Felt like celebrities. And to think that I decided to be Vasan that day by wearing of all things PINK!!! OMG, I must be color blind or something. I always thought PINK is for BIMBOs!! Not me!
YeePei: What happened to you?!
Grace: You looked feminine.
God help me.

And the robes. The large robes that was overlysized for me (even tho I'm using SS). My fingers are lost among the sleeves, that I had problem shaking hands. I looked like Harry Potter in pink. No, more like Batgirl or pontianak harum watever. Or like being in a funeral choir. And we don't get to have the hat and mortarboard because we have not graduate yet. Bla... what a waste of time then.

And a chance to insult pharmacists one last time. We were lining up for rehearsal and since we are a bigger batch, we had trouble finding our spots. They were all lined up. Hell, they had a smaller batch.
Tim Sung: Hey, you guys are losing face to pharmacy.
Me: Oi, quickly la. Cannot let that happen.
Right in front of them.


So the real stuff began at 9.45. Trooped down the red carpet with cameras flashing in my face. It was supposed to be a solemn occasion, but I was talking and laughing with everyone. During rehearsal the day before, I had Text Twist to play while waiting my turn to make a fool of myself, but now on the real day, I had nothing but my wits and the ability to just doze off.

The academic staff walked in followed by the Court of Deans and Chancellors. And not to mention the LIBRARIAN coming in holding the mace.

Dayang Siti Yuhana: "He's the Court Jester and he is going to dance for us."

Names were being called out and we tried to memorise the whole process of "Bow, walk, bow, handshake, pose, walk off" Fine and dandy until we realised that that dumb chancellor only smile at the camera with malay girls. He's a malay, duh. So now the tough thing is to get him to at least pose for the camera.

I had plan to just stroll on stage, act cool and all. So I did, and lucky me managed to get that dumb man to at least look sideways. And as I got off, the gay lecturer had to call me to slow down. Fine, I did. And then when I get back to my seats, someone told me that I was shuffling like a Parkinson patient.

What the hell?

Then the announcement of Dean's List students where the students mentioned had to stand up and bow to their parents. No Bin's list, where students would have stood up and covered their face in shame. And the Gold Medallist announcement where we planned to throw our scrolls into the air or do the wave. Whoo...

And who can forget the speech by the dumb guy with the most elaborate suit. We are medical students and he began his speech with politics. We thought maybe he picked up the wrong speech, as in he took tomorrow's speech instead of the speech intended for the convo.

I thought: SESAT!

I don't trust doctors turned politicians (eg Mahathir, Sheena Toyat). They are too too slimy and this man is the same. He was like a slimy ball of fat sitting on the throne, with folds of fat falling all over his face. Icky.

And there is the meet the parents session and more click click click and more yak yak yak followed by cheese, click click click. First new parent I met was Grace Chew's mother.
Grace mom: So this is THE Elena.
Ok, Grace. What have you been telling your mother?
She's a nice lady who looks so like grace. (Richard: "No, SHE looks like her mom") Meeting her was like meeting the great Ellis Grey (from Grey's Anatomy) and I did not know what to say. Once again I noticed that I still don't know how to communicate with adults unless I bring them DOWN to my level of conversation, because I sure do not know how to go up to THEIR level of conversation.

Then there was TJ's dad who look so ganas and Zen's mom who mistook me for someone else. And of course Raj's mom who is so tiny and if his dad was bigger than him, where did the tiny gene go? I caught glimpses of everyone else's parents and how proud they seemed of their children.

And when we finally returned the robes and scrolls for our transcripts, it was then the reality start setting in. This is the last time we would ever be gathering as a batch. Still, it seemed incomplete with those who have already went missing. But what about these friends now. After this, we would be graduating at different part of the world, will there be a chance of a mass reunion of doctors? Hell, will I ever be able to see most of these faces again? Yeah... I would be seeing most of those Seremban people, but what about those leaving for other parts of the world? Will I be forgotten, a pebble in their history of time? Will I forget them, with my lack of ability to keep in touch with friends?

Only time can tell.

At every graduation, a valedictorian would speak on behalf of the batch. He would look back at those days spent together with the batch and thread them together to form a single speech. But since we are not graduating, I would say a few words before we part ways. Most of these were quoted before in this blog, and I would thread them together to form a speech.

But to me a speech is something that I prepare for ears of strangers, people I did not know, but after all that we have been through together as a batch, that 2 and the half years of fighting and struggling together, I think that none of us are strangers anymore. I may not know your name, I may not know your background, but I know you, and I recognise you as a member of this batch glorified.

Standing at the crossroads of tomorrow, where all of us will part ways and go down different roads, I believe that the destination of that each road is the same. If wind of fate wishes it, we would converge again at that endpoint and look back at our different roads and find them not so different after all.

We are a batch of students with intertwined fates, not because we are the same, but because we are held together by our diversity. A batch of students with different talents and different past, thrown together by the one single direction in life: To be a Doctor. It was destiny that we met together and that single goal in life is the thread that bound us together. There is a bond between each and every one of us eventhough we may not see it, a bond forged in the hell of two and a half years of medical school. It is a bond that nothing could break.

Even as each and every one of us step forth to different realm of the world, we would ever feel the spirit of M2/03 within us. M2/03 is more than a batch, M2/03 is the US, the students of the batch, and the spirit that lives in each of us. And that spirit can never be conquered. M2/03 may have break off, but the spirit will never die. With each step we take into our new world, M2/03 will live on in us.

This road we walked upon is a difficult one. The burden we picked is a heavy. The end goal may be a goal worth fighting for. But this is a life we will never make it on our own. There are mountains to climb, there are pitholes that swallow us up. And it is times like this that we call upon the spirit that held us together. It is times like this that we will look back at those days we spent in the sun and realise that we are not alone.

So go forth my brothers and meet those challenges. Ride on with the wind and may M2/03 be with you.

Our reasons may be different,
but our goals are the same.
- Delita, Final Fantasy Tactics

We passed by on 9:27 PM |