It is past 2am and I should be in bed but I am wide awake from a huge bar of chocolate I ate earlier. Oh yes, it is that time of year now- with exams looming in the distance and course works piling up and revision suddenly becoming more urgent and all I want to do is eat my way through it. Not good when I’m not supposed to be having dairy right now, and I am eating little else. Probably due to my lack of sleep and terrible diet I now have a cold. It started suddenly with a sore throat and now I am hacking up my lungs every few minutes. Lovely and exactly what I need right now.
I had a maths test today which went terrible. It was strange; I was in the library last night and suddenly this guy in my course comes up to me and then he offers me his answers to the coursework that I could keep and even explained several concepts to me and talked to me about the test…which is the only reason I feel slightly bad for failing it so miserably. I spent 4 hours in the library the night before that attempting to learn fourier transforms and in the end I got not a single question correct. It’s so confusing. It’s going to take me a long time to get it all learnt but in the end, there is still time. I pray that if I just keep at it then it will all click and I will be able to do better on my exams. That even I’m still struggling, I am at least I am buckling down to my work and that has to count for something. See look, it may be the sugar talking but I’m trying to be positive here. I’ve started my maths revision, obviously, and my power electronics. I just need to sit down and get on with my software engineering, which is something I am desperately putting off because I do not understand C++ in the slightest. My lecturer is OK but nothing can change the fact that I struggle to break problems into lines of code. I’m also behind on my control systems and signal processing. My control systems lecturer is really good so I am hoping that I won’t struggle too much trying to actually learn it, but my signal precessing lecturer…is not so great. She seems so young and when she lectures it never really feels like a lecture. She is way too relaxed and did I mention she looks about 20? She is nice though, she came up to me in the tutorial the other day to ask how I was getting on and settling in to the campus which was awkward, but as I said, nice. Apart from that labs still suck and I’m still behind and I only have 4 days now to get done what I’ve been putting off for 4 weeks. Trust me, I have a massive backlog. its the one thing I can’t be positive about. I feel slightly sorry for my lab partner for being stuck with me.
The other day me and the other electrical and electronic students from the uk met up with one of the UK staff members in control of study abroad and we talked about Malaysia and how we are finding it. It was a bit nerve wracking and I worry about what I said. I actually felt a bit bad for him because we had a lot of complaints. Things are good here but there are things that are different in a frustrating way. The lack of organization, the general laid back attitude of Malaysia… I had a parcel due from the UK and i went to the mail office 4 times asking after it before they thought to tell me they were keeping it upstairs in a different place. I had by that point a already been calling up customer service and sending off a letter of enquiry to Pos Malaysia thinking it had been lost. oh, that was bad. Also, the uni isn’t quite at the same level as back in the UK. The lectures at this uni are still OK even if not great, but the resources just aren’t here. None of the notes are ever uploaded online, rather they are uploaded to a drive that can only be accessed on the uni computers (I know! How backwards!), its a struggle to get hold of textbooks from the library, there are too few computer rooms and too few printers, and half of the too few printers are always broken. I will also forever be annoyed that I had to pay for a tool kit for my one module. The heat is another thing that gets annoying. it doesn’t bother me, but I am fairly concerned about my belongings. My favourite necklace and bracelet are now rusting, and I keep finding mould on weird things- my handbag (!), a wooden hair accessory (!), one of my makeup brushes (!). I bought these anti humidity box things and I’m not sure they are working out. I need to get hold of some silicon sachets and spread them everywhere. Perhaps I should stop being so cheap and turn on my air con, but come on, it seems such a needless expense, and the sound of it drives me crazy. :/
Of course it is now my reading week which is the one thing I don’t need to pretend to be thinking positively about. I am terribly exciting for going to Seoul. I am eager to travel and this sounds bad, but to get away from here a bit. Not Malaysia per say, but taking a break from campus would be good and I am desperate to stay in a hotel and to be free of the mould and the funny smell coming from my bathroom and the 60 million spiders that reside in my room even though I vacuum it twice a week. (In fact, vacuuming seemed to release a plague of spiders from the deep dark corners of my room *sigh*)
Yes, its coming up to that time of year where I just become a bit grouchy and fed up and I’m eager to take a break from real life. Can it be thursday already? I want to be on that plane to Seoul already!