Magic Toothpaste

I've always looked forward to the day I would go out and buy the latest issue of TopGear, after which I would read it on the way home and then read it some more until my mother told me it was time for dinner. The reason for this is that I have been, and still am, a huge fan of things on four or more wheels since I first knew what a car looked like. However, the reason I've chosen the aforementioned motoring magazine over the countless others available is because I've developed a taste for that exclusively English blend of witty writing containing plenty of dry humour, properties that provide genuine reading pleasure, if I may.

Unfortunately, the BBC decided that each significant portion of the world would have its very own version of the magazine, and so TopGear Malaysia was born. This had the nasty side effect of having our local motoring journalists writing for the magazine, which wouldn't be a problem at all if they actually knew how to write. I experienced some very nasty palpitations the first few times I read the articles written by these amateurs and have since then tried my very best to avoid their reviews.

I shall justify my stand by using a review about the new and very sexy BMW 640i coupe as an example. Now you should bear in mind that all this was written by the editor of TopGear Malaysia, a position that makes his literary blunders all the more intolerable.

One of the things that makes the articles by the original UK journalists so appealing is that there is a certain flair to their writing that is glaringly absent in those written by their Malaysian counterparts. The proper way to write something like this is to make sure everything comes together nicely, but in this article it's like as though our editor decided to make a list of the things he'd want in the review and went 'All right I shall write this first, and then this and then that', which really isn't the way to go about as a journalist for TopGear. This had the unintended effect of making some of his sentences seem rather mechanical. The only way you'd properly understand what I'm saying would be to read the whole thing yourself.

Of course, this being an English magazine, the writer tried to be as English as possible in his style of writing. However, this didn't quite work and his failure is especially evident in the first two paragraphs of the article. The thing with this sort of writing is that you either do it properly or you don't do it at all, and you can see how his miserable attempts would detract from the joy of reading such an article.

There are also quite a number other miscellaneous stylistic errors that make this article less than a joy to read, one of which being the somewhat cliché manner the editor writes certain things. For example: 'The rear seats are great as long as you are not taller than DC (DC being the editor's initials). An interesting point to note: If in the future you happen to purchase a red 640i coupé, and you find a little indent on the ceiling/roof,then...”DC was here”.' Nobody writes like this any more! There was also a sentence where he put words probably meant as sarcasm in inverted comas: 'We only got to test the “humble” 640i with “puny” numbers like 450Nm from 1300 – 4500rpm.' Really? Then there are the instances when he tries to fit too many things in a single sentence, resulting in a difficulty understanding said sentence without having to read it over and over again.

However, the worst sin committed in the writing of this review would be the appalling grammatical errors that so obviously show themselves even when one is merely skimming through the pages. Even then, this article isn't the worst I've seen as just last month another review written by the same person contained a rather alarming number of such errors. Of course these mistakes could merely be typos, but then this just shows that the lazy bastards never bothered proof-reading their work but then again, typos are mainly spelling blunders and not the screwing up of an entire sentence. This, I would say, is the main reason why I don't read the things written by our local reviewers any more.

Pixie Poop

The people in charge of this university, it seems, aren't really that smart after all. Yes, our university may now stand higher than any of its lesser counterparts in Asia (at least according to some sources), but I have a rather nasty feeling that this ranking was based merely on all things academic. You see, I don't think the higher-ups here have nearly as much know-how on the way students work. It's really as though they've long forgotten the times when they were staying up all night to finish whatever needed handing in the next day.

I am of course referring to the way they cater to our rather demanding food requirements. Yes, there may be five places to eat from, but four of them close at 9pm, while the last one opens at six in the evening and closes at two in the morning. Now anyone will know that as people whose main responsibility is cramming facts (whether or not we actually understand the aforementioned facts is another issue) into our catastrophically overworked brains, our needs for stomach-filling extends to way beyond two in the morning. Therefore, it remains a great mystery as to why the campus authorities have yet to let us have an eating facility that is open throughout the night. Now because we haven't anywhere to go on campus when our collective tummies start rumbling in the wee hours of the morning, we're forced to stock up on instant noodles, and in case you happen to be an ignorant imbecile I shall tell you that these have the surprising side effect of being bad for you. If you haven't got any food you will find that you have no choice but to waste precious study time to walk to the nearby convenience store, which also only has instant food.

There was a time in the middle of the previous semester when a significantly large area around McDonald's was cordoned off for some sort of mysterious construction and upgrading work. At that exact same time LG7 conveniently decided that it too would like an upgrade. Unsurprisingly, everything went terribly wrong when there wasn't enough room for everyone to eat. When LG7 reopened, LG5 moved down and as it turns out there still isn't nearly enough space for everyone to eat during lunch hour. As a result we spend, on average, fifteen minutes trying to find a place and another fifteen minutes lining up to get our food. Now you can see how this would be a problem for someone, such as yours truly, who only has a half-hour lunch break on certain days.

Everyone was trying to guess what it was that was being installed behind the scaffolds surrounding the fast food joint. Was a Subway finally coming here? Alas, we were cruelly disappointed when we found out that besides adding a McCafe, they just made McDonald's bigger.

It is because of these things that I have come to the conclusion that the bigwigs don't quite care for our physical well-being, at least in terms of food intake. Now if you're reading this and you're one of the aforementioned bigwigs and you strongly disagree with me, I highly recommend you prove me wrong by letting us have some food that's actually healthy, and you can start by having a Subway here. Next, and more importantly, open a canteen that we can eat from all night. I'm really surprised that someone hasn't already done that since it's a huge money-making opportunity, plus we shall then possess the ability to somewhat pacify our insatiable night-time appetites. Win-win!

Oh sweet fish balls

I suppose it's time I resurrect this thing considering that the last time it has seen action was almost a year ago. I, unfortunately, am not here because I finally decided to share the contents of my brain cells online but because I haven't got a choice since the compulsory language course I'm taking, Styles of English for Engineers II requires that we write a blog entry at least once a week, which I guess is a good thing since my rusty writing skills need to be brought back to working order. So we're given a list of very vague things we're allowed to write about, though we've been told to be nice about whatever it is we're putting down which would be rather hard for me since I've chosen to write a complaint, reason being the time-honored tradition of complaining is one of the things we as human beings do best. I've chosen to complain about the food situation on campus, simply because I can't stand it much longer.

I'll be frank and say that I've gotten sick of the food here. No, really, it's so bad that even when my stomach's completely empty, I don't feel like eating. At all. Now I know some of you may have some strange, weird friends who don't eat much or/and don't feel like eating even though they haven't had anything all day, but I shall tell you know that I'm the sort of person capable of eating four Big Macs in a row with room to spare for a Double Cheeseburger, and I can't go for more than four hours before I feel the need to replenish my tummy, so you can see how this situation feels quite wrong for someone as metabolically endowed as myself, very wrong indeed.

I know that there are 4 main eateries on campus, 3 of which have very generous menus and the depressing fact that I've gotten tired of eating from all of them pretty much speaks for the degree of my predicament. Now the canteen that I have elected to have most of my meals is called LG5, because apparently it's five floors underground. This particular eating facility has a menu that occupies half the wall it's mounted on, and that has made me take twenty minutes to decide what to have for the first and half of the second semester (to the exasperation of my roommate), after which I never wanted to look at it anymore. I also found out the hard way that they have a horrible misinterpretation of the term 'Thai food'. The same applied for the LG7 below, though I only eat there about once or twice a week because it smelled funny. There's a coffee shop/cafe upstairs but I don't like eating there because it's mostly expensive western food. As for LG 1, which is where I have breakfast, if I was up early enough that is, I was getting sick of having lunch there too. This was simply because one of the best things there was the barbecued pork rice, aka charsiewfan, and there was a point of time where I had it every time I was there for lunch because I was sick of the mixed rice where what was supposedly sweet and sour pork was merely sauce-covered flour. The thing that I find completely intolerable, at least by Malaysian standards, is the fact that they use WHITE rice instead of the oily rice without which charsiewfan isn't charsiewfan. Really, white rice?

Now the main reason I can't stand eating here any more even though the food quality is actually quite decent is because as a Malaysian I've come to expect and observe a certain standard of eating, and as such I desire a certain quota of Malaysian grub every now and then. Also, try eating around the same menus every day for four months. I shall now tell you that I'm used to having either fishball noodle soup, proper Malaysian charsiewfan and wantanmee, or, if I'm feeling particularly spicy, curry mee or nasi lemak, every day, for breakfast and/or lunch. Now imagine not being able to have any of that for four bloody months, and you might just get a hint of where I'm coming from. Really, it's one of the most tormenting things I've had to withstand living here.

However, the single most unforgivable atrocity in UST's catering services is that the three main cafeterias close at nine, or sometimes even earlier if their feeling lazy, and McDonald's only opens until ten. There's another canteen near the halls that only opens at night until two in the morning, but that's rubbish so we're going to leave it out here. The people who run this university should know better than anyone else is that most students have a habit of staying up till the wee hours in the morning, either to study or to other non-academic (and usually unmentionable) things. So I think, and surely you would have to agree with me, that it's preposterous for them not to have an eating facility that's not open twenty four hours a day.

It is because of this that I've actually gotten sick of McDonald's, and I never thought a day would ever come where I would get sick of indulging myself in America's pride and joy. The reason for this is simple, really. McDonald's is the only main restaurant that's fully functional till ten, and because everything else closes at nine, I usually end up eating junk food a few times a week. Worst of all, there was a really low point in my life here when I almost got sick of instant noodles, the wonderful things that I've cherished since my mother lost the ability to keep me away from them. Since it's only normal to get hungry at the most inappropriate times in the morning, I've been regularly having them, sometimes everyday, and besides the horrifying possibility of my not wanting to ever have them again, this situation also has a funny side effect of being bad for my health. Now I know why so many of the locals my age are suffering from acute hair loss.